I sigh at her and laugh. Keeping a secret from June is just as hard as it’s always been. “Just trust me,” I say before she digs too much deeper.
The train station I take her toward is the same one that I saw her walk by several months ago, for the first time in ten years. I’m quiet as we head through the space. It’s serene right now, the newly paved area empty as no more trains are running here for the night. Patches of grass decorate the gates around the station. The area is dimly lit, only a few streetlights dotting the night.
The memory of that meeting plays sharply in my mind. Eden walking beside me after his first internship interview, his spirits high as he tells me what he wants to do for the Republic, my hands in my pockets, a smile on my face as I listen to him. The sight of June walking toward me from the opposite side of this walkway. The way I had stopped as she passed me by, how everything about her—her eyes, her walk, the sense of her there—had seized me like a hook. I think of how I’d caught up to her, how we’d introduced ourselves to each other again after so much time apart.
Hi, I’m Daniel.
Hi, I’m June.
Now I’ve taken her back here. I look at her as we walk, a lump forming in my throat. Is she thinking about that moment, too? She’s quiet, and her eyes seem far away.
Eden should be in position, ready to do his part of my surprise. I glance toward the ledge of the train station’s second floor. He should be up there somewhere. My heart pounds in anticipation.
It’s now or never.
Suddenly, as we go, strings of tiny lights illuminate overhead. There are thousands of them strung in arcs along the trees and poles, guiding our way.
June looks up at them in surprise. A soft gasp escapes her.
I tighten my hand around hers and pull her forward. As we walk, more strings of lights turn on to guide our path, one round after another, their golden, twinkling glow reflected against the wet sidewalk until it looks like we’re walking through a fairyland.
June looks at me, the lights gleaming in her eyes. A curious, puzzled smile is on her face. “Is this your doing?” she asks me, nodding up in wonder at the lights.
I smile and lean down toward her. “Just follow me,” I whisper.
The lights continue to illuminate for us, one row after another, guiding us toward the end of the walkway, where a small park surrounded by shaded trees sits around the corner. As we reach it, I feel a tremble go through June. Her steps falter for a moment.
The walkway leading all around the square space is lit with candles. Thousands of tiny fairy lights glow in the trees overhead. Delicate glass orbs hang from the branches, filled with intricate bouquets of dried flowers, and baskets of roses blanket the grass all around us in a breathtaking pattern, their scent sweetening the air.
I lead her to the center of the space, then turn to face her, my eyes meeting her dark ones. A faint breeze whispers through the leaves. I’m trembling now too, unsure if I’m going to be able to do this.
“Each memory I have of you, I keep in a treasured place in my heart,” I say. “This place holds one of my favorites. You remember it too, yeah? Where we saw each other again, for the first time in a decade?”
June’s eyes are wide now, full of love and fear and expectation. “Of course,” she whispers.
I turn my eyes down for a moment, too shy to hold the gaze between us. My smile edges one side of my mouth up. “I’ve thought about that meeting every day for the past few months. That in this big world, somehow, I found my way back to this city, to this place, and somehow, after everything, the world still chose to put us back in each other’s lives.”
I turn my eyes back up to hers. “The Republic is a place that holds some of our darkest memories, for both you and me. You’ve been through so much, and so have I. We went through it together, and somehow we emerged from it to be here again, at each other’s sides.”
She smiles at me. There is a sheen of tears in her eyes now, and within them are a million stars. “Is that why you brought us here?” she murmurs.
I step closer to her and look down at our intertwined hands. “June,” I whisper hoarsely, “I’m in love with you. I’ve always been, since the first moment I knew you. There’s nothing that feels more right to me than to be by your side. And I realized that I could never get that feeling if I stayed in Antarctica. So I came back to find you.”
She leans toward me, searching my gaze. “Thank you for coming back,” she whispers.
I glance up at the twinkling lights. “I wanted to bring you here because I think this place holds my favorite memory of us. Of the fact that we’re still here.” Then I reach into my pocket and pull out a small, polished box. I’d spent so long preparing for this moment, overthinking every second of it—but now, I can only keep going. “I … wanted to bring you here because I’d like to stay here, at your side, no matter what happens. I thought this place might be a good beginning for the next chapter of our lives.” I hesitate, bashful now. “That is, if you’d like to be here with me too.”
Her hands tremble against mine as I kneel down before her and open the box to show her a ring.
It’s a clean, silver band studded with tiny, evenly spaced sparkles of diamonds, designed with an intricate twisting pattern reminiscent of the paper clip ring I gave her years ago, and of the one she’d given me. I’d worked with a craftsman on it years ago, had kept it in my possessions in the hopes that one day I’d be able to gift it. It looks like ten lost years aching to be made up for by a lifetime together.
“A long time ago, I gave you a ring that held my entire heart,” I tell her. “But it represents a past. I want to give you something that is a future. A possibility.”
June looks at me with eyes full of hope and fear. “And what is that future?” she asks.
I gather all my courage.
And I ask her the question I’ve been thinking about for so long, the one that my life has been leading up to since the moment I first met her, when we were still so young, unsure what the next day would bring, clinging to each other in desperation, finding ourselves together, the question that has drawn me back here to her, heart bared, vulnerable, afraid and hopeful.
“Will you marry me?” I say to her.
And for an instant, I think I’m dreaming. I’m going to wake up and this is all going to disappear. Or maybe we aren’t meant to be—she will turn away, or she will shake her head, and this particular future will never come to pass.
But then June’s tears finally spill down her face, and her smile is the brightest light I have ever seen, and she is wrapping her arms around my neck, crying and laughing and shaking, and I am so overwhelmed with joy that for a moment all I can do is embrace her. I take the new ring and slide it onto the finger where she’d once worn a twist of paper clips that represented our history.
A past. A future. Something that can be ours.
I realize I’m crying too, because the final puzzle piece of my heart has fallen into place.
June’s answer drifts up into the night air and echoes across the cityscape, one of millions of things happening in each of our lives, the small steps you take that are invisible to everyone else in the world. The steps that, nevertheless, matter the most.
Yes.