It’s a warm summer night in downtown Belleville 2014. As usual, the crowd was at the Blue Agave, a local bar in town. Julia and her good friend Greg were sitting at the patio tables having a drink. It was getting late and she had to leave soon because of work in the morning. “Julia, this is my friend Ben” Greg stated with a smile. Julia looked at Ben who was standing next to her. He was tall, taller than most of the guys she knew, with a young handsome face with slight stubble. He had a bright orange shirt on, which today she insists was a dragon ball z shirt. “Hi” she smiled. A bit of awkward silence until Greg stepped in again. “Ben really likes trivia” She raised an eyebrow, “Oh, really? I love trivia!” Ben smiled and sat down “We should play together sometime! We could get a team together!” “That sounds great, I would love that” A plan was made for a trivia team that would never assemble, and they continued to talk until Julia had to call it a night. “Let me know when the next trivia night is, I’ll be there!” “Will do!” She walked across the street to her car. Heart pounding “Oh my god, I think I’m going to marry him”

“Are you sure you wanna wear that coat? It’s gonna be like 70 degrees?” It was Christmas Eve and Ben and Julia were getting ready to go over to his parents like they’ve done every year since they started dating. Ben had his big overcoat on that was meant for below freezing weather. “It’s fine.” He said, short and curt. Julia rolled her eyes and continued to nag. “Ok, but don’t complain if you get too hot.” Ben was silent. She shrugged and started packing all their stuff up to take over there. A box of presents, a box of games and prizes, and a plate of cucumber sandwiches. The drive over to his parents was peaceful but quiet. A little too quiet.. “Everything ok?” Julia asked. “Yeah” short answer again. What was going on? Why was he being so weird? They pulled up in front of the house, and started to unload the car. Ben was having knee pain lately, maybe that’s why he was acting strange. Julia frowned, feeling bad about nagging him earlier to get all the stuff in the car. “I’ll get most of the boxes of presents, and come back down to help you” Julia said heading up the steep steps to the front of the house. “Julia, will you help me?” Julia was at the top of the steps with her arms full of presents and a plate of cucumber sandwiches. “Oh crap” she thought. “He’s hurt his knees trying to get up the steps” She turned around to see him at the bottom of the steps on the ground. She hopped down the top 3 steps to get down to him. She thought he fell and couldn’t get up. “Will you help me for the rest of our lives?” She paused, arms still full of presents and that plate of cucumber sandwiches. “What are you doing?” She was in shock. She slowly dropped everything she was holding to the ground. She trotted down the remaining steps and sat in front of him. She looked down at the open box with the ring inside. He looked up at her smiling. “What are you doing?” She asked again in shock. “Will you marry me?” She nodded, and he put the ring on her finger. They stood up and hugged. Just the two of them, on the sidewalk in front of his childhood home on Christmas Eve. It was perfect.