Rebel

Yes.

Always.

Forever.

June’s answer drifts up into the night air and echoes across the cityscape

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.

I realize I’m crying too, because the final puzzle piece of my heart has fallen into place.

“Will you marry me?”

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.

“And what is that future?”

“But it represents a past. I want to give you something that is a future. A possibility.”

“A long time ago, I gave you a ring that held my entire heart,”

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.