Or maybe a coma.
A coma might explain this.
Because at that moment, Zander Michael Davidson gets on one knee, his hand leaving his pocket and holding up a plastic ring with a heart on it.
My breath stops.
“Where did you get that?” I whisper in awe.
The ring is one he gave me when I was six after he won it in some crane game down the shore in Ocean View. He’d been trying for some baseball card set and instead got the junky ring, handing it off to me like it was trash.
He was so annoyed about it because he had spent his last quarter trying to get it.
I, of course, had been over the damn moon, letting that thing turn my finger green for a month until my mother forced me to take it off.
Once I did, I closed it into the little gumball machine container it came in, snapping the lid on and putting it into Luna’s and my pink dream box for safekeeping.
And promptly forgot about it, mostly.
“Luna,” he says, giving me an answer I already knew.
“I’m going to fucking kill her,” I murmur under my breath.
“It was mine, technically,” he says, and I put my hands on my hips, annoyed, emotions so volatile right now.
“You gave it to me,” I say, and his smile spreads across his lips.
I’m sure this all looks so strange from the outside.
Me in a winter coat and pajamas, barefoot in the dark kitchen of my parents' house, Zander on one knee holding a damn gumball machine ring that’s over twenty years old.
But then his face softens.
“Let me give it to you again,” he says in a near whisper, my heart stopping.
“What?”
“It was always meant to be us, Zo. I’ve spent a week plotting out our perfect future, seeing if it really is the same as what you wanted when you were ten. You want to live here. You want to be an interior designer or do something creative. You want three kids—”
“I said two.”
“Yeah, but you want three,” he says with a smile. My heart skips a beat with that smile. “You want to live in a white house with a red door and a wraparound porch so you can sit out front and watch the kids play while you daydream about rearranging our living room for the fifth time. You want a puppy that will nip at the heels of whoever is closest, keeping them in line.”
I can’t breathe.
It’s all making sense.
Zander has spent a week giving me everything childhood Zoe wanted and learning everything modern-day Zoe needs.
“I always loved the version of you that was carefree. But this week cemented that I am head over fucking heels for this version of you. The one who loves fiercely and is afraid to let those she loves down. The version that wants everyone to be happy, even if it means she’s not. The dreamer. I want to give both of you everything you ever wanted.”
“Both versions,” I whisper. He smiles.
“Every version, Zoe.” I lick my lips, staring at him. “So I just have one more question for you.”
The remaining breath in my lungs leaves in a shaky exhale.
“Zoe Ann Thomas. Will you marry me? Be mine forever. We can figure the rest out so long as I have you.”
The ring glints in the dim light, the pink heart-shaped gem still shining.
“I didn’t get a real ring,” he says, his smile nervous now. It’s strange seeing it—Zander nervous.
He’s the most self-assured person I know and now he’s kneeling in front of me, nervous.
Because of me.
“We can go tomorrow or the next day or whenever. I knew you’d want to pick out your own ring, anyway, since you’ll be stuck with it forever.”
His words make no sense at all.
And yet they just show me he knows me.
I so would want to pick out my own ring to make sure it would be something I’d want to actually wear until the end of time.
“Zander, what are you talking about?” I ask because I still can’t wrap my head around it.
“It’s the last midnight question, Zoe.”
My heart stops.
I get it now.
The MASH card.
That stupid box Luna hid under her bed.
My playlist.
He added his own songs to it.
The questions about how I wanted my life to look.
Will you marry me?
It all slams into me at once, making some form of convoluted sense but still, so confusing all the same.
“Zander,” I start, my breathing uneven. “You . . . You have to ask my dad first.”
His smile widens, and I realize then that I didn’t say no like common sense would deem.
“Already did,” a deep voice says from behind me.
I turn, and there stands my dad in his pajamas, my mom with squinty, tired eyes in her robe.
“What the hell is going on?” I ask because now the world is most definitely imploding.
“What should have happened years and years ago, Zoe. I’m making you mine in a way you can’t run from.”
“When did you ask my dad?!” I say in a panic.
“When you were refusing to call me after your interview,” he replies, still on one knee, still holding the stupid plastic ring, a single eyebrow raised in challenge.
He’s right.
I ignored him after that interview, so confused because I thought I’d feel relieved to have a job offer that was exactly what I thought I wanted, and instead, I felt sick.
Unfulfilled.
Lonely, even.
I didn’t answer because I was scared that I’d say fuck it and tell Zee we should run away from reality again.
“We can talk about that later. Talk options. If you wanna do marketing in the city, we’ll figure it out. If you wanna do something else, I’ll make it happen. If you wanna stay in town and start popping out kids, I’m game. But this comes first,” he says, tipping his chin to the ring.
My dad clears his throat, and oddly enough, I smile.
It is funny, after all, Zander telling me if I want, I can start popping out kids tomorrow in front of my dad.
Funnier, though, is how I don’t cringe at the idea.
“Come on, Zoe,” he whispers, then he reaches for my hand.
His is warm but clammy. He’s nervous.
So damn nervous.
For what?
That I’ll say no?
As if I could.
“I came to your apartment before.” He furrows his brow, confused. “Threw rocks at your window.” He shakes his head.
“I wasn’t home.”
“Yeah, figured that out when your neighbor opened the window and threatened to call the cops.” Zee's eyes go wide. “I was at the wrong window,” I say low and embarrassed, and the tension and nerves break as he tips his head back with a laugh.
And the sound fills me, swirling around me with joy and happiness and comfort.
It’s then, I know.
I never had a chance.
Whether it was ten years ago, or a week ago, or five years from now, I was always going to end up his, wasn’t I?
Zee squeezes my hand once, twice, three times, and I come back to the universe, a new understanding taking over me before he speaks again.
“I want it all, Zoe. I want all of your midnight secrets, all of your fears. Everything you wanted when you were ten, eleven? I want to give it to you.”
“I wanted a pony with cotton candy pink hair.” I say the words low and confused because, of course, that’s what goes through my mind during this monumental moment.