It was a bit of a squeeze, but she maneuvered one jeweled foot onto his lap.

She clearly heard him gasp, and she couldn’t help but giggle. The lightest touch trailed on her foot as his fingers outlined the chain running from her toe to her ankle. And, of course, that made her giggle more. Maybe this was a bad idea—someone with a foot fetish really shouldn’t be with someone so ticklish.

“This is for me?” he asked, reverently.

“Yes. You like?”

“I love it.” He chuckled, fingering the chain again. “This is beautiful.”

“There’s more.” She squeezed her foot off his lap and back into the hallway. “Open the door.”

Immediately after the door opened, he fell back down to the ground to look at both her feet this time. Running his fingers over the little bells around her ankles, hearing the soft jangling sound as they hit each other. She shivered as she closed the door behind her.

He looked up at her, eyes wide. “Are you trying to torture me?”

She laughed as she lowered herself to the ground as well, sitting in front of him, knees bent, both her feet in his cross-legged lap. He gripped her ankles before running his hands up under her skirt and over her smooth calves, and then back down to the anklets.

He looked into her eyes. “You’re beautiful.”

“I …” Her voice shook. She closed her eyes a second and then tried to smile. This was hard. Harder than she expected.

“I …” she started again. “You’ll probably think I’m nuts, but I just want to put this out there. Whatever you say is fine—we’ll still be friends—but I had to ask you before you leave … ” She clenched her fist around the ring in her hand. “Nadim. Will you marry me?”

He stared at her for several seconds, his expression betraying shock, but nothing else. His hands around her ankles tightened. “Marry you?”

She smiled. “Yes. I know it’s sudden and ridiculous, but hear me out. We can run to Niagara Falls to one of those twenty-four-hour wedding places before you leave. Then I can sponsor you to come back to Canada as my family. It may take a bit, and we’d have to prove to immigration that this relationship is real, but we have those FoodTV videos as proof. And if the immigration doesn’t work or if you don’t want to live here, I’ll come there, wherever you are. London, Dar es Salaam, it doesn’t matter.” Her voice cracked. “Maybe this isn’t about standing on our own feet to defy our families, but instead choosing the family we want. And I want you to be my family. I’m on my way to falling in love with you. I have your thirty-dollar ring … ” Her voice trailed off, losing steam as she showed him the swirling emotions in her eyes.

What she said wasn’t entirely true, she wasn’t on her way to falling in love, but had already been swept in a tidal wave so strong she thought she’d drown. She had no doubt she loved him enough to survive oceans of separation and an uphill fight to be together.