One bottle of Fumé Blanc and one delicious burger later, Jake seems to edge on nervous rather than full and pleasantly tipsy like myself.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?” I ask.

Jake gets up. “Come with me.” He grabs my hands to pull me up. “I have a surprise.”

He drags me to the spare bedroom and opens the door. I walk inside. The room’s filled with floating red and pearl white party balloons.

“Jake, what’s this?”

He smiles. “Have a look around.”

I take a few tentative steps inside the room, noticing various objects dangling from most of the balloon ribbons. I grab one, and immediately, a furious blush spreads across my cheeks. I cover my face with my hands and press it against Jake’s chest to hide.

“Oh, gosh. You’ve found the Jakebox!”

“I had a tip-off.”

“I’m going to strangle that sorry excuse for a best friend. You were never supposed to find it.”

“Why not? It’s super cute. And I’ve added some things of my own.”

“You did?” I peep at him from between my fingers.

“Come on, you should own the Jakebox.” He spins me round and pushes me gently into the room.

I navigate the balloon maze and each one’s a surprise. A million pictures of us stare back at me, some from the Jakebox and others not. They range from age fifteen up to last week. I find tickets from movie nights, concerts, vacations.

On the next balloon, I recognize a sheet of crumpled paper Jake passed me in class the first year we started dating. On top, it says, “Prom?” Below are two option-squares, one says, “Yes,” and the other says, “Yes.” I marked both of them and stamped a lipstick kiss underneath.

“You were already such a charmer,” I say.

Next, I find a page from my diary.

“Oh, you didn’t read this!”

“I soooooo did.”

I keep moving through the balloons. I find some Post-its. I used to leave them on the bathroom mirror of his house before I left in the years we were living apart. “You kept these!”

“These were my lifeline. I hated being away from you so much, especially knowing it was my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault. I know I blamed you, but I shouldn’t have.”

“But if I’d followed you to Boston…”

“You would’ve hated it. And who knows where we’d be now.” I turn around. “The important thing is that we’re here, now.” I kiss him.

“Ouch.” Jake pulls back as Lucky starts climbing on his leg to try to get to the balloon ribbons.

“Someone wants to play,” I say.

“He already helped enough with the setting up.” Jake drops Lucky to the floor where he stares intently at the ribbons, one paw stretched forward menacingly.

“I bet he did.”