It was breathtaking. I’d never been at night, with the entire garden lit up, so I’d never seen how stunning the huge floral sculpture could look when the tendrils of bright green hair were glowing with light, subtly changing colors. Her eyes were lit up as well and appeared to move, giving her an entirely new sense of life, something that not even being draped in living flowers could have done. Water cascaded from her open palm and fell into the pond, shining like the rest of the garden.

“Wow,” I said, Noah and I finding a spot by the railing and squeezing in between two other lovestruck couples. I could only get that singular word out before we both became entranced, falling under the Earth Mother’s spell.

There was a dark wall of ivy behind her, conspicuously lacking any kind of spotlight. Across the wall, words started to appear as if written by an invisible hand in curving, white letters. I cocked my head, surprised. None of the other exhibits had a written element to them. It started off in a slow scrawl, drawing everyone’s attention.

The first three letters had me cocking my head.

J.

A.

K.

That was weird. The strokes of light were spelling out my name. Was there some kind of interactive thing going on tonight? Did they take my name from my ticket purchase? Or maybe it was another Jake… wait a second.

The rest of the words filled up the wall of trailing ivy:

“Will you marry me?”

I blinked a couple of times, trying to get the words to make sense in my head. This had to be a joke, had to be for someone else. It couldn’t be… I turned to Noah, and—he wasn’t there.

He was behind me, down on one knee, smiling up at me with tears welling in his eyes, shining like jewels from all the glittering lights. Everyone else faded away. The entire world disappeared as Noah spoke.

“Jake, you’re my everything. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, listening to you quoting Cats and sometimes snoring in your sleep.” He gave me a wink.

“I never snore,” I said in a hushed and shocked whisper.

Noah continued, his smile growing, the velvet box in his hand slightly shaking. “We may have started off as friends, but it wasn’t long at all before we realized we were soul mates. So, Jake, my soul mate, will you marry me?”

I didn’t skip a beat. “Yes, Noah. Yes, a hundred times yes.”