The last burst of light streaked across the sky, and Dorsey exhaled a slow breath. “Thank you all for coming tonight!” he said to the crowd. “I asked you here to celebrate someone you already know. The only DJ who gives a jam, Liza Bennett!” The crown erupted in cheers. “By now, you should all have your bamboo lantern or your candle on a banana leaf. By lighting them, I invite us to let go of what has been weighing us down, all of our fears. Tonight I want us to light our lanterns to”—his voice shook—“new beginnings.” Dorsey’s eyes met hers. “Liza, I love you. I, Blank Datu-Ramos, love you, Alizé Bennett!” The crowd roared.

Liza grabbed the mic. “Just Liza is fine,” she told the crowd. Dorsey turned the mic off and handed it to an attendant.

“I want to ask you question number 37 privately,” Dorsey said.

“There are only thirty-six questions in the app, Dorsey,” Liza reminded him.

He smiled and took a deep breath. “Liza, will you marry me?”

Liza could barely breathe. Hundreds of small, glowing floats made from banana leaves were placed in the water. The Anacostia River was positively ablaze with everyone’s hopes and dreams. Over her head, hundreds of candlelit lanterns of various sizes made from a thin gossamer fabric stretched and floated into the sky.

“You don’t have to answer now.” Dorsey took their huge lantern and scribbled out a note. Liza made out the words Netherfield Must Go in print. She wrote First Impressions on her own right before she lit the base. The lantern gently floated up and met the others in the sky. In the dark of night, the floating lanterns took on a filtered sodium glow, and it looked like they were at the bottom of a champagne glass. Above her and below her, the shimmering points of light blazed. She put her old mistakes away, and when she looked up at Dorsey, her heart was ready to walk fearlessly into her new purpose.

“Yes.”

Dorsey’s hands clasped hers, and his slightly sweaty palms trembled. She turned to look at him, and he was already drawing near her. When his mouth met hers, the shutters clicked, and the murmuring fell away. He was all there was and all there would ever be.

EPILOGUE

The basement at Mount Tabernacle African Methodist Episcopal Church was at fire hazard capacity. Liza looked down at her feet, vivid and glittering green against the garish red carpet, and tried to imagine them swollen. She held a fresh bouquet her mother had strong-armed a florist for. Janae pulled at her peacock-feather shawl. Her sister hated feathers, a fussy holdover from her pageant days, but Bev had insisted. Now all the women stood around her looking like the Supremes as the pastor recited his third (and counting) vow.