“I ended up in a laundromat!”
“Yep!”
“That is so not him!”
I wandered back to the bedroom, phone in hand. My work bag was already packed; my marketing deck was half-open on the dresser. We supported each other’s careers, traveled together, and could still make each other laugh even after the worst days.
On our feet first, we’d said a hundred times. No wedding talk until we could both breathe. Now life was humming along. Careers finally stable, savings finally growing. We’d been so careful about that.
And then last night happened.
No wedding talk until we could both breathe.
“Priya, real question,” I said. “Do you think he’s been okay lately?”
“Define okay?”
“He’s been… I don’t know. Exhausted. Taking calls in the hallway. I asked him three times last week if something was wrong, and he just kissed my forehead and said everything was fine.”
“Nora. The man was planning a billboard proposal. Of course he was sneaking around.”
I sat on the edge of the bed. “Right. Yeah. That’s obviously it.”
“Do you think he’s been okay lately?”
“Yeah. Stop investigating your own fiancé. He is not a cold case.”
Fiancé. I still had to catch my breath every time!
I thought back to the phone call yesterday afternoon.
***
Myles’ voice, all careful and rehearsed.
“I have something special planned for tonight. Meet me at our favorite restaurant at seven; dress up and call me when you leave. Keep me on speaker during the drive, okay?”
“He is not a cold case.”
“You’re being weirdly bossy.”
“Just do it, please?”
“Fine, Warden. Seven o’clock.”
I’d changed outfits four times. Priya had been on FaceTime then as well, for all of it, cackling as I rejected each dress for crimes like “too Sunday school” and “makes my elbows look aggressive.” I finally settled on the black one, called Myles from the car that evening, and pulled onto the highway.
“You’re being weirdly bossy.”
We’d been chatting about nothing when the billboard rose ahead of me, huge, lit, and impossible. I saw our faces and four enormous words: Will you marry me?
I cried so hard that I almost missed the exit.
“So, honey,” my boyfriend had said, laughing in my ear as he figured out I’d seen his surprise, “will you marry me?”
“Yes! Of course!”
“Then hurry! Your fiancé is waiting!”
I cried so hard.
***
The evening was everything I’d wanted! At the restaurant, there was a blur of champagne, hands, and the ring sliding onto my finger. We celebrated and talked about our future. I’d sat across from him, staring at my own finger, and thought that nothing in my life had ever felt this settled.
***
“Earth to Nora.”
Priya’s voice yanked me back to the bedroom.
“Sorry. Spacing.”
“Go to work. Be productive. Look at the ring during meetings like a weirdo.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Earth to Nora.”
I hung up, bathed, threw on jeans and a hoodie, and grabbed my bag and car keys. Then I took one more look at my hand. Whatever Myles had been hiding these past few weeks, it had ended with lights on a highway and a “yes.” I couldn’t imagine what could shake that now.
I decided I wanted one more look at that billboard. Maybe take a photo for Mom. Maybe just get proof that I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing. So, I took the same route.
I decided I wanted one more look at that billboard.
***
The drive felt different in daylight. Quieter. Less magic.
Then I turned the corner and hit the brakes so hard that the car behind me honked.
My smile disappeared.
Across our faces, across the beautiful “Will you marry me?” from 12 hours ago, someone had scrawled in red spray paint:
“Before you say yes, there’s something you need to know.”
I pulled onto the shoulder and just stared.
My smile disappeared.
“No,” I said aloud to nobody. “No, no, no, this is a bit! This is one of Myles’ friends doing a bit!”
His group chat had a history of dumb pranks. Last Halloween, they’d filled my fiancé’s car with plastic spiders. This was that. It had to be that.
I called Priya.
“It’s 7:40 a.m.; are you at work already?”
“I’m looking at the billboard; someone graffitied it.”
“What?”
I called Priya.
“The proposal billboard. Red letters. It says there’s something I need to know before I say yes.”
There was a long pause.
“Okay,” my friend said slowly. “Breathe. You’re spiraling already; I can hear it.”
“I’m not spiraling.”
“Nora, you’re on the side of the road calling me. You’re spiraling.”
“Priya, what if…?”
“Nope. We don’t what-if. We assess. It’s probably his weird friends. It’s probably that guy Kenny who thinks he’s funny.”
“You’re spiraling already.”
“Kenny isn’t funny.”
“Exactly. Which is why he’d do this.”
***
I drove to work in a fog. I couldn’t remember a single email I sent. I refreshed the traffic camera at that intersection maybe 11 times, Googled every billboard company in the county, and chewed a pen until the ink cracked in my mouth.
Should I tell Myles?
“Kenny isn’t funny.”
I kept picking up my phone and putting it back down. If it were a joke, I’d wreck his high. He’d been floating too. If it wasn’t a joke…
I couldn’t finish the sentence.
***
By 5 p.m., I was home, kicked off my shoes, and poured a glass of wine so full it counted as two. Myles had texted that he was stuck on a call and would be an hour late. Fine. Good. I needed an hour.
Then, a few minutes later, the knock came.
Three quick raps.
I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“You forgot your key again, didn’t you?” I called, walking over with a smirk while I wondered how he’d gotten home so quickly. “One day I’m going to superglue it to you.”
I opened the door.
The man on the other side was not Myles.
He was maybe 40, in a black baseball cap pulled low and a windbreaker zipped to his chin, and he kept glancing over his shoulder as if the hallway were going to swallow him.
The man on the other side was not Myles.
“Are you Nora?” he asked.
“Who’s asking?”
“Please.” He held up both hands, palms out, and whispered, “Myles can’t know I spoke to you. If he pulls up right now, I’m gone, okay?”
My mouth went dry.
“You got my message, right?” He leaned closer, dropping his voice further. “The one on the sign. Please tell me you haven’t said yes yet. We need to talk.”
“Who’s asking?”
The ring, which had felt weightless all morning, suddenly felt like a bolt on my finger.
“I… I already said yes,” I heard myself say.
Something in his face collapsed. Not triumph. Not glee. Something closer to guilt.
“Oh no.”
“Oh no, what?” My voice climbed. “What do you mean, ‘Oh no’? Who are you?”
He glanced over his shoulder again.
Something in his face collapsed.
“Can I come in? Just the doorway. I swear I’m not, I’m not a creep, I’m just… this is a mess. I’ve been trying to find you since last night.”
“Since last night?”
“Please. Two minutes. Then I’ll leave. But you need to hear this before he gets home.”
I looked down at the ring. I looked up at the stranger who’d defaced my proposal message.
And I stepped aside just enough to let him in.
“I’m not a creep.”
I kept the door cracked, one foot braced behind it, my heart hammering ridiculously under my hoodie.
“Start with your name,” I said. “Then explain why you’re on my doorstep whispering my fiancé’s name like we’re in a spy movie.”
The man pulled off the cap. He had tired eyes.
“Devin,” he said. “That’s my name. I run a sign company. Small crew, mostly me and my brother.”
My heart hammering ridiculously.
“Okay, Devin. Why did you write over my proposal?”
He winced.
“Because your fiancé hired me to put it up,” he said. “And then he stopped answering my calls.”
I let the door open another inch. Not because I trusted him. Because my knees were trying to give up on me.
“Hired you?” I repeated.
“He stopped answering my calls.”
“Yeah, he paid the deposit. Cash, even. Really nice guy on the phone, kept saying it had to be perfect, the exact intersection, the exact time the lights kicked on.” Devin rubbed the back of his neck. “The second half of the invoice was due the morning after. He ghosted me. I sent voicemails, texts, still nothing.”
“So you vandalized your own billboard?”
“I panicked,” he said. “I’ve got a shop lease due on Friday. I figured if his girlfriend saw my message, she’d pull out and maybe he’d finally call me back.”
“He ghosted me.”
I stared at him.
“You wrote ‘there’s something you need to know’ on my engagement billboard,” I said slowly, “because of an unpaid invoice?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds bad.”
“It IS bad, Devin.”
“Okay, I know.” He looked genuinely sick about it. “I saw you pull over yesterday morning. I was across the street in my truck, waiting to see if Myles would come by.”
“It IS bad, Devin.”
“I know this might sound creepy, but I followed you to your work and then here.”
I gasped and stepped back.
Devin lifted his hands again and took a step back.
“I’m not here to harm you or cause any trouble. I just want my money.”
I didn’t know whether to run, laugh, or throw my wine glass.
I did neither. I pulled out my phone.
I gasped and stepped back.
Myles picked up on the second ring, cheerful.
“Hey, future wife!”
“Come home now,” I said. “Now. There’s a man named Devin in our entryway who says you owe him money.”
The silence on the other end lasted long enough that I heard him swallow.
“I’m five minutes away.”
He made it in three.
“You owe him money.”
***
When Myles walked in and saw Devin standing next to the coat rack, every drop of color left his face. He set his car keys down as if they were made of glass.
“Devin,” he said. “I was going to call you tomorrow. I swear.”
“You said that on Monday.”
“I know.”
“And Tuesday.”
“I KNOW.”
I crossed my arms. “Somebody talk. Preferably the one wearing my ring’s receipt.”
Every drop of color left his face.
My fiancé wouldn’t look at me. He looked at the mismatched armchair we’d been fighting about for two years instead.
“I’ve been broke,” he said. “For months.”
“Broke? How?”
“Broke as in the promotion got delayed. Broke, as in my car needed the transmission redone. Broke, as in I’ve been driving for a delivery app after work three nights a week and telling you I had late meetings.”
My fiancé wouldn’t look at me.
The exhaustion. The hallway phone calls. The way he’d been asleep on the couch by 9 p.m.
“Myles…”
“I wanted the proposal to be right,” he said. His voice caught on the last word. “We said we’d only do it when we’d gotten on our feet first. I wasn’t on my feet. I was faceplanting. And I thought if I just pulled off one perfect night, I could catch up before you noticed.”
“I wanted the proposal to be right.”
“The ring?”
“Financed. Twelve months, no interest.”
“The billboard?”
“The deposit cleaned out my checking account. I was going to pay Devin from my next paycheck. Then my card got declined at the gas station, and I… I froze.”
Devin, to his credit, was studying the ceiling as if it held answers.
“I was going to pay Devin.”
I felt about eight things at once. Relief was the loudest. Not another woman. Not a secret child. Just a proud, stupid, wonderful man who couldn’t say the word “broke” out loud.
“I’ll pay him,” I said. “Right now. Tonight. Get me the checkbook from my desk.”
Myles opened his mouth, closed it, and went.
My hands shook so badly that I had to write the amount twice.
I felt about eight things at once.
My stupid and proud fiancé sat on the arm of the couch beside me, watching my pen move across my own account, and didn’t say a word. Devin apologized approximately six times on his way to the door.
“For the record,” Devin said, pausing on the mat, “he really did want it to be perfect. Guy called me four times just about the font.”
“Goodnight, Devin.”
“Goodnight. Congratulations, and I’m so sorry.”
The door clicked shut behind him, and the apartment went very, very quiet.
“Guy called me four times.”
I sat on the couch and slid the ring off my finger, setting it on the coffee table like evidence.
Myles sat across from me, hands folded, waiting.
“The billboard almost didn’t ruin us,” I said. “You did. You decided alone that I couldn’t handle the truth.”
“Nora, I was going to tell you…”
“When? After the wedding? After the honeymoon we can’t afford?”
He rubbed his face.
“You decided alone.”
“On our feet first meant together, Myles. Honestly. Not you grinding yourself sick in secret.”
He looked at me, wet-eyed. “I built the perfect night in my head because I thought if it wasn’t, you’d realize you could do better.”
That opened something up in me. I’d known he felt one step behind; I just hadn’t known he’d been carrying it like a suitcase.
“You dork,” I said softly. “I didn’t fall for a billboard. I fell for the guy who, in my head, proposed over burnt pancakes on a Tuesday.”
He laughed, then choked on it.
He looked at me, wet-eyed.
I picked up the ring. “I’ll put this back on. But we redo the ‘yes.’ No productions. Budget on the table. Debts on the table. Wedding whenever we can actually afford it.”
“Deal.”
“And you tell me when you’re drowning.”
“Deal.”
I picked up the ring.
***
Weeks later, I drove past the intersection. The billboard was gone, replaced by a car insurance advert with a smiling gecko.
I laughed out loud in the car.
***
Myles proposed again at home, just the two of us, and I said “yes” again.
My aunt Rosa had offered her backyard for the wedding when we were ready. Priya was already fighting with me about the playlist. Myles was sleeping through the night for the first time in months.
The best “yes” I ever gave was the second one.
