Most engagement stories have a perfect storyline that they follow. To counter that, we’re here to tell ours. It started two days before the eclipse, August 19th. The day seemed ideal with everyone leaving town. It was like we had the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, to ourselves. Abigail suggested we go to one of our favorite restaurants, Paco’s Tacos, for dinner and I couldn’t have agreed more. I thought that this may be a good evening to pop the question given it was just a few evenings away from the end of vacation, so I asked my father where my grandmother's ring was. He said it was in the safe in a white bag, so I went looking… amongst the many other white bags in the safe. I couldn’t find the engagement ring quickly enough and this was poor timing with Abbey about to get ready in the same room as the safe. I had to cut my search short and close the safe. Later on when Abbey was in the car, I suggested I forgot something in the house and went to find the engagement ring. This time, the only thing i found was a locked safe with a dead internal battery: I couldn’t get in. From there, I gave up and decided to enjoy good food. In the back of my mind, I knew Abigail thought this was the engagement night with all my bustling around. Later in the evening I told her the whole series of unfortunate events and we both got a good laugh out of it. Two days later, I had created a backup plan being the last night of vacation in Charlotte. This time around, we pulled a business casual for pizza and wings in the middle of town. Afterwards, we played a few tunes on the step-bells as we walked through Romare Bearden Park. After strolling through the butterfly garden and sitting down on a bench, I got down on one knee and asked her "will you marry me?" the moment was so surreal for the two of us, and the rest is a blur, but we are very excited to be spending the rest of our lives with each other as a team, and as best friends.