In Summer 2008, my 14-year-old self fell head over heels for a cute, brown-eyed teen I met via webcam on MSN Messenger while he was hanging out with a mutual friend. The love story began when Lucas called me during "Yellow" at the Coldplay concert I couldn't get tickets for. He even brought me a purple butterfly confetti to school on Monday, which I still have to this day. However, the romance was short-lived, as Lucas broke my heart after a few months of dating. Like any teenager, I spent my sophomore and junior years of high school trying to figure out how to win him back until I realized it simply wasn't meant to be and moved on. Fast forward to 2015, when Lucas called me to let me know he was thinking of me. That same year, he moved to Madrid, and we didn’t speak again until 2020, when he started sliding into my DMs on Instagram during the pandemic. We’d talk and flirt, but with the distance between us, I thought there was no way he was getting out of the friend zone. In 2022, I took a trip to Spain to visit his sister and got to spend time with him again. For about a year and a half after that trip, he continued pursuing me until one day, I finally agreed to give it a shot. After months of texting 24/7 and FaceTime calls every day, he flew me out to Spain for our first official date. The rest, as they say, is history.

Dearest gentle readers, seeing Ana for the first time through MSN chat (yes, we're that old) immediately made me think "Wow, she's gorgeous! I want to meet her," and thankfully, I did later that Summer. She swept me off my feet with her beauty and kindness and I knew I wanted to date her. Unfortunately, I was a typical teenage boy and broke it off shortly after. Later that school year, I realized that it was a mistake, and we dated a second time. I was young and dumb though and broke it off once again. Fast forward a few years, she was dating someone else, and I was close to moving to Spain, but I still had her on my mind. She was always the girl I dreamt of, and I wasn't going to settle. I kept trying to convince her we would be better off together, but she's a lady and wasn't going to end her relationship over my craziness, especially with me moving away. I ended up moving and we didn't speak for a few years until I decided to slide into the DMs. We would talk and flirt and I knew she wanted me just as much as I wanted her, but that's all that happened because neither of us wanted to budge on doing long distance. That is until magic sparked when she decided to visit my sister and crash at the apartment. We began to talk nonstop day and night, until we realized it was time to put our stubbornness aside and give it a shot. We finally started dating (yes once again… for a third time) despite the distance and the rest is history.

During a trip to Edinburgh, Lucas mentioned to me that the day after we got back to Madrid, his friends Jose and Ashlee would be there for a layover and wanted to meet for breakfast. I was so excited to finally meet them! On June 13th, I woke up with vertigo and felt terribly dizzy. Lucas told me we could stay home if I wasn't feeling well but I assured him I'd be okay and would push through as his friends were only here for a few hours. His sister, Thaisa, was joining us for breakfast, and as we walked through Retiro on our way "to the restaurant for breakfast," we passed by the rose garden, which I had mentioned to him I really wanted to visit. He looked at his sister and said, "let's cut through here since Ana wanted to see it". I thought nothing of it and Thaisa and I kept joking we felt like we were in Bridgerton with the beautiful flowers blooming in the garden around us. Lucas suggested we take a picture, and little did I know that Thaisa had handed off the ring and was recording the moment. When Lucas got down on one knee, I immediately started crying and totally blacked out. All I remember was him saying, "I'm sorry you have vertigo" and "Will you marry me?" before I answered, "I absolutely will!"