IF YOU ASK YSA: It definitely was not love at first sight. I met Justin in November of 2019 in the hallways of a small nursing home in Santa Monica called Beachwood. He had just graduated college and was new to the floor as a nursing assistant. I was the unit secretary, finishing nursing school, usually quiet at my desk while watching the comings and goings of a place I already knew well. Justin was the opposite of quiet. He walked onto the unit cracking jokes, filling rooms with his voice before he had even sat down. As an introvert, I wrote him off pretty quickly. But you cannot hide from someone for long in a place that small, and over the following weeks I started catching glimpses of a different Justin—the one who got quiet beside a patient's bed, the one who was gentle and genuine in ways the break-room version of him never let on. It was how he carried other people through hard days. That version of him stayed with me, even when I told myself I was not paying attention. Then March of 2020 happened, and the world stopped. We were both assigned to the COVID unit. To keep our families safe, a few of us moved into the Courtyard by Marriott, just a few blocks from the Santa Monica Pier. Justin’s room—Room 541—was down the hall from mine. I would come home from shifts too tired to speak, and somehow he was always there: a knock on the door, a walk along the empty streets, a reason to forget the six feet between us. What was meant to be a few days of quarantine became weeks, then months. Stuck in the hotel together, we made do with a hot plate and a microwave, living like college students all over again. When 3rd Street Promenade reopened, we walked the empty sidewalks to Cabo Cantina for margaritas. On other nights, we drove Pacific Coast Highway past midnight with Taylor Swift on, or hit the taco truck for tostadas and Mexican cokes. By Christmas, Justin had even snuck a real tree into our room, lights and all. Looking back, it was in those simple memories that I started to fall in love. Not all at once. Just steadily. For the longest time, I had been quietly praying for a love that felt safe and genuine and meant to last. Somewhere between the Christmas tree in Room 541 and the late drives down the coast, I realized the love I had been praying for had been a few doors down the whole time. Six years later, our story led us to Fort Worth, Texas, where we live with our two dogs, Poncho and Yoshi. Justin is in his last year of medical school. I am a registered nurse at a nearby hospital. The pandemic, the move halfway across the country, every milestone in between—none of it has been easy, but none of it has shaken us. We keep choosing each other, again and again. Love, it turns out, finds you when you least expect it, in the places you would never have thought to look.

IF YOU ASK JUSTIN: The decision to marry Ysa was easy. The planning, not so much. By the time I started thinking about a ring, we were living in a small two-bedroom apartment in Fort Worth, Texas. If you know Ysa, you know there is no plate, no coaster, no lampshade in our home that will go unturned or uncleaned in her presence. Hiding anything from her, for any length of time, is a kind of sport. The day the ring arrived, I rushed home from a Pediatrics rotation only to realize I had just missed the mailman who needed my signature. The next morning, I picked it up at the post office, speeding home with the box in my lap. Ysa was coming home in a few hours. I needed a hiding spot, fast. Over the weeks that followed, the ring moved. One day it lived in a container of tangled cords and forgotten chargers. Another day, in a cereal box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch that she despises. I had always known I would propose in Santa Monica, in the city where it all began. Our summer trip to California gave me the opening. On the morning of July 2nd, I drove over to her house with a bouquet of flowers and left them on her doorstep. Tucked inside an envelope were instructions and the keys to Room 541 at the Courtyard by Marriott—the same room we had lived in years before. Meet me here. She panicked. I received a steady stream of photos of her crying, which I chose to read as a good sign. She grabbed the white dress that had been hanging in her closet for months—she had known, somehow, even though she said she "did not know"—and waited for her friends to come pick her up. While she packed, I drove to the hotel and left another note in her room telling her where to meet me at sunset. Afterwards, I headed down the street to La La Land on Montana Avenue, our favorite coffee shop, to think through what to say before I popped the big question. Ysa, it turned out, had the same idea. Minutes after I ordered, a text from her friends came through. They were blocks from the café. She needed a latte to calm her nerves. Panicked, I bolted before my coffee was even ready, ducked into an adjacent stairway, and watched Ysa walk in just as the barista called my name. Even on a day I had spent trying to stay one step ahead of her, we had ended up at the same place at the same hour. By evening, I was waiting for her at Stonewall Ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains, on a hilltop overlooking the beaches where we had spent many nights. There was no WiFi, no signal, and nothing to do but watch the road below. As golden hour hit, the marine layer rolled in off the ocean, surrounding us. It was heavenly. Then, a small Honda Civic pulled up. Ysa walked down the hill toward me at the edge of the cliff in her white dress. She was beautiful, already crying. I do not think anything I said to her made any kind of sense, but I managed the only question that mattered. She said yes. Later in the night, we celebrated with our families and friends over dinner, then drove back to our room. Six years later, we ended the night in Room 541 exactly where we had started, only this time, with a wedding to plan.