1986 The summer was hot. Top Gun was dominating the box office, and thanks to Tom Cruise and an iconic beach volleyball scene that totally moved the plot forward, volleyball became a worldwide phenomenon on par with jazzercise and Enron. 1996 Two intrepid youngsters are born 7,700 miles apart. 2001 Zoë and Bobby are both in London and watch the Wimbledon tennis final taking place nearby. Bobby becomes a tennis fan for life. Zoë asks if her grandmother could put on a movie instead. 2010 Bobby joins his aunt, uncle, and cousin for Thanksgiving in Oak Park, IL for the first time. Zoë hosts her 14th consecutive Thanksgiving approximately a mile and a half down the road. They do not cross paths. 2013 Both Zoë and Bobby tour Georgetown University over Spring Break one day apart. Citing intellectual snobbery, neither apply, miss the opportunity to meet seven years ahead of schedule, and go on to be mid-level managers at their email jobs. 2017 Back in Oak Park for Thanksgiving, both Bobby and Zoë attend the same screening of Lady Bird at the Lake Theater. Had Bobby sat on the right side of the theatre, this wedding may have happened many years sooner. 2021 In a narrative payoff no one saw coming, both volleyball and Top Gun return to relevance and are back in the spotlight. Bobby, desperate to relive his days as a college athlete, creates a joint Bumble dating profile with his roommate in the explicit hopes of recruiting women to join a co-ed rec league team. Zoë, notoriously sports agnostic, visits her best friend in Nashville for Halloween, and stumbles across a Bumble profile that can only be described as "volleyball-forward." Both swipe right, and Team Bozo is born. After a brief exchange of messages belittling the Chicago school of economics, Bobby asks Zoë to marry him. She demurs. The next day, they corral their friends into chaperoning a "double date." Minutes after meeting, they fall in love and agree to see each other again in a few weeks when both, once again, will conveniently be a mile and a half apart in Oak Park for Thanksgiving. The rest is history :) 2024 Bobby asks Zoë to marry him for real with the help of some dedicated friends and a coterie of giraffe balloons. Joe Biden opts to drop out of the ongoing presidential election the next day to avoid diverting attention from the real occasion.