The dinner party
It started with a mismatched seating chart. Wren was seated at the far end of a friend's table, mid-argument about whether a hot dog is a sandwich. Elliot, three seats down, had opinions. By dessert, neither of them remembered who else had been at the table.
The long way around
What followed was a year of terrible puns, borrowed field guides, and one very long road trip up the Blue Ridge Parkway that was supposed to take four hours and took nine, because they kept pulling over. Neither of them minded.
The question
Elliot asked at the same table where they'd met, at the same friend's house, four years later almost to the day. The friend still swears she didn't set the whole thing up. Wren said yes before Elliot finished the sentence.