“Not a movie?”
I shake my head. “Just you.”
“Just me?”
I nod, still trying to decide if any of this is real. This is a scene I never imagined. This is a moment I couldn’t have dreamed up. And it’s better than any movie I’ve ever witnessed.
“Just Fran. Just Callum,” he says, his fingers sliding from my cheek to my neck and into the back of this updo that Kailey spent an hour on. “I like us.” He leans down, bringing his mouth to mine and pecking my lips.
But then—Callum just confessed to falling for me, and I’m not content with a peck. Snaking my arms around his neck, I hold him close, pressing my mouth to his. My body warms with his touch, with bliss and light and the man in front of me.
Inching back, I say, “No more hiatus?”
He pecks my mouth. “No more.”
“And you realize—” I say.
“Oh, boy.” Callum exhales.
“If I hadn’t planned those remakes, we never would have?—”
“We would have figured it out,” he says.
I moan—deliriously happy. “Just admit it—admit that the romcom wins again. Come on. Say it,” I whisper, so close that my nose brushes his and his breath warms my cheeks.
“I won’t say it.”
“Cal,” I whine through a wide, joyful grin. Kristina was right. It’s not about what we do, it’s about who we’re with. But I’m pretty sure my remakes worked some magic and made Cal a believer again. “Just say it.”
“I’m not going to say it, woman,” he says. And then he does the most romcom thing of all and shuts me up with a kiss. Long and deep and ridiculously delicious.
Forty-Six
“So, you are dating?”Tiff asks.
“We are,” I tell her, raising Fran’s hand in mine and kissing her knuckles.
She presses a hand flat to her stomach, her eyes warm and shining as she peers at me with new eyes. Not new—just sure. She looks at me as she always did, only now with the confidence that I’m looking back.
With the guests gone and the party over and the cleaning crew coming in the morning, my family plus Fran gather as we always do. Still in our party clothes, we sit around the backyard fire pit, the western night sky dark with only half a moon, a scattering of stars, and this fire for light.
“I knew it,” Mom says.
Kailey chuckles. “We kind of all knew it.”
“Wait,” I say. “All of you?”
“Uh, yeah, bruh,” Asher says. “You couldn’t stop looking at her?—”
“You never killed her,” Tiff interjects, to which Ash breathes out a disgusted raspberry.
“You’re an awful actor, son,” Dad says.
I shake my head. “I was just doing my best to stick to the belief I’d been so sure of after Simone.” I swallow, my nerves beating against my insides. This is a strange conversation to have with your entire family.
“We all knew thatlove isn’t for Callumthing was stupid,” Tiff says—and she’s right, but does she have to imitate my tone in that way?
I breathe out a shaky voice. I have turned my one-eighty—and I’m not turning back. “Fran knew it too,” I say, peering over at the woman who has so wholly stolen my heart. Her strength, kindness, and outlook on life won me over, but it may have been her faith in love, even her remakes, that sealed the deal. “She was looking for something while I was ready to give it all up. I was wrong.”
