“Kiss someone Iloveon New Year’s Eve.”
He bent and kissed me, right there in the spot where I thought I’d ruined it all, but I’d been exactly where I needed to be.
And with Evan, I always would be.
Epilogue
Elizabeth
“Words are easy, like the wind; faithful friends are hard to find.”
The Passionate Pilgrim
“They’re here!” I yelled when the doorbell rang.
Evan jumped up and brushed his slacks, hiding the evidence that someone had recently straddled his thighs. “Perfect timing.”
I clapped my hands giddily and raced to open the door. Chelsea threw her arms out, and I ran into them. “We brought presents!”
Bas stood behind her and nodded at me. “Merry Christmas, Elizabeth.”
“Get in here,” I said, reaching for him.
He wrapped me in a bear hug, and I breathed him in. He always smelled like whatever he’d been cooking, and I hoped that meant… “I brought those cookies you like so much.”
I squealed. “Thank you thank you thank you!”
Evan waited patiently behind me but gave Chelsea a hug as soon as I moved. “I hope the flight wasn’t too bad.”
“Not from Richmond, but the international flight was brutal.” She and Bas had been living abroad for the past year. Evan and I flew out to visit them one time, for a joint honeymoon, but this was the first time she and Bas had come out to Colorado. “Have you heard from the MFA program yet?”
“Not yet. They won’t make a decision until spring, but I’m keeping busy.” Kate had been letting me work remote, and I’d been writing, which reminded me… “Oh, and my short story got accepted! I’m gonna be published.”
“Which one was that,” Bas asked, handing me a wine-shaped package. “The dystopian one?”
“Nah. I trunked that one. I don’t think you’ve read this one yet. It’s kind of uh…”
“Smutty,” Evan said, his hand sliding into mine. “It’s an only-one-bed, trapped-in-a-snowstorm, enemies-to-lovers romance.”
“It’s a fuck fest,” I corrected. “But you’re welcome to read it.”
I loved that Evan had never once questioned me for writing it. He didn’t worry if it meant I was unsatisfied—I wasn’t, not one bit—or if I was secretly interested in someone else. He just started discussing all the tropes with me, and I rewarded him sinfully.
Not everything had been so easy over the past year. But even when we fought, we talked everything out, following rules we honed over time. Take turns. Listen. Speak your truth. But most importantly, we both believed in action over words, or as Shakespeare wrote,They do not love that do not show their love.
“Come on inside,” Evan said, and we all followed him into the living room where our sad little tree hid no presents. We’d already opened them Christmas morning, just the two of us in our matching pajamas, our tradition.
As our friends sat on the sofa, I handed Chelsea her wine-shaped present. We each opened our gifts with feigned surprise. I said, “It’s just my size,” and Chelsea said, “This will never fit in the suitcase. We’ll have to drink it now.”
She followed me into the kitchen to fetch wineglasses, and once we were alone, she asked, “So tell me the God’s honest truth, is everything going well here?”
“Are you casting doubt on my happy ever after?” I scrounged a wine key from the drawer, and with my latent bartending talent, twisted it into the cork.
“Oh, not at all. I’m just hoping to get the dirt on Boulder.” She opened a cabinet, then another until she located the wineglasses and set them out.
“Why? Have you grown tired of Europe?”
“Look, Bas promised to show me the world, and we’ve seen some amazing sites, but the only place I ever want to be is near him, so I’ve lost that wandering soul.”
