Page 111 of The Write Stuff

I shrugged. “I know. I’m a total geek that way.”

He broke out in a wide grin. “I guess it’s good that I love my geek.”

Everything inside of me went warm as a feeling of comfort settled over me. This was what I’d always wanted. “Yeah, that’s my favorite adventure of all.”

EPILOGUE

SIX MONTHS LATER

“Ithink it’s too white.” Mom looked over the wedding dress I was trying on and shook her head. “The color washes you out, Wylie.”

I frowned at my reflection. I’d fallen in love with the wedding gown the second I saw it. It wasn’t overblown, just a simple beaded bodice, and I was in no danger of tripping over the train because it was nonexistent. Tripping hazards were a reality in my life. There was no getting around it.

“I hate to agree with your mother,” Eleanor said from one chair over. “You really need something in a blush rose because you’re ridiculously pale.”

I glared at them in the mirror, but they were too busy chatting about their upcoming book project. A return to the Galactic Empire of Coronado was in the works. It had made all the newspapers. Thanks to the feeding frenzy that had followed the announcement, Huxley and I were now even more famous than we had been. We were getting thanked for bringing our mothers back together.

Don’t get me wrong, I preferred them being friends to being enemies, but I could have gone without the paparazzi following me everywhere I went for a full month. I didn’t even know there were paparazzi in Georgia.

“I really like the design of the dress,” I said, drawing their attention back to me. “It’s simple.”

“It’s too simple,” Mom said.

“Way, way too simple,” Eleanor agreed. “We should get a designer on this. We only have a few months.”

If I had my way, they wouldn’t even get that long to fuss over a wedding. They’d put their feet down, together, when they found out about the engagement, though. Huxley and I had thought we were being smart when we started a video call to tell them the good news. They’d taken over the entire thing with overblown plans within seconds of us breaking the news.

I would have been fine flying to Vegas and doing it up with an Elvis impersonator at one of the infamous chapels there. I still wasn’t over the Star Trek Hilton closing before I had a chance to visit it. Mom and Eleanor put the kibosh on that right away, though. They absolutely refused to let us elope.

Because we were afraid of their wrath — me more than Huxley — we agreed to a small, tasteful wedding in Savannah. We’d even suggested the riverwalk as a venue. We’d been shut down there, too, however.

No, our mothers had taken their renewed friendship to heart and were completely controlling our wedding. I was starting to regret getting them back together.

“I’ll change,” I said dully as I stomped toward the dressing room. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know that they were exchanging amused looks. They enjoyed torturing their offspring — together and apart — more than should have been allowable by law.

I didn’t really regret them getting back together. At first, it had been difficult. They spent a full week in Savannah, talking over everything … more than once. They admitted to their faults, apologized, and then got in another fight right away. They’d been so mean to one another that night, I was convinced it was all over, that we’d never get what we truly wanted. They’d woken up the next day completely cleaned out, however. All of the fight had left them after they hurled insults for two hours straight. Suddenly, they were ready to start over anew.

Eleanor had divorced Jules. Everybody saw that coming. Instead of immediately jumping into another relationship, however, she started therapy. Mom even flew to New York for a month of intensive counseling, just the two of them. Even though Mick had been at the center of their problems, he was left out of the therapy. Once Eleanor admitted she never loved him, he was no longer the issue. No, the issue was that they had been secretly competing with one another throughout their entire friendship, so that’s what they got counseling for.

I, for one, was glad for the therapy. It seemed to have done both a world of good. They were better friends now than they ever had been. It was amazing.

Except when they ganged up on Huxley and me as a unit. They were bossy as hell and impossible to deal with when that happened, which was how I’d ended up in this bridal store with both of them bullying me. They refused to trust me to pick out my own wedding dress.

The proposal had been a surprise, although not really. Once we’d told each other how we felt — and our mothers hadn’t imploded — it had been smooth sailing.

Huxley put his house on the market quickly. We didn’t know where we wanted to live. We just knew that we didn’t want to live there.

Bree bought it back because she couldn’t stand the idea of anybody taking over her hard-fought battle with the HOA and ceding victory. Brody had finally given in, and they’d decided to add to the house. It was his only option, and he knew it as well as anybody else. So, they hired a contractor, came up with plans, and then got to work. They were still living in the house Brody had purchased, but as soon as the construction was finished, they were moving into Bree’s house.

They were both happy with the outcome, even if Brody did think it was a waste of money. He would deny his wife nothing, though, so it was for the best.

Huxley moved in with me right away. We didn’t want to be apart. Lucy stayed with us for a month before moving in with Hayley. She could have afforded an apartment close to her college campus by that point — Mom was helping her out if she stayed in school — but she and Hayley were going strong and weren’t spending nights apart. It would have been a waste of money.

As for Lucy, she’d decided she wanted to be an artist after all. It wasn’t a normal degree, though. Her major was creative business leadership. I had no idea what she was going to do with the degree, but if there was any place to make a go of it with the credentials she would walk away with, it was Savannah.

The Savannah College of Art and Design, or SCAD as it was known locally, wasn’t easy to get into, however. Especially when you hadn’t been studying for years, and your high school transcripts weren’t that impressive. Thankfully for Lucy, although likely not for some other student, Mom and Eleanor had pulled some strings.

The good news was that Lucy was doing really well. The bad news was that she hadn’t suffered, not even a little, for her art. I felt as if she should have had to work harder before a solution was handed to her. That wasn’t how it came to fruition, however.