Epilogue A Year Later
“OK, if you have everything handled, I’m going to head out.”
Tamarah looked up at me from her computer, and I could tell how much she respected me by how hard she was fighting not to roll her eyes.
“You’ve taken time off before,” she said. “For longer than six hours, at that.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said with a laugh. “I know we’re about to get feedback on the Argon Films proposal, and given the tight timing, you may have to handle it. Though if you hit any snags—”
“I won’t hit any snags,” she said with a youthful confidence I wish I’d had. I loved seeing her grow into her new role as media planner here; I felt a little weird about taking too much credit for anything but it did thrill me to have built a little department and elevated people who were great at their jobs. At the end of the day, we weren’t saving lives or anything altruistic; we were marketing movies and TV shows. That said, since Phoebe had built a better little world here, free of so much of the bullshit I’d seen coming up—and still heard gossiped about—I loved the extra responsibility I’d taken on in the last year, and the work I did to ensure this better version of the entertainment industry stayed that way, less toxic in as many ways as we could manage.
Obviously, the most important reason I’d pushed to expand my department was for BME; a bigger team could handle work better as well as take on more work. But I’d had a second benefit in mind, of course, no longer being two-thirds of a team of one-and-a-half so I could also take more than a day or two off at a time without checking my phone constantly. The whole future I’d wanted for myself had a lot more travel and adventure than just the occasional long weekend, but I was still getting there. For now I was still the type of executive who got nervous about leaving six hours early, even with a more-than-competent staff in place.
Speaking of adventure, though, Chloe’s Bronco was idling outside the office, and I rushed to get into it. The show tunes playlist blasted out through her speakers, and she belted along with “Defying Gravity” in lieu of a greeting.
“Hi,” I said. “Is this a hint for this so-called surprise?”
“No, this is pure musical theatre enjoyment,” she said dismissively. “Also I just did a really stressful adult thing and I need—wait, why did you say so-called ?”
I laughed and leaned over to kiss her. “Like a colonoscopy?”
“No, Clementine,” she said in mock impatience, and we both cracked up. It had officially been one year for us—one year and some change if you counted from the night she rescued me from street-harassing assholes—and I still laughed more than I ever had in my life leading up to that night. Leading up to Chloe.
“Is that really the first thing you think of when you think adult ?” she asked, turning up Hyperion like we were headed to my place, which I assumed we weren’t. “Picture less butt stuff, more office stuff like paperwork and financial information.”
“Also terrible,” I said. “I mean, obviously, depends on the butt stuff.”
“Obviously,” she said. “I have a disclaimer.”
I laughed. “About butt stuff?”
“No, I think we’re good there,” she said with a grin. “Anyway, I know that you know that I am like firmly not a person who plans cute anniversary events or—OK, has ever done this for one solid year with a person, period, so it’s possible I’ve done this extremely weirdly. Let’s just say I’m rethinking all of it.”
“Extremely weirdly sounds perfect,” I said.
“I made reservations at Saffy’s tonight too,” she said.
“That sounds like an extremely normal anniversary thing to do,” I said, and she laughed.
“I’m never going to avoid a tradition that involves a meal out,” she said. “Also, how anti-relationship-establishment are we, anyway? At any given moment there are dozens of Eastside queers in our vicinity practicing ethical non-monogamy and renting bigger apartments for their throuple situations, and we’re just like … not interested in getting married. Unless someday it makes sense for health insurance or whatever, in which case you can totally wife me up for bureaucratic reasons.”
“Totally, I know. I like feeling antiestablishment, though,” I said. “Even if we’re actually boring.”
Chloe made the turn onto Rowena, and I gave her a look.
“Are we just going to my place? If my surprise is sex, we could have done that at your apartment, which was closer.”
“Clementine,” Chloe said with a sigh, which made me laugh. “No, we are not going to your place. And I hardly think sex counts as a surprise.”
I managed to stay silent the rest of the short ride, even though Chloe literally made the familiar turn in front of my condo development and then parked right out front of my place.
“Just be patient,” Chloe said, jumping out of the car and waiting for me to follow.
“I didn’t say a word.”
“Yeah, your thoughts are loud as hell,” she said, taking my hand and tugging me to the main entrance. I waited for her to unlock the gate with the key I’d given her a few months back; even though we weren’t living together, we spent more nights together than apart and so spare sets of keys had been exchanged fairly unceremoniously.
“What’s …” I hurried to keep up with Chloe. “I don’t think I’m good at patience.”
She stopped across from my condo and grinned. The morning sun glowed behind her, and it struck me for maybe the millionth time how gorgeous she was. For all that our lives could be tied up with other people, between our friends and my job, I often never felt more like I’d gotten everything I’d ever wanted than in these moments when it was just Chloe smiling right at me.
“Your lack of patience isn’t news to me,” she said, pulling me in for a kiss. “OK, another disclaimer, I can still get out of this if you look horrified when I tell you.”
I laughed. “I love surprises that come with this many warnings.”
“I told you I’m bad at this,” she said. “But here goes anyway. I know our friends think we should have already U-Hauled at some point last year, but I also know things have been working really well without that.”
They had been. As hard as it had been for me to get used to living alone, I’d eventually figured it out. For a person with ADHD, getting a semi-functional routine had been tough for me at first, but just like work and my catnip side-hustle, I forced myself to figure out a system that actually worked for me. It turned out I hadn’t needed a partner under the same roof to keep myself chugging along; I’d needed meal planning and an advanced yoga class.
And the truth was that there were just a lot of things I liked about living alone—even if calling it that was slightly disingenuous, considering how often Chloe and Fernando spent the night at my place. Still, I loved committing even harder to my own slightly ridiculous twee style throughout my place. I loved having time to decompress after work. I loved watching all the overly dramatic prestige TV shows Chloe hated, with only Small Jesse Pinkman for company. I wasn’t sure he was a fan either, but unlike Chloe he didn’t ask a thousand questions that could have been gleaned simply by paying more attention.
And I knew she liked her space, too, room to come home alone and spend time doing whatever was easier without me around.
“But also …” Chloe shrugged, holding out her arms, like a much cuter shrug emoji. “We know we’re in this for the long run. It could probably be easier . So when your weird neighbor listed this place …”
It hit me with a bolt of lightning, a gust of wind, the earth shaking beneath my feet. For Chloe, I knew, these weren’t small words. This was a force of nature.
“You bought the place next door,” I said in awe.
“I’m officially preapproved to buy the place next door,” Chloe clarified. “In case I’d gone off the deep end and you were like—”
I wrapped my arms around her and covered her lips with mine. She was still adding disclaimers, which was so funny to me that I also ruined the kiss by laughing.
“So you’re happy?” Chloe asked. “I’m not about to do the weirdest and worst move possible?”
I felt it rear up, that old familiar gut reaction that said it was safest to hold back the full force of my emotions. Remembering to push past that had honestly been harder than getting up an hour earlier for yoga class or building out a meal planning list every week, but it turned out that it might have been just as good of a habit to develop. Honestly, better.
“I love that you did this,” I said. “Or that you’re preapproved to do this. I know our friends will probably think we have gone off the deep end, but I can’t think of anything more romantic than this. I mean, for us, not in general.”
Chloe blushed, and I laughed at that because it happened whenever I called her romantic or thoughtful or a good girlfriend, even after a year. I loved how tough she was; just last week she’d screamed at a guy who’d nearly blown through a crosswalk while we were out taking a walk with Fernando, and the guy had deserved it. But I loved, too, how tender she was, how she kept me stocked with NyQuil and tissues when I had a cold, how she cooked me dinner whenever she knew work was extra busy and my meal-planning was about to go out the window for the night, how she once spent an entire weekend installing cat shelves around my condo for Small Jesse Pinkman just because I mentioned I thought he’d like them.
“I do have bad—well, not ideal news about tonight,” Chloe said, lacing her fingers through mine and pulling me toward my condo. The truth was that we’d gotten slightly squishier, at least when we were alone with each other. “I had to ask Ari for help getting the reservations—”
“You’re only a mere mortal after all,” I said.
“Yeah, exactly,” Chloe said, beating me to opening my own door. “But there was some kind of misunderstanding I choose to blame her for and, anyway, she made a reservation for all eight of us, and when I tried to fix it, she somehow thought I wanted to make sure Fiona and Hailey could also come, so. That’s our night out.”
I laughed and hugged her tightly, burying my face on her shoulder and laughing some more. “Just us and literally eight of our closest friends for a romantic dinner. Honestly, that sounds about right.”
Chloe slipped her arms around my waist, and I felt the shift in vibes. After all these months, her eyes still seemed to drink me in like it was the hottest day of the year and I was a glass of water, dripping with condensation.
“In the meantime,” she said, “we have more than a few hours to ourselves.”
“Yeah, I think we’ll survive.”
“I spent a long time thinking I didn’t want this,” she told me as we walked down the hall to my bedroom, and I nodded because of course I knew. “But I think somehow I just knew I didn’t want it with anyone but you, Clementine.”
“Oh my god , Chloe, you have to warn me when you’re going to sweep me off my feet like that,” I said, my head dizzy from her words and the sentiment behind them. And as we pulled each other into bed, I glanced out the window at the building next door and thought about the future, when Chloe would be right there, because of me. I wished I could tell my old self not to worry so much that she wasn’t sure what she wanted. She was going to stumble right into it anyway.