Epilogue EXT. THE EMMY AWARDS RED CARPET
Almost Two Years Later
Cole was tired of red carpets. He was tired of the banks of photographers and the coordinated pocket squares and the fake conversations. So many fake conversations. He was tired of all the travel and of sleeping in a different hotel room every night. Why did Waverley have to hold premiere events in New York, London, Edinburgh, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Mexico City, and LA? And why did he need to wear a different suit to each event? They were tuxes, for crying out loud. They all looked the same.
But he wasn’t tired of people saying nice things about Waverley , which had dropped its third season six months earlier. He wasn’t tired of the fact that it had received the best reviews in the show’s history, and apparently the best ratings, too—though Videon never gave anyone, you know, the numbers to prove that. He definitely wasn’t tired of getting nominated for things for the first time in his career. Like, say, an Emmy, which was what they were here for. And he extra-specially wasn’t tired of the outfits Maggie had worn to all those fancy events. Tonight’s slinky electric-blue column dress—high-necked in the front but swooping so low on her back that he’d wanted to know how it stayed up—was a particular favorite.
“Did you visit the set during filming for the fourth season?” Maggie was asking Libby.
At least for this conversation, Cole liked the reporter involved.
“I did,” Libby said. “It looks very sexy, even if you turned them down when they asked you to come back.”
Thanks to Drew’s leak, Maggie had become something of a minor celebrity. She was the most famous intimacy coordinator in the business, even if she’d only worked on a handful of projects. The Guinness World Records people ought to certify that.
“Well, I had other things to do.” Maggie gave Cole a knowing smile.
It took Cole a second to realize that she meant something appropriate for public consumption and not just what they got up to every night.
“As the VP at Instep Pictures?” Libby asked. “Remind us what your mission statement is.”
“Well, Cole and I started Instep to build on what we’d learned making Waverley . We believe that great art grows out of great environments. Rather than a top-down model, where you have a genius who’s so devoted to their vision that they treat everyone around them badly to achieve it, we wanted to support creators in building diverse, nurturing sets. Making movies doesn’t have to wreck everyone involved. Creativity thrives when you’re good to each other. That’s really the core of it for us.”
She was saying we , but Instep had been all Maggie. Cole had helped her get meetings with financiers, and he’d lent her his name, but the production company was entirely her vision.
Maggie had kept insisting that she hadn’t learned enough on set to do this, but he’d convinced her that she didn’t have to make the movies herself. That producing was really about assembling a team of cool, smart, creative people, and then figuring out what they needed to do their best work. And honestly, Maggie had spent her entire life doing that in different ways. Once she started to believe in herself, he hadn’t been at all surprised when Instep had taken off.
“And your first projects drop soon?” Libby asked.
“At the Snowshoe Basin film festival in Montana at the end of the month. We’re really excited.”
For all that she’d told him what really mattered was that the two of them were together, he knew she wouldn’t have been happy if she didn’t also have a career that made a difference. Cole was confident that now, in her third job, she’d found a way to do it that was as big as she was. More than as a high school drama teacher and more than as an intimacy coordinator, Maggie was changing the world as a producer.
He was so damn proud of her.
Tasha Russell bumped Cole’s shoulder with hers. “Are you wrapping up here, or is Maggie still in the middle of her Darryl Zanuck routine?”
“She’s almost done.”
Or not. Maggie was in the middle of describing every project Instep had in the pipeline to a rapt Libby. They might be here awhile.
“Ryan has a flask if you need it,” Tasha muttered.
Ryan held open the lapel of his own tux, revealing it tucked into an interior pocket. “Gotta be prepared.”
“And if you’re nervous—”
“I’m not,” Cole told his friends.
“Sure.” Tasha didn’t, for a second, believe him.
But as always, he was telling the truth. Being nominated was actually an honor. It wasn’t something he would’ve been able to imagine just a few years ago. And at some point in the future, after he did some more serious roles, well, who could say? But for the moment: “I’m not going to win.”
“Everyone loves a comeback kid,” Tasha said.
Which had turned out to be true. People had loved Cody Rhodes, and they had loved watching Cole playing a grown-up role. Even if they still sometimes treated him like a frat boy, even if no one believed him when he told them that he’d finally managed to read all of The Heart of Midlothian , even if sometimes the way they loved him was limited, the outpouring of support meant a lot.
“The ceremony will be boring, and when it’s done, I get to just be me.” Cole James, fully grown up, no longer a reckless kid.
“Until you have to promote the next one.”
Tasha did have a point.
Heck, Oscar buzz was already starting to build around Palooka . And the parts Cole was getting offered these days, they were meatier. If he hadn’t managed to entirely reinvent himself, he’d gotten most of what he wanted.
“Isn’t that right?” Maggie turned around, giving him the “Help, I need you” look.
He was only too happy to oblige, especially because joining her meant he got to slide his hand up the bare skin of her back, exposed by that most excellent dress. “Isn’t what right ... pumpkin?”
He and Maggie didn’t really do terms of endearment—and from the expression on her face, he had a feeling that she was going to remind him of that later on.
“That you’re going to produce a documentary about the tabloids of the early 2000s and how they affected the celebrities from that period?”
“Oh, yeah.” He wasn’t planning to go on camera, but it had been all too easy to find people who’d been coming up at the same time he had been to go on the record about how toxic that environment had been and how the stench of it had lingered. It felt like the last thing he needed to do to truly make things up to the cast and crew of Central Square .
Maggie was beaming at him as if he’d just invented the moon and gifted it to her, and that—that made it all worthwhile. So Cole kissed her temple, which resulted in a blinding smattering of flashbulbs, but you had to give the people what they wanted in this job sometimes. And what they wanted was Cole James, deep in love.
It was what he wanted, too, so it wasn’t a hardship or anything.
“That sounds amazing. I can’t wait,” Libby said. “Tasha, do you have any comment on the latest news coming out about Vincent’s trial?”
Once Libby’s story had broken, more and more of Vincent’s victims had come out of the woodwork. It turned out that some of them had cases that the district attorney thought were actionable. Cole hadn’t been following the story too closely, but it sounded as if Vincent might actually face some real consequences.
Cole had never been so happy to be wrong.
“Yeah, they take the trash out on Mondays,” Tasha said. “And I wish all his victims the best.”
“Succinct,” Libby said. “I love it. Before I let you all go, I do have to ask about that.” She gestured at Maggie’s left hand and the sparkly ring that Cole had planted there at a vineyard in France, while Ryan and Tasha had watched and clapped, a few months ago. The show’s absolutely grueling promo schedule had had at least one upside.
“I figured it was time to put a ring on it,” Cole told Libby, before dropping another kiss on Maggie’s temple, this one far longer and much less chaste.
Tasha leaned past them to say “Cole refused to follow Ryan’s and my lead and get married by an Elvis impersonator in Vegas. I had a half-off coupon for them to use and everything.”
Ryan had managed to get his way and lead Tasha down the aisle more than a year before. He was a persistent mofo.
“So those rumors are true?” Libby asked.
“Abso-fucking-lutely.” Tasha was a marvel: confirming a story that had been rumored for more than a year in the most profane manner possible.
Cole had to get things back on track. “Yeah, well, Ryan had to lock you down, and I had to do the same before Maggie realized she can do better than me.”
Maggie gaped at him. “There’s absolutely no one who is better than you, Cole James.”
“It’s handy that I feel the same, Maggie Niven.”
When he looked back at Libby, she was rolling her eyes. But when she said “Congratulations, you two,” it was sincere.
“Thanks, Libby.”
As they turned to walk away, someone in the crowd shouted, “Cody! Cody!”
Cole leaned into the crowd and fist-bumped the fan.
“You don’t have to answer to that name, you know,” Maggie muttered when he returned to her side.
“I spent a long time running away from that guy, but Cody will always be a part of me.”
Cole had realized that his fans didn’t just like cheering on their favorite actor from the early aughts; they were also nostalgic for younger versions of themselves. They liked remembering who they’d been when Central Square was still airing new episodes and life had seemed ... simpler. If Cole didn’t share his fans’ impulse to live in the past, that was okay too. They were on their own journeys.
“I don’t resent Cody anymore. And besides, if I hadn’t played him, I never would’ve ended up on the path that led me to you.”
Maggie’s smile turned melting. “Have I mentioned that I love you?”
“Not often enough.”
And with that, he led his wife up the red carpet.