Epilogue
One Year Later
Ryan
When my love lamented about the happy endings in romance novels, she forgot about the epilogue. The glimpse into the future—maybe one year, maybe more—to let the reader know that the happiness of the characters they’ve come to love was not short-lived. That in the space between the end of the last chapter and the end of the book, the characters have continued to grow and live their full, complicated, beautiful lives.
Our lives have definitely been full over the last twelve months. Going back to school has been an adjustment for Josie, but she’s rising to the challenge with the same badassery and grace she brings to everything she does. She added a business minor to her degree, so it’ll take her longer to graduate, but the things she’s learning will set her up for success in whatever she decides to do next.
And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good to take care of her, keeping her fed and watered with plenty of Americanos and the occasional Munchkin.
Between studying and reading (for pleasure!), Josie’s been working a few hours a week at the store. She’s helped me implement a lot of her systems and strategies so I’m no longer making decisions based on my gut alone. More than that, her support and belief in me have helped my anxiety go down and my confidence go up.
The new, expanded bookstore is organized and efficient, but we’ve maintained the personality of my old store, the coziness that invites customers to feel at home. And of course, our romance selection is still the largest and most diverse in the city.
Josie’s here now: moderating an event with author Luke Duncan about the second book in his Camp Shadows YA series, which our teen readers have been devouring. Josie and Luke—who used to write under the name William Lucas Duncan (I always thought the three-name thing was a bit pretentious)—are having a lively discussion about why it’s so important to let kids with disabilities be the heroes of their own stories, and the teenagers in attendance are rapt. Although it’s hard to say if that’s because of the conversation, or because Luke looks like a modern-day Paul Newman—which also explains why Eddie’s been lingering by the event space for the last hour.
“Hey, boss—I’ve got something for you.”
Cinderella’s smile is as bright as her hair, which is currently blue. She says she’s still trying to figure out who she is, but I think she’s a human rainbow: full of color and quick to make people smile.
She’s been smiling more lately, ever since she started “talking” to a very nice man. Carlton was the foreman of the construction crew that worked on our stores, and he kept coming in after the job ended. Cinderella insists they’re just friends, but I see the way she lights up when he walks in.
“Should I be nervous?” I ask.
“Don’t be silly,” she says dismissively. “Put your hand out.”
I oblige, and she places a sparkly pin in my open palm. It says: Book boyfriend Husband.
My eyes go wide, and I close my fingers around the pin, slipping it in my pocket next to the velvet box I’ve checked and rechecked a dozen times today.
“She hasn’t said yes yet,” I whisper.
“She will,” Cinderella says, patting my shoulder. “She’s a smart girl.”
The compliment makes me smile. Josie has managed to endear herself to all my OGs, which wasn’t the easiest task. Everyone made the transition to the new store except Eliza—and that’s only because she’s studying and playing soccer at the University of Florida. We miss her, but she’s promised to stop by whenever she comes home for school breaks.
In her absence, Nora has added a few more shifts—including leading story time on Saturday mornings. She bristles at any comparison to a sweet grandmother, but the role fits her. Indira’s here almost every day. She still wears all black—but she’s got a bright pink ribbon on her name tag that lets people know she’s an assistant manager. She’s done an amazing job familiarizing herself with the new genres we carry, and it’s been nice to have an assistant manager who actually assists.
Georgia isn’t on staff, but she might as well be with how much time she spends studying and hanging out in our café. She still makes incessant jokes about my height, but I put up with it because I love Josie and Josie loves Georgia. I kind of love her, too. In that annoying-kid-sister way. It’s nice not being the youngest in this little found family of ours.
I’ve met their mom a few times; she’s working to earn Josie’s trust back, holding down a job, going to therapy, and staying out of the dating world for now—but it’s Georgia whose blessing I asked for. She also helped me pick out the ring. There are two small diamonds (Georgia made me make sure they weren’t blood diamonds) and the center stone is an emerald. According to my future sister-in-law, emeralds are the stone of intuition and foresight, and throughout time they have been seen as symbols of truth and love. I couldn’t think of any better symbolism for my relationship with Josie.
A smattering of applause calls my attention to the event space; the conversation is over. I head up front to help people check out, but Henri, one of our new employees, has it under control. They’re moving faster than the credit card machine can approve the purchases, handing customers a multicolored bag printed with our new store name: Beyond the Pages. Thanks to Josie’s coaching, I was able to negotiate my involvement in the naming of the new store as a condition for accepting the job. Xander surprisingly agreed, which shows just how desperate he was.
Kind of like how desperate I am to get this crowd moving, so I grab a pad of sticky notes and help write the names for Luke to sign.
An hour and a half later—one superfan bought twelve books!—we say good night to Luke and his very pregnant wife, Jessie, and lock the door behind them.
We’re finally alone.
My stomach knots up. After participating in hundreds of bookish proposals, it’s my turn. For so long, I thought I’d never find my love story, that I was meant to help other people find their beshert (a Yiddish word Josie taught me, which means the person they were destined for). Never in a million years would I have thought my own beshert would end up being the prissy girl who worked at the highbrow bookstore next door.
“What are you smiling about?” Josie is looking at me suspiciously, her hand on her hip.
“Aren’t I allowed to be happy?”
She steps closer and gives me a quick kiss. “Let’s go home and we can be happy there.”
Home. I love that word—and the fact that we moved into a two-bedroom apartment near Porter Square a month ago.
“In a minute,” I tell her, my stomach uneasy with nerves. “I got you something—sit down and I’ll be right back.”
Josie moves to her favorite spot, the reading nook on what used to be the Tab side of the store. The old leather couch from Happy Endings is there, and we’ve added a rug and a lamp to make it feel homey. When I return, her shoes are off, and Persephone is purring in her lap. She looks like the BookshopGirl I always imagined.
“Here you go,” I say, handing her the wrapped package. My hands tingle in anticipation.
“A blind date book?” Her eyes light up. “It feels pretty thick…”
“Just read the clue. Out loud.”
She gives me a soft smile. It took Josie a while to warm up to what she calls my acts of adoration, but as she says, there are worse things than being in love with a practicing romantic.
“?‘Enemies to friends to lovers,’?” she reads, then looks up. “I didn’t know that was a thing?”
“Keep reading.”
“?‘Witty banter, slow burn, online epistolary, Jewish representation, tall fetish’—this sounds like it could be our story.” Josie laughs, but I’m too nervous to join in.
“Open it.”
She unwraps the brown kraft paper slowly, like she knows what’s inside is precious. As she takes in the cover—an illustration I had commissioned—her eyes grow wide. The two of us, standing back-to-back in front of our respective old stores. Josie has her nose in a book, but I’m only pretending to read mine. Instead, my eyes are on her. The title is BookFriends to Lovers .
“There’s a blurb from Penelope Adler-Wolf,” Josie says, confused.
Josie’s mentor and friend was more than happy to give our story an endorsement: “A true testament to the power of love and good literature.”
“Take a look inside,” I say.
She does, and her breath catches. “It’s our messages,” she says, awe in her voice.
As she flips through the pages, all the conversations between RJ.Reads and BookshopGirl, I slip off the couch and onto one knee. Josie doesn’t notice—she’s reading, laughing and smiling at the notes I left in the margins: pointing out when I started having feelings for her, when I first realized who she was, when I knew I loved her.
It’s all there, captured in the pages of our story.
“This is…” She looks up and freezes when she sees me on bended knee, holding out the open ring box.
“Josie Anne Klein,” I say, my voice shaky. “I think I fell in love with love stories because I knew one day, they would lead me to you—a woman who thought my name was Brian.” She laughs, her eyes filling with tears as she smiles down at me. My voice gets stronger. “From the moment I met you—both on BookFriends and in person—something about you captivated me. Whether we were bantering online or sparring in real life, I couldn’t get you off my mind.”
She’s glowing, and tears escape her gorgeous green eyes.
“I grew up hearing my parents say, ‘When you know, you know,’ but I didn’t really know what love was until I started loving you. What we have is deeper, and richer, and more beautiful than anything I ever could’ve imagined. So, Josie—” I take a breath, my own eyes brimming with tears. “Will you—”
“I know, too,” Josie says, kissing me. I taste the salt of her tears—or maybe mine.
“Is that a yes?” I ask between kisses. “Remember, I need words.”
“You can have all the words,” Josie says, pulling back to look at me. She’s sitting on my knee, her hands on either side of my face. Her smile is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. “Like fiancé.”
“I like that.”
“And husband. Or partner?”
“Either is okay with me,” I say, giving her another kiss. “But there’s one more word I need—hopefully a three-letter one. Will you marry me?”
“Yes!” Josie shouts. “Yes, I will marry you, Brian and Ryan and RJ.” She throws her arms around me, and I hold her, silently thanking whatever fates conspired to bring us right here.
Eventually, she pulls away, narrowing her eyes in a way that tells me her mind is working through a plan. “I just have one condition.”
“Okay…?”
She sits back on the couch, pulling me up to sit beside her. She takes the ring box from my hands and admires it before looking back at me. “After I graduate, I want this bookstore to be ours.”
“It already is,” I say, confused.
“Technically speaking, it’s Xander’s. But I want to buy it from him. Together.”
My laugh dies on my lips when I see how serious she is.
“No way Xander will agree to that,” I say, shaking my head. “He put too much money into the renovation. He’ll never sell.”
“Well, it’s a good thing neither of us is afraid of a fight.”
Josie’s got a gleam in her eyes that I remember from our early weeks of competition.
“Another battle?” I say.
“Think of it as the fight for our future.”
I blow out a breath, but something in my gut tells me she’s right. “And this time we’ll be on the same side from the start.”
“Oh, Ryan,” Josie says, picking up the book of our conversations—our love story. “We were always on the same side. It just took us a while to figure it out. So, what do you say?”
I nod.
“Words,” Josie teases. “Will you be my life partner and my business partner?”
“Yes,” I say. “Always and forever yes.”
And with that, I slip the ring on her finger, and I kiss her.
My former enemy.
My fiancée.
My everything.