Charlie’s Epilogue
Charlie's Epilogue
Five months later…
I’m starting to seriously worry. Myles and I drove to work separately today since I had an afterschool meeting and he was planning to use the time for a grocery run in town, but my meeting took forever, and I’d totally been expecting him to be home before me.
Not only was he not, now I’ve been here for over half an hour, and there’s still no sign of him. There’s bad service between here and town, so his phone going to voicemail makes sense, but it certainly doesn’t make me feel any better.
I’m just about to dial his number again when I hear the bang of his truck door outside in the driveway.
The moment I’m out the door to meet him (we could pretend it’s just because I want to help him with the groceries, but there’s no getting around the fact that a full school day, plus my meeting and whatever delayed him in getting home is waaayy too long for either of us to go without touching each other) I stop short.
He’s standing beside his open truck door, hand on the back of his neck, and there’s this nervous edginess to his expression that I haven’t seen since the day he told me he was staying here in Riverside. That he wanted me to stay with him too.
I can tell he’s not as tightly wound as that day, not by a long ways, but seeing that look does things to me. Fluttery, confused things that have me so totally caught between worry and excitement, because ohmigod, for him to be looking like that means whatever this is, good or bad, it’s a big deal.
“Baby, what’s going on?”
“I did something.” He’s leaning to the side, reaching into the truck as he blurts the words, but his eyes are locked on mine, watching for my reaction.
“I should have talked to you first, but you were in your meeting, so I couldn’t call, and I don’t know if you’ll love it or if it will upset you, and I don’t want to make you sad if you’re not ready, but—”
“Ohmigod—” The tears in my eyes are as instant as the huge, totally unstoppable smile that spreads across my face as Myles straightens up, lifting a small, sleek puff of black fur from the cardboard box he’s pulled over onto the driver’s seat. “Ohmigod, Myles, let me see him!”
And fine, there may just possibly be some squealing and clapping involved…
Myles’s nervous expression melts into pure happiness as he lifts the kitten to his lips, dropping a soft kiss on the top of his head before carefully passing him to me, and ohmigod, how he does that to me—making me love him more and more, literally every time I see him—I will never understand.
The kitten is tiny. Probably too small to be away from his mother, but big enough that his bright blue eyes are open and alert. As soon as I cuddle him under my chin, I can feel the vibrations of his surprisingly loud purring.
“Where did he come from?”
Myles steps closer, wrapping his arms around me, dragging a happy sigh all the way up from my toes as I rest the side of my head against his cheek.
Between us, the kitten settles against my chest, little pinprick claws kneading through my shirt when I stroke my fingers over the silky fur of his head.
“A woman had him in a box outside the grocery store. She said she’d already sold his brothers and sister, and he was the last one left from the litter. He just looked cold and lonely in the box, and he was meowing so loudly and—”
“I love him. And,” I look up from the kitten, something that’s hard to do for precisely one second before my lips brush over Myles’s. “I love you. So, so much. Thank you for not leaving him there. And thank you for him.”
Between the fact that neither Myles nor I are remotely willing to put the kitten—who, I finally pry out of Myles, he started calling Phantom on the drive home—down for even a second, and the many, many highly distracting kisses that sidetrack us, it takes a ridiculously long time for the two—no, the three—of us to unload and put away the groceries.
Among those groceries, I find a bag of kitten food and an adorably huge selection of toys Myles stopped off at the local pet store to pick up, which of course creates a whole new sidetracking situation as the two of us have to stop and watch Phantom bat and chase and pounce his way through every last ball and feather and toy mouse as we unpack them from the bag.
“We’ll have to find someone to stay with him next summer,” I tell Myles, using my fork-free hand to steer Phantom’s sneaky little paw away from my bite of spaghetti he’s shamelessly trying to steal.
Are we totally setting ourselves up for a Cyril-style beggar-thief by holding Phantom during dinner? Probably. Do either of us have the heart to commit the travesty of putting him down on the floor while we eat though? No, we do not.
Just like I always took Cyril back to Seattle for my visits with my parents and Gemma (and now Rosa too, obviously), bringing Phantom along won’t be any trouble.
Next July though, Myles and I are going to Provence for two weeks—the first of our planned trips for Myles to take me to see his favorites of the places he’s traveled to.
I’d been the one that proposed the idea—that we should go somewhere new every year during our summer break.
Much as Myles loves our life in Riverside, I know he also loved traveling.
His face positively lights up when he tells me stories about the places he’s been and the things he’s seen, and not only was there no way I wanted him to lose that, he’s also totally infected me with the need to experience the world like that too.
Thanks to his dad leaving Myles what is now our house, our miraculously rent and mortgage-free life makes the reality of this possible.
“Rach said Leo will be coming home for the summer from college,” Myles reaches over to scratch under Phantom’s chin. “We could ask him to do it? And maybe we could get Phantom a sibling? You know, so he’s not lonely without us?”
His gorgeous face is so sincere and so totally adorable that I really do have to set Phantom down. Not all the way down on the floor—I’m not heartless—but just in my lap as I lean over into Myles’s space where he’s got his chair pulled right up next to mine for a long, sweet kiss.
How on earth did I get so lucky? Myles and our home here in Riverside, a job I love in a community that, contrary to Myles’s (and if I’m honest, my worries too) has wholeheartedly embraced our relationship as so sweet, and Myles, and all our amazing plans for the future, and Myles, and now, Phantom and his future kitty sibling.
It’s so much. Too much, in only the best and most beautiful way possible.
It’s everything.