Epilogue
EPILOGUE
ONE MONTH LATER
ASH
M y dad has tackle-hugged my boyfriend.
"I'm so happy you two figured it out," Dad says, adjusting his glasses from where his face bumped into Rusty's. "I knew you would, but I'm still so happy to see my baby girl so happy!"
"Thanks, Greg," Rusty says. He has tears in his eyes, too, but he's blinking them away while my dad lets them fall freely. "I dig the shirt, by the way."
"Thanks! I made this one myself," he says, looking down at his "In My Lucy Jane Era" T-shirt that is almost definitely breaking some copyright or another. But, then, there are no cameras allowed at this concert, so I think he'll get away with it.
My mom hugs Rusty next, her huge mess of curls getting in his face. He smiles and lets it tickle his nose. "I've been waiting for this moment since the first time we FaceTimed," Mom gushes. "I told Greg, ‘You just wait. Our sweet girl is too naive to realize that's the boy she's going to marry someday.’"
"Naive? Rude!" I protest. "Dumb, yes. Immature, obviously. But naive ?" I feign offense. "Wow, Mom. Wow."
"I like the part about marriage, though," Rusty says, gesturing to the Ring Pop on my finger.
He gives me a new one everyday, and I think I'm finally wearing him down on the flavor. At least now that he's discovered blue raspberry.
"There is no such thing as a blue raspberry, so they can make up whatever flavor they want," he told me when he switched exclusively to the blue ones. "The rest are all pretending to taste like something real, and they don't. They're an abomination."
" Excuse me? The watermelon flavor is so much better than actual watermelons."
I think I broke his heart when I said that, but since then, I've accepted the blue rings daily without complaint.
The sacrifices I make for love.
"Take your time," Dad says.
"Don't take too much time," my mom says. "I want some grandbabies with Southern accents!"
I look at Rusty with wide eyes, but he grins.
"Yes, ma'am."
I hold my hand out to Rusty. "Want to talk less about our future children and instead come with me to check on Lou?" I ask.
He takes my hand, and we leave my parents to sit on our picnic blanket. Jane and Tripp and Tripp's cousins are on a blanket to one side of us, and Parker, Sonny, and half of Sonny's family are on our other side. Past them are Millie, Duke, and Lottie.
Lottie and I have had an on-again, off-again friendship since Rusty and I made it official. Fortunately, she's gone totally gaga for Sonny's nephew, Felix, so I'm hoping we'll be able to put this behind us for real this time.
Rusty and I walk across the Sugar Maple High School football field and say hi to almost everyone we see. The anticipation in the air is so thick, it's making me dizzy. After Lou's identity got spilled, she decided to hold a free concert for Sugar Maple residents and guests. We've had it in the works for a couple of weeks, but the rest of Sugar Maple didn't find out until this morning.
It turns out that a fair number of people suspected Lou was Lucy Jane. When your legal name is Lucy and all your friends share a middle name, and when you have the kind of voice that could narrate audiobooks or sing the National Anthem at the Superbowl, well, people start to put two and two together.
Also, when we had Lou narrate one of the Sugar Maple tourism videos, we forgot that half the town knows her.
Dead giveaway.
Unless you're an idiot like Philip. Ha!
Fortunately, the people of Sugar Maple have grown up around the likes of the Carville family and the top quarterback in the NFL. They don't care as much about her fame because they care so much about her person.
They've willingly protected Lou's identity because that's what good neighbors do.
"But if I'd known there was money to be made off the secret, I'd have sold you out so fast and bought the diner outright," Tia said when we walked by the diner this morning to tell her about the concert.
"Because Tripp is such a terrible business partner?" Jane asked.
Bill was so eager to sell the diner and get out of town that he offered to sell it to Tripp on the spot.
Tripp brought Tia into the discussion and offered to be a silent investor for her. She doesn't have to run anything by him, although she did have to promise that there will always be real meat on the menu.
"He tried to veto a meatless salad," she told Jane. "It's salad . "
"Tell him if he gives you any grief, you'll start offering green eggs and ham."
"Beg your pardon?" Tia asked.
"He has this whole Dr. Seuss thing," Jane said. "But it'll work. I promise."
Tia helped spread the word about the concert, and now, with the sun setting, Lou is only a few minutes out from taking the stage. She's putting on a one-woman acoustic show, although she did finally choose her band for the tour. All female, so she won't run the risk of falling for any of them, like her mom did.
We run into the Chicks and their wives sitting in chairs along the sidelines. The Hens, as Rusty calls them, are only a yard or two away. Granny Belle's husband died years ago, and Mr. Beaty and Tia's grandfather are talking about football.
"My granddaughter told me you two aren't a real couple till you have a 'power name,’" Chick Hanks says, puffing out his chest. "So we've come up with one for you."
Rusty and I swap eager looks. "Lay it on us," I say.
Chick Hanks spreads his hands as if he's bestowing a blessing on the land. " Rasty . Get it? Perfect blend of Rusty and Ash."
"Rasty?" I repeat.
"I thought we decided on Ashty, " Chick Parkinson says.
"Ashty?" Rusty looks shocked, like they said a foul word. Because it sounds like one!
"No, it was Rash ," Chick Allen says.
I double over laughing, but I manage to make it look like a vicious coughing fit. Rusty ducks his face and pats my back, not willing to let them see how hard he's laughing.
"Do y'all hear yourselves?" Granny Belle asks. "It's Rush . Rusty plus Ash. It takes the same number of letters from both names and it does not sound like some troubling medical condition that we don't talk about in polite company." She looks skyward. "Heaven help me before I say somethin' nasty. "
"You mean somethin' rasty ," Mrs. Beaty says, and the Hens crack up.
Rusty clears his throat as I bring my face upright with a flip of my hair. "We'll take it under consideration, won't we, Gorgeous?"
"Sure will, Farm Boy."
When we've made it far enough away, I collapse into laughter and make Rusty give me a piggyback ride. "Ashty, babe. Ashty ."
"You keep sayin' it in my ear like that, and I'm gonna like it a little too much."
I laugh and kiss his neck as he holds my thighs and walks us over to the tent backstage.
I pat his shoulders and hop down outside the tent. "Knock knock," I say, and we walk through the open flap. Fans are blasting in the tent, blowing air on Lou's flowy off-white maxi skirt and sage sleeveless top. She paces in front of them with her arms held just high enough that it's obvious she's trying to cool off her sweat.
I have never in my life seen Lou nervous.
"How you doing?" I ask.
"Why did I do this to myself? I haven't performed on stage since I was twelve!"
"You were the youngest person to ever win the Sing Off at the State Fair. You got this!"
"No. I'm a YouTube artist for a reason. I don't want to sing in front of people. I want to sing in front of a camera with weird lighting and my hair covering my face so no one knows who I am."
"Half the town already knew who you were," Rusty says. "You're among friends."
" You guys are my friends! These people are …"
"Neighbors. And you're too Southern not to know what that means," Rusty says .
She narrows her eyes. "Your sound argument is not wanted here. This is a logic-free zone, thank you very much."
"My mistake," he says.
She clutches my shoulders. "I can do this, right? Can I do this?"
"You can do this! Pretend everyone is in their underwear."
"Ew! Why would I do that?"
"To make you less nervous?"
"Performing to people wearing their underwear in a field is much more nerve-wracking than performing to people wearing clothes," Lou says like I've lost my mind. "Why would they be in their underwear? It sounds nefarious."
"Perfect! See, you've already thought of something even worse than performing your own music in front of a crowd. If you get nervous, just tell yourself, 'at least they're all wearing clothes!'"
Lou exhales a laugh. "That's not bad."
I put my arm over her shoulders. "You got this, Lou. Security took away everyone's phones, so no one can even record you. What's the worst that can happen?"
"I make a mistake, forget the words, faint, throw up, pee my pants."
"When you put it that way …" I say. "If you're really that nervous, play a track and pretend? — "
"A track? " she says aghast, as I knew she would. "I would rather mess up, faint, pee my pants, and throw up all over myself."
I grin. "There she is."
Determination settles on her brow. "Here I am."
"Hello Sugar Maple!" Lou says in the microphone a few minutes later. Raucous cheers greet her words. "I can't tell y'all how excited I am to be with you tonight. And believe me, this sheen of sweat is all weather and definitely not me being nervous that my big secret got revealed, or anything."
People laugh generously, and the energy only stays ultra high and ultra supportive as Lou starts the first few chords of her first song.
"I'm gonna start us off the way my career started, with a little song I call "Double or Nothing."
The crowd goes wild.
Mama always said,
“Love is doubling your pain,"
I always said,
“Nothing risked, nothing gained."
This was Lou's first song, and it's still her biggest, so it's no surprise when almost the entire crowd sings along to almost every word.
Double or nothing is how I roll
Double or nothing sure takes its toll
Lovin' you is easy, why is lovin' you so hard?
You made me a promise, and I take you at your word .
Rusty pulls me up to dance with him. I rest my head in the crook of his neck and watch my friend perform with so much energy and passion, it's like she was made for it.
"I can't believe she was nervous," Rusty says, his dreamy voice rumbling against my ear.
"Even sexy geniuses can miss what's right in front of their face sometimes," I say.
"You really are a sexy genius," Rusty says.
I laugh and kiss his neck. "Thanks, Hotcakes. "
"Can I ask you something?" Rusty asks in a tone that isn't quite steady. "You made such a big deal about my friends’ abs, but you haven't done that with me. I know you love me, but am I … less than you wanted?"
I push back to stare at him. "Rusty, no! It's the opposite. The abs thing was part of my life, but it was a means to an end. It was an easy way to connect with people and to fit in. I made a show of objectifying Tripp and Sonny because my friends thought it was funny. It gave us something to laugh about. But ‘tummy waffles’ was also selfish. When girls found out I ran it, they wanted to be my friends. When guys found out I was in charge of a page they wanted to be on, I could pretty much date any guy I wanted to. Unfortunately, that meant the guys I dated? — "
"Sucked?"
"Precisely. But you mattered too much for me to reduce you like that. You were too important."
"And you didn't believe mine would be anything to write home about," he says.
"Not at all. I had no clue what a secret hottie you were."
"It wasn't a secret."
I smile. "No, it really wasn't. But I guess I never thought I could attract someone like you, when I'd only ever attracted jerks."
Lou changes songs to something upbeat, but Rusty and I keep slow dancing like we're the only people in the audience.
"It still makes me sick to think that you've ever spent a second with a guy like Philip," Rusty says. "When a guy like me was in the world. No, not just a guy like me. Me. I've had a crush on you since the moment I saw you. But I've loved you since you figured out I have dyslexia."
"That was our first time working together. We barely knew each other."
"I know. But you took all the awkwardness out of something I thought I was supposed to be ashamed of and showed me it was possible to own it and wear it with pride. I'd always felt like I needed to hide it or work around it. I knew right then that I would never find someone who inspired me to want to be my best self more than you."
I lean back into him and hug him tight. "I know what you mean. I spent so much time letting losers convince me that only they could make me whole. Your acceptance and love changed that. I didn’t realize how powerful it would be to feel whole all on my own."
Rusty squeezes me close and kisses my forehead as we watch Lou strum and sing with her eyes closed and her heart on full display.
Rusty's voice vibrates at that sexy, low frequency intended just for me. "You also didn't realize how powerful it would feel to be loved by someone with really nice abs." I laugh. "I mean really nice abs,” he says. “Easily the top five you've ever seen."
"I believe you, Hotcakes. I saw you in that wet shirt! You could set a waterfall on fire."
He shakes his head. "I'm not kidding about how nice they are. You should want to see them a lot more than you do."
"But I love all of you. I'm not fixated on your body."
"I want you to fixate a little on my body."
I laugh into the evening sky, and Rusty holds me steady at the waist, helping me make a half circle until I'm right back where I started, my face in front of his.
I kiss his jaw and put my hands on his back, feeling where his muscles dip into his spine. "You are stunning . You're the kind of attractive that teenage girls create entire fan accounts around. You're the stuff of hot guy memes and Reddit threads about the perfect man." I look into his gorgeous hazel eyes. "It's not your fault that your smoking hot body can't compete with your scorchingly hot soul. "
Rusty kisses me into a coma of want and happiness and then revives me with more kisses.
"You can kiss me like that for the rest of our lives, Farm Boy," I say.
He puts his lips to my ear and whispers, "As you wish."