Epilogue Diana
A FEW MONTHS LATER
“Twenty more minutes to a new year!” Maggie called out, handing Diana and Jay refilled flutes of champagne. Maggie kissed Diana on the cheek.
“Damien still stuck in New York?” Diana asked Maggie, who had run into the kitchen to check in with her ex-husband and best friend.
He’d had plans to spend Christmas with them and the girls, but a huge snowstorm kept him sequestered in New York.
Maggie was super bummed, and Diana knew Maya was as well.
Diana was also bummed because she had yet to really spend time with Damien, but, she reminded herself, she still had time.
There was a future where she would get to know Damien beyond the man who’d had everything she hadn’t. And she was looking forward to it.
“Yeah, sucks, but Maya said she will swing down to New York after the girls get back from upstate,” Maggie said, hands on her hips. Diana could tell she was bummed. Diana reached out a hand and drew circles at the small of her back.
“Don’t worry, we have plenty of time to get together,” Diana reassured her, and Maggie smiled.
“Totally, and you know, maybe a good time will be when the weather isn’t so crazy. I’m very much looking forward to barbecue weather again,” Jay joked.
“Says the woman who just moved from London to Vermont,” Maggie said chuckling, and the two exchanged a brief look of pure warmth that settled Diana in a way she never thought she’d have.
“Fair, we could have moved to like, Florida, but…” Jay said, shaking her head.
“Fucking Florida politics,” Maggie muttered.
“And California’s too far,” Diana said quickly, “and besides, we aren’t there.” She smiled at Maggie who smiled back.
“Yeah I suppose you make a case, I was away long enough,” Jay said, and Diana felt her cheeks flush. She turned to look at Maggie who winked at her. Diana’s face spread into a wide smile.
“Damien is welcome here, either solo or not, whenever. Blizzard or not.”
Maggie leaned forward and kissed Diana once more, this time quickly on the lips, smiled at Jay, and then walked back to her seat on the couch where a waiting Michaela handed her own drink back to her. They seemed to pick up where they’d left off in an animated conversation.
“Momma, Syl and Lou are both knocked out,” Michaela and Jay’s middle child, Mars, said, having just walked up to them.
“Yeah I know love, just let them sleep, they’ll throw a fit if they think we sent them to bed before midnight,” Jay cooed and Mars shrugged and happily went back to playing UNO with Cole and Julia.
Jay smiled after them, and then turned to Diana, “So,” she began.
“So,” Diana said back.
“This is really…” Jay’s voice trailed off as Diana followed her gaze back to the couch where their partners continued to chatter away.
“Nice,” Diana finished without looking away.
“Nice, it is. I think they really have taken a liking to each other. Michaela loves Maggie.”
“Part of my whole secret plan to make this a love commune,” Diana deadpanned and Jay let out her full and jovial laugh, the one that had always made it impossible for Diana not to follow her.
“I must say it is just really great, that even though so many things are uncertain, so many things on fire right now, to have come back home,” Jay said once they’d finished laughing. Diana turned to look at her, her molten brown eyes on hers, soft and somehow always gleaming.
While Diana and Maggie had been figuring out how to fit together, the world around them continued to fall apart.
Jay and Michaela had had to flee one hostile environment to another that was growing more and more hostile by the day.
For two trans women, Black and Brown women, and an immigrant, Diana knew they were part of a vulnerable community, and Diana would always do her part as an ally to protect them.
She had promised Jay that again and again, and would again and again.
“Things aren’t uncertain, they are certainly horrible,” Diana said solemnly, and Jay nodded.
They both took sips of their champagne. “But they’ve been horrible before.
The good ones will win again, and you, Michaela, and Maggie are starting something that will contribute to that good.
I will do everything I can to support you. Me and Julia.”
Jay smiled back at her and said, “I know.” Then her face lit up and she said, “Speaking of Julia, so she reached out to an old friend at an agency or something? Anyway, Grace Colburn agreed to come and do a workshop at the center! Can you believe it, she’s pretty high profile, and I can't believe she’s willing to come up here, but we will take it! ”
Diana smiled because Maggie had told Maya the same news over Christmas and had promised Maya could either meet her or at the very least, she’d get a book signed for her. “Yeah, Maggie mentioned it over Christmas. Julia contacted an old high school crush from back in the day.”
“Wait, you went to school with Grace?” Jay said incredulously.
“No. We went to school with the agency head who represents Grace, why?”
“Well, I don’t know anything about her crush on your old classmate, but I saw her face when we did a Zoom meeting with Grace. I have never seen our Julia so tongue-tied.”
“Oh?” Diana felt one of her eyebrows raise as she looked over at Julia, who was playfully accusing Mars of cheating while Cole looked on and shook his head.
“Yes, I mean Grace is a presence to be sure, even virtually,” Maggie added.
“Interesting…who knows. One day, I hope she finds the love she’s too proud to admit she’s searching for.”
“Well she’s got that whole Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic thing going on,” Jay said, and Diana turned to her.
“Oh my god right? I had the same realization the other night!”
“Hmm, well maybe Grace is her Rose,” Jay mused and the two fell into a comfortable silence until Cole exclaimed, “Time to countdown!”
As if on cue, the sleeping twins opened their eyes, sleepily turned their heads while Cole squeezed himself between his sisters and pulled them in close. Julia wrapped Mars in her arms and Maggie stood to walk over to Diana while Jay went and sat in her vacated seat.
They all audibly counted down with the numbers on the muted television screen and then yelled out “Happy New Year!” together.
Diana turned to Maggie and kissed the woman she loved.
Maggie kissed her back, and Diana knew Jay was kissing Michaela because Julia made a wolf whistle while the younger kids made displeased noises.
The full sound of it all, after having the girls and Maggie at home for Christmas, made her chest tight.
Her home, like her heart, continued to be so full of all of the love it was surrounded by.
And for the first time, she got to enter a new year, a new beginning, with all of it.
For the first time, she was entering the new year with Maggie by her side. And she vowed never to let her go.