epilogue
MARLEY
one year later
The first thing I notice when I step off the plane is how loud the world feels after a week so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
For the past several days, I’d been waking up to nothing but the sound of the ocean outside my balcony door.
Sun-warmed sand, salt air, and the kind of peace I’d been craving for months.
It was much needed, and Othello had insisted on it.
“You deserve the vacation you never got,” he told me. It was my birthday dinner. Just the two of us when he’d handed me a single plane ticket to Mexico.
A week in Azulik.
It was seven whole days of bliss at a jaw-dropping adults-only resort. The place was designed for a deep connection with nature, in a luxury villa that literally looked and felt like a treehouse. The entire experience calmed my senses and put me at ease.
I spent afternoons on my veranda in a swinging hammock, reading books or shopping at their boutiques.
Mornings doing yoga, or simply walking barefoot on the beach.
Evenings were dinner at one of their fabulous restaurants and a night bath in their mosaic round tub, because they don’t have showers.
To say I wasn’t well-rested and restored would be an understatement.
It was the most romantic and thoughtful thing anyone had ever done for me.
This man always knows what I want and need.
I tighten my grip on the strap of my weekender bag and move forward with the crowd as I exit the plane. The airport is buzzing with people, and all I want to do is see the man that I’ve been missing while on vacation.
It doesn’t take long for me to spot him. Standing tall and looking so damn fine. He has his hands tucked in his jeans pocket. The sleeves of his black t-shirt stretching against his chiseled arms.
He’s been watching me.
Seeing me before I saw him.
The moment our eyes connect, the noise of the airport fades into the background.
After 12 months, you’d think the butterflies would stop fluttering in your stomach for a man you’re head over heels for.
But it doesn’t stop. And I hope it never does.
Othello moves towards me, and my feet move faster.
His smile grows wider the closer I get. We finally close the gap between us, and I barely have time to unload my luggage before his arms wrap around me and he pulls me into his chest. I bury my head into the crook of his neck, squeezing him tight, sniffing his signature cologne that had enraptured me in Maui, which I now know is Versace Eros EDT.
“Damn, I’ve been waiting all week to do this.”
I moan before lifting my head up to kiss his cheek, then his nose, then his lips. He laughs.
“I wish you were there with me,” I tell him. He sets me back down on my feet and brushes my hair from my face.
“Well, that would defeat the purpose of a solo vacay, wouldn’t it. You’re supposed to have no distractions, remember?”
I laugh lightly. “True, true. But you would have been the perfect distraction.”
He gives me that look he always does, like I’m some prized possession, and then lowers his mouth on mine. I melt into him instantly, our kiss familiar and adoring. When we finally come up for air, he murmurs against my lips, “I can’t wait to get you home.”
“Well then,” I say, smiling up at him, “let’s go.”
We make it to baggage claim, and after he grabs my suitcase, I link my arm through his as we walk.
“So, how was it?”
“Everything and more. Thank you so much, babe.”
“Did you fall in love with Mexico?”
“I did,” I admit with a shrug. “We have to go back together next time.”
I squeeze his arm tighter and snuggle into him as we walk. “What about you? What have you been doing without me? Were you bored out of your mind?” I tease.
Othello chuckles under his breath. “Nah, your mother kept me very busy. After we met with the caterer, she had me help her narrow down the guest list.”
“Oh, wow. I told her I wanted to be there for that. Did she add a lot of people?”
“About 50 more, but who’s counting?”
“My dad and his wallet, that’s who?” I shake my head.
My mother and her vision of the perfect wedding. She’d done this with my sister, and now she was overjoyed that my time had finally come and she could do the same for me. Planning every detail of the kind of dream wedding she’d once had with my father.
The pressure my mother had put on me to finally settle down and get married had, at last, come to fruition.
And maybe that’s what made our relationship better.
Stronger. Somewhere along the way, things had softened between us.
My mother had ceased to spew the opinions and hard-hitting advice she loved to give about what I was doing right or wrong.
It was a crazy way to end it, but I was grateful for it.
I heard less criticism in her lectures and more pride.
Eight months after our epic trip in Maui, Othello proposed to me in front of our closest friends and family at a tiki bar in Atlanta. We joke about how he’d nearly cum in his pants the day he fed me that taco in Hawaii. Apparently, I had made it look too damn good.
My mother didn’t stop crying the night we became engaged.
Looking at me like I was the apple of her eye.
She admitted that they were tears of joy.
She told me her only wish was to see me truly loved and seen.
Somehow, I had found those things and more with Othello.
A man who was supposed to be my fake boyfriend.
I find it in the way he looks at me. The way he touches me. In the way he listens. In the way he loves me out loud and without shame. I am enough for Othello. And he is enough for me.
More than enough.
I won’t lie, my mother’s ghostly advice echoes in my head every now and again.
But I realized her words, as sad as they could be, were her way of trying to protect me from the kind of love that could ruin me.
My belief that if things were too good to be true kept me with one foot out the door whenever my feelings took over, and happiness arrived.
I couldn’t be too certain or too happy because something was bound to fall apart.
But being loved by Othello, my fiancé, my man, my man, my man, taught me that some things aren’t too good to be true.
Some things are just good. And as I get a sense of déjà vu, Othello pulling my suitcase with one hand while holding mine with the other, I realize this love, this man, is the truest thing I’ve ever known.