Epilogue Ben
Iwoke to the sound of distant, pounding ocean surf and soft chanting. A warm breeze floated through the open windows, bringing with it the tang of salt. The bedsheets were wrapped around my legs, a reminder of me and Ella’s midday sex session.
I must have fallen asleep afterward. Our impromptu fall vacation was taking way more out of me than I thought it would.
This was Ella’s first trip to Hawaii, and the woman wanted to do everything.
Yesterday, we woke up at the ass crack of dawn for surf lessons.
She was terrible. I had so much video blackmail to get back at her for that cross-country ski incident last winter that I gleefully looked forward to the opportune moment to unleash it.
Maybe I could enlist Jane to help. She had the kind of devious mentality that would be perfect for this. Must be where Willow got it from.
Once Ella’s fail-surfing was over, we’d spent the late morning on a chartered whale-watching vessel.
After landing, we ate lunch, then headed further inland to hike the volcano and watch the sunset from its western summit.
Thankfully, someone picked us up in a vehicle afterward, and we were chauffeured back down to the base.
We ended the night with dinner at my parents’.
And this was just one day of activities. We’d been here for a full week, and I was so sore that it hurt to turn my head toward the sound of her chanting.
“Sipping Mai Tais on a beach, sipping Mai Tais on a beach, sipping Mai Tais on a beach,” Ella sing-whispered over by the drink cart. She wore a green string bikini, butt twitching back and forth to the tune of the song she’d made up.
I had no idea where she got this boundless energy.
I knew she was sore too. Her feet had blisters on them.
She woke me up at one this morning swearing and hopping up and down next to the bed, trying to alleviate the Charley horse in her leg.
And yet here she was, several hours later, practically vibrating with energy.
If anyone ever found a way to bottle it, they’d be a millionaire.
She lifted a silver drink shaker and rattled it over her head along with the rhythm, doing a full-on dance now.
One that looked disturbingly similar to Skunkarooney Time, complete with hip-thrusts and elbow flares.
The sight probably shouldn’t have turned me on, especially since I was so tired I didn’t know if I could even get it up, but…
“I like the way your ass jiggles when you do that,” I told her, voice still rough from sleep.
She froze, looked at me over her shoulder, and then sent me a devastating grin before shaking her hips even faster than before. A second later, she set the drink mixer aside and belly-flopped onto the mattress.
“Let’s move here,” she said.
“You’re only saying that because it was forty when we left Maine.”
“Nope, I’m saying that because this place is amazing.” She reached out and smushed my cheeks together, expression slightly manic. “You grew up just being able to go outside all year round?”
“Yes,” I said, batting her hands aside. “We can’t move here. We have the dogs and your family and all my appointments.”
She rolled onto her back and mulled it over for a second, chewing her bottom lip in a way that would forever make me want to pull it out of her mouth with my teeth.
“We could shave the dogs. I could start a huge fight with everyone in my family and become estranged from them. And we could schedule all your appointments for the summer and then winter here. What about that?” she asked, craning her head sideways to look at me.
“I don’t think so,” I told her. “Boots and Doodle would look ridiculous shaved. And I like your family too much to be estranged from them.”
That was the goddamn truth. Late last spring, after we’d reconciled, I met all of them in one go.
Ella’s parents had thrown a dinner party that even Megan and Stacey came up for.
A few of her family members had holy shit moments, much like Ella had when we’d first met, but they quickly brushed aside my fame and absorbed me into the family in a way that made me feel like I’d been there all along.
Our moms now talked so much that they jokingly called each other “besties”.
“Okay, how about this,” Ella said, sounding desperate now. “I move here with all the dogs, you stay alone in the frigid north, and we try the long-distance thing?”
I pushed my tired, aching body up and rolled on top of her. “Abso-fucking-lutely not,” I said from inches away.
She frowned at me. “Fine. Fine! But can we come out here more often? I really mean it when I say that I love this place.”
“My parents would definitely approve of that,” I told her, smoothing her hair back from her face. “And maybe we could bring your parents with us too.”
“That would be really good for Mom if we came during the winter.”
“Then that’s settled. Plus, now that the foundation is growing, we might need to come out here at least quarterly to help out.”
She smiled up at me, the look more feral than warm. “Gotta put all that lawsuit money to good use.”
“You’re doing that thing again. With your face,” I told her.
“Right,” she said, blanking it. “Letting my, “Ah-ha-ha, fuck you, Mr. Ex-Commissioner,” feelings run away with me again.”
“That’s it.”
She was so good throughout the trial. Her backbone and her steadfastness and her constant reassurances and her unending belief in me had raised me up when it felt like the whole world was trying to keep me down.
I dropped a kiss of thanks on her brow and then moved to place one more on her button nose. “It’s like your entire skin has become one giant freckle.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Har.”
“Don’t give me that look. I mean it in a good way. Your freckles make me want to trace them down and see just how much of your skin they cover.”
She shifted her legs so that our hips fit together. “Please do.”
“Don’t start that. I’m so tired,” I said, leaning down to kiss her, quickly, because I didn’t trust myself to linger.
We could have sex again right now, sure, but then I’d probably fall asleep again, and we’d miss my cousin’s birthday party that I promised my aunt we would be at.
She was not the aunt you disappointed. Not without never hearing the end of it.
“Oh good,” Ella said, grinning. “Then it’s not just me.”
“It’s not just you,” I told her. “You’re beautiful,” I added, because I couldn’t say it enough.
Her sideways grin turned into a blinding smile as she snaked her arms around my neck. “So are you.”
The past year and a half with her had been a rollercoaster.
Most of the time, we’d been up, laughing and teasing and loving each other just like this.
We’d had our lows, too. I tried to push her away a couple of times when things got bad.
The clinical trial I took part in was rough.
One of the side effects of the meds was nausea, which I completely ignored because that was a listed side effect for just about every medication I’d ever been prescribed, and I’d never experienced it.
Oh, what a sweet summer child I had been.
I spent the entire time I was on that one feeling like I was one deep breath away from projectile vomiting.
It was miserable. I lost a lot of weight.
I was forced to cut back on my workouts, which dropped my endorphin levels. I ended up getting short with her.
There were other factors driving my mood down at the time. In the middle of the trial, I had my second, more detailed PET scans done, and the results showed that I’d have to be on antidepressants for the rest of my life.
My response had been to try and “save her” from myself. Ella ignored me. She was stubborn in a way that would be annoying if it wasn’t so impressive. God, was I thankful for it now, regardless of how infuriating it was at the time.
Really, I should have known better than to push her away.
She meant it back when she told me she was all in.
Every day, even while we’d been out here, she was the one to block out time for us to sit down and play some sort of brain game that was advertised as “fun!” but without her would be boring as fuck.
She insisted on giving me scalp massages before bed every night because one of the scans made the doctors think I could be prone to headaches.
She attended half of my therapy sessions.
She’d even booked regular time with a therapist of her own to unpack everything with her and help her work through some of her own mental health issues.
And she never, ever complained when I backtracked or had a depressive bout. Or when I was forced to up my meds, putting a temporary halt to our sex lives and becoming a shadow of my usual self.
She was just…there for me. Always. In a way that made me think she always would be. In a way that made me so fucking happy and thankful that some days I just kind of sat and stared at her, wondering how I got so lucky.
Would it always be like this between us?
I had no idea. The clinical trial actually worked.
Most of the tau was gone from my brain. The treatment was now in the approval process by the FDA.
But my brain wasn’t “fixed”. It never would be.
There might be hidden damage we hadn’t yet discovered.
I could still experience further symptoms. The headaches I was warned about, possibly even seizures, mood swings, memory loss. There was no way to know.
But one thing I did know was that unless we did something else to fuck it up between us, Ella would be there with me through it all.
“I love you,” I told her.
“I love you too,” she said, pressing her lips to mine.
It was several moments before we broke apart, but when we did, her gaze skirted sideways, toward the open windows and the ocean breeze blowing in through them.
She looked back at me, and under her breath, began to chant, “Sipping Mai Tais on a beach, sipping Mai Tais on a beach.”