Epilogue
COLE
“By the way you just looked at Mini Mason, I’m wondering if later might become sooner than we talked about,” I said as Pia walked away just as I caught Juliette’s expression.
Heritage Hill was one of the stops at the Cedar Falls Annual Fall Festival.
“Come on. Let’s take a walk to the lake.”
To the left of the public docks used by Heritage Hill guests, hidden behind a thicket was another private dock that Parker and Mason had just finished rebuilding at the end of the summer.
The boat was gone already, stored away at Cedar Falls Marina for the winter.
But a wooden bench that bore an “In Memory of Papa Bennett” plaque, the bench and plaque a gift from the guys to Mason and Pia, sat under a tree that still bore its autumn leaves.
Before she sat, I pulled Juliette onto my lap. Her arms draped across my neck as I kissed her, slow and teasing, promising the night ahead.
She pulled back eventually, much to my dismay.
“What if I did get pregnant sooner?” she asked.
Her cheeks flushed from kissing, or wine, or maybe the nip in the air, Juliette’s eyes bright with possibility, she waited for my response.
And then it hit me. Such things were possible, even with her on the pill. “Are you—”
“No, no. Nothing like that. I know we have a plan, and you’re in a brand new position.
I just wondered what you thought about that?
I’ll admit, when I look at Mini Mason, there’s a tug in my chest.” She shrugged, pretending it was no big deal, but I knew my monella pretty well.
It was a big deal, and my answer was everything.
“We have lots of plans,” I said. “Italy over the holidays. Napa next spring. And though Napa might not be as much fun for you—and Italy, for that matter—if you were pregnant, they could also be postponed. We have a lifetime of trips ahead of us. I want children with you, Jules. Now, a year from now. Doesn’t matter to me. ”
She smiled, as if I’d given the right answer. Which was good, because it was true.
“Now would be hard, since I’m not currently pregnant.”
“Okay, so not now, in the strict sense of the word. But you know what I mean.” I pulled her close against me thinking back to another time we were at this lake. Had I ever explained my behavior to her?
“I was cranky that day,” I blurted.
The switch in topics jarred her.
“Which day?”
“At the wine festival over the summer. Parker, or maybe it was Mason, I forget. One of the guys accused me of being cranky, and I was. I thought you were beautiful, but off limits. I was the one who supposedly would never break the pact. Never get married.”
“A self-inflicted restraint that never really existed.”
We’d talked about this more than once these past months.
“True. But I’m sorry for being a jerk that day.”
She kissed me, on the nose.
“You’re not going to say, ‘I didn’t think you were a jerk’?” I asked.
“Nope. Because you totally were. Making fun of me for trying to help Parker.”
“I was making fun of you for toppling into the boat. Just so we’re being clear.”
She tried to get off my lap, her mock-indignation at being insulted, but I held her down and kissed my fiancée again. This time, we both let it linger.
Luckily we didn’t live far away.
“So Jules, what do you think? Time to get out of here?”
“You called me Jules,” she said, standing. “You rarely do that.”
“Want me to start?”
“No,” she said. “I like having my own name, just for you.” She reached for my hand. “Two, if you count monella.”
“Which I do.”
We headed up the hill, prepared to find our hosts and say goodbye, but I stopped.
Juliette stopped with me.
Mason and Pia stood in the middle of a group, their baby in his arms, framed by Heritage Hill behind them.
Parker and Delaney were among that crowd, and not far from them, Beck served drinks under a double tent with its sign reading “O’Malley’s On the Go” on one side and “Cedar Falls Catering” on the other.
He and Mae used it for festivals, working their businesses side by side.
All four of us had broken the pact, the money donated to the community fund. It had served us, for a time, to imagine ourselves living together as bachelors, untethered and uncommitted, but it turned out we were never meant to stay that way.
But some promises are meant to be broken, especially the ones that make room for everything we never knew we needed.
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