Epilogue
MAYA
The new apartment smells like possibility, fresh paint, sawdust…
…and that specific brand of chaos that comes from mixing IKEA furniture with Mike Altman’s questionable assembly skills. From my perch on the stepladder, paintbrush dripping white onto the drop cloth below, I watch him squint at the cryptic diagrams like they’re written in ancient Sumerian.
“That piece goes there,” Sophie says patiently, pointing at the instructions.
“It doesn’t fit.”
“Because it’s backwards.”
“It’s not—“ Mike rotates the piece, tries again. “Oh.”
“Oh,” Sophie mimics, catching my eye and flashing a look of fond exasperation.
The late summer sun floods through the floor-to-ceiling windows of our Philadelphia apartment, turning dust motes into tiny dancers and highlighting the organized chaos of moving day. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, all ours in a new city.
Boxes labeled in Maine’s terrible handwriting (“STUFF” and “MORE STUFF” and my personal favorite, “MAYA’S STUFF”) are stacked against walls, while I jealously survey Sophie’s far more sophisticated packing system, which involved precisely no involvement from Mike.
My gaze catches on the thick cream envelope propped against a box near the door. Forwarded from Pine Barren, because of course my parents still don’t know my new address. The Hayes family crest gleams gold in the afternoon light, as pretentious as ever. Inside, I’m sure the calligraphy is perfect.
Two years ago, I would have ripped open the letter, desperate to be accepted.
Now?
Now I look at it and feel… nothing.
No anger.
No desperate need to prove myself.
No aching desire for their approval.
Just… nothing.
Because the thing is, I already have everything.
I have a job I love at Metropolitan Children’s Hospital in Philly, where my supervisor actually praised my empathy last week instead of calling it a weakness.
I have Sophie working three floors down in the ER, our lunch breaks spent gossiping about the residents.
I have Mike assembling furniture badly in my living room, and Rook sending inappropriate memes to our group chat, and this whole ridiculous, perfect chosen family who looked at my messiest, most unfiltered self and decided I was worth keeping.
I have parents who fly in once a month, not mine but Maine’s, who love me and hug me like I’m their daughter and text me every day. Susan Hamilton sends me recipes I’ll never make, and Richard asks my opinion about Chloe’s treatment plan like I’m the expert I worked so hard to become.
And I have him.
Maine.
Not just the performer, not the player, although those parts are fun. But also the sweetest guy in the entire universe, who leaves me coffee in the mornings and stays awake during my trashy reality shows and looks at me like he can’t believe I’m real.
Sophie’s eyes catch mine, understanding flickering across her face. She knows what that envelope was. She also knows I don’t need to talk about it. That’s growth, baby. And, when I nod at her, she picks it up and tosses it in the recycle bin without even a word.
The refrigerator—our first joint purchase that wasn’t beer—is already covered in the detritus of our new life. Maine’s rookie schedule with Philadelphia takes up half the door, but we don’t need Mike’s schedule, because of course the universe decided to keep them together.
Their bromance transcended college hockey and went pro.
But it also means we had built-in friends in a new city. It means Sophie and I could navigate our new jobs knowing we had each other. It means home followed us here, although Sophie flies out every other weekend to go see her sick mother and her sister.
Next to the schedules is a photo that makes my throat tight every time I look at it. Chloe at her last appointment, from a few weeks ago, cheeks pink with actual health instead of fever, grinning as she holds up a sign that says ONE MONTH!
The experimental treatment isn’t a cure—we all know that—but it’s working.
It’s fucking working.
And, better than that, the trust fund Maine set up with his signing bonus means she’ll never have to worry about treatment costs again.
His parents cried when he told them. Hell, I cried when he told them.
He just sat there with this quiet smile, like he’d finally set down a weight he’d been carrying his whole life.
Whatever happens, Chloe is covered.
“Hey,” Maine says, climbing up beside me on the stepladder, which creaks ominously under our combined weight.
“This thing has a weight limit,” I point out. “And I’m not sure your team will be thrilled if you break your leg falling off a ladder…”
“Eh, we’ll risk it.” His thumb swipes across my cheek, and comes away white with paint. “You’ve got a little…”
“Interior decorating is messy work.”
“Everything you do is messy work.” But he says it with such fondness that it sounds like a declaration of love.
Which, knowing Maine, it probably is. He’s gotten better at saying the actual words, but occasionally his “I love you” sounds like “you’ve got paint on your face” or “your parents called and I told them you were dead.”
(He didn’t actually tell them I was dead, but he did tell them I was doing all sorts of drugs)
“You good?” he asks, and I know he saw me tell Sophie to throw away the letter.
Nothing gets past him anymore, not when it comes to me. He’s mapped every tell, every defense mechanism, every way I try to hide. And every time I try to swish away from him or deflect, he just holds my gaze and holds me in his arms. It should be terrifying. Instead, it’s the safest I’ve ever felt.
“More than good.”
He kisses me, and it tastes like tomorrow and all the tomorrows after that.
Like Sunday morning coffee and Thursday night takeout and all the ordinary, extraordinary moments that make a life.
Like falling asleep on his lap after a long shift.
Like inside jokes and shared groceries and the quiet revolution of choosing each other every single day.
“Gross,” Mike calls out. “Get a room.”
“We have a whole apartment,” Maine points out.
“That I’m currently assembling furniture in,” Mike rolls his eyes.
“You’ve been working on that same shelf for an hour,” I tell him. “Sophie could’ve built the entire bedroom set by now.”
“She already has,” Sophie says serenely.
Mike looks genuinely wounded. “Without me?”
Maine’s laugh rumbles through his chest where I’m pressed against him.
This is what we fought for. Not the grand gestures or the dramatic reconciliations, but this—the quiet Sunday afternoon with paint in my hair and his heartbeat under my palm and our friends turning our empty apartment into a home.
“I love you,” I tell him, because I can now. Because saying it doesn’t make me weak or vulnerable or any less myself. It just makes me honest.
“I love you too,” he says easily, like it’s the simplest truth in the world, then his voice drops. “What are you thinking about?”
“Home,” I tell him, and watch his smile bloom across his face like sunrise.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Sophie laughs. “We really do have a type, don’t we?”
“Himbo hockey players with hearts of gold?” I offer.
She smirks. “That’s the one.”
“Hey,” Mike and Maine protest in unison, which only proves our point.
The doorbell rings before they can mount a defense, and suddenly we’re all grabbing plates and chopsticks and arguing about dumpling distribution and Maine’s stealing food off my plate even though his is identical and Sophie’s insisting we need to eat at the actual table like adults and Mike’s pointing out we don’t have a table yet and?—
And it’s perfect.
Not Hayes family gala perfect.
Not even healthy, well-adjusted adult perfect.
But our perfect.
A beautiful collision of life and laughter and love.
I catch Maine watching me over his mountain of dumplings, that soft, private smile that’s just for me. The one that says we made it and this is real and I choose you all at once. I smile back, my heart so full it might explode all over our half-painted walls.
Because we’re home.
Finally, actually, brilliantly home.