Epilogue
Keeley
One Year Later…
The rooftop garden of The Serendipity is beautiful in July. It’s blooming with a million fiery, bright colors and sweet floral smells that carry on the gentle breeze, mingling with the chatter and laughter that fill the summer air.
And I mean fill . This place is bursting to capacity, which briefly makes me think about fire code, which makes me smile as I remember all of my nights on the fire escape with Beckett last summer.
I smooth down my favorite ripped jeans as I look at the huge crowd that has gathered to celebrate the amazing talent that is Beckett McCarthy.
My heart couldn’t be more full.
Beckett’s entire rowdy family are front and center, happily (and loudly) excited to be on their first trip to America, although Niamh is still coming to terms with the fact that she may not meet Oprah. Aoife bounces baby Keira on her knee as she talks to Mr. Prenchenko, who appears to be asking her a million questions. Mr. P is quite the self-proclaimed Hibernophile these days.
Hibernophile meaning person obsessed with Irish culture, for the record. I had to Google it after Mr. Prenchenko used it in conversation a few times and I finally caught on to the fact that he wasn’t talking about herbs.
Now, the word “faerie tree” gets thrown into the conversation, and I smile at the now-familiar lore. When Beckett and I went to Mayo for a very chaotic Christmas last year, we did a driving tour of the country’s top sights, navigating a million twisty-turny backroads lined with stone wall fences as he took me to see a famous faerie tree in Cork.
I wanted to go and kiss the Blarney stone, but Beckett said that it was a germ-infested tourist trap and that he would kiss me instead. Which, of course, I readily agreed to.
So, instead of lining up to kiss a rock, we went to see the Cliffs of Moher and the Ring of Kerry and drove all the way to the North of the island to take in the Giant’s Causeway. We went to Irish bars to drink pints of fresh Guinness—which Becks claimed again was superior to the canned variety we can buy in the States, but honestly I still couldn’t tolerate the stuff. We also checked out Irish trad music performances in Temple Bar and Galway town.
On all these outings, Beckett wore a baseball cap to hide his face from the ever-growing crowd of people who recognize him since “Love and Serendipity” went viral on SoundCloud.
Now, several months later, we’re gathered in Serendipity Springs—where it all started—for the launch party of bestselling international artist Beckett McCarthy’s debut album. Made up of a collection of songs he wrote back in Ireland, mixed with several tracks about falling in love when he least expected it, and even a country-esque song—“Riot Grrrl”—that he wrote just to make me smile.
Because if there’s one thing Beckett never fails to do, it’s make me smile.
“Isn’t this amazing?” Nori asks as we watch Cash, Ezra, and Becks set up the equipment.
“Unreal,” I agree with a grin. Becks and I often hang out with Cash and Nori, who both still live in the building. Serendipi-Tea continues to grow and flourish under Nori’s ownership, and we visit the shop often—especially now that she is importing and stocking Becks’s beloved Irish Barry’s tea. He may have shed a tear when he drank his first cup.
Cash and Nori are also engaged now and make for super fun couple friends. We’ve even formed a beer league baseball team.
We’re terrible.
Cash can barely play due to his injury, Nori shrieks and closes her eyes every time the ball comes near her, and Beckett can never remember any of the rules. Or which way to run when he hits the ball.
It’s chaotic and hilarious and a totally perfect pastime for us.
“I don’t think I’ve ever even met a celebrity, nevermind known one,” breathes Mae from my other side, her hand cradling the belly that currently holds Everett’s little-sister-to-be.
Everett is dancing and putting on quite the performance for the Hathaways, who are sitting on a bench near the back, holding hands and as in love as ever. They’re the original elevator meet-cute of the building, and I’m happy Beckett and I share a similar origin story as a couple.
If I have one wish, it’s that we’re as happy and content and as in love as they are in generations to come.
Somehow, I have no doubt that that will be the case.
“Don’t catch Becks hearing you call him that. He hates that word,” I tell Mae with a smile. And it’s true. My boyfriend, forever humble and gracious, seems a bit baffled with his success, but I like that he’s the sort of guy who will never let it go to his head.
All he wants is to live the small-town life here in Serendipity Springs, and make music in Ezra’s studio in his spare time between teaching kiddos guitar. He’s made enough money from signing with a label to teach all of his lessons on a purely volunteer basis. He even utilizes the local community center—and occasionally one of the quiet rooms in the library (with Sissy’s lavish blessing)—to reach more kids.
I glance at Sissy through the crowd. With her hair a foot high and her smile a foot wide, she’s earning a lot of surreptitious, confused glances from Beckett’s younger brothers.
“He’ll have to get used to it,” Mae throws back at me, smiling indulgently. “Especially after your write-up on today’s event!”
“I’m not sure I’ll have quite that much reach,” I say with a giggle.
Becks and I decided that this party today was the perfect opportunity to celebrate his album launch and welcome his family to the USA. And I’m thrilled to be doing a write-up about it for Evoke Serendipity Springs—the new sister site to Boston-based Evoke that I now run.
Yes, that’s right. You’re looking at the head writer for the first regional Evoke website. Nisha has plans to roll out many more over the next year, but Serendipity Springs got to be the pilot location.
After I took the job in Boston last summer, I moved out there, as planned, and Beckett moved into my apartment at The Serendipity.
It was a great arrangement for a few months. We FaceTimed daily, drove to see each other on weekends, and Beckett would come up frequently during the week through the late fall and winter so we could go to Bruins games (which he loved) and Celtics games (he was baffled to discover that the team has no Irish players despite the name).
We ate our way through all the foodie goodies on offer at Faneuil Hall, and one weekend, Beckett brought Gramps to visit me. We wheeled him around the aquarium so he could look at the penguins.
It was fun.
And as it turned out, good for both of us. Beckett put down roots in Serendipity Springs with his work and friends and music, and it put me in the drivers’ seat of the situation in a much healthier way than what I’d been doing before, when I was trying to stuff my love for Beckett in a box.
I’m no longer living in fear and making reactionary choices. Instead, I’m choosing to face my fears head on. And when your fears have nowhere to hide, nowhere to fester in the dark, they’re no longer as scary or difficult to conquer.
Our time doing long distance taught me that my love for Beckett would overflow out of any vessel in which I tried to contain it, and seeing how strong it is—how strong we are together—has allowed me to deepen both my trust in him as a partner and my trust in myself.
What I’ve realized is that, when you’re with the right person, you make things work. You let your heart shape your circumstances.
Of course, when Nisha approached me earlier this spring about heading up a regional chapter of the brand, I was ecstatic to bring my dream job to my hometown, where my dream boyfriend now resides.
What’s for you won’t pass you, Beckett’s Gran used to say. But we also work hard not to let it pass us. Because that’s what real love does—it holds on, holds tight, and holds true.
“This turned out to be quite the event,” the building’s owner, Archer, says to me with a nod and some semblance of a smile. He and his wife Willa stand near us, his arm around her slender waist. “Although I’m a little worried we are over capacity right now.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” I reply, which transforms his normally serious disposition into a smiling one.
Archer was gracious enough to let us use the rooftop garden for today’s album launch, and when I got to chatting to him about planning this party, it transpired that The Serendipity meddled to bring him and Willa together, too.
And that wasn’t all. Archer informed me that Willa’s friend Sophie, who used to tend to the garden on this rooftop, fell in love up here and moved with her former best friend Peter—now the love of her life—to North Carolina.
In fact, the more Beckett and I have gotten to chatting with the residents of The Serendipity, the more these types of stories emerged: Olivia and Logan on the other side of the hall fell in love when they became next-door neighbors; Matteo, who owns Aria (which I need to try again as a date location) and Iris from upstairs met when the building started delivering her his newspapers; Scarlett, the nice girl who lives in the basement, fell in love with her brother’s best friend shortly after moving in; and my new friend Phoebe got together with her boyfriend, Jay, in a similar fashion.
In fact, everywhere I look at The Serendipity, the magic of love is all around me.
The more I fought against falling in love, the harder I fell. There was no escaping the plans it had for me… and I’m so glad I faced my fears and let myself get swept away in love’s journey, because it brought me here.
I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
“Hello, everyone!” The speakers set up on either side of the makeshift stage squeak as Beckett’s lilting voice echoes across the rooftop. “Thank you for being here for this exciting day—a day which, if I’m being honest, I never thought would happen.”
Everyone claps and cheers. Cash puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles.
Then, Beckett begins to strum his guitar. The crowd dies down as he says, “And while there are many people to thank for making this happen, there’s one person in particular that I want to acknowledge.”
His hazel-green eyes zero in on me. Hold me captive. “Keeley Roberts,” Beckett says, his lips curling into the dimpled smile I know and love. “You’re my muse, my inspiration, the love of my life. The only one for me, now and always, and I love you more than you could ever know.”
He then starts to play the opening chords of my favorite track.
The one with the hauntingly beautiful melody I first heard coming from the library.
The one he sang for me at the recording studio that made me rush in to kiss him.
A song he named “Stay.”
* * *
Thank you for reading The Escape Plan!