Epilogue – Best Wishes
KELSEY
The thing about marrying into the Kingman family was that the party never really ended. It just changed venues.
The intimate ceremony on Bear Claw Mountain had been ours.
Sixty people, one snow globe, one reindeer, and the best night of my life.
The reception the following evening in Aspen was something else entirely.
Three hundred guests, a venue the size of a small country, a paparazzi situation outside that Ciara Mosely Willingham had described to me as “contained but spirited,” and the very reasonable question of whether Declan and I had enough left in us to show up to it.
We did. Barely.
I was in a the mini dress, white, shorter, made for dancing — and Declan was in a fresh suit and we had managed approximately fou hours of sleep between us, which I felt was frankly heroic given the circumstances.
We arrived to the kind of reception entrance that reminded me I was, in fact, still Kelsey Best, because three hundred people losing their minds at the sight of you tends to do that.
Declan kept his hand at my back the entire way in. He always did. It was the thing I had stopped noticing and then started noticing again, the way you do when you realize something has become as natural as breathing.
The venue had been transformed. Penny had insisted on carrying the winter theme forward, so even in July there were fairy lights in every surface, white and silver everywhere, and the whole room smelled faintly of pine.
The woman who had spent the summer saving the world in the number one movie of the season was at a table near the bar, wearing a Best Kingman jersey over her gown, which was a sentence I was going to need a moment to process.
The man who had just finished shooting a superhero franchise was dancing with his wife near the back, also in a jersey.
“Is everyone wearing a jersey?” I asked Penny, who had appeared at my elbow with a glass of something sparkling and the expression of a woman who had pulled off something extraordinary and knew it.
“Not everyone,” she said. “Some people put the plushie on their head instead.”
I turned and looked. She was not wrong.
The mini Wiener the Pooh plushies were everywhere.
In hands, on tables, tucked into jacket pockets with their little flower girl dresses peeking out.
The resemblance to the actual Wiener the Pooh — who was in attendance, in her flower girl dress, sitting in her own chair at the family table with the dignity of someone who expected to be seated and fed peanut butter treats — was, I had to admit, uncanny.
Jules and Penny had outdone themselves.
“Where did Penny go?” Declan said.
“Penny has been at your elbow for thirty seconds total since we walked in,” I said. “She’s everywhere and nowhere. She’s in her element.”
Declan nodded with the respect of one professional for another.
We were barely twenty minutes into the reception when the lights dimmed and a screen dropped at the far end of the room. A card appeared on it, in Jules’s handwriting:
For everyone who couldn’t be there. An accurate historical document. — Jules
The crowd settled into curious attention.
The officiant Barbie wore a tiny suit that someone — Jules, obviously Jules — had tailored by hand.
“Friends and family,” Jules’s voice said, in a pitch-perfect impression of Everett’s reception cadence, “I am deeply honored to be here.”
The room took approximately four seconds to understand what they were watching. Then it erupted.
The blonde bride Barbie was one of the plus-size ones and had a small fur wrap made from what appeared to be a cotton ball.
The groom Ken had been given a tiny dark green vest. There was a dachshund toy at the end of the aisle pulling a sleigh the size of a matchbox, which of course led to another plus-size Barbie with brown hair and an exact replica of Jules’s best man suit in a dark shade of green, complementing plus-size red-headed Penelope Barbie’s green maid-of-honor dress.
The crowd, several of whom were at this point wearing jerseys and holding plushies, was completely losing it.
“I can’t,” I said, into Declan’s shoulder.
“Look,” he said. “She made the snow globe.”
She had. There was a small dome over the ceremony, Northern Lights projected inside it via what appeared to be a flashlight covered in green cellophane. Someone near the back of the room let out an actual wail of delight.
The vows were delivered with complete sincerity by Jules, doing both voices, switching sides slightly for each character.
I’d expected silly voices. Parody vows. Jules being Jules.
But this girl took her role as Best Jules seriously in everything, apparently including Barbie reenactments of her brother’s secret mountain wedding.
When Groom Ken placed the ring on Bride Barbie’s finger, three hundred people cheered.
“By the power invested in me by the internet and the great state of Colorado,” Jules-as-Everett intoned, “I now pronounce you husband and wife. Kiss that girl.”
Groom Declan-Ken and Bride Kelsey-Barbie were pressed together in a very respectable dolly kiss.
A roar from the crowd.
The End, read the final card. Congratulations Declan and Kelsey. You’re welcome. Love, Jules.
P.S. I am available for all future wedding reenactments. Reasonable rates.
P.P.S. Declan you owe me for the reindeer.
P.P.P.S. I still don’t know where you’re going on your honeymoon and I find this deeply disrespectful.
I laughed until I couldn’t breathe. Next to me, Declan had his face arranged in the careful neutral of a man experiencing significant feelings and choosing not to show them, except that his eyes were bright and his hand was warm and solid in mine, and I knew every version of him by now.
He was having the time of his life.
The lights came back up and he took the microphone from the DJ, which nobody had apparently expected, including me, because the room went immediately and completely quiet in the way rooms did when Declan Kingman decided to speak.
“I want to thank everyone for being here,” he said.
“If you’re in this room, you mean something to us.
Both of us.” He paused, in the way he did when he had something specific to say and was making sure he said it right.
“The press spent a lot of time this year wondering if my wife was going to change her name.” Another pause.
“They never considered the alternative.”
He reached into the into one of the swag gift bags just like everyone here had received and pulled out the lightweight jersey many were wearing.
He shook it out showing off the BEST KINGMAN. Number 98.
The room took it in. Declan said, into the microphone, completely calm, “Yes, I am changing my name, and I expect all of you to be wearing my fan jerseys before next season even starts to let the whole world know.”
From somewhere near the bar, the band of Mustang Kingman’s raised their glasses. Except Chris. Until sweet baby Hayes, smacked him in the chest.
Declan found me with his eyes across the noise. I could see him working not to smile, which was his version of smiling, which was my favorite thing in the world.
I walked to my husband and kissed him in front of three hundred people and a lot of cameras and I did not care even a little bit.
“Declan Best Kingman,” I said against his mouth.
“Kelsey Best,” he said back. “My wife.”
The rest of the night was exactly what it was supposed to be.
Loud and warm and full of people I loved and people I was still learning to love and the specific joy of a party thrown for you where for once you were actually present enough to feel it.
I danced until my feet hurt. Declan danced exactly as much as he was willing to dance, which was enough.
Sara Jayne caught me near the end of the night and held my face in both hands without saying anything, and I understood all of it.
The movie star taught Pooh a trick involving the plushie that I didn’t entirely follow but that resulted in Pooh carrying the plushie around the room in her mouth for twenty minutes, which Isak filmed from four different angles.
After that, my little Pooh found Bridger, who lifted her up into his arms. Her cute wiggly butt snuggled right into him and she promptly fell asleep. Guess that last costume change into her tutu would have to wait.
It was, in every way, a perfect night.
We filmed the social media video the next morning in the cabin.
I was in Declan’s flannel shirt and he was in yesterday’s undershirt and we were both slightly wrecked from approximately, which I felt was the most authentic wedding content either of us had ever produced.
“Hi,” I said to the camera, which Isak was holding with the professional steadiness of a man who had been filming Kingmans his entire life and had seen everything.
“If you’re watching this, you couldn’t be at the reception last night, and we missed you, and we wanted you to have something anyway.
” I leaned into Declan’s shoulder. “We got married two days ago. In secret. On a mountain. In July. It was perfect.”
Declan, beside me, said nothing. He was drinking coffee. He did lift the mug slightly in a toast, which was probably the most public warmth anyone was going to get out of him on two days of marriage and a total of four hours of sleep, and I thought it was perfect.
“We love you,” I said. “All of you. Thank you for loving us back.” I paused. “One more thing. Some of you have been trying to figure out where we’re going on our honeymoon. I’ve seen the theories. I’ve read the threads. You are all very creative and I love you for it.”
I paused. “Here’s what I’ll tell you. Willa pointed us somewhere and told us we would never want to leave, and she was right, she usually is.
It’s somewhere the beaches and the waters are warm.
Somewhere with ruins older than anything I can wrap my head around.
Somewhere the seafood will ruin me for all other seafood, apparently, though I’m choosing to be optimistic about that.
Oh, and something about outdoor mineral mud baths that are apparently going to put my entire skincare routine to shame.
” I tilted my head. “That’s all you’re getting. Good luck.”
Declan looked at me sideways. “That’s too much.”
“That’s nothing.”
“Your fans are going to triangulate our location from the seafood comment.”
“My fans are very smart,” I agreed. “They deserve a good puzzle.”
He shook his head in the way that meant he was trying not to smile. I had catalogued every version of that expression. I intended to spend the rest of my life adding to the collection.
“Tell them about the jerseys,” I said.
He looked at the camera for a long moment. Declan Kingman, operating on little sleep, in yesterday’s undershirt, having the time of his life and absolutely refusing to show it.
“Best Kingman,” he said. “Number 98. Get one before my brothers do something about it.”
“Thank you, husband.”
“You’re welcome, wife.”
Isak lowered the camera. “Jules is going to lose her mind that she’s not in this.”
“That’s the goal,” Declan said.
Our bags were already in the car. Willa had made exactly one phone call on our behalf and refused to tell anyone anything except that we would be warm and that the food would be extraordinary and that she was extremely jealous.
The reservations were under a name that was not Kingman or Best. The private flights were not on my jet, because people could track that.
Instead booked under names that were very, very fake, which was a thing Penny had arranged with the particular competence of a woman who had been managing my life and my privacy for years and was very good at it.
I took one last look around April’s cabin. The good blanket, folded back on the chest. The flowers on the table, still fresh. The light coming through the small window the way it did in the mornings up here, clean and gold and particular to this mountain.
I thought about April and Bridger on a snowed-in night, finding each other in a wreck of a cabin with duct tape and a blizzard and a dog the size of a bear.
I thought about Declan proposing on a Thanksgiving with a ring and a prayer and his weirdo siblings watching from the trees.
I thought about two nights ago, the two of us in this room, the mountain quiet outside.
Same cabin. Different snowstorm.
“Ready?” Declan said from the doorway.
I picked up my bag.
“Nobody knows where we’re going,” I said.
“Nobody,” he confirmed.
“Not even Jules.”
Something that was almost a smile. “Especially not Jules.”
I walked to him and he took my bag and we went out into the July morning together, into the sun and the pine smell and the view of Bear Claw Valley spreading out below us, and I thought about a beach vacation honeymoon all to ourselves.
Before Declan, I didn’t even know what real downtime meant. He’d ruined me. Ruined my for any other love. Forever and ever.
For the rest of my life, my motto would be: Love me like a Kingman, or I don’t want it.