Epilogue
Can We Keep the Physical Manifestation of Our Love With the Beer Koozies?
Two Years Later
“Did you steal my straw?” I ask. It’s not really a question but an accusation. More of a fact, honestly, because the man definitely stole my straw.
Ethan and I stare each other down in our kitchen—our immovable kitchen in our town house on Lake Lewellen. The van was too small, though I made it way more than a week. (Seventeen weeks, if we count the six days our engine conked out and we had to stay in a KOA, which I am 1,000 percent counting.)
The nomadic life is hard! And it’s not just me who can’t hack it.
Ethan has fully leaned into his sappy sentimental side now that he has a permanent address to store cheesy mementos of our relationship.
He keeps everything these days: gas station key chains that spell my name right, state park maps, every innuendo-emblazoned trucker T-shirt we stumble across.
We’re only at the beginning, and I don’t want to forget any of it , he said when he handed the cashier at Yellowstone a twenty for a T-shirt that read Old Faithful Blows over a confoundingly sexual illustration of the geyser.
I don’t think he knew how much that moment meant to me. The way he casually announced there was no ticking clock on this thing between us. It made me like the shirt more, even though I’d groaned for a solid ten seconds when he’d first plucked that ugly thing from the circular rack.
He’s also pretty obsessed with Cat Power, the Maine coon kitten we found wandering around a Walmart parking lot somewhere outside of Bend, Oregon, and named after the singer-songwriter.
Though she tolerates road life, her favorite spot on the planet is in front of our fireplace at home, and now that Ethan’s writing songs—and no longer performing in bustling student unions during Rush Week—it’s his favorite spot too.
We furnished the place slowly, picking pieces one at a time from antique stores and estate sales all over the country and decorating the walls with my photographs from our trips. Gone are the days of empty rooms and Airbnb-caliber art. Our home is intentional.
But that doesn’t mean my boyfriend can just take my things .
“Powell,” I caution. The forks and knives clank together as I scour the utensil drawer, searching for the familiar phallic novelty straw. “It’s not in any of its usual spots.”
He looks to the ceiling for strength. “This is an intervention. You’ve become desensitized to it. Last time my parents were here, you were just sipping away on that thing like it wasn’t shaped like a penis.”
I pull open the utility drawer next. Cat saunters between us, blissfully unaware of the brewing conflict between her humans. “You didn’t throw it away, did you? It’s the physical manifestation of our love.”
“Please, Chuck. Don’t give a phallus that kind of power.”
I grab a sad metal straw from the empty glass next to the sink and thoroughly rinse it under hot water. “I let you keep your toe shoes, and this is how you repay me?”
Behind me, Ethan wraps his arms around my waist and rests his head on my shoulder. “The straw was indecent.”
“Your Vibrams are indecent,” I parry.
He sighs into my neck and I can’t help but be a little giddy at the feel of him wrapped around me like this.
These are the moments I love most. The casual touches and dizzying banter that doesn’t lead to anything else—when we simply exist together. It’s those moments when I feel most rooted to the ground. Even when we’re headed somewhere, I know we’re not going anywhere.
He squeezes my middle. “It’s not gone. Just put away. It’s in that plastic bin in the garage with the camper plates.”
I twirl in his arms to face him.
Once we accepted that a van was simply too small for two people to live comfortably in for more than an extended weekend, we decided to upsize.
For a brief, irrational moment, I’d considered buying two vans that we could caravan on the highway, one after another, like charter buses on a ski trip.
Luckily, we’d kept in touch with Harlow and Russell, who tipped Ethan off to a two-hundred-square-foot vintage Holiday Rambler, and after a fair amount of money and elbow grease, it’s become my absolute favorite place to be… for two to three weeks at a time.
“I knew I loved you,” I say triumphantly, draping my arms around his neck.
“Can we keep the ‘physical manifestation of our love’ with the beer koozies?”
“I accept these terms.”
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “No counter? You already put my Vibrams out there on the proverbial chopping block.”
“Nah. Keep ’em,” I reply, peering into his gray blue eyes. “I’m feeling soft today.”
Today is Laurel and Petey’s anniversary, which is sort of our anniversary.
Though Ethan argues our anniversary is actually this one night we ran out of gas in our early twenties when, unbeknownst to me, he realized he was in love with me.
I argue that knowledge is required by both parties to create an anniversary, not to mention his proposed date is in November, and November in Minnesota will test anyone’s resolve.
This year, we spent the entire month in Monterey, California, with Laurel and Petey, avoiding the harrowing transition from autumn to winter.
Since my sister only forced my boyfriend to play Michael Kiwanuka’s “Cold Little Heart” on his guitar about six or seven times while she looked woefully at the shoreline and pretended she was Reese Witherspoon in Big Little Lies , I deemed the trip a success.
“Do you have much work today?” he asks, his fingers absently stroking my back.
I shake my head. “I have to finish a reply brief, but it should only take me a couple of hours.”
About two weeks after I bought Ethan’s van, one of Stacy’s law school friends connected her with an associate position at his much smaller—less dysfunctional—intellectual property firm.
After settling in, she connected me with a position as a counsel attorney that offered the flexibility and autonomy of working for myself with some of the security of the law firm life.
Now I get to pick my clients and work on projects that matter to me.
There’s no partnership path—something that used to be an immediate deal-breaker for me—but job security means something different to me now.
I spend my time with the people who feel like home.
I work exclusively with and for people I respect.
Sometimes I make art, not to live, but to fill me up.
One day, I might find a way to make a career out of it like Harlow does.
Or maybe I won’t. There’s no plan or agenda.
For now, it’s nice doing things for no other reason than that they make me happy.
My head droops to his shoulder, my spine a noodle in the face of his gentle ministrations. “The patent examiner was so egregiously off base with his rejection that I’m hoping my righteous indignation will fuel me for most of the morning. After that, I’m all yours.”
“I love that for you.” He plants a kiss on top of my head. “I have to finish mixing that thing for Ivan, but then I’m good if we want to go somewhere this weekend.”
It takes everything in me to keep my face neutral, because I have a feeling about what this weekend has in store. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
Throughout the morning, Ethan shuffles between our shared office and the kitchen, Cat hot on his trail like a furry shadow. Meanwhile, I work on the back deck, thinking about everything other than the emerald ring I found in one of Ethan’s five-finger-shoe monstrosities two days prior.
We haven’t talked much about getting married, other than a few of those naked, late-night conversations when everything exists in the hypothetical.
Somewhere between If I turned into a zombie, would you kill me?
and We should totally move to Gstaad , Ethan whispered, “I know you don’t want to get married again, but there’s this caveman part of me that really wants to call you my wife. Is that weird?”
“You can just call me your wife if you want,” I said back. “We don’t need to be married for that.”
“I can’t just start calling you my wife. There should at least be rings involved, even if we never make it legal.”
And now there’s an emerald ring, and I’m sweating through my linen sundress.
“Charley, can you help me with something down here on the dock?” Ethan calls out just out of sight. I climb down the rickety wood stairs and follow the path to the water. Ethan comes into view. He’s in one of his nicer shirts—one with buttons—and he’s down on one knee.
“You’re doing this now?” I blurt, then cover my mouth with my hand. “I mean, I thought you were doing this this weekend.”
“What?” He shifts his weight on his knee, seeming unsure whether he’s supposed to stay down there. “How did you know I was doing it at all?”
I lengthen my stride across the dock until I’m finally in front of him. “I found the ring in your shoes. Cards on the table: I also tried to hide them in the garage, but then I found…”
“I should’ve known something was up when you let me win with the straw!”
I kneel down in front of him, so I can look at him straight on as water builds behind my eyes. I start to take the ring, when—
“Wait!” I shove his hands back. “You didn’t ask me anything.”
“Oh, you’re right.” He closes his eyes, preparing what I’m sure will be an incredibly moving speech. Then he opens them. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to ask in a nonmarriage ‘marriage’ proposal.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I insist. My bare knees ache on the splintered wood, so I stand back up. “Okay. Ask me now. I’ll pretend it’s a surprise.” I fluff my dress a little and take a deep breath.
“Okay…” Ethan looks up at me, his cheeks beet red in the sunshine.
I love him so much that sometimes I worry something will take him away from me.
My heart still squeezes a little whenever he comes back from a solo trip.
At first, it was a ghost of old anxieties that he might disappear.
Now it feels like something different, warm and reassuring.
Of course , it says, you knew it . Love doesn’t run out.
It isn’t finite, and having Ethan in my life is worth that dwindling fear that he might go away.
He looks between me and the ring, back and forth, until he explodes with laughter. “We are so bad at the big gestures.” He pulls himself up to stand, wiping at his eyes. “This is tragic.”
Something in the way he says “tragic,” as though even our most disastrous moments are something magnificent, warms the inside of my chest. His eyes glisten, and his hand shakes as he wraps it around my left palm and slowly slides an emerald ring up my finger.
My heart thumps all the way into my throat, and I’m not sure I hear the question so much as watch his lips move when he asks, “Charlotte Beekman, will you let me call you my wife, so we can be this way forever?”
My eyes go blurry with tears. I don’t even have to think. I have the answer memorized. I always have. “Of course. Yes!” I fling myself into his arms.
He presses our foreheads together. The electricity of the moment crackles down my spine. “Good.” His sigh brushes my lips. “I got bands for us too. I know this won’t be a legal thing, but I’d still like to exchange vows, even if it’s just for us.” That big, crinkly smile lights up his face.
“I’d love that.” I nod. “But you know…it might not be so bad to get married again. To you. Like married married. If you want that.”
He pulls back his head to look at me, his hands on either side of my face like I’m the only thing keeping his body from floating away. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted, Chuck.”
“Then let’s get married married,” I suggest through the happy tears. God, “in love” Charley is so emotional. I clear my throat. “We should probably do it soon. Your health insurance is so bad, and I think for tax purposes we could open—”
He shushes me with a kiss. “I love you, but can we put the five-year tax plans away, please? Let’s play it by ear for the rest of the weekend. Get away somewhere…”
“Of course,” I assure him, enjoying the way his laugh rumbles against my cheek. “You know I’d go anywhere with you.”