Epilogue #2
As soon as Luke spots Marcus and Tiff, he comes bounding over and excitedly hugs them, completely shocked to see them.
Tiff immediately gushes over his spectacular outfit.
He’s in a pair of forest green corduroy trousers, a black sparkly, mesh see-through top, and a very form-fitting corset that is doing amazing things to his waist. He particularly enjoys how I can’t stop staring at him whenever I see him, relishing how I possessively grab that snatched waist and pull him closer.
I swear, he does this shit to me on purpose. Actually, I know he does.
I catch Marcus’s smug, knowing look out of the corner of my eye, and I immediately feel my face flush.
The anxiety spikes ten-fold when I remember the ring burning a hole through my pocket and what I’m expected to do with it.
Thankfully, Luke’s too preoccupied being the gracious host to notice my sudden spiral.
As he walks away to greet another newcomer, I whirl around and punch Marcus in the arm amidst his sinister cackling.
“I will kill you,” I hiss.
“I didn’t say anything!” he laughs, but then Tiff rolls her eyes and drags her husband away to a safe enough distance where he can’t cause any more trouble.
Watching their joyous reunion with Ryder and Justin across the room isn’t enough to quell the somersaults my stomach starts doing.
Marcus’s delicate allusion to the oncoming proposal makes me panic more acutely than I have all night, and suddenly, everything feels more real.
Like it’s all happening too quickly. The pressure has increased not only to do it tonight, but to do it right—in front of our friends and Luke’s colleagues as witnesses.
All one-hundred-plus of them.
Why did I ever think I could do this?
Christmas music is playing over the sound system, permeating almost every room, and grating my brain after six hours on repeat.
The house is packed, every available seat taken on the first two floors.
Enough people are standing around and chatting in groups that you have to weave through the sea of bodies to move from one end of the room to the next.
It’s the definition of overstimulating.
For the rest of the night, I meet too many new people to count, their names flying out of my head as soon as I learn them from the sheer barrage of information.
Luke introduces me to this new actor, that important producer, a well-renowned choreographer, the best set designer, so-and-so playwright, until my head starts spinning from all the noise.
I shouldn’t be shocked that Luke knows so many people, but I am.
He’s made many new friends over the last two years since his celebrity status kind of skyrocketed after the whole being shot thing.
Fans who saw his Instagram post in the hospital two years ago blew it up until nearly half a million people interacted with it, demanding to know what happened.
Then, it went viral in the acting community.
While he documented parts of his recovery process on social media with intensive physical therapy, and his overall healing journey, some major news corporations filled in the rest as they followed Pete’s lengthy court trial, throwing more of a spotlight on Luke in the process.
It was incredibly unexpected, and Luke wasn’t sure how to handle it.
In addition to dealing with his physical injuries, and working through emotional turmoil, the sudden thrust into a ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ situation was almost overwhelming.
But he persevered. Despite how hard it was to have such an intimate and terrible moment of his life played out for the world, he was determined to use it to his advantage and control the narrative surrounding him in the process.
He arrived at every court appearance where he was sure to be photographed dressed in a sophisticated and fashionable black suit, and he’d use his signature charm to curry favor with the jury and journalists when he was required to take the stand.
When offers started pouring in for him to model for magazine spreads, speak out against domestic violence on podcasts, and make cameo appearances on major TikTok influencers’ videos, he jumped at the opportunities.
After a lengthy drawn-out trial, Pete was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Luke was so mad they’d even give him the chance of getting out that he was ready to scream.
Still, he turned it into a diva moment in front of the cameras, laying on the tears to enhance his relief that the whole ordeal was finally over.
They just didn’t realize they were tears of rage.
Ultimately, he gained nearly sixty thousand new followers with the publicity, including some of the who’s-who of the theater world who otherwise wouldn’t have known who he was.
There was a ton of attention put on his career and the work he had done up until that point, and where simple virality would have faded attention quickly, Luke’s raw talent kept the interest going.
It opened so many doors for him going forward, including landing the role of the Emcee in the Broadway revival of Cabaret following some of the big-name actors.
It’s an honor he still doesn’t fully believe he deserves.
He’s been performing for the last two months with stellar reviews, and I couldn’t be more proud.
However, he likes to say his biggest pull was getting to meet Jonathan Groff, who he’s been madly in love with since watching him in Glee, and who—he informs me—he would leave me in a heartbeat for if the opportunity ever arose.
I know he’s joking (mostly), and I’m not expecting him to show up tonight.
Although, I suppose I wouldn’t be shocked if he did stroll through the door with how crowded our house has become.
Great. Now all I can think about is the possibility that he does show up, and when I get down on one knee and ask Luke to marry me, Luke will say, “Actually, no, thank you. I’m going to run off with my new, attractive, wildly successful actor boyfriend, Jonathan Groff,” and they’ll ride off together into the sunset.
As if my anxiety wasn’t already through the roof.
Kill me now.
In an effort to quell some of the nerves, I pick up my camera and start walking around the house, taking candid shots of the party guests.
Luke always insisted that I have a natural eye for photography, but I never thought to look into it seriously until we’d lived here for about six months, and I started to get bored with nothing to do.
The hobby quickly became a passion as I learned more about it.
I bought a professional-grade camera, researched its functions, and practiced working with different lighting, angles, and composition.
I got pretty confident in my ability to snap a good picture.
Luke has always been a willing model for me, and my camera rolls are full of his image.
His Instagram features a lot of my work, too.
Even tonight, I can’t help but point my lens at him every chance I get, watching how he exudes nothing but towering confidence with his guests that has nothing to do with his height.
When he eventually catches me from across the room, he smiles warmly, and it’s so dazzling and genuine that I can feel my heart rate spike knowing he’s smiling like that just for me.
There’s nothing performative about it. After capturing a few shots of him in that authentic space, he turns back to his colleague with a new, slightly noticeable twinge of pink on his cheeks.
I like knowing I can still draw that kind of reaction from him.
The evening stretches well into the night, and as midnight quickly approaches, I still haven’t found the courage to grab everyone’s attention, pull the ring out, and drop to one knee.
The pressure compounds every time I run into Dmitry, Rei, Star, Marcus, and Tiff, with their expectant faces, and unhelpfully encouraging words.
They’ve got suggestions and opinions, all of which only add to my anxiety.
It begins to feel suffocating to the point where I avoid them.
It’s very mature of me, and I definitely don’t feel like a child.
My self-doubt is suffocating, my hands shaking so badly that I’m terrified I’ll lose the ring when I pull it out.
The beating staccato rhythm of my heart in my chest is so loud it’s drowning out the Christmas music.
I’m definitely going to mess up whatever speech I try to give.
I’m not a professional actor. I don’t deliver monologues for a living.
Oh, god. How could I think I’d be good at performing one in front of the one group of people who make it their job to speak eloquently?
The longer this goes on, the more I feel like I'm about to have a panic attack. Before it gets too bad, I quietly excuse myself and head upstairs to the library to find some peace and regroup away from the noise.
Some people are up here, too—maybe six or seven total—but they’re murmuring amongst themselves throughout the room instead of taking up the space.
The atmosphere is very different than downstairs.
Quieter. And there’s Charise, just as I expected, curled up in an armchair with a book and a cup of tea she must have made in the kitchen.
She glances up when I come over, and her eyebrows immediately shoot up her forehead, disappearing behind her straight-edge bangs. Whatever she sees in my face is enough for her to close the book in her lap, giving me her full attention. It must be bad for her to do that.
“You look like shit,” she says point-blank, and I can’t help but groan as I lay out flat on the couch beside her chair, throwing an arm over my eyes in abject misery. When did I become such a diva?
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I grumble.
“So, I guess the proposal thing’s not going so well.” She chuckles.
I groan again.