Epilogue
Bri
One Year Later
I will never get used to the New York winters, especially the bone-deep chill I get at night in this drafty apartment. I’ll never get used to waking up without Liem either. He should still be here with me. But he’s not.
So should he.
“Liem?” I whine, still shaking off sleep.
He appears in the doorway, shirtless, sweatpants hanging seductively low, wearing his sluttiest glasses. He greets me with a gentle voice and handsome smile. “Hey.”
With a pout, I complain, “You weren’t supposed to leave me.”
“Not even to make you breakfast?”
I realize my error. “Oh. I guess I’ll let it slide this time.”
He chuckles, coming back to bed, moving under the covers to lay between my legs, his head on my chest. Touching his soft curls, I breathe easier.
“What did you make?” I ask.
“I’m prepped for chili eggs on rice and fresh mango juice whenever you wake up.”
I hum, looking forward to my favorite breakfast but not so soon. “Why are you awake so early?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“After everything we did last night?” I ask incredulously.
I’m not sure what got into him, but he came home hot and ready. He’s been this way all week. Nervous energy over a big project coming up at work? Anxious about the holiday? I’m not sure, but I enjoy him working out his feelings on me.
He leans up onto an elbow and peers down at me. “Want to go again? Or have you had enough of me?”
I brush my hands over his hair for one more touch. “I can never get enough of you.”
He melts at my words, leaning down to press a lingering kiss to my lips. His hand slips into the front of my panties, finding my favorite spot as if he owns a map. “Promise?”
With only a tease of his fingers inside me, he has me melting, blushing, completely smitten. “You should probably do all you can to prove me wrong.”
~
If you’d asked me last year if I would ever come back to this restaurant, I would have said hell no, but here I am, standing on the curb, staring through the gate of the enclosed patio, trying to remember that dinner. I thought my life was ending, when really it was just beginning.
I never expected to become family with the couple breaking up at the next table, but here I am, waiting for Liem on the corner with Natalie.
The amount of time we spend together, you’d think we were a polycule or something.
I love hanging out with Natalie, talking about her work drama, watching art films with the bougie imported snacks she gets from the market near her apartment.
But now she’s taking my tiny bestie to Seattle for Lunar New Year while Junie and May fly here to spend it with us.
She got a work call and was blabbing about source confidentiality and ethics for several minutes before I looked up and recognized the building behind us. What an ugly place for life to drop a fine-ass piece of man in my lap.
“Sorry.” Natalie sighs. “People are horrible, and I hate them.”
“Ooh, same.”
She tucks her phone away in her bag and takes the bouquet of red and yellow flowers back from me. “I’m so ready to be done with work, you have no idea.”
She’s right; I don’t. I love my job. Sure, the clients can be shitty and demanding and wrong about everything they think they want, but the work is wonderful.
A little over a year in, it’s still new, fresh, and exciting, and I hope that never changes.
Maybe I’m still in the honeymoon phase. Like everything else, time will tell.
My schedule will pick up next week while hers will calm down for the New Year celebrations with family. I’m happy I get to spend this holiday with Liem, especially when he is building new traditions now that he has lost his beloved matriarch and gained a tiny human.
“Are you excited for tonight?” Natalie asks me. I must have been zoning out again. This building is distracting as hell.
Liem and I are going to a lantern lighting in our favorite park tonight; a private moment of calm before the celebrations and guests claim all of tomorrow.
“Yes. Definitely. I love that park. We have some great memories there,” I say.
“Kind of the opposite of this place.” I look back through the slatted fence. The tables haven’t changed either.
“You don’t like Manhattan?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Do you not remember this restaurant?”
She looks, but her expression doesn’t change. “No?”
“This is where it all started, girl.” Her brow furrows with confusion. She has got to be playing. “Where the breakups happened. The place Liem and I met.”
Her eyebrows raise. “Oh my god, it is. Yikes.”
“Right? Why did you decide to trade off here?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
Liem walks over holding Vaughn, who is wearing Natalie’s favorite coat with the bear ears on the hood. Without the added flair, he would look like Liem on a weekday, black hood up, grumpy look on his little face while he ponders this life or his last one. Smart-ass little baby.
Liem’s face lights up when he sees me. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I say, pulling him close to press my lips to his. Even a quick peck warms me in the icy air.
Natalie takes Vaughn from Liem, but Vaughn reaches for me with both arms and whines.
“Oh, you want your favorite person, I see,” Natalie says.
I lift him from her hands and hold him against my chest. “You only like me because of my hair.”
Sure enough, his little baby fist is wrapped around the curls at the end of my braids. He’s a good baby, quiet, loving, the top two cutest to ever exist, but it also helps that I get to pass him off for the hard parts.
Liem’s arm snakes around my waist when he kisses Vaughn’s cheek one last time before I hand him back to Natalie. “Have the best night,” she says to us.
“Have a safe flight, and call us when you land, please,” I say.
“I will.” With both her arms full, we kiss cheeks rather than hugging, then she leaves.
Liem is now wrapped completely around my waist, pressing kiss after kiss to my face and neck.
“You’re awfully cuddly today,” I tease.
“I missed you.”
“We’ve been apart for six hours.”
“I know, but I . . .” His cheeks are pinker than the cold usually makes them. “I missed you extra today.”
He pulls me into another kiss, and I welcome it. His hand on my cheek quivers enough for me to notice. “You’re shivering.”
He snatches his hand away. “Am I?”
“Do you remember this place?” I glance at the building.
“Oh, shit. Yeah. This is where we met. Damn. Did you want to go in?”
I eye him. “Why are you being weird? I’m not going to break up with you if we go inside,” I say with a laugh. “But no, I’d rather not eat hundred-dollar spaghetti if I have the option.”
“Okay. Cool.”
“Want to do our café instead?”
A smile returns to his face. “Yeah, that sounds good too.”
~
Later that night, we’re at our favorite park, standing on our blankets with paper lanterns rather than waiting for a movie. It’s so cold my nose hurts, but I will accept any excuse to come here.
All around us, a multitude of glowing lanterns leave the hands of the wishful and drift into the air above us.
It’s beautiful to see, not only the flicker of the candles inside them but the hope lighting up the faces around us.
Everyone with their own challenges and pain, letting it float away with the help of one little, hopeful flame.
“This is so beautiful,” I tell Liem. Our lantern lifts higher and higher until I can’t tell which one is ours. “Thank you for bringing me here. It’s . . .”
My words trail off when I turn to find him crouched on the blanket. It takes a moment to register that he is on one knee. I gasp when he opens the small box.
“Oh my god.”
“Bri. I love you. So much. And I—”
“Yes!”
His eyes widen. “I haven’t even asked you yet!”
“Then hurry up!”
His laughing smile widens, replacing his former nerves. “You are everything to me. I want to spend the rest of my life twinning and laughing and being painfully real with you, my best friend. So, Bri, my sunshine in the rain, the love of my life. Will you marry me?”
“Yes!”
I fall to my knees and pull his face to mine.
I wrap my arms tight around him. The lanterns look like a sea of stars behind the blur of my happy tears. No one notices us, the lanterns still capturing everyone’s attention. Alone in a sea of people. This is our moment, and I take it all in, setting it to memory.
I don’t know what I want to look at more, him, the lanterns, or the ring.
“What do you want to do now?” he asks, drying my tears and pretending he didn’t shed a few of his own. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you want food.”
I laugh. “Oh, like you don’t?” We share another kiss. “I changed my mind. Pasta sounds pretty good now.”
“And wine?”
“Definitely. But . . . I kind of want to take it home. Sit at the coffee table, let me stare at this”—I lift my hand and wave the sparkling, bespoke ring—“before I let you take me on the couch.” That’s the most us scenario possible.
I brush my thumbs against his cheekbones, staring at the way the lanterns make his beautiful eyes shimmer. “Does that sound like a good night?”
He nods, staring dreamily into my eyes, right into my soul. “Sounds like the perfect life.”