Epilogue
EVIE
The wall beside the window in Briggs’s condo has officially run out of real estate.
I’ve spent the better part of the year curating this mess.
A grainy shot of the horizon, caught the morning we were both awake at four and neither of us would admit why.
A charcoal sketch of Briggs passed out on my sofa with his legs hanging off the end.
A brown, brittle dahlia pressed and dried by hand.
Even a grocery list I lifted from his fridge, because seeing the good yogurt, whatever she likes in his handwriting felt like something worth keeping.
It’s a map of us, more or less.
“You’re messing with the alignment again,” Briggs mutters from the sofa. He’s propped up with a bag of frozen peas leaking condensation onto his shoulder—the first casualty of the season. “You fixed that last Tuesday.”
“The dahlia was leaning.”
“It’s been leaning since Labor Day. I thought we liked the tilt.”
“I’ve developed higher standards.” I take a step back, surveying the gap that isn’t nearly wide enough for the next frame. “We’re going to have to migrate to the hallway.”
“The hallway,” he agrees. “Lead the way, gravedigger.”
I sink into the space he makes for me, tucking my freezing toes under his thigh just to hear him hiss. He grumbles, but the arm he hooks around my neck stays heavy and warm.
The first puck drops in an hour. Sam and Lily are coming over shortly, and I already know where the spare cups are hidden and which of his extra-large T-shirts feels the most like home.
I’m back to Vegas on Thursday—two client consultations and a removal my dad wants me there for. Briggs follows in December for the league break. We’ve stopped counting the miles and started counting the days.
He paid off my student loans in October.
I put up a fight about it for eleven days, and then he pointed out, correctly, that it was a rounding error to him and the only thing standing between me and taking every flight I wanted.
I checked whether he was solving a problem or getting rid of one.
He passed. So I let him, and I’ve decided not to be weird about it.
His forearm is a heavy weight across my lap. I run a thumb over the tiny spade near his wrist, the first mark I ever left on his skin. Four lines, one handle, and a whole lot of shaking. “Breathe, Evie, it’s a shovel, not the Sistine Chapel,” Tomás had whispered behind me.
“You’re inspecting the inventory again,” Briggs says.
“Checking for fading.”
“It’s a good shovel, baby.”
“It’s a perfect shovel.” Just below it, the cherry bomb from August—the night I finally let him see the inside of my favorite bar and Hazel decided he wasn’t a total loss. “You’re becoming a collection of my mistakes.”
“I see no mistakes.”
“The cherry bomb is slightly off-center.”
“Symmetry is bullshit.” He rolls his arm over, exposing the clear, uninked stretch of skin on the inside of his elbow. “I was thinking about the next one.”
I sit up, trying to read the expression he’s hiding. “Yeah?”
“Two swifts,” he says, looking at the skin instead of me. “For Zig and me. I want it somewhere I’ll see it every time I look down.”
“I can do that.” My voice is a little wrecked. “I’ll have to work on the sketch.”
“You can use me for practice as long as you need,” he murmurs against my hair. “You know that, baby?”
“That is a dangerous offer to make to a woman who owns a tattoo machine.”
“I love you,” he whispers, his mouth finding the sensitive skin at my temple. “I love every single piece of you.”
I don’t have a workshopped response ready. That’s the thing about this man—he’s finally figured out how to say the honest thing out loud, and every time he does it, he takes my entire vocabulary along for the ride.
“I love you, too,” I manage.
“Yeah,” he breathes, his arm tightening around my middle as he hauls me in until there’s no space left for anything but the two of us. “How fucking lucky am I?”
I lean up and press a lingering kiss to the dahlia climbing his neck, the same flower his father buys twelve of on the first Saturday of every month.
He’s been a man of his word since I got on that plane last April—present for every small thing, never once retreating behind the fortress or letting the silence stretch too long.
The miles between Vegas and Charlotte still ache when he isn’t there to crowd my kitchen, but I’ve stopped waiting for him to disappear.
I trust the version of us we’ve built. I trust that when the distance gets heavy, we’ll find the words and work our way through it.
Neither of us is waiting for the other shoe anymore.
We’re just happy.