EPILOGUE
HOLLY
ONE YEAR LATER
The house smells like roasting turkey, pumpkin spice, and so much good food that it’s hard to be patient and wait for everything to be done. Thankfully, since I’m pregnant I’m not expected to wait and have been cheerfully snacking all day.
This is our first Christmas together living in the Victorian house I bought before we were dating.
James gave up his condo ten months ago without a single bit of protest. When we sat down to talk about our living situation, I thought for sure he would want to keep his condo or for us to purchase a more modern house together.
He didn’t. “It never felt like home anyway,” he told me.
We sold most of his furniture and easily found a place for the items he kept in mine, or rather, our home. Merlin, that traitor, started sleeping on James's side of the bed and ignoring me whenever James is around. James finds it hilarious. I call it what it is, mutiny!
But the joke is on them because now James is in charge of litterbox detail and that suits me just fine.
I’m only four months pregnant but my mother insisted that I not travel to their house for Christmas, and instead, they would come to me.
I argued that I could drive twenty minutes, it wasn’t a big deal.
Neither parent was willing to budge, so here we are, my house and kitchen full of family.
My parents, Frost and his girlfriend Maya, Natalie and her mother, Claire, Adam and his father, Glenn.
We're not seeing James's mother or his sister Lindsey and her family until after Christmas, a trip already planned for the twenty-seventh, with flights booked and the guest room in Florida already made up according to his mother's last six texts.
It's strange how easily that part of his life folded into mine.
How a man who once described his family as polite strangers who shared genetics has spent the last year slowly and deliberately rebuilding something with all of them.
He calls his mother every week now, and Lindsey sends pictures of her kids unprompted.
By two, the large dinner table groans under more food than ten adults could eat, which, according to my mother, is the entire point of a family dinner: no one leaves hungry. James sits to my right and under the table, his hand slowly rubs the small mound of my belly.
Everyone already knows we’re pregnant, as we announced that at Thanksgiving. But now we have another thing to share. We agreed to wait until dessert, and it’s been hard not to spill the news before then.
“We have an announcement,” I say, once the pie's been served and Mom's stopped circling the table refilling everyone's coffee without being asked.
My voice comes out a little unsteady, which surprises me, given how many times I've practiced this exact sentence in my head over the last week. “We had the ultrasound a few days ago.”
The table goes quiet, all eyes turning toward me.
James’ smile grows, and together we announce, “It’s a boy!”
The dining room erupts. Mom lets out a little shriek and throws her arms around me while my dad seizes James’ hand and pumps it up and down like he’s working the handle of a well.
Natalie and Adam are calling out name suggestions, while Frost is saying it’s a good thing he kept all his old toys.
Through it all, James and I just smile. The pregnancy was planned, as we started trying even before our small June beach wedding, but it still doesn’t feel real at times. Maybe that’s how the best things go, when you’re so happy you need to pinch yourself to know it isn’t all some wonderful dream.
Later, once the food has been eaten, leftovers packed away, and dishes are done, everyone heads back to their homes, leaving the house quiet again, just James, Merlin, and me.
James comes up behind me, wrapping his arms around my middle. “Are you okay?” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
I lean into him and smile. “More than okay. I keep thinking about how close I came to never having any of this. If I hadn't gone to the bar for that drink, if you hadn’t shown up at my shop…” I trail off.
“I think about that more than I'd like to admit.” His hands rub where our son is having a grand time kicking me. “I almost let fear talk me out of the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“But you didn't.”
I can feel his smile against my hair. “No, I didn’t.”
Turning in his arms, I gaze into his bright eyes. “I love you, James.”
“Good because I love and adore you, Holly.”
We meet in the middle, both of our lips claiming the others in a sweet kiss and I think about every fairy tale I read, every happy ending I refused to stop hoping for, and all the happiness in my life.
Fairy tales are wonderful, but sometimes real life is better.
THE END
Thank you so much for reading James and Holly’s story.