Epilogue One Year Later
Epilogue
One Year Later
“Okay. Which earrings?” I ask Maren, holding up my trusty gold hoops and the dressier pearls I reserve for weddings and holidays (if I actually remember I have them).
“Pearls for sure.” Maren smiles gleefully. She got into town two nights ago and has been acting strange ever since. “Put them on and let’s go. You’re gonna be late for your own party.”
“It’s Sebastian and Omar’s party, too,” I remind her.
When we get to Bubba’s, we find Parker and Wade outside, wrestling with the finishing touches on a massive balloon arch.
In place of the hostess stand is an easel with a book open to a full-bleed photo spread: On the left, a six-year-old Bubba stands with her parents in front of the restaurant the day it first opened in 1965, and on the right is a photo from last year of Bubba, Sebastian and Omar standing outside The Jetty.
I’d spent hours interviewing Bubba for this chapter, mostly while seated with Sebastian at her dining room table, flipping through faded photo albums and scrapbooks.
Maren gives my hand a squeeze and says, “I’m so proud of you, Leens.”
Life really does have a funny way of coming full circle.
Last summer, my old boss from Ever After had come across my article on Atlantic City’s original saltwater taffy shop and DM’d it to a friend, who just so happened to be an agent who mostly reps culinary travel guides.
The agent read more of my clips and reached out to see if I would be interested in putting together a proposal for the book publisher Rizzoli.
Officially, the restaurant is closed tonight for a private party for the one-year anniversary of the grand opening of The Jetty and the new-and-improved Bubba’s.
Unofficially, we’re also celebrating the launch of my new coffee-table book, Beach Bites: A Culinary History of the Jersey Shore.
In the dining room, we find my parents and the Murphys already halfway through a round of cocktails. They throw their arms around us and congratulate me, and then I’m shuffled toward more of my favorite people: Omar, Andre, David and Henry, Theo and Hana and Esther.
Thirty minutes fly by and I realize I still haven’t seen Sebastian. I’m chatting with Mr. Gerstein and his middle-aged daughter when I feel a broad hand graze my back.
“Mind if I steal her for a minute?” Sebastian asks.
The Gersteins head for the appetizer spread and I whirl to face Sebastian, my heart rate quickening. We’ve been officially dating for a year now, but his presence still momentarily knocks me off my axis.
“Congratulations,” I say, linking my arms around his neck as he wraps his around my waist.
“Right back at you.” He smiles, but there’s a heaviness in his eyes that—along with the tribute on the wall behind him—reminds me how bittersweet this occasion is.
In September, Bubba stopped responding to treatments, and she passed just before the holidays.
Sebastian was devastated—we all were. But there’s a peace in knowing she got to experience one final season, and a pretty epic one at that.
No one can replace Bubba, but in just one summer Sebastian and Omar proved they are more than capable of carrying her legacy into a new chapter.
We spend the evening with our friends and family, sharing memories of Bubba and summers past. I referee good-natured debates between Omar and Sebastian about new menu ideas and whether or not The Jetty is worth trying to air-condition (Wade pipes up strongly in favor).
We catch up on everyone’s news, their goals and worries and accomplishments big and small, and it feels like Bubba is here with us, listening.
Then again, maybe the point was always to give us a space to listen to each other.
The festivities wrap up around ten o’clock, and only Omar, Sebastian and I are left.
“Just like old times,” Omar teases when he passes me stacking the chairs.
“At least I get to wear cuter shoes now.” I wiggle one of my sandaled feet.
“You should get some rest, Omar,” Sebastian says, jangling the keys. “Lina and I will finish closing up.”
I hug Omar goodbye, congratulating him again, and then he claps Sebastian on the shoulder and heads out the back door.
Once Sebastian and I finish up in the dining room, we do a final round to make sure all of the equipment and lights are off. Then Sebastian locks the doors and we head to the parking lot.
“My place tonight?” Sebastian asks as we head toward his Jeep. Both of our cars are here, but I’ll ride to work with Sebastian in the morning to grab mine. That’s the only way I’ll get up early enough to try The Jetty’s new seasonal cold-brew flavor before it sells out.
“Definitely,” I say. “Maren tore through my closet to pick out my outfit. My room looks like it threw up young millennial.”
“You know, my offer to solve all this back-and-forth still stands,” he says as we climb in.
“And my answer still stands, too,” I say, pulling him across the console for a kiss so he knows I’m not being ungrateful.
Before his mom passed, Sebastian had gotten her blessing to sell the house and start fresh, but it needs a bit of work before it’s ready to go on the market.
He’s made it clear I’m more than welcome to move in with him in the meantime, but I’m not ready to let go of my apartment yet.
By next year my savings will be solid, and maybe we could buy something together.
It’s important to me that we feel like equal partners.
We spend the short drive exchanging stories from the party, filling each other in on conversations the other person missed.
“Did you notice Maren actually laughed at one of Andre’s jokes?” Sebastian asks as he turns the key to his house.
“Yes! But she’s honestly been so giddy this week, so who knows if that means anything. She had me wondering for a second if you were planning to—” I stop short when Sebastian steps inside and I gain a view of the dining room table, which is covered in photographs. “Whoa. What are all those?”
“See for yourself,” he says, pulling the door closed and gesturing toward the table.
I pick up the first photograph that catches my eye.
It’s a blurred selfie of Sebastian and me in our Bubba’s T-shirts.
I’m making a duck face, and he’s holding up a peace sign.
I place the photo back on the table and pick up another one, of Chris and Ravi pretending to be in a sword fight with a mop and broom.
There are so many candids, too, mostly of either Sebastian or me, and even some of Bubba in her office or behind the hostess stand and Omar in the kitchen.
“I completely forgot about these,” I say, in awe.
“Maren had come by one day with that old film camera,” Sebastian says.
I nod, skimming the prints with my fingers. “Someone had brought it to the thrift store, and she immediately took it for me.”
“You were obsessed with it that whole week.” He comes up behind me, hands skimming my shoulders.
I laugh. “Until it ran out of film and I realized I had no idea how to develop it, or where to get more.”
As the words leave my mouth, the realization hits.
“You kept these all this time?” I ask, turning to him.
“I held on to the film, and then my freshman year roommate at UCSB was a film major and he figured out how to develop it. I thought about mailing the pictures to you so many times—along with an apology—but I never figured out what to say.”
We’re silent for a moment, and then I say, “They’re incredible, Sebastian. Thank you.”
“Lina,” he says, green eyes glimmering, “I know that I haven’t always said the right things at the right times, but I want you to know that I always saw you.”
He presses his forehead to mine, and then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out something sparkly.
“Don’t worry,” he says with a smirk, “I’m not proposing—or at least, not exactly.
This was my mom’s favorite ring. Not the one my dad gave her.
It was originally my grandmother’s, and I want you to have it now.
I know that you’re the person I want to marry, Lina, but I’m not asking you to marry me anytime soon if you don’t want to.
What I am proposing is whatever we decide to do next, we do it together.
We can save up for a huge Bonnie and Amelia–style wedding one day, or if you’re still sick of weddings we can have a little one, or we can just be together and do nothing celebratory at all.
I love you, Lina Mariano, and I don’t want to let another summer go by without you feeling that in your bones. ”
He slides the delicate gold ring onto my finger, and I manage to blurt out a combination of words that I hope resembles “I love you, too.”
I stretch up on my tiptoes and pull his body against mine, craving as much contact as humanly possible. His embrace feels like being wrapped in the fluffiest beach towel after hours in the ocean: warm, dry and safe from the waves.
And as we hold each other I let myself picture past, present and future Lina not as three separate women, each with her own beginning and end, but one real, concurrent whole. Insecure and confident, naive and experienced, loving and beloved. All of it—all of me—right here, at once.