EPILOGUE #2
Despite his words, he pulls me straight back into his chest and I’m laughing into his mouth.
When I’m able to stop, when I realize I haven’t had him in my space for the last week, that months ago there was always a chance he wouldn’t have made it out, the hook in my chest, the one that feels permanent now, pulls.
The scar across his chest is just below my eye level and I graze my fingers over the pink line cutting across the hair and tanned skin.
“I missed you,” I say.
He dips his forehead down to press against mine, and our noses touch as he murmurs into the minimal space between our lips. “I missed you, too.”
His hands lift to grip my jaw, and when I look up into his eyes, he nods once, brings me back to the present.
We’re here, now, planning out our day because there’s no danger and no threat, the credits already rolled on that part of our lives, and we’ve decided not to stay behind in the theater afterward.
“Maybe we just stay in here for a while,” I say. He kisses around the words my mouth makes, and it takes all my concentration not to lose my train of thought. “And then let some cool barista butcher your name on your coffee order.”
“Sounds good to me.”
I have the feeling I could’ve suggested watching paint dry or streaming the latest documentary about Nepalese goatherds Laurie wants us to watch with her new boyfriend—he wants to be the next Edgar Wright, of all things, so we get on great—and he would’ve said the same thing.
“Hey, Wes?”
Other things are starting to draw his attention. Like my breasts, my belly button, my… Mmm. I pull his hands up to my waist, but it must be the water that makes them slip down again.
“Mm-hmm?” he says distractedly, winding an arm around my back and drawing me under the showerhead.
I lean back to ask, “What makes you happy?”
He hits me with that smile. The one that, whether in the middle of a murder scene or the middle of my shower, still makes it feel like the blood in my veins is running hot.
“I would’ve thought that’s kind of obvious, Jamie.”
He knows what I’m doing. It’s a thing we do. We do things other than run from psychotic killers now. Things like farmer’s markets, and driving each other to the airport, and shared showers, and asking questions I already know the answer to because he tells me all the time.
His lips come down onto mine when he asks, “What makes you happy?”
He already knows the answer because it just so happens, I tell him all the time. We have a lot in common. And I’ve heard that’s a very strong foundation for a successful relationship. That and surviving a killing spree. That’s a pretty solid foundation, too.
“I would’ve thought that was obvious, too,” I say, biting my lip to stop smiling. When he lifts a hand from my waist to hold up three fingers in front of my face, it pulls my mouth into a full-blown grin.
It’s disgusting how in love I am with this man.
And to think I once thought—in my defense, for like two minutes, tops—he could’ve orchestrated a slaughter fest that gave me a whole new appreciation for cardio training.
He folds one finger down.
Three.
His arm tightens around my waist, so we’re belly to belly.
Two.
My arms loop around his neck and we’re chest to chest. There are only two possible outcomes in a position like this, but when it comes to Wes only one comes to mind.
One.
His eyes close just before mine, but his smile is a perfect match for where my lips are curved up against his.
“You.”
“You.”
After that we stop talking for a while. Our dialogue replaced by a soundtrack of water echoing off tiles, breaths hitching, and the indulgent sounds of two people who’ve had the opportunity to learn each other’s preferences and the luxury to play them out because there isn’t a killer on the other side of the locked door.
And that’s good. It’s the promise of the good, that there are still good things to be had, that helps heal the scars that lie deeper than the ones tracing across our skin.
Sometimes it’s not all shower sex and sharing breakfast and holding hands while you wait for your coffee order (“Wentz?”) to get called out.
Sometimes I do find myself dragged back into the darkness, the survivor’s guilt, the trauma, the anguish, the fear.
It happens to Wes. Laurie, too. But most of the time we’re able to pull ourselves out, and if we have a hard time doing that, just like that night, we take it in turns to help each other, support each other, remind each other we survived.
And not by chance or destiny or fate—despite what John may have wanted to believe—but because of the choices we made.
Even when you know the formula, you still have to decide how the story is going to play out.
You have to decide how you want the movie to end.
You have to decide what role you’re going to take in it.
Because Final Girls and Leading Ladies aren’t born.
They’re made. They’re a culmination of their choices.
And in the end I chose to be both.