Epilogue
PORTLAND PRIDE FESTIVAL, THE JULY AFTER NEXT
It’s a heat wave, and Yael waits impatiently for her coworker, Gemma, to relieve her from her shift at the Multnomah County Library booth.
Mia is off getting her face painted (like a shark; her dinosaur phase has come and gone) and she has Yael’s portable fan with her.
She presumably has Suresh and Ravi with her, too, but they’re lower on Yael’s list of priorities at the moment.
Trading half of Pride as an attendee for two shifts next week instead of three seemed like a steal on a date where the average forecast is seventy-nine and partly cloudy.
At ninety-seven and full sun, she’s sweating in her it’s-too-hot-to-wear-clothes-that-touch-me flowy dress even seated, and she’s no longer sure she got a good deal.
Gemma arrives, two iced matcha lemonades in hand, and passes one off to Yael. The first sip very nearly earns her a confession of love. She gives Gemma a quick rundown of the booth operations, and then she’s off to find the Kissoons.
“Dadi!” Mia shrieks as Yael approaches the face-painting station.
“You need to sit still, honey,” the (probable) saint working there tells her.
The Kissoons got to the festival after Yael did, so she didn’t get to see any of them get ready.
Mia has on a matching shirt-and-shorts set with hearts of every color printed on it, Ravi wears an ombré pink-purple-blue mesh shirt and white drawstring shorts.
Suresh is, as always, wearing a company T-shirt, but the logo on this one is outlined in rainbow instead of white.
Both men have freshly (read: messily; Mia hasn’t yet honed her craft) painted nails.
“Hey, baby girl,” Yael says. “You look stunning.”
“What about me?” Ravi asks.
“You look fine, too, I guess.”
“Hey!” he protests, slinging his arm around her shoulder and pressing a kiss to her temple.
“It is way too hot for that,” Yael says, curling away from him.
“You’re so mean to me,” he says. But he drops his arm, finding her hand to link pinkies instead.
“You like it,” she mumbles back. “Nice shirt, Suresh.”
He smiles sheepishly. “I could tell you were disappointed I didn’t dress up last time.”
Yael laughs. “Just wait, I’m going to douse you in glitter next year.”
“She serious?” Suresh asks Ravi, but Ravi only shrugs.
The artist finishes with Mia, and she slides off the chair to come suction herself to Yael’s side. Yael gives her a single squeeze before urging her back. “We can hug longer when we’re in air-conditioning, Ms. Shark. Wanna see the rest of the festival?”
Mia nods, grabbing her free hand.
THEY WALK AROUND the crowded waterfront, only saying goodbye to Mia and Suresh once they’re sun-zapped and melting. Or, Yael and Mia are melting. It’s so humid in Trinidad and New York that the dry heat out here has never really registered to Ravi and Suresh.
“I can’t believe we’re going to have to move into the new place in this weather,” Yael says as they head west toward her and Charlie’s apartment.
They’re set to pick up the sets of keys to the new house they bought with Suresh tomorrow.
It’s a few blocks away from his old place, in the same school district for Mia and a reasonable bus ride to Yael’s part-time job at the library.
Most importantly, it’s a duplex, with room for a recording studio on their side and a huge shared backyard.
The four of them fell in love with it on the spot.
Ravi stops walking, pulling them out of the flow of foot traffic. “But you’re excited?” he asks.
Yael laughs, shifting their hands so she can grasp his fully. “So fucking excited.”
“Good,” he says, and he kisses her. And suddenly it’s not too hot out for him to touch her, after all.
“Ms. Koenig?” someone says.
“Ravi?” A second voice.
They break apart to find Zoe and JQ staring wide-eyed at them.
“Hi!” Yael says. Ravi lifts the hand that isn’t holding Yael’s to wave. “How’s U of O?”
“Better than high school,” JQ says.
“I started my own book club,” Zoe says.
“That’s amazing!” Yael grins, and Ravi beams at her. “I’m at the downtown library now, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You should come say hi.”
“Yeah, we will,” JQ says.
“Are you headed down to the festival?” Ravi asks.
“Yes,” Zoe says. “Leo’s visiting with his new boyfriend so we’re gonna meet up with them. You?”
Yael shakes her head, smiling up at Ravi.
Leo still texts him, sometimes, and Ravi knows that he met this boyfriend at his freshman orientation at NYU.
His name is Cole. When Ravi told Yael, it made her cry—“happy-sad tears,” she’d said.
“We were there all day,” she tells Zoe and JQ.
“But have fun! And please tell Leo we say hi.”
Ravi and Yael say goodbye and turn away, and before they’re out of earshot, they hear something like “I fucking knew they were together!” from behind them.
“They knew before we did,” Yael says, switching their hands so they’re only linked by the pinkies again. She sighs. “And even though it’s miserable outside, I am very excited to move into our new home. I made a Koenig-Kissoon sticker for the mailbox.”
“I am so in love with you,” he says.
Yael laughs. “You still say it like you can’t believe it.”
A few years ago, he hadn’t known it was possible to love someone like this.
To be loved by someone like this, and not just when it’s easy.
Through petty arguments and the worst mental health days, through milestones and mundanity.
Sometimes he looks at her and he swears he can see a million different futures in her eyes, the two of them together in every one of them. “You’re in love with me, too,” he says.
“I’m in love with you, too,” Yael says. “And I can’t wait to live with our family.”