Epilogue #2
“There’s my girl,” he says, patting the vinyl seat when he spots me.
The moment I slide in, he hooks a hand behind my neck and captures my mouth with his.
“Do we need to sneak off to the office?” I murmur against his mouth.
His eyes spark with heat. “Lift that skirt of yours and I could get off there right here.”
Liam’s hand strays down, fingers moving to the hem of my dress.
“Absolutely not.” I press a palm to his chest. “Have you lost your mind? God only knows what’s happened in this booth.”
He settles for my mouth but we only have a few minutes of alone time before our friends begin to trickle in. Austin and Penny arrive first, with Lizzie tucked away in her carrier.
“You’ve got a baby, in a bar,” I quote, from one of my favorite movies as I lean in for a hug from Penny.
“We are in Alabama, Cass,” Austin quips, earning a playful punch from Penny.
Before I know it, we’re all here, gathered around a larger table in the center of the room.
Josie is, of course, fashionably late. “Did you bring it?” I ask while Liam is distracted by Lizzie, who he’s trying to pull a smile from.
“Sure did. Want a sneak peek?”
From a flat cardboard sleeve, Josie slides the art I commissioned for Liam’s gift. It’s a recreation of the famous Dogs Playing Poker painting, but in this one, Mutt sits front and center, dealing cards with one paw. On his head is a plastic visor with a cigar hanging from his mouth.
I burst out laughing when I see it.
“Josie, Liam is gonna flip. This is perfect.” While it’s not the sentimental gift I received for my birthday, everything about it screams Liam. We’ve had a lot of heartfelt moments, so I want him to have something fun.
Josie slides it back between the cardboard and I take a seat next to Liam.
“All right, everyone.” I tap my knuckles against the tabletop to get my friends’ attention. “We have business to attend to.”
Liam turns from Lizzie with an arched brow. “What kind of business?”
“The birthday kind.”
“Cassie,” Liam groans, but Josie is already on her feet, passing out party hats and noisemakers. When she snaps the elastic of the hat under his chin, he sighs. “This is the poker fiasco all over again.”
“You only turn thirty-one once, babe,” I say, poking him in the ribs.
In response, he blows the party horn in my face. But his feigned annoyance doesn’t last long once he sees the painting.
“It’s Mutt.” Liam looks to me then to Josie, eyes crinkling with delight. “You painted Mutt playing poker.”
“The visor was my idea, but the rest was all Cassie.”
Liam traces a finger over the painting, his face split into the most brilliant grin.
“Do you like it?” I ask, peering up at him.
“Are you kidding? It’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. I love it. I can’t wait to show Mutt.” He holds it at arm’s length to admire before passing it around the table for everyone to have a look.
While they’re doing so, I take the time to look at my friends and family. I mean really look at them, as if from outside my body.
In graduate school, my favorite professor once gave an analogy about human perception.
She explained it like this: hanging over our eyes is an invisible veil.
We can see through it, but it blurs reality, toning down the pain, the suffering, and happiness, too.
We like it this way, to be a bit numb to it all.
But occasionally, as though pushed by an invisible hand, our veil lifts.
And for a fleeting second, you see life in unfiltered technicolor.
The greatest joys to the most horrific cruelties.
She told us the best therapists are able to lift their veil themselves.
I’ve never had that ability, rather, it usually lifts on its own, taking me by surprise.
This is one of those moments.
My professor said one more thing, almost like she didn’t believe it herself.
Sometimes while your veil is lifted, you see something else.
Threads that connect us all together. And I see them now, shimmering between my friends.
My family. Tyler, at the age of twenty-two, who met a girl.
A vivacious wild, spirited girl named Josie, who had so much faith in Tyler’s dreams she told him about her little town of Singing River and its legendary studio.
Without that conversation, Tyler might never have known what this town could mean for Austin, my precious big brother, on the verge of losing everything when he arrived, now holding Lizzie on his lap with his wife at his side.
The next thread forms, almost like spider silk, moving from Austin to my dear friend, my sister. Penny, who smiled for years through her own heartache, now wearing a joy so genuine, it radiates off her.
It hovers in the air for a second before extending across until it reaches Liam.
And while yes, I see it, I feel it even more strongly, stretching from the man who buried himself so deeply in grief he thought he’d never find a way out, yet found the courage to choose to love again.
It’s such an overwhelming feeling, I gasp out loud.
Liam, the greatest love of my life who chose me, chose to keep going even on the hardest of days.
And chose to be the strong one on my worst ones.
But the thread doesn’t stop with us. It keeps moving, circling through all of us, weaving through the laughs, the scars, the breath stealing love, until I see it for what it is. A single unbroken cord, connecting six people who found each other when they needed it most.
It’s too much, seeing every tear and stitch that led us to this ordinary, unremarkable, sacred evening in a bar. My eyes start to burn, and I bite down on my lip, hard. Blinking through the sheen that threatens to fall, I slip my phone from my pocket to check off one last thing from my list.
Witness something beautiful. Check.
The End