Chapter 25 #2
As she began to speak, her voice, steady and confident, sliced through the commotion.
Although she was tired of the cameras and the questions, she wasn’t afraid of them anymore.
She no longer had anything to hide, and she wanted the world to see that.
“I think I speak for all of us,” she began, and in an instant the crowd went completely quiet, as if someone had muted them.
Their silence was so abrupt it was almost startling, and she paused to recalibrate.
She began again, “I think I speak for all of us when I say that I’m ready to put all this behind me.
We’re grateful for everyone’s support, but we’ve spent enough time in the public eye and we’re really looking forward to doing whatever is next, privately. ”
As she finished her statement, she felt an unexpected rush of exhilaration.
There was something undeniably empowering about standing there, her words commanding the crowd’s attention.
Will moved to stand beside her, and she glanced up at him, then back to Abby.
She had said all she needed to say, but she wanted to leave the door open for them to have their own declaration moment too. “Right?”
Abby smiled at her, the pride in her eyes unmistakable. “I believe that about covers it, yeah.”
That was all it took to break the spell. The reporters sprang back to life like bees disturbed from their hive, swarming them with questions.
“This is the part where we just go, right?” Abby asked Naomi, squinting as a volley of flashes flickered from somewhere in the crowd.
“I think so,” Naomi said, more unsure of what route to take to get through the crowd than whether it was time to leave.
The crowd had begun to bleed from the sidelines into the walkway as their eagerness for answers pushed them forward.
She tried to drown out the noise and focus on their exit when a question jumped out at her from the crowd.
“Abigail, what can you tell us about your recent breakup?”
For a moment, the thought crossed her mind that Riley had gone through her phone while she had been sleeping, read her texts with Abby, and fed the question to a reporter in order to get answers.
But no, that couldn’t be it. While she knew the occasional snooping was greenlit by Riley’s moral code, they would never share that knowledge outside of their circle.
So, how did a reporter know what she had only learned last night?
She looked at Abby to see if she had heard the question too. But Abby’s eyes, wide with disbelief, were trained towards the crowd. Naomi followed her gaze until she saw it too.
Saw her.
Emerging from the sea of reporters, eyes locked on Abby as if no one and nothing else existed, was Freya. “I …” Naomi heard Abby stammer.
Freya, although breathless from the effort of weaving through the crowd, could be heard clearly as she asked another question. “Does staying out of the public eye mean you wouldn’t date a public figure?”
Immediately, Naomi felt two hands grab her by the shoulder and then heard Riley’s voice in her ear. “Oh my god. It’s happening. This is it. This is it!”
Naomi started to turn toward them, heart pounding, but then her focus snapped back to Abby, who was staring straight at her—as if searching for an answer, for permission, for something.
Naomi could only smile back, hoping her eyes said everything her friend needed to hear: that whatever came next, her friends would be by her side.
For a beat, Abby remained frozen, disbelief flickering across her face, her lips parted as if she couldn’t quite process what was happening. Then, slowly, something shifted.
She turned back to Freya, and Naomi watched, gleefully, as uncertainty gave way to a slow, elated smile. “I think I could be talked into making an exception for the right person,” she said.
Freya reached Abby, her voice growing softer but simultaneously stronger. “Can someone be the right person even if it took them a long time to get to a place where they were ready to be the right person?”
“Are you sure?” Abby asked, never taking her eyes off Freya. “Your career. Everything you’ve worked for. Your whole life. I know I said a lot of things, but I don’t want to be the reason—”
Freya took Abby’s hands and pulled her closer.
“When I didn’t know what had happened, when Will said there’d been an attack and you were on the way to the hospital and I didn’t know if you were alive, it just …
” She stopped and laughed. “It just became so obvious that none of that matters. Abby, I don’t want to waste one more moment hating you. ”
Riley let out a squeal that could have shattered glass. “I knew it! We made this happen!”
Naomi could hardly believe it. She’d had her suspicions, of course, but did this mean The Plan actually worked? Had Riley, had they, really helped bring Abby and Freya together?
“Does this mean the breakup she told me about was with Freya?” Naomi said, finishing her thought aloud.
“What breakup?” Riley said “When? You can’t keep these things from me!”
“Then that actually was Freya’s stuff at Abby’s place I saw,” Will added.
“After this, we’re going to have to have a serious discussion about keeping secrets from me,” Riley said.
“Shhh, later, I can’t hear.” Becca squeezed in, pressing up against Naomi, and hushed them.
Naomi didn’t argue. She didn’t want to miss another second of what was unfolding in front of her. Freya had leaned in even closer to Abby, the two now impossibly close, as if some unforeseen thread—or perhaps four loving but meddlesome friends—had pulled them to where they were always meant to be.
Even still, Naomi could make Freya’s words out, clear as day.
“I love you.”
Naomi couldn’t stop the tears as she watched her best friend throw her arms around Freya and say, “I love you, Freya Jonsson,” before pressing her lips to Freya’s.
Naomi hadn’t thought it was possible to be happier than she had been a few minutes ago, but standing here, watching Abby’s own love story unfold, Naomi knew she had been wrong.
The only thing more perfect than finding her own fairytale moment was sharing that moment with Abby.
Because that’s how it had always been, and it was truly the only way she wanted it to be.
Their lives were inextricably connected, their friendship, a lifetime of shared laughter, dreams, tears, encouragement, and even—when necessary—fake pocket dials, all of it had led them here.
Because it wasn’t only Will who was her beshert.
They were all her destiny. And wherever life took them next, they would go together.