Epilogue
EPILOGUE
Cody
Seasons changed and time carried on, slowly on some days and rapidly on others.
Spring had been coated in grief, and I measured its passage not by how the minutes of sunlight lengthened, but by how frequently Liem’s smiles met his eyes. How many times he approached a new canvas or one of his sketchbooks only to put them back down again.
It was many long weeks before he touched his art again, and I’d never forget that morning when he’d squirmed out from under the covers, kissed my cheek, and left for the gazebo with his sketch pad under his arm.
It’d been the first day of summer.
I’d given him a five-minute head start—well, more like a generous three—before stuffing my feet into my running shoes, stretching outside the cottage’s front door, and falling into an easy jog. I gave him space, but if my circuit cut near enough to check on him every few minutes, I had no control over that.
So I told myself.
No one was left unchanged by the past year on the Coast, especially since the previous summer, when the Lott family had moved to the Coast just as I prepared to leave it. But no matter how many smiles Liem offered or how full they were or weren’t, my love for him and his entire being grew impossibly deeper. With every breath we shared, each depth discovered, and the new answers I found to questions about him, his dreams, his life… I fell harder.
And I found more of myself too.
More of me to love, more capacity for giving love. And receiving it.
Summer had been wonderful in its simplicity.
I lifeguarded, edged closer to Mordor with Dad, took my classes, and spent my nights and mornings surrounded by a warm body that smelled like charcoal, sunshine, and the fresh, salty air of home.
Summer also brought one of the most brutal hurricane seasons the Coast had seen in years. One hurricane in particular—Hurricane Holly—made the biggest impact. We joked now that its landfall was personally responsible for the new silver hairs that showed at Vinh’s temples.
Everything had turned out okay, but hauling the houseboat inland, boarding up the cottage and the Lott’s house, and preparing to evacuate had been an experience, but we’d done it.
Packing my essentials had been easy. All I needed these days was one fireproof box and one dazzling man. After spending more and more time with Vinh, my faith that he would take care of my best friend better than anyone was rock solid.
Bree and I would always have each other, but now it was by choice and not just survival.
My plate expanded slowly with time and testing, and when the world shook, it did not falter. I didn’t fail.
Everyone’s homes, Ari’s, and the boat had all fared well through the storm, but the same could not be said for the oak tree behind the Big House.
Which was what brought us to today, one of the last days of summer.
“Cody, this is morbid,” Bree said from beside me on my open truck bed.
I’d just put a handful of popcorn into my mouth, but in deference of the moment, I waited until I chewed and swallowed it before answering.
“Yeah, it is. And if you want to leave, we can go back to the cottage now. Just say the word.”
She sighed. “I don’t. I think you’re right. I’d rather the idea of how it looked not haunt me and just know instead.”
I passed her the popcorn bowl, and she took it, huffing something close to a laugh before she ate some. Vinh had prepared it for us, not being able to help himself in having a hand in this morning’s admittedly morbid errand. Both Lott brothers had offered to come with us, but she’d told them she didn’t want to risk bad karma for them from Miss Barb.
“Cody and I are already deep in it,” she’d said, making my heart laugh and cry all at once, which was the same reaction she’d had when I’d told her the entire story of my big heist inside the home.
There had been a lot of tears that day, when Liem and I had presented her with the refurbished frames and photographs we’d worked on in Dad’s garage. She now knew it all—AJ’s involvement, my horrible trip to Louisiana, my sadness over not being able to get a rooster statue.
Bree, showing her beautiful, true colors, had forgiven me in the same breath that she cursed me for taking such a risk. The same concern that’d filled her eyes then filled them now as we watched how easily Miss Barb’s house fell.
I swung my legs as I watched her and grappled with the contradictory feelings that stormed inside of me. Relief and gratitude that, almost a year after I’d royally fucked up by leaving town, things were back to normal between us.
The zing of chainsaws punched the air, making us both jump, and we shared an edgy laugh before her gaze was drawn back to the house and mine to her leg. The scars. The tattoo.
I blew out a breath and laughed hoarsely. Things were not normal, but even so, they were somehow mostly better, despite it all.
Reaching behind my head, I traced the tiny new star tattoo on the back of my neck and smiled to myself.
More than better.
That giant tree that AJ had tossed me into had taken power lines with it as it epically smashed across Miss Barb’s house, which made it a public safety threat.
So, on this hot and exceedingly humid late-August day, I sat with my best friend and watched as the city demolished the home that she’d grown up in.
Or, like me, raised herself in.
The popcorn bowl eventually lay forgotten as more machines of destruction cranked on, and the house fell.
Bree grabbed my hand, squeezing tightly after one particularly large section collapsed. “I think I’ve seen enough.”
I glanced at my watch—a fitness tracker I’d accepted from Dad with only a little fuss—and nodded. “Let’s get you home. I’ve got my BTB meeting in an hour.”
“That will never stop being funny,” she mused as we got into the truck. “What’re y’all planning now?”
I smiled at Bree wryly as we headed toward Bay Springs. “Last-minute things for the Labor Day weekend markets and parade and then preliminary planning for the Harvest Festival in October.”
We were silent as we crossed the twin bridges, and I glanced over to find Bree staring at me. “The hell are you looking at?”
Despite my scowl, she just smiled even bigger, but she just shook her head in answer.
My scowl fell off and my body lit with excitement as we pulled into the cottage’s driveway beside Vinh’s car and Liem’s Vespa, but I resisted jumping from the truck and took a moment to look at my best friend.
“You’re okay?”
Her brows furrowed slightly as she considered her answer, but she eventually nodded. “I’m okay.” She angled her head toward me and added, “It’s all working out, isn’t it?”
I held her gray eyes for a moment, and then movement drew my attention to Liem’s bedroom window. My nerve endings shimmered with anticipation at his silhouette, and as I unbuckled my seat belt, my hair stood on end as if actual electricity entered my nerve endings.
“It had to, didn’t it?” I replied, almost to myself.
We got out of the car, and Bree sidled up beside me and whispered, “Are you ready for your secret stuff for this weekend?”
“Yeah, Cher,” I replied, my eyes staying on my target as I hurriedly walked to the front door. “I’m ready.”
It swung open as I reached for the handle, and there he was.
Smiling. Whole.
Mine.
I walked him straight back to our—for now—bedroom and tasted his soft gasp as I took his beautiful face in my hands and kissed him soundly.
I was definitely going to be late for my meeting.
Liem
The Labor Day parade was in full swing, and it was sweltering. Sweat dripped down my face and spine, and the circulation provided by my expanded armholes hardly did a thing.
“ Ti Bet ,” Cody groaned as he greedily took in my exposed skin.
Ah. Except drive Cody wild. That was a thing they did.
“Yes, Dezi?” I inquired innocently as he pulled me through the rows of tents and vendors.
His beautiful hazel eyes narrowed on me as the crowd swarmed, and he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me to his side. “Stay close,” he murmured in my ear.
Always.
I wasn’t sure where he was taking me, but this morning, he’d woken up more excited than I’d ever seen him.
We’d woken up early as we always did and had watched the sunrise from the houseboat’s deck. Then, in a move also very unlike him, he’d talked me through a schedule for the day. But he balanced the scales when he—in a move very like him—backed me against the wall, just out of sight of any neighbors, and kissed me senseless.
In multiple places.
Afterward, he’d reiterated how concerned he was about being downtown right at noon and had even set an alarm on his smartwatch to remind himself of it as we cleaned up. Then he had acted quite curiously when the alarm had gone off.
“Don’t tempt me, Ti Bet,” he’d said as he scrunched his eyes closed and covered the top half of his face with his tanned hand. “No talking, no touching. I don’t want to be late.”
And we hadn’t been, making it to the festival right at noon, but goodness, his keyed-up energy had not waned.
The cotton of his sleeveless shirt pressed against my bare sides as he guided me straight through the crowd and to Bay Hall. He positioned his hands on my hips then and guided me in front of him as we walked up the ramp—it still looked as fresh as it did on the day it was unveiled back on Memorial Day, and Cody low-key presented it to me and my entire family and?—
Ahh. I saw now what his energy reminded me of.
Memorial Day. That one day, at the end of May, when Cody had gotten both of our families together for a surprise birthday lunch for his dad and guided us afterward to Bay Hall for ice cream. I tugged him to a stop at the top of the ramp, smiling at the memory of Jeanne’s kids swarming Cody during the lunch and continuing to the entire way down the street.
His patience had never waned with them, and I suspected it wasn’t even tried. He was just like that with them by nature. Eyeing the man beside me, I suspected he was going to be such a wonderful father one day, and it was a dream I carried deep in my heart to be one alongside him.
Stepping up to him, I lightly pressed my toes to the top of his running shoes as I looked up at him. “What have you done, hmm?”
He smiled nervously but held my gaze, the greens of his hazel eyes bright and beautiful. I hadn’t a clue if he knew that his last grand gesture—joining the BTB committee and employing the power of public pressure to make the entirety of downtown Bay Springs accessible—was what had brought me back to life.
That it was the reason I’d finally reacquainted myself with charcoal, paper, and the ink-blue dawn.
“Baby,” he said quietly, almost vulnerably as he pulled on my braid. “Follow me inside?”
I laced my fingers through his, brought our hands to my mouth, and kissed his knuckles. “Yes,” I answered and then sealed it with one more kiss to the center of his hand. “Lead the way.”
His eyes sparkled at that, and he pulled me past all the busy vendors and their customers to the elevators, where he pushed the Call button.
I drew a deep inhale, counted to seven, and then released it right as the light above the elevator shone and the doors opened.
Cody had been breathing with me, as he now did by reflex, and we stepped in together, side by side. He positioned me in front of him then, my back to his front, and whispered in my ear, “Top floor, please.”
I pressed the button at the top of the column, and it lit up. Just as the doors clanged shut, Cody splayed his hand across my stomach, and he pulled me further into him as he nuzzled my neck and inhaled deeply. My eyes drifted close as I sank into him and tipped my head to the side so he could kiss up my neck all the way to my ear.
The elevator halted and jostled us even harder together, and I gasped as his warm breath ghosted the shell of my ear. “Open your eyes, Ti Bet. And please say yes.”
I hummed in pleasure as I complied, finding a brass key in Cody’s open palm.
“Take it,” he urged quietly, and I did, lifting it by the thin string looped around it.
My heart stuttered as I realized what it was—Cody’s missing bracelet. The one that’d been absent from his wrist since the figure drawing class at the Locc.
He reached past me and held his hand through the elevator opening when the doors threatened to close and then ushered me out into the vacant, airy hallway. We walked a few paces together down the hall and halted in front of a big, heavy door with a number 3 hung on it.
Cody kept one arm around my waist as he smiled proudly at it, then reached out to the metal sign and touched the tip of his finger to each of the ends of the numeral as he overenunciated, “Li-em Lott.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that “Liem Lott” was technically only two syllables.
He caressed the sign with such reverence and then smiled at me with such obvious joy that my knees nearly buckled.
As if sensing it, he held me tighter and gestured toward the door. “Open it?”
Nodding, I put the key in the lock.
Then I walked into the loft.
The loft that, Cody quietly explained, he’d worked hard for all summer and used his new friendships with members of the BTB to secure for us.
The loft that already held some of my art and framed photographs of us and of our families on the exposed brick of the walls.
The loft had a brand-new, fireproof sliding glass door, he also explained, that led to a small east-facing rooftop terrace.
The terrace with the furniture from the houseboat’s deck already on it and my easel set in front of a new stool.
I walked through the space, with its exposed brick and high ceilings, all rooms and spaces visible from the door, and gripped the key tightly in my palm.
“Liem?” Cody said as he rounded beside me, his hazel eyes intent. “Will you live here? With me?”
I gave myself seven seconds of breath, and the answer came easily. “Thank you for asking me.” I laid my hand on my chest and gave him my truth. “I would love nothing more.”
His smile was life-changing, life-affirming in the way it lit up everything inside me—everything I was, would, or could be. He kissed me desperately then, and we made it as far as the couch before we were naked and panting.
Afterward, as we lay tangled together on the new rug patterned in shades of blue that brought out the gold of his eyes, I pressed my cheek over his heart and asked, “Why noon?”
His chest rumbled as he laughed and stroked my hair, and I traced a finger down his abs as I absorbed the sound. “Because, Ti Bet. That was the earliest the realtor said I could be here. And—” He hauled me on top of him, flushed, warm skin against skin.“—we’re having lunch with our families downstairs at one to celebrate.”
“Oh? And what time is it now?” I inquired.
He sat up and pulled me to him as he took my lips again, kissing me soundly before he answered, “I have no idea.” Then he flipped me onto my back and licked and kissed across my chest and down my stomach, where he paused and looked up at me through his lashes. “Let’s just wait for someone to knock.”
With a laugh of pure joy, I threw my head back and gave myself to him.
And continued to do so, day after day. Year after year.
For all the dawns, and all the dusks, we were each other’s.