Epilogue 2
Things were mostly back to normal some two weeks after the incident, except I was working seven days a week again while Thaeros healed.
They came in every now and then with their arm in a sling to get food.
I’d offered to cut their pancakes for them once, which had earned me an incredulous look from both them and Ben. Rae had outright made fun of me.
By the middle of December, it was getting festive, and Rae’s gingerbread latte was doing quite well; so well that we’d also added a gingerbread milkshake.
The Moonlight tea Rose had delivered himself was fairly popular too, and after seeing it, Kasey had been inspired to make other blue food.
The butterfly pea ice cream was popular with children and everyone who liked taking photos of their food.
On a slow Monday, the bells above the door twinkled, and Echo came in, his neck in a collar.
“Echo,” I said while Rae did the Moonlight’s greeting back from where they were making more coffee.
“Hi. Miss me?”
I was dumbstruck for a second. “Because you decided we’re friends?”
“No. Yes. Also maybe.” They looked around, though with them being unable to turn their head, it was just their eyes that moved from one corner to the other. “Hey, can we sit for a moment? I just wanted to talk.”
I looked at Rae.
Before I could even ask, they said, “Are you delegating, boss? Hold on, let me just mark that in my calendar.”
They pulled out their phone too. I decided to roll my eyes at them but pretend ignorance otherwise.
I plated two pieces of our cherry pie for Echo and myself, figuring that would be all right, especially because he’d picked Soyer’s table. I also made two of Rae’s gingerbread lattes, put a straw in Echo’s, and brought everything over.
Echo looked at the drink somewhat wistfully. “I miss things ahead of time sometimes. This coffee, for example. I’ve never had it, but I’ve known what it tastes like for a while now.”
“Not the cherry pie?” I asked, placing everything neatly on the table in front of him.
“Not particularly. It’s good, but I like the crepes better. The ones Kasey makes. The blue ones he hasn’t quite perfected yet.”
“I’m not sure Dwayne’s going to be on board with blue pancakes, to be honest with you.”
Echo smiled at me. “It doesn’t matter what Dwayne thinks. It matters what you think. Dwayne trusts you.”
I frowned. “Do you really know all that or did you make some of it up?”
Echo carefully drank some of his latte before answering. “You’ll only know once you get there, won’t you? That’s really how this works anyway.”
“I see. I was glad to hear you’d be okay. Soyer said you broke your neck?”
“Yup.” Deep sadness passed over his face, the kind that makes you cry spontaneously, but he reeled it back in. “I knew that might happen. It’s fine. At least I saw him this one time.”
“Who?”
Echo turned his cup on its plain white saucer, and for a moment, nothing but the sound of glass against ceramic filled the silence between us.
“In another reality, Cecil and I found each other. It didn’t start out as love, but that’s what it turned into.
He was different there, just a man, but not the kind you want to be friends with.
But then he changed… It doesn’t matter.” He turned his cup again.
“In a way, it’s like he was my ex before he was anything else.
That’s what it feels like, I think. Just raw. ”
I had trouble wrapping my head around this, with the idea there’d ever been a possibility that Cecil might care about someone else.
True, I’d not known him before that creepy and unplanned meeting, but I’d seen his cruelty through his actions, and I’d recognized the egotistical side of him.
It didn’t line up with what Echo was saying.
“I’m not sure I believe that.”
Echo sighed. “That doesn’t matter. It has no bearing on this reality whether you do or not.”
“If you believe it though, if it’s real for you, I am sorry you’re hurting.”
He smiled and took another sip of his coffee. “That’s why I like you. You don’t judge me for not hating a man who was objectively vile. I’m grateful to have you as a friend.”
I cleared my throat. “I still mostly don’t know you.”
“Isn’t having coffee together the start to being friends?”
I ate some of my pie. It was perfect. Soyer would like it when he came in later.
“I suppose it is. But I don’t know how Elias is going to feel about me making other friends.”
“I’ll tackle that once my neck is fully healed. Only one kind of trouble at a time, you know?”
I gave him my widest grin. “Elias isn’t trouble. But he is my best friend. Soul twin, he says.”
Echo bit his lip. “If only you knew.”
We finished our coffee and pie. Talking to Echo was odd, with the non-linear way he brought things up, but it really wasn’t that much worse than denying my soul twin his chocolate milkshakes.
Not long after Echo had left, the door opened, and on a gust of cold air and a scattering of snowflakes, Soyer walked in.
“Welcome to the Moonlight Diner,” I said from where I’d been refilling our saltshakers behind the counter.
“Hi. Cute place you got here. Really blue.”
“The co-owner likes it that way. He has a blue kitchen at home as well.”
He frowned. “It’s not that blue.”
“It sort of is though.”
He dismissed my argument with a regal wave of his hand. “Forget about my kitchen. You’re leaving early today. You have a thing.”
“I have a thing?”
“Oh yes.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “But Rae—”
“I was briefed on this ahead of time,” they said while walking past behind me with a gingerbread latte for Ben.
I looked at Soyer. “Did you get into the secret chat?”
“If I had, I couldn’t tell you about it because that defeats the purpose.”
Kasey looked out through the passthrough. “Oh, are you guys still here? You should get a move on.”
My mouth fell open. “Seriously, all of you?” I looked at Ben. Ben lowered his head in peak guiltiness. “You too, Brutus?”
Soyer pulled a key from his pocket and spun it around his index finger. “It’s for your own good, Amory.”
I looked around the Moonlight. It really wasn’t that full.
There were a few werewolves having dinner at the corner table, and the reader was back, this time at table seven where he was engrossed in his newest romance.
I still had to ask what he was reading, but for now, I was imagining that he was secretly a librarian, reading all the books that could suck you into their pages.
He was a special librarian forces librarian though, so those books couldn’t suck him in.
I sighed. “Okay, fine. Do I need to change?”
Soyer shook his head. “Nope.”
He rounded the counter and stopped in front of the swing doors, holding out his hand to me in unspoken invitation. I took it.
We walked through to the back. In the storage room, Kasey stood ready with my coat—Elias had given me this one after he’d forced a shopping trip on me. He’d bought one for himself as well. We now matched, almost as if we really were twins.
Kasey beamed as Soyer took the coat from him to help me into it.
“Have fun,” he said, somewhat ominously, his snakes dancing around his head like a living halo.
Soyer unlocked the back door, and we headed out into the snowy night. A cab was already waiting for us at the end of the alley, and Soyer held the door for me. Once he’d slid in after me, the driver drove right off.
Soyer reached into one of his coat pockets, pulled out a small blue box and held it out to me. It had a sparkling silver bow tied around it.
“This is your Christmas present. It’s early. That was just easier logistically.”
“But it’s more than a week away still!” In my belly, excitement bubbled though, and I felt like a kid on Christmas morning.
“Who cares? Why wait? Come on, open the box.”
I took it from his warm hand and admired it first. It wasn’t heavy at all, so I was pretty confident it wasn’t jewelry or anything that expensive. Soyer had given me a new watch right away after he’d burned the old one, so it couldn’t be that either.
I pulled the ribbon open and lifted the lid, then stared at the black cloth in the box for a second before I pulled it out to better see what it was.
“A blindfold?”
Soyer beamed. “Yes. That’s the first part of your present. We can use that in the bedroom later, but that’s optional. Putting it on is not.”
I pointed. “You want me to put this on.”
“Absolutely.”
“Now?”
“Mm-hmm.”
I nibbled on my lower lip. “Okay, but it’s weird. It’s almost like you’re some creepy dude who got me into a car with him and is now blindfolding me so I don’t see your face or know where we’re going.”
“Oh, too much work. You’d just come with me wherever I told you to anyway. There’s no need to blindfold you to get you there.”
“That’s not even true,” I said, and put on the blindfold.
“Mm-hmm, sure. Feeling good? You can’t see anything?”
The blindfold, despite not looking it at first glance, was pretty decently made, and I couldn’t see a thing.
“Nope. I’ll fall over like this.”
He took my hand. “I won’t let you fall, my heart. You just have to hold on to my hand, and I’ll guide you.”
I knew where we were going when I felt the wooden boardwalk underneath my feet. Knowing that this was the underground made me even more excited. Maybe we’d take the Small Express again, or maybe Soyer would show me something else I’d never known existed.
We walked for a while, and the oddest thing was, it was pretty quiet. Then, we came to a halt.
“Are you ready for your present?” Soyer asked.
“Yes. Do I get to guess what it is first?”
Soyer huffed. “Fine. If you must.”
“Are we doing some kind of shopping?”
“Not really.”
“Are we… Oh, I know! Is there a movie theater down here?”
“What, in the underground?”
“Yes.”
Soyer sighed. “There is, but that’s not where we are. You get a maximum of three guesses, my heart. One more.”
“Okay. Are we going to some special restaurant?”
“Hmm, you could say that, actually. Take off the blindfold, Amory, and look.”
I did. Brightness flooded in, then sound. People cheered. It took my ears a second to adapt, and my eyes as well.
“Welcome to the Moonlight Underground!” Standing right in the front of a store like many others down here was none other than Elias. Behind him, I spotted Dwayne and Ant, Levi, and Thaeros with his sling. Vico and Chef were there as well.
“Huh?”
Soyer put an arm around me when someone launched confetti into the air. The little store had a painted facade of blues, light and dark mingling in a beautiful, dreamy way.
“Welcome to your ice cream parlor, my heart. Do you like it?”
My jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”
Soyer pointed. “It’s yours. The ice cream parlor. I gave it the name, but if you really want, you can change it. The real opening is in an hour, and we’re only serving two flavors of ice cream today. Want to guess which two?”
I stared at the ice cream place, then at Soyer. “You rented an ice cream parlor for a date?”
“Aww!” Elias said, then pulled out his phone and took a photo of me and Soyer.
“I didn’t. I’d never do that.”
I exhaled. “Oh. But you got them to open early?”
Elias was rocking back and forth on his heels, and Simeon peeled off from the small crowd that had gathered to hug him and keep him calm.
Soyer took my hands in his. “Amory, my heart, I bought you an ice cream parlor. We’re having the opening today. And since you wouldn’t guess, we’re serving only cherry and butterfly pea ice cream. It’s blue, and that’s fitting. We’ll have the best blue ice cream in the underground here.”
“My recipe!” Kasey hollered from behind Dwayne and Valentin.
I gaped at his wavering snakes. “How did you get here so fast?”
Soyer cackled. “I led you in circles, my heart. Hence the blindfold.”
Elias cleared his throat. “That was my idea. But come, let’s go get a milkshake, Amory. Blue and cherry pink, with lots of cream on top.”
“Not today, young Hawthorne.” Soyer pulled me close. “He’s sharing one with me tonight.”
“Aww…”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Simeon lead Elias away, and we had a moment to ourselves.
“This is my present for you this holiday season, my heart. It’s just a small thing, but you’d make me very happy if you would accept it.”
“It’s… An ice cream parlor isn’t small, Soyer.”
“You’d be surprised. There really isn’t a lot of room here.”
“But I have the Moonlight.”
He nodded. “There’s staff, actually. That’s a bit—you know what, we’ll talk about it later. Do you like it?”
My eyes welled up. “You turned an offhand comment into a big romantic gesture.”
He nodded. “That’s because I want you to be absolutely positive about me flirting with you. I considered having a sign made, but this seemed more useful.”
A tear rolled down to the center of my cheek before Soyer caught it with his thumb.
“I…I love it. I really do.” I laughed. “I bought you a pair of red underwear. It’s supposed to be a joke.”
Both his eyebrows shot up. “Well, fuck me. Didn’t see that coming. I’ll have to wear them because you gave me them.”
I nodded as the tears flowed freely. “Yeah, you will.”
“Right, you’re such a beautiful mess when you cry with joy. My heart, will you have a sundae with me tonight?”
I nodded. “Yes. Tonight and every other night. Unless we have a milkshake.”
“I’m glad. I’m ecstatic. I love you, Amory.”
In response, I kissed him until heat bubbled where our lips touched. It was a long time before we broke apart to cool our fire-drunk mouths with the sweetest cherry ice cream fit for only the brightest firebirds in the whole wide sky.