Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
RHYS
December 29th
Corfu, Greece
Like Forrest Gump infamously said about a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get with a Corfu sunrise. The morning sky is as delicate as a sigh. An unfiltered, jaw-dropping canvas painted bright pink with streaks of golden yellow. With the colors reflected on the glassy, still surface of the Ionian Sea, it’s impossible to tell where the sky ends and the water starts.
Hands down, this will be my favorite sunrise.
The first one with Dani in my heart, and in my house.
She landed late last night. As soon as she fell into my arms, not even the fragrance of eighteen hours of travel wafting off her could dampen the thrill. We threw ourselves into each other, making up for three days of lost time. Full-blown, unfiltered, soulmate-perfect mayhem.
Sheets stained with desire.
I swing in my hammock, strung between two gnarled olive trees, and a quiet buzz of happiness thrums through me. I listen to the birdsongs and the tide slapping at the rocks far below on the sugar sand beach. Breathing in the scents of sea and earth, the thyme and rosemary growing wild, I can’t help but smile and think of her. Dani lives in my brain, in my soul, somewhere beyond sense and reason, and I’m trying to reconcile the depth of my longing for her with the reality that she also needs to sleep.
I kept her awake until the first light of dawn, poor thing.
I’ll give her at least another hour.
That gives me ample time to process my new glittering, hopeful world. Since ditching the insanity of influencer life, I’ve filled up my days with one mission in mind. Well, two. The launch of our agency and pulling off the biggest job of my life: Dani’s partner.
So far, so good.
We left Osoyoos at the end of September and moved (with the damn bed) into the house I bought in Vancouver. Thanksgiving and Christmas had us shuttling between her parents’ place and mine. Gordon and Deb Rialto welcomed me as their own son, and not once did they bring up what Dani had quietly informed them of when they returned from South America.
The two nicest people I’ll ever meet. I appreciate how chill they are.
Unlike Mom.
She has fixated on us like one of her renovation projects and manages the upgrade of Rhys to serious coupledom with a vigor that borders on extreme. Emails clutter my inbox with decor suggestions for the house in Vancouver or cooking classes for couples. Honeymoon-approved vacay destinations.
Just in case you need some help, darling!
And I’m like, Mom, settle down.
I have survived for sixteen years on my own.
If I can call the endless meandering of my hazy hot mess years surviving.
Now I have an actual purpose, and I become lost deeper in the fantasy of us by the second. Living our dream life in Corfu and Vancouver, cuddled in each other's arms, drunk on love and possibilities.
I can hardly fucking wait for it all.
“Hey you,” Dani says.
I startle, an unbalanced mess of arms and legs trying to sit up too fast in the hammock. And there she is. Bundled into one of my hoodies, barefoot with bedhead, and hands down the sexiest woman alive.
“Morning. I didn’t expect you to surface for hours.”
She pads over with a delighted laugh. “I couldn’t sleep. I’m too excited.”
Palming my cheek, she brushes her mouth over mine with a soft, sleepy kiss. I can smell the tangy musk of us on her breath when she says, “And I missed your warmth.”
“We can fix that.”
I spread my legs to accommodate her. And she does an okay job for a hammock rookie, laughing as she clambers in, utterly graceless. She burrows against my chest, snuggling into the fleece blanket to ward off the chill as a giant sigh escapes her mouth. The sun is a golden ball of fire, slowly rising out of the clear blue water, and I can taste salt at the back of my throat, cut with the faint scent of chlorine from the infinity pool.
“It’s so pretty,” Dani murmurs. “The palm trees and all the flowers. Your garden and pool. Exactly what it looked like in your videos.”
When the chatty real estate agent toured me through the palazzo a decade ago, I snapped it up, no questions asked. All the security measures I craved came pre-baked into the design: at the end of the road, high on a cliff, and fortified like a bunker. And now it finally feels less like a jail and more like a home with Dani here. I band my arms around her, nuzzling into that secret pocket of her neck where she goes wild when I nibble the delicate skin. I never want to stop touching her.
“Speaking of videos…” I fix on a spot on the horizon, readying myself. “I wanted to bounce an idea off you.”
“Go for it,” she says.
A quick recap of what’s happened since August. I haven’t posted at all. Bowed out of pre-existing commitments and turned down new ones. With radio silence on my feed, the comments on my last reel have tipped the ten thousand mark. Variations of the following:
OMG. Is this the end of Rhys?
Dude, I’d be a no-show if I were you.
WTF people???? Leave the poor man alone.
I wasn’t sure how to end it all, but on the marathon Boxing Day flights back here, the vision became crystal clear.
Dani listens carefully, weighing each word. “I think that’s brilliant,” she says. “But is it wise to kill your account?”
“The Trenton Troublemaker era feels done. I’m over it.This is the Rose Dylan Agency era.”
She twists her head to face me. “You like that name?”
“It’s grown on me,” I admit. “It sounds classy. Not too feminine or masculine. Just right.”
I balked at first. Did I want Bob Dylan haunting me? Dad was obsessed with Dylan and drilled into me as a kid that I should be honored to carry his name. And me, Rhys Dylan Trenton, giant shithead and lover of beats, argued that a creaky whine was a horrible choice to be the voice of a generation.
That did not pave the way for a better relationship between my father and me. But now that he’s on the mend, the dark periods behind us, we’re bonding. One small step at a time.
“I like it because it links us together, without being obvious,” Dani says. “Only our closest peeps know our middle names.”
“And the R and D also represent our first names,” I point out. “Did you realize that?”
She glances up at me with a look of come on.
“Careful,” I mock-warn. “I might be your lowly assistant on paper, but I wield considerable power.”
She pokes my ribs and laughs. “Are you talking staying power?”
“The first time didn’t count,” I remind her, poking her back.
We’re both chuckling as she sets the hammock in motion, rocking us back and forth. “Every time counts,” she says. “The Rose Dylan agency is a team effort.”
I reach for my phone, buried between our legs. Galvanized. “Then let’s do this. One take. No time to overthink it.”
“Now?” she asks like I’m losing my mind, when, in fact, my head is in the clearest space it's been in years. “I haven’t showered.”
“Me either. Level playing field.”
She blows out a deep breath. Attempts to wrangle her hair. Pulls the blanket over us because she is naked from the waist down. “Okay. Ready.”
I open the camera app like I’ve done a million times. Find the best angle. Against the rising sun, we’re backlit, a little blown out. Time is of the essence.
My finger hovers on the record button, pausing a moment to let the rush of memories spool through my mind. Will I miss this? Maybe here and there. But like Evelyn said, living and dying within your comfort zone cripples your ability to do more. And my man Seneca said it best:
He who is brave is free.
I press record.
“Hey, everyone,” is how I start it. “Long time, no post. As you can see, I have my hands full.” I kiss Dani’s cheek, and she bursts into a nervous giggling fit. Adorable as ever. “I just wanted to say thanks for all your support and love over the years. It’s been a wild ride.I hope I inspired wanderlust and the importance of history. Now it's time for me to carve a new path, and me and my girlfriend have big plans for the world. Right, babe?” I zoom in on Dani, who curls into my chest, mortified with by the close-up. “Oops,” I say. “She’s a little gun-shy on camera. One of the reasons why I’m shutting down this account.”
As soon as those words leave my lips, the weight and significance of the moment hit me unexpectedly. I’m verklempt. A deer in the headlights forced to carry on with a live recording. “Yeah, so…” I clear away the lump thickening my throat. “I’m moving on. We’re moving on. New adventures. New ventures. This is our official goodbye to my old handle, but keep your eyes peeled for the Rose Dylan Agency launching in the new year. You can follow us there.”
I whisper into Dani’s ear, and on the count of three, we both flash my famous two-fingered sign, smiling like idiots as we say, “Peace out! And Happy New Year!”
Thirty seconds later, our goodbye video is out in the universe. Then I shut the phone off. On New Year’s Eve, I’ll delete the account. Start the year fresh on every level.
(And that was my other inspiration for jetting back early from Vancouver—to scrub clean any lingering remnants of Myla before Dani arrived. Dmitri, weasel that he is, informed me that Myla slunk back to Prague to hide under a rock. Her Rhys smear campaign backfired big time, and the privileged gates of Glitterati-land slammed shut in her face. And for good reason. All the posers I used to pal around with have perverted skeletons lurking in their closets that make my drawings look tame.)
But I digress.
Dani and I sway in silence for a long minute. I wait for the bleak nothingness to blanket me—sixteen years of The Trenton Troublemaker, my entire identity, soon to vanish with the press of a button. Tellingly, a weird peace settles over me instead.
“How do you feel?” Dani asks.
“Good,” I admit. “Relieved, kind of.”
She glances up, searching my face for unspoken truths. “It might hit you later, like an aftershock.”
“Bring it on,” I say, snugging her closer. “I have my safe zone right here.”
(Little did I know that this post would become my most-watched ever, with over ten thousand comments. It spreads like wildfire across mainstream media. Fucking CNN picks it up. Our new agency explodes from that level of free exposure.)
“We’ll have to brainstorm a great tagline for our agency,” Dani says, moving right along. My efficient, can-do woman. “Something memorable. Catchy.”
“What about An intoxicating pairing ?”
“That’s Evelyn’s line, you brat!” she says, giving my ribs another hard jab. “Sounds like you and she are angling for my job.”
“No,” I chuckle, bumping her to one side, “but I do need you at a different angle.”
She inhales with gleeful, childlike wonder. “Does this finally mean…?”
Of all the drawings that went public, her favorite remains the one of me going down on her on this very hammock, on this very patch of grass.
“Are you ready to break again?” I tease, her slick sensitive parts the obvious answer. My rascal hand, always up to no good, has zeroed in on the mother lode.
“I’m always ready for you.”
With a smile I recognize as dangerous, she pops off my hoodie, rearranging herself in the hammock widthwise, legs spread and dangling off the side.Using the hoodie to protect my knees, I kneel in front of my muse, my everything. I spread her legs wider, as wide as the hammock allows. Dani gazes into my eyes with such naked acceptance, so happy and relaxed that I feel strangely out of sorts. Me, responsible for that look of utter serenity? I try to catch my runaway breath, but it’s galloping too fast, like my heart.
I ache everywhere. For her. For us. Our life together.
“I love you, Dani Rose.”
“I love you, Rhys Dylan,” she whispers back.
The sun rises behind her, casting us both in warm, golden rays. A cloudless sky of blue waits for us to welcome the morning.
And welcome it, we do.