Epilogue
15 MONTHS LATER: KAI
K ai was on the floor staring at the ceiling, patiently counting the beams over and over again. He’d been stuck like that for half an hour now. There was no sign of him being able to get up anytime soon, considering his baby was fast asleep on his chest. It was kind of funny to watch Mikey’s little body rising and falling as Kai breathed, the kid absolutely dead to the world. Mikey hadn’t slept great the last few nights. Kai wasn’t going to interrupt the best nap he’d had in days, even if that meant Kai was the mattress.
This sort of thing was his new normal these days, and he loved every second of it. It was strange to love someone so much when eighteen months ago he couldn’t have even imagined living like this. But then he’d learned a whole bunch of lessons about letting go of controlling everything and just jumping in, hadn’t he? Steering away from anything that might possibly go wrong had failed him for decades. In such a short space of time, things had changed so much in a whirlwind of chaos. But learning to trust the process had made Kai happier than he’d ever been before, so he tried his best to pay attention to those lessons.
Amy had moved into the penthouse apartment with him pretty much immediately, and Kai was baffled that he’d ever lived there alone. It had been so big and so empty before. Now there was a kitchen dominated by Amy’s passion for her job, her confidence and experimentation growing wilder by the day, and a nursery down the hall that smelled of their son, where his toys lay scattered in chaos and where he woke gurgling every morning. No wonder Kai had been in a constant state of panicked depression living in this place alone. It had been nothing more than an empty box back then; now it was a home.
Kai had been dwelling on all these changes, and his thoughts had spiraled in and out of the same topics since he’d been trapped by a sleeping Mikey, but they were interrupted when he heard Amy arrive home along with the rustle of grocery bags.
“Kai?”
“Hi,” he called, not concerned about waking Mikey up. The kid could sleep through a jackhammer. It was wild. You just couldn’t move him; that was the thing. They’d had his hearing checked and he was completely fine, just impervious to noise once asleep. But there were worse quirks the kid could have had.
“Where are you?” Amy asked, sounding confused.
“On the floor.”
Suddenly, Amy was standing above him with a wry smile on her face and an opened bag of potato chips in her hand. “Are you guys having fun?”
“Mikey’s having the time of his life.”
“Still not bothered by noise, huh?” she asked. “Because I could definitely have been quieter coming in.”
“Nope,” Kai said. “I think he actually likes it when I talk. He can feel the rumble in my chest or something.”
Amy sat down on the floor beside them. “Do you want a potato chip?” she asked and held one out above his mouth. Kai opened up obediently, and she dropped the snack right onto his tongue.
“Thanks.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I think about half an hour, but honestly I’ve lost all concept of space and time. I am just a speck on this planet, my sole purpose to be a living mattress for a very small person.”
“I mean, we live to serve his every whim and need,” Amy said with a serious nod. “He deserves nothing less.”
“I serve my master humbly and dutifully.”
Amy chuckled and ate some more of her potato chips. Mikey was still not bothered by the noise in the slightest, just so long as he was left on Kai’s chest.
Amy had been working a lot this week. Well, she worked a lot most weeks, but the last few days in particular had been wild for her. Kai had taken on the main parent duties, hence laying on the floor as Mikey’s mattress. At the moment it was mostly just meeting with clients and designing menus months in advance, giving Amy enough time to source ingredients and schedule casual staff for the various dates.
Despite the shrimp debacle that Kai had heard so much about, the charity gala she’d catered for had propelled her business to new heights, and she’d been booked up ever since. She had to hire new staff immediately, people who would come on the day of the event to help prep and finish off all the food. But Andy was her right-hand man. Kai was surprised that when Amy had decided to officially take on employees, she’d immediately sought out some teenager who had been a waiter at the charity gala. Then he heard again about the fiasco with the “contaminated” shrimp because, whether she admitted it or not, Amy was kind of traumatized by the whole thing. She insisted that she owed this kid the equivalent of a blood debt.
Despite his doubts, Kai saw why soon enough. The kid was a hard worker and had a heart of gold. On the brief occasion that Andy had met Jason, Jason had jokingly tried to poach him for his own business, mostly to tease Amy. Andy had stood loyally by Amy’s side, the joke passing right over his head, proclaiming that it was the catering life for him, so an office job was not in his future. In reality, it was a mashup of both a job and an apprenticeship. At least twice a week, they would have cooking lessons, where Amy would teach Andy everything from how to debone a chicken to helping him study for food safety accreditation. Kai loved those sessions — even though he wasn’t directly a part of them — when Andy would appear in their penthouse kitchen and Amy would patiently teach him everything she knew, while Kai observed quietly in the background, pretending that he wasn’t observing at all. He loved it because he could see a glimpse into the future when Mikey would be a teenager and Amy would be teaching him the same things. A future where they could have full conversations with their kid and get to know who he was as a person.
But Kai tried not to dwell on the future too much; it would be here in the blink of an eye, and he knew he would just be pining for the past again. For now, he was content to have Mikey, tiny and pudgy and a blank slate of a human being, sleeping on his chest on the living room floor.
“We’re going to have to book you a chiropractor appointment or something,” Amy said dryly, watching her sleeping son with a smile on her face.
“I don’t know. I think forty-five minutes on the floor is doing wonders for my back.”
“We’ll see if you feel the same tomorrow morning.”
“You’re so pessimistic.”
“I’m realistic.”
“Ah-huh.”
The truth was Amy had never been happier, and it showed. She was no longer so closed off with a million walls locking everybody out. And it still pained her to receive help — definitely pained her to ask for it — but at the very least she could see how much easier her life was with a helping hand every now and then.
But her career wasn’t the only thing in their lives that had morphed into something completely new. Jason and Kai had combined forces and never looked back, and Kai, too, was amazed at the difference having someone to lean on had made. And it wasn’t just at work that he found himself able to lean on Jason. Jason had apparently meant every word when he said he’d admired Kai for coming clean about the whole misguided engagement plan. After that, there was no reason to keep anything from the other man, and while it helped their businesses immensely, Kai found himself with a real friendship that grew stronger by the day. Funny how close you could get to someone when you didn’t have a web of lies hanging between you.
Jess had filled the same role for Amy, the two of them inseparable. Not to mention that Jason and Jess had been nothing but supportive during Amy’s pregnancy. They had seen Kai and Amy at rock bottom across that restaurant table and had decided they were still worth the work that friendship entailed. Kai was determined to spend the rest of his life making it up to them, even if he had no idea how he was going to achieve that. But the very least he could do was keep trying.
Really, in hindsight, Kai was amazed at how chicken he’d been. Both he and Amy had been fearful of sharing their true feelings for so, so long, that honestly it was kind of impressive. They could probably qualify for some sort of world record. It was obvious that they’d been completely in love with each other since high school, and God, they had wasted all those years not talking and thinking that staying apart was all for some greater good. They were ridiculous, the both of them.
But at least they were here now, no matter how ridiculously long it took them. Mikey was here, too, and Kai didn’t even want to think about a universe where he wasn’t on the floor with the little baby on his chest.
Amy ate a few more potato chips, content just to sit quietly next to them, not needing to say anything to fill the silence. Kai had one of those moments where you can stand outside yourself and see how perfect a moment is, where you know that you will be thinking about this moment for years to come.
So in favor of his new motto of jumping in feet first and not clinging to what should be done, he decided on a whim that right now was the perfect time to ask the question that had been burning on his tongue for the last few days, ever since he’d picked up the ring from the jewelers. He’d decided he would just ask it when it felt right . And that was now.
“Hey,” he said. “I have a question.”
“Oh, really?” Amy asked, finished with her potato chips and lying down beside him, turning her face to look at him eye to eye, that smile still on her face. Yeah, it was definitely the right time.
“It’s a very important question,” he said, knowing Amy wouldn’t take his grave tone seriously.
He was right. She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Sure, it is,” she said, still smiling. Kai was glad she smiled so much these days. He never wanted it to stop.
“I mean it.”
“It’s so serious,” she continued, “that the best time to bring it up is on the floor with Mikey drooling onto your shirt?”
“Yep. This question is so important that it can’t possibly be asked at any other time.”
“Oh wow. So it’s super important.”
“The most important question I’m ever going to ask.”
“Well, you better ask it then.”
He took a moment just to take in her smile for a second longer. Then he asked, knowing it would change the direction of their lives once again.
“Amy, will you marry me?”
Her smile flickered in surprise, and she blinked.
“What?”
“Will you marry me?”
“Are you seriously asking me, or is this a joke?”
“I’m seriously asking. I said it was a serious question. It’s not my fault you didn’t believe me.”
It was a rare occasion that Amy was speechless, but here she was, staring at him with her mouth open like a fish. She was silent for long enough that a spark of worry started up in Kai.
“It’s not a joke,” he said. “I promise.”
“No — I mean, yes, I’ll marry you, but… what?”
She sat up, staring down at him with a stunned expression.
“Now are you being serious?” he asked her. “Is that an actual yes, or are you teasing me?”
“It’s an actual yes, Kai. Yes, I will actually marry you, seriously and not in a joking way.”
With that she leaned down and kissed him, her hand on his cheek, and Kai knew he had picked the perfect moment. He knew with crystal clarity that he would remember this for the rest of his life. Kai jostled around enough that it finally woke Mikey, who held his head up with wide eyes and an open mouth. His surprised face looked so similar to his mother right beside him that Kai couldn’t help but laugh. Mikey joined in, gurgling with a big, gummy smile and crawling off of Kai’s chest to give Amy a hug.
“It’s definitely not a joke?” Amy asked, settling Mikey into the nest of her crossed legs.
“Why do you keep asking if it’s a joke?”
“Because it just came out of nowhere ,” she said, in a little bit of shock but laughing and grinning the whole time regardless. “We were just on the floor, and Mikey was making a puddle on your shirt. I wasn’t expecting it.”
“It was the right time to ask,” Kai said with a shrug, knowing that there would never have been a better time. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
What with it being a completely spontaneous time to propose to Amy, he didn’t exactly have the ring on hand that second . But it was close by in his office drawer, in a small navy box with gold trim. He padded back into the living room where Amy and Mikey still sat, and oh, man… He could have broken down and cried right there with how perfect they both looked. Instead, he managed to stay composed, somehow, and sat opposite them.
At that high school reunion so long ago, they had joked about getting the imaginary engagement ring resized, about how obnoxiously large the diamond was, and how you could sucker punch someone with it, it was so big. But a ring like that wasn’t the ring Kai had bought.
He opened the box, and he knew he’d picked the right one when Amy let out a soft little gasp without realizing it. It was a soft, warm gold with a deep blue sapphire right in the center, surrounded by diamonds, yes, but small ones creating a border around the blue stone. It was dainty and simple but beautiful, nonetheless. As soon as Kai had laid eyes on it, he had thought of Amy, and that’s how he’d known it was the one. It seemed like the strategy had paid off because she was speechless again, the second time in one day. That must be some sort of record.
“Here,” he said encouragingly and took the ring out of its box. “It’s yours.”
Amy still said nothing, just watching him with a soft smile on her face and Mikey in her lap as Kai reached over and took her left hand in his, slipping the engagement ring onto her ring finger.
“Do you like it?”
“I love it,” she said, her voice coming back to her. “And it’s the perfect size.”
“I maybe measured your finger while you were asleep.”
“You didn’t?”
“I did.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Are you impressed?”
“I really am, actually. That’s very stealthy of you.”
“It was Jason’s idea. That’s what he did before getting Jess’s engagement ring.”
“Well, speaking of Jess,” Amy said. “I better go call her because she will want to know immediately. ”
“Every minute that passes will be taken as a great insult,” Kai agreed, only half joking.
“Right? Come on, bub,” she said, hoisting Mikey up with her as she stood. “Let’s go and video call your auntie and prepare your eardrums because she’s absolutely going to lose her mind.”
Kai sat there for a moment longer, soaking it all in, committing this moment to memory and making sure to savor it before it slipped away. The sound of Mikey gurgling, Jess’s voice over the phone and then her squeals of delight, the afternoon sun floating in through the windows and the knowledge that someday soon Amy would be his wife. It was all perfect, and even though he didn’t quite know how he deserved it, he was never, ever going to let it go.
The End