Epilogue #1
Skylar
Killer Distiller was a brick building painted fire truck red with black awnings and outdoor seating on the sidewalk. The east side was all glass so you could see the production area with all the distilling equipment, lit up but empty now since it was nine on a Thursday night. The west side was the bar, not as clean as a touristy tap room but not as cramped and dim as a typical bar, and the walls were a boggling collage of punk, goth and horror art.
Ezra would rather wax his chest than go in here under normal circumstances, but I loved it. As soon as I’d seen the name and squealed at how cool it was, I went inside, and the first thing I saw was an old-school message board. Dead center had been a flyer for Thursday pub quiz league and I’d shown up the next Thursday and found a team short a body. That first night, I dazzled my new teammates with my random knowledge about everything, and they’d embraced me just the way I’d been hoping my grad school cohort would.
Auden, Oscar and Keats kicked ass and before the first night was over, I’d been an official member of Team Wildfucker. Tonight was the Fall Final of the quiz league and we were neck and neck with Team Bowtie, drinking beer and laughing between rounds.
“What do you mean, seven feet tall!” I gasped at Auden.
Auden, who had grown up in Wildflower and transferred to undergrad here for his senior year, which was a ballsy move I admired, rolled his eyes at me. “Bean is six foot, eleven and three-quarters inches tall, is what I mean, precisely,” he retorted, spilling the tea about yet another local, this one Bean, one of Killer Distiller’s owners. “I swear, he was six foot when we were thirteen. They wouldn’t even let him play sports because all the other parents were afraid he’d accidentally squish their kids. Like he could hurt a fly.”
“I’d let him squish the shit out of me,” Keats moaned theatrically.
Oscar clapped his hands over his ears, turning beet red. He was the only one of us who wasn’t in school, but he owned a new, super-cute bookstore just down the street. I suspected he was a certified genius and knew every answer, except that he was easily flustered and second-guessed himself. “ Keats ! Aren’t you dating Kirby Hoy?” he squeaked.
“I don’t date ,” Keats said, blanching. “I ate his ass like it was dessert at a five-star Michelin restaurant a few glorious times, until he went exclusive with Nessa Hillman.”
I giggled into my beer. “I’m sure you’ll find another ass to ruin with your tongue soon.”
“Who says I haven’t already?” he said with a smirk, tossing back his dirty blond hair.
“Okay, quiz masters!” the emcee shouted into her mic. “Time for the final Final round!”
Everyone cheered and I basked in all the friendly competition and excited conversation. The quiz league, and other nights out with these three plus some of their other friends, fed my social butterfly energy, but it didn’t take up too much of my free time. Ezra had a lot on his plate between his kids, the vet clinic, and me, and he enjoyed the shit of his well-deserved alone time too. So I liked only having one or two commitments a week outside of grad school so I could be flexible and see him when it worked best for him.
My goal was for us to be ready to live together when my lease was up next August, which was still nine months away and felt like an eternity, but I could be patient. Ezra needed the time to settle into the new routine we were building and be completely confident that I wasn’t going to change my mind and leave Wildflower when I finished grad school. There was no way I was going to change my mind, but he was cautious and a relationship this serious was new to me, so I understood. I still took every opportunity to gush about everything I loved about Ezra and Wildflower. And I deserved the time to keep growing all the roots I’d planted here and flourish even more before I did move in.
“Skylar,” Auden said, snapping his fingers in front of my face. “Are you drunk?”
“Kind of,” I laughed, “but I’m back, sorry. What’s the final category?”
“Professor Fine,” Auden said, biting his lip and groaning like a hussy.
I had no idea what that meant, but I was so game!
“Question one!” the emcee shouted. “What is Professor Fine’s astrological sign?”
“What the hell?” I laughed as we all hunched in close.
“Professor Fine is a legendary undergrad professor of vocal performance,” Oscar explained quickly in a hushed, awed tone. “He’s been here about ten years now.”
Keats snorted and added the vital bit of, “Legendarily a fucking smoke show .”
“I bet he’s a Libra,” Auden declared like he was the master of astrology.
“Well, this is a bullshit category,” I said, trying to sound huffy but just laughing.
“Put Libra down, Oscar,” Auden said.
Oscar dutifully put down Libra, since it wasn’t like this was common knowledge.
The rest of the questions were just as ridiculous, but I loved it, loved that no one was taking this too seriously, that the point was to hang out with friends, answer random questions, and have our championship fate decided by this infamous Professor Fine.
By the time Team Bowtie eked out the win by two damn points, I was buzzed and happy, and bounced up to give hugs and kisses before scurrying outside where Ezra was waiting. I was so happy, I didn’t even whine melodramatically when I left Killer Distiller and was fucking rudely smacked in the face by the freezing Colorado winter night. I zipped my coat up until it was jabbing my throat and pulled my double-thick knit beanie over my hair.
“Skylar,” Ezra called, and I looked down the street until I found his truck, window rolled down like it was fucking eighty degrees out, waving at me with a sleepy smile.
I wanted to run to him, but I had slipped on ice last weekend and still had the bruised ass—and ego—to prove it, so I took exaggerated, slightly staggering steps over to him.
He hopped down and opened the door for me, casual as you please in jeans, boots and a hoodie, and caught me when I burrowed right into him, my nose already frozen.
“Save me, Ezra!” I exclaimed. “I’m going to turn into an ice sculpture any second!”
Ezra sighed, but then he grinned and assured me, “A sexy ice sculpture.”
“Scandalous,” I sang as he boosted me up into the truck, grabbing my ass way more than was strictly necessary to be a gallant gentleman and help me into the truck.
Once he was behind the wheel, the heat blasting for me, he asked, “How did it go?”
“We got the silver,” I crowed, almost smacking him with my enthusiastic fist pumping. “Silver is so much better than gold,” I said thoughtfully, “I don’t know why it’s not the metal for first-place medals. Whoa, metal, medal. Wonder if medal is named that because of metal… What was I saying? Oh yeah, silver is better. Look at your silver,” I said admiringly, “that right there proves silver is the sexier metal. Although… gingers are sexy too…”
When I remembered to breathe, Ezra chuckled warmly, his hand smoothing over my thigh and cupping it with his most amazing, delicious, gentle firmness. “I love your mind.”
“I love your ass,” I reciprocated happily. “Oh! Keats was talking about eating ass and it made me realize that we’ve never done that!”
The truck swerved sharply.
“Ezra, be careful!” I gasped. “You called me precious cargo, remember?”
“Fuck, baby,” he rasped out. “You can’t just say shit like that while I’m driving.”
I collapsed into giggles, realizing why he’d swerved. “I’ll wait until we’re in bed,” I promised him in my most prim, serious tone, then stuffed my hands over my mouth to try to hide more giggles. My mouth was salivating at the idea of rimming him already, and I hoped he was too, even though he was white knuckling the steering wheel, eyes dark and serious.
As soon as we were in his bed, me with my socks still on like an animal because my feet just got too cold without them, even under his thick, warm blankets, I wriggled against him and looked up at him with big, pleading eyes. “Can we talk about it now, Ezra? Please?”
He shut me up with a kiss, grabbing my ass with both hands, both of us groaning.
But both of us were too horned up—and I was too buzzed, according to him, the silly, caring, sweet, amazing love of my life—to talk about it, or to do anything more than kiss and hump each other frantically until we came with loud shouts. I hummed sleepily as we came down, bundling Ezra up in my arms because we loved switching up who was the big spoon.
“Ezra?” I whispered into the back of his neck.
“Mm, baby?”
“I’m really glad I found my new friends,” I confessed. “For a little bit at the beginning of school—when I wasn’t obsessing over this hot, straight vet—I was worried that you would be my only friend. You’re my best friend, but it wouldn’t be fair if you were my only friend.”
Wedging himself deeper back into my spooning, he said, “I wasn’t worried for a second. Everyone can see how brilliant and fun and kind you are, and your cohort is just made up of buttfaces, as Naomi would say. Well, I was worried you’d make a hundred friends and then not need me for anything except my superior sexual prowess,” he added self-deprecatingly.
I squeezed him gently. “I love you so much, Ezra. Nothing is better than being with you, whether we’re making love, walking the pets, studying and napping side by side, or watching movies with your kids. I love that we respect what we each need, too. You respect that I need more friends and social time, and I respect that you need a few friends and plenty of time for yourself. It’s never going to stop being the most precious thing to me.”
“I love you,” he said simply.
I smiled and kissed his neck and shoulders languidly while he purred and went lax with sleep. I might need to use thirty words to say I love you, but I only needed him to use three.