Epilogue
CHELSEA
FOUR MONTHS LATER
“Is it okay if I objectify you right now?” I called to Seamus from my perch on our new hammock, twenty feet from where he knelt; shirtless, with a hammer hooked on his tool belt. “Because you look incredible, and I can barely move.”
“You just rest up,” Seamus said. “I like seeing you relax.”
“If you insist,” I said. I stretched languorously.
My body was exhausted. Seamus had just gotten back to town two nights ago, and we hadn’t exactly spent those sleeping.
Plus, Lola and I had just gotten back from a three-hour trail hike and run.
It was late, and the shadows were starting to stretch, but the mid-August sun had been too hot to run in any earlier.
I should have maybe started on scrounging up some food, but after downing our weight in water, we’d come down here to the ridge to check on Seamus. AKA flop in the hammock contentedly.
As Seamus started hammering again, I looked out over the view, my hand stroking Lola’s ruff.
This—this was my happy place. This wasn't Seamus's original hammock on the back deck, but one we’d strung between two trees down on the ridge, my favorite place to hang out while watching Seamus work on his ‘vacation project.’
“You know the point of a two-week vacation is to relax,” I’d told him when he’d come home with all the lumber.
“Building is relaxing,” he said. “I haven’t held an actual hammer in months.”
I’d helped out at first. I had zero experience with construction, but I was a quick study, at least at the jobs he had me doing.
I knew I was slowing him down though, so mostly, over this two-week stint he was home from his Jewel Lakes job, I planned to hang out with Lola, answering only the most vital emails for Chelsea Kelly Events Management, and offering moral support.
I was on vacation too. Pacing yourself is key, my therapist told me. There’s no hurry.
When I told her my fears about one of us dying, she just smiled. “Why be held hostage by a possibility, when your life is right now?”
It took me a while to settle into that thought, but she was right. The only thing I regretted about time now was that I’d wasted all those years not seeing her earlier.
“If you say so,” I smiled. Soon, I’d get up and go have a shower and think about dinner. Ordering in sounded good. But for now, I wanted to watch the love of my life building a piece of our future.
The structure Seamus was working on was starting to take shape. He said it would be ready for painting by next week. He’d taken a break from hammering and was currently standing with one knee perched on a stack of wood, making markings on it with a flat pencil.
Seamus looked over at me now, wiping sweat from his brow with his forearm. “I like watching you relax.”
“I like watching you work.”
And I did. His back glistened with sweat, and as he lifted a heavy piece of lumber into place, his forearms flexed, hard and veiny.
I swallowed, sitting up and angling my head.
It hadn’t been easy, being partially long-distance these past several months.
At first, I’d spent a lot of time in New York State, staying with him and Lola.
But when Sarah, the new employee at Reilly who’d been temporarily living in his place moved out, he’d insisted I move in, with Lola.
He came down on the weekends, and on those days, we were inseparable.
We did everything together: walking, talking, cooking, lying in the hammock on the porch. Making love for hours.
But I did love watching him work, and it wasn’t just because he was half naked and I wanted him so badly.
I loved watching him work because I loved Seamus Reilly.
I loved him here, in our—our—incredible backyard with a view of all of Quince Valley.
I loved that he was building a gazebo because the day we came home for this break and were lying in bed, he mentioned he wanted to build it one day.
I said why not this day? Only half joking, and he’d met my eye and said okay.
Just like that.
“When did you know you were ready?” Winona asked me over lunch the other day. We’d started hanging out this spring, and as it turned out, she was becoming as good a friend to me as Mia. “To tell that stinker Seamus you loved him, I mean.”
“The storage locker,” I said without hesitation. “And the drawing.”
She’d raised her eyebrows, insisting I go on. Winona, as it turned out, was a secret romantic, who on top of plumbing and poker, loved romance books and matchmaking. “I just love love,” she said, though she refused to talk about the word in the context of herself.
Winona, who’d been slurping the last of her strawberry milkshake, paused. “The what now?”
I laughed. “Four months ago,” I said, “Eli told me about a storage locker.”
Eli had finally opened the letter from his ex.
She’d written him to tell him she was going to be going through their storage locker and throwing out anything he didn’t claim in the next month.
He explained that when they split, he didn’t want to go through any of their things to divide them up.
Kelly got pissed and said she’d put it in a storage locker until he was mature enough to deal with them.
Then he confessed he’d been the one paying for it.
“You mean you’ve been paying fees for two years on a whole house’s worth of stuff because you don’t want to deal with it?”
But I’d been incredulous more than judgmental. I saw how this seemingly innocuous thing had been weighing so heavily on him. He’d put off dealing with this painful part of his past, and the locker filled with all those memories had sat there in the back of his mind like a festering wound.
“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” I asked. We’d been having heart-to-hearts over coffee for months by then.
“Chels, I haven’t even told my therapist about it.” Eli said, his expression one of deep shame. “He keeps saying I’ve been making such great strides… I didn’t want to disappoint him with this thing I can’t seem to deal with.”
My heart hurt for Eli. Those same words from Mom I’d remembered myself came to mind. The fastest way to heal is straight through the pain.
I’d been leaning on those words, facing the hard stuff head on, since the moment Seamus left. But when Eli told me about the locker, I realized I’d been avoiding the thing scaring me the most: acknowledging that I was ready.
Ready to go to Seamus, to see if he’d still have me. To see if I wasn’t too late.
Truthfully, I’d been ready—on paper at least—for a while now.
The first few days after Seamus left, I’d given myself the week to grieve.
It was a strange process, I’d discovered, because I wasn’t just upset about Seamus leaving.
I was grieving the fact that I’d finally be leaving the old me behind for good.
I loved that part of me, messy as she was.
She’d done the best she could with what she had. But it was time to say goodbye.
When the week was up, I got to work. I made a list of all the things I was wanted to do: Write a business plan for my new events business.
Take on a few clients. Quit my job at the Rolling Hills.
Start running again. Start going to therapy.
Make art. Make real friends. Spend time with Cass, Eli, Griff, Jude, and Dad.
Visit Mom’s grave. Get a house. Get a dog.
I posted that list on my fridge, and then I went through the list one by one, making notes about my progress in my sketchbook in both words and art.
One of the first things I did was visit Mom’s grave, with Dad.
He’d brought me a gift—a box so heavy we’d had to lift it into my trunk together.
When I opened the lid, I found rows upon rows of notebooks.
Only these weren’t like my sketchbooks; these were lined notebooks, filled with Mom’s neat handwriting.
Her diaries, dating all the way back to her childhood.
“She kept them the way you kept sketchbooks,” Dad said. “I never read them, and you don’t have to either, but I thought you should have them.”
I was so shocked, both at the diaries and the sketchbook comment, that it took me a moment to understand this was what he’d been trying to give me when I’d been so caught up in Seamus, when I’d kept putting him off. “I’m sorry, Dad.”
“I am too, Peanut. For not trying harder.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant about the diaries, or something else. I didn’t ask.
By some miracle, I matched with an amazing therapist in Greenville in week two—one Mia recommended. I went through all the items on that list, the easy and the hard, the straightforward and the complex. I cried, I got scared, and I failed at times, but I got up again.
By the time springtime rolled around, I’d checked off every item on the list except the last two: the house and the dog. When I got to those, I froze, my ambition suddenly stalled.
At first, I’d told myself it was because I’d already filled my calendar with clients at Chelsea Kelly Events Management—several of whom had come through Jamie’s recommendation at the party, even though I hadn’t finished it up myself.
I was just the right amount of busy, and thinking about moving my venture out of my living room and into an office downtown.
The thought of packing up and moving on top of that tipped me into stress territory, which my therapist and I agreed was not the point of this whole exercise.
Plus, Cass was house hunting with Blake.
Maybe that was enough excitement for both of us.
But not being keen on these two important items was just as stressful. This was the final piece. I had to be true to my word to myself.
It wasn’t until the drawing that I understood.