Epilogue #2
“Well, sweetheart, it seems like people like you a fuckuva lot more than they like me,” he said, shooting me a smile as he turned the laptop to face me.
He clicked a button, refreshing the video, then stabbed a finger at the screen, showing me the views.
“Two million?” I asked, eyes going round. “That can’t be right.” Not that quickly.
“Oh, it is. And the comments are all people saying they’re in love with you and that they need to see more of you trying new things.”
“No way. I sucked at, like, everything,” I said, shaking my head at the thumbnail of the video he’d uploaded. Me lying on the bright yellow surfboard in the sand in my green one-piece, trying—and failing epically—to try to push myself up to stand like I’d seen Atlas do a hundred effortless times.
“I think that’s what they like. You’re relatable,” he said, scrolling down, and showing me all the gushing comments about me.
My confidence had been climbing since moving to Navesink Bank. It definitely got a boost since getting with Atlas.
But I could feel it notching up even more as I read all the lovely comments that complete strangers had to say about me.
She’s the sweetest thing ever. Marry her.
Omg, she’s like so pretty.
I know she doesn’t mean to be hilarious, but I’m cryingggg.
Look at her dimples when she smiles at you (heart eye emoji)
“So, what I’m saying is… it seems like we have some travel plans to make,” Atlas said, clicking open a new window, and bringing up a search engine. “What do you want to learn next? Skiing? Bungee jumping? Zip lining?”
I never imagined there would be a time in my life where I could not only live as freely as I wanted, but that I could do it out in the open for others to see. Without fear.
Sure, I’d done a lot of the work myself to get to this point.
But Atlas had been right there with me, pushing me, building me up, reassuring me that I was safe and free to do whatever my heart desired.
And my heart desired one thing above all else.
Him.
“Anything,” I said, leaning my head into his shoulder. “So long as you’re there with me.”
Atlas - 12 years
“I’m jealous of an eight-year-old,” AJ said, shaking her head as we watched our son on his surfboard.
AJ was tanned and glowing with a belly as round as the beach ball our four-year-old was chasing down the beach.
“Because he can actually lay on his stomach?” I teased, standing beside her. “Or because he didn’t inherit his mother’s noodle arms?”
“Both,” she admitted as we both watched our son pop up in one smooth, graceful motion, standing on his board, and leaning his body back and forth like he was actually catching a wave.
He looked like, well, both of us.
He was tall and lean with more muscles than you’d expect on a child, thanks to the very active lifestyle he’d been raised in. He had dark hair and eyes, but a set of dimples just like his mother.
Those fucking things let the kid get away with a lot more than he should.
And, I imagined, in fifteen years or so, they would get him all the girls his heart desired.
He was a lot like I’d been at his age. Daring, reckless, never afraid of a challenge.
But he had more roots than I had, thanks to his mother, who had been very dedicated to creating a home base for all of us, so that no matter how much we traveled and explored, we had a place to come back to, to settle in to.
Turning, I saw our four-year-old grab the beach ball and start running back toward us.
He was still round-faced and muscle-free. But with how much he liked to follow around his big brother, I had no doubt that he would be learning to surf and skate and bike like nobody’s business once his limbs lengthened out a bit.
“So what do you think?” I asked, reaching over to rest a hand on AJ’s belly. “Does Mark finally get to win a bet, or what?” I asked, feeling the baby kick restlessly against her stomach. Like it was ready to get out and get moving. We were a week past her due date. So it probably was.
“I think Mark’s losing streak is going to continue,” she said, pressing her hand over mine. “I’m pretty sure it’s another boy.”
We figured when we’d started this whole parenting journey—thanks mostly to a drunken night trying to warm each other up in a ski lodge in Colorado where we’d stopped using protection—that, given my own family dynamics, we were likely to have a bunch of boys.
We didn’t care what we had. We just wanted them healthy and happy.
We’d spaced them out. Each four years apart. It gave us time to bond, and figure out how to navigate traveling with extra passengers.
It got a little harder with each kid. But we were determined to give our kids the world. As well as a home they wanted to come back to over and over afterward.
A home we’d had to put two additions on so far. We’d considered just selling, but something had always stopped us.
“This house is what brought us together,” AJ had said, all teary-eyed with her early pregnancy hormones. “I don’t think we should leave it.”
So we didn’t.
We just blew it out to add a few more bedrooms. Another bathroom. A kitchen big enough for two or more people to actually move around in, a proper dining room, and an extra family/toy room for the kids.
It was there in that house where I’d met AJ. Where I’d slowly fallen in love with her as my body forced me to slow down and learn what ‘home’ meant.
We’d built love there.
Then a life there.
And, finally, a family there.
Woof!
An alarmed little bark had both of us turning to see the Golden Retriever mix, Delilah, using her body to push our four-year-old away from something on the beach.
“Probably a jellyfish,” I said. “I’ll go look. Good girl, Delilah,” I said, patting her head.
She was still all long-limbed and gangly, barely a year old, and full of energy and love for the kids.
We still had Samson, though he was kind of a couch potato now in his old age. A little blind, very deaf, very spoiled, and still a part of the family.
We’d gotten Delilah on a whim when there’d been an adoption event at the doggy daycare AJ used to work at.
We hadn’t been sure if it was the right time for a new dog, what with Samson old and slow. But the kids had fallen in love with her. And we figured having another dog in the house would be good for all of us.
Her presence seemed to calm Samson, who no longer felt the need to try to look after the kids, or bark at the delivery men, or check the perimeter of the yard. He left all of that up to Delilah now.
“They sting, remember?” I said to my son, pointing toward the jellyfish.
“Like a bee?” he asked, making a buzzing noise. He’d been stung on his foot not long back, and it had become a teachable moment.
“Like a hundred bees all at once,” I told him, picking him up, and bringing him over to his brother who’d now abandoned his surfboard to start building something out of the wet sand.
I’d opened my business not far from where we were standing, lucking out when a local business decided to sell and move somewhere they could live on a beach year-round.
It had cost a small fortune. But after the success of our travel vlogs, and some careful investments, we’d been able to swing it.
And now, several years into it, we had something really good going.
Sure, it was only income in the summers.
But, fuck, was the money good in a beach town where locals and tourists alike flocked to the area to bake on the beach, play in the waves, and learn to engage in some fun water sports along the way.
It allowed us to have a mostly calm, quiet fall and winter where we could all cocoon up, enjoy the holidays, take a winter vacation to somewhere real snowy, since Navesink Bank wasn’t exactly known for much accumulation, and make plans for the coming summer.
There was still travel.
And I still enjoyed it.
In fact, since I’d just about seen it all in my day, it was much more fun to show the world to AJ. And then the kids. To watch them experience all the things I’d set out to do when I was younger.
More and more these days, though, I found my comfort at home.
With my kids.
With my wife.
With my siblings and their families.
AJ told me once. About the night I went to track down Joss, and had the girls come and babysit her. About how they’d broken into the storage room and seen all my gear. And how AJ had worried that by falling in love with her, she was shrinking my world, that she was taking things away from me.
And how my sister had told her that was the wrong way to look at it. That what she was doing, instead, was showing me a different kind of adventure.
I moved behind AJ, wrapping one arm around her belly, and the other over her chest, and stood there watching as our older son buried our younger son in the sand, feeling our third baby—likely another son—kick against my arm.
That was exactly what this was.
My world wasn’t shrunken.
If anything, it had expanded to realms I never could have anticipated, ones I wouldn’t trade anything in the world for.
Yes, it was an entirely different kind of adventure.
But it was one I was never going to get sick of.
“Ah, Atlas,” AJ said, voice a little tight, setting me on edge.
“Yeah?”
“We should get the kids in the car. And then drop them off to Kingston and Savvy,” she said, turning to shoot me a little smile. “I think Mark is about to lose that bet. Tonight.”
XX