Epilogue
A Year Later
The signing line is impressively long.
James’s hand is warm on my back, rubbing circles as he smiles and talks to one of the coordinators who have been kindly leading us around this year’s annual Meadow Forever festival all day.
When they told us we would have volunteer escorts, I assumed it was just so we would be on time for the various panels James and I agreed to speak at today, but it turns out it was dual-purpose.
There are so many people who want to stop and talk to us.
So many fans of our social media presence, of James’s Hollywood and stage work, and—weirdly—of me.
“You basically got me through freshman year of college,” a woman said to me after the first panel.
The moment the moderator announced the end of questions and began to escort us panelists off the stage, the woman leapt from her front-row seat to stand by the steps.
“I had no friends and no life, but every week it felt like there was a group of friends in my earbuds talking to me about their favorite books. So…thank you.”
I’m glad I can see her in the signing line that winds back and forth in front of the long table that’s been set up for James and me. I hope I’ll get more of a chance to talk to her and tell her how grateful I am to her for listening.
“Nervous?” James whispers in my ear.
I nod.
“Don’t be,” he says. “Most of them are here for me.”
He grunts and laughs when I elbow his rib cage.
“You’ll do great,” he assures me. “You’ve done great all day.”
“Only because you keep plying me with cinnamon rolls,” I say. “Where did you find those anyway? And when did you have a chance to get them without me seeing?”
“There’s this beautiful thing called the Internet. Highly recommend it. You can search for things like ‘bakeries that deliver near me’ and pay an impressively large fee to have them brought just about anywhere.”
I’m more grateful for the sugar rush with every passing hour.
There are endless people here waiting for signatures on the physical audiobook CD cases that just released last week, the promo photo James and I had printed of ourselves last-minute to sell for a small donation to the wolf sanctuary, and one very dedicated lady’s leg cast that she says is just to complete her Arabella-is-also-clumsy cosplay.
But mostly people want to talk. They want to ask questions—Did you really not mean to kiss on camera?
Did you really fall in love on this project?
—and to tell us what The Meadow means to them.
They want to tell James that they’ve already bought tickets to his Chicago Romeo and Juliet directorial debut next month, to tell me that they are counting down the days until my new Meadow Forever podcast—the one the festival is paying me to host—comes online, and to ask if they can be guests.
“Is it going to be like On the Same Page ?” a woman in a bedazzled William shirt asks me. “Either way, I’m here for it.”
“It will be similar,” I say. “We’ll just be using The Meadow specifically as a vehicle to discuss other people’s lives, to gain empathy and understanding through a shared common interest in Arabella and William’s story.”
The woman grins, and I can’t help but grin back.
A year ago this would have seemed impossible.
Even when James and I decided to be “a thing” that we gradually progressed to calling a relationship, there was still so much uncertainty between James’s mom’s house going up for sale, James moving into an apartment in Tatum, and me joining him six months later.
James was still living off his Hollywood checks and I was doing some freelance social media work through connections I’d made with the Meadow audio work, but we still felt in-between, settled in each other but unsettled in the world.
Until James got a call out of the blue from a stage producer in Chicago who, upon finding out James was now a free agent, offered him his own show carte blanche with more to come if it was successful.
On the same day, I got a call from the Meadow Forever people who were very interested in drumming up year-round content to supplement the festival in the form of a podcast, and would I be interested in hosting and helping shape the show?
It felt like magic. It is magic.
Especially because with our new incomes we could afford to buy back James’s mom’s house, to hang our mothers’ matching paintings and shirts side by side in the living room overlooking the babbling brook, and to turn the studio into an office for podcast recording and theater planning.
“Strange the house didn’t sell sooner,” the realtor told us when we came to sign the papers. “Lots of nibbles but never any bites. Something else always came up like a magic trick, and this poor beauty has stood empty.”
I’m still smiling about the impossibility of it all when we get to our hotel that night after the festival and James drags me onto the bed before I even have the chance to take my clothes off.
“I’m gross,” I tell him. “For a state that claims to be so cold, all I did today was sweat. ”
“If you find sweat gross, I have news you might find upsetting in regard to my agenda for the evening,” James says, grinning.
“That’s your pickup line?” I ask, wriggling out of my shirt and sighing when my skin meets the cool sheets. “That’s the best you can do, oh great director and co-writer of the next big thing in Shakespeare adaptations?”
“I was referring to the sauna in the spa downstairs,” James says, affecting an offended air. “But if the lady’s mind has turned to debauchery, who am I to stop her?”
“No saunas or debauchery until I’m showered and fed. In that order.”
“Demanding little thing,” James says into my ear, and he makes it sound like a compliment. “Whatever am I going to do with you?”
“I don’t know,” I say, letting my voice lower suggestively. “I guess…shower me, feed me, and then debauch me? In that order?”
James rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling when does.
“Good thing we have more than just one night,” he says. “Otherwise I’d be rather put out.”
“You’re always put out,” I tease. “It’s like half your personality.”
“And the other half?”
I grin up at him. “Pretending to be put out when really you’re enjoying everything as much as I am and just won’t admit it.”
His hands are warm on my bare back as he pulls me closer.
“Well, we’ve always been good at pretending, haven’t we?”
“Or terrible at pretending, one of the two.”
Somehow, it’s nearly an hour before we order food and I shower, but I don’t mind. Because while my stories might not begin in the right place…I can’t argue with how they end.