Epilogue
Three years later
“Olivia, slow down!” Dom is trailing behind me, but I can’t slow down. We’re on the way to film the first scene. “Quinton already said he wasn’t going to start without you!”
“I know!” I shout behind me but I’m nearly breathless. Our driver got a flat tire on the way to the set. Of all the days, this can’t be the one that I’m running behind.
“My love, they’re not going to start without you.” Dom grabs my hand, urging me to slow down.
We’re running down the side of the highway. Dom is jogging behind me, insisting we can just grab another ride to the set, but we’re only a mile off the exit we needed to take, and I don’t mind running the rest of the way. I can’t stand thinking of all those actors and actresses sitting on the set in the heat, waiting for me to start filming.
“I can’t have Travis Simpson and Ashley Kent waiting for me while they burn up on the beach!” I call back to him.
My film, The Best Wrong Move , is officially starting production today. One silly little flat tire could never keep me away from that.
Just a few more minutes of sprinting and we’ll be there.
After leaving Quinton, Selma, and Dom that night — almost exactly three years ago — I was filled with a desperate kind of craze, practically foregoing eating or sleeping in order to write the new script I was always meant to write.
The one the universe practically threw in my lap.
The story starts out with a girl proposing to a boy in front of the whole world, becoming famous after everything in her life failed. Ultimately, she runs away to fall in love with the man she was always meant to be with, working feverishly to start her life over somewhere beautiful.
The girl ends up leaving New York to follow her dream, draped in flowy kaftans while sitting in a beautiful emerald bay by the sea for the rest of her life. She lives with the man she loves, and eventually decides to marry him on their very own hill outside their home, underneath a hearty grove of mango trees.
They pick ripe fruit for their breakfast each morning, after passionately making love every night. And the girl eventually adds a little writing cottage nearby, surrounded by a breathtaking garden, with the money that she earned from selling her first full-length feature film to a famous director, the one who just so happens to be her new, eccentric brother-in-law.
It’s the first of many stories I’ve got stored up in my head, now that I have all the time in the world to sit and write, while my husband tends to the beautiful garden growing around me.
But the biggest secret of all?
I’ve already let Quinton in on the next story I started writing a few weeks ago. It’s the sequel to my first. And he’s promised to help me surprise Dom with it when we arrive on the set today.
It’s the story of a sweet little boy who grows up in the grove of fruit trees and gardens, overlooking the most beautiful view of the Pacific. He’ll be as handsome as his daddy, and as strong-willed as his mama. And one day, after many, many years, he’ll bring his own love story home. Then, while the sun sinks down behind a pale fuchsia sky, they’ll all gather around their long, worn-in table, overlooking the ocean, retelling the story of how one day, when they least expected it, they met in the most peculiar way.
THE END