Epilogue
Bellamy whistles her approval when I stride into the kitchen, doing up the last button on my shirt.
“Looking sharp, cowboy,” she says, spinning away from her notebook and setting down her pen at the kitchen counter. She lives with me now, and I love seeing her in my home day and night.
“A host has to look good,” I say.
She sashays over to me. “And you do. You look positively fuckable.”
I drag her against me. “Don’t put any ideas in my head, woman. I have to get to work.”
She smacks my ass. “I know you do. But bring that cute ass home to me this evening so I can do bad things to you.”
“Sounds like a deal. But pretty sure I’ll be doing the bad things to you.”
I’d do them now, but have a party to host this evening, one of a new variety Carpe Diem has just introduced.
Our parties are now more open to many. I launched this style of event last month, hosting romance mixers at pool halls, and in parks, dive bars, arcades, karaoke joints.
The membership fee isn’t platinum level.
It’s affordable, and those parties are taking on a life of their own.
Coco and I have been hiring hosts and hostesses throughout Manhattan so we can throw a handful of events each weekend. Soon, I’ll expand to other cities.
I still contend that in-person events are better than online dating. I haven’t changed all my stripes. But I do want more people to experience what I’ve been lucky enough to have in my life.
Big, powerful, written-across-the-sky love.
Like the kind Angeline found. She met her boyfriend at the first of this new line of events. “We just sparked,” she said when she told me about her guy.
I couldn’t be happier for her.
Though, selfishly, I’m happy she stayed on as a client. The partnership still fits—her company rolled out a new line of inexpensive sports watches.
I flash my new one at Bellamy as I head to the door. “Guess I’m not such an elitist anymore,” I say.
“You can be an elitist, though, when you take me to Europe next week and we stay in five-star hotels.”
“So, you do like my elitist side.”
She pretends to consider this. “Seems I do.”
“I knew it. I fucking knew it.”
“Feels good to be right, doesn’t it?”
On this count, yes.
But I want to be right on another one too. “Meet me at The Lucky Spot tonight?”
She smiles. “I’ll be there.”
The party was a hit, and after I say goodbye to the last guest, I check my watch. I’ve got thirty minutes until I meet Bellamy, and it’s time for a change of plans.
I send her a text, asking if she can meet, instead, on Forty-Sixth and Broadway at eleven-thirty.
Thirty minutes later when she walks toward me on the corner, I don’t get down on one knee.
That would be all too predictable.
But my intentions are brilliantly clear for her to see.