Bonus epilogue
Chelsea
One year later…
There are exactly three things I know about my husband-to-be's laptop.
One: the password is a Terminator reference, which is both predictable and, in my opinion, a security risk.
Two: his desktop is so organized it makes me feel like a feral raccoon by comparison. Folders inside folders. Naming conventions. Not a single file called stuff2 or FINAL_final_USE THIS ONE.
Three: I am not supposed to be on it right now.
In my defense, he told me to be on it. He called from the road somewhere between Saddle Creek and Austin and said, Baby, I left the Ferris projections open. Can you send them to Hayes before he loses his mind?
Of course, I agreed because I am helpful.
What I did not tell him was that this would give me the perfect opportunity to snoop. It’s not like he doesn’t know I’m nosy. I’ve been nosy since the day we met so this is on him.
Mike is asleep on my feet under the desk, which is his primary occupation these days. My big goofy boy has adapted to small-town life by becoming approximately forty percent lazier and one hundred percent more spoiled, mostly because JD sneaks him bites of brisket and thinks I don't know.
I find the Ferris file and send it to Hayes. Task complete. Now, to just take a peek at all his ridiculously precise-named file folders.
Quarterly projections. Allocations. Fiscal year summaries. Etc., etc., etc.
But then I see it.
Down at the bottom of his desktop, a random file, I nearly miss because it blends in with his background image. But it’s labeled No Fate.
My whole body goes hot and then cold. My heart rate speeds.
I should close the laptop. That's the correct move. That's what a normal, well-adjusted person with excellent boundaries would do. I am neither of those things, though, so I click the tab.
It's a spreadsheet.
Column A is dates. Column B is a running count. Column C is notes.
Oh.
Oh, no.
Day 1. She told me she has a boyfriend. Congratulations, Ward.
Day 6. Coffee. Iced, oat, extra shot. Raining. Note: she drinks cold when it rains. Nobody drinks cold when it rains.
Day 41. Learned she chews ice cream. It’s simultaneously the weirdest thing and the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
Day 63. Told Hayes I'm moving her desk. He knew. Everyone knew.
Day 212. Rosemary mint. H-E-B, aisle 9. Do not tell her how long this took.
I press my hand over my mouth. Mike lifts his head, then decides my emotional state is not his problem and goes back to sleep.
I continue to scroll.
There are hundreds of them. Hundreds. Some are one word.
Some are a paragraph. Some are just a number and a blank cell, and somehow those are the ones that get me the worst, because I know exactly what a blank cell means from a man like JD.
It means I didn't have words for that day, but it was important, so I logged it anyway.
Day 561. Bracelet in her hair. Nearly said something. Didn't.
Day 874. Zilker. Asked about Mike. She squeaked. She has no idea what she does to me.
Day 1,093. Told the whole company I'm leaving and moving back to Saddle Creek. Worst day of my life. But it was a decision I had to make because being close to her every day is killing me.
Day 1,096. Not the worst day of my life anymore.
And then, near the bottom, in a cell all by itself:
Day 1,461 — ask her.
I check the date on my phone.
It's the day after tomorrow.
I do what any rational woman would do in this situation. I panic.
I close the laptop, I sit on the kitchen floor with my dog, and I eat Blue Bell Cookie Two Step directly out of the carton while I call my sister.
"He's counting," I say, before she can even say hello.
"Who's counting? What?" There's a wail in the background, then a rhythmic series of shush-shush-shush.
“Is my perfect nephew being cranky?”
“He’s just a little colicky.”
“Poor baby.
“Chels, it's four in the afternoon and I have been awake for nine hundred hours. Can we get to the point of the call? I can hear the ice cream in your mouth."
I set down my spoon. "JD. He has a spreadsheet."
"Of course he does. He's a finance guy. That's like calling to tell me a fish has gills."
"A spreadsheet of me, Charlie. Every day since we met. Day one. Day one. The day I told him I had a boyfriend and he said congratulations, and I went home and screamed into a pillow."
There's a long pause on the line.
"Charlie?"
"I'm here." Her voice has gone soft in a way that immediately makes my eyes sting. "I'm just—give me a second. That man loves you like it's his job."
"The whole spreadsheet is called No Fate."
"Like your tattoo," she says.
"There's an entry for the day after tomorrow."
"Oh?"
Something in her tone gives me pause. "Charlie."
"Mmm."
"Charlotte."
"I'm putting the baby down—"
"You know. You know what the entry is."
"I know nothing," my sister says, in the voice of a woman who knows everything, "except that you should probably get your nails done tomorrow."
She hangs up on me.
* * *
JD
Here's what I've never told her.
I started the log on day four.
Not day one—day four. Day one, I just went home and stood in my kitchen for a while, thinking about a woman with a No Fate tattoo and a boyfriend and the exact shade of red her face went when she realized what she'd said.
By day four, I understood I was in serious trouble, and I did what I always do when I'm in serious trouble.
I made a spreadsheet.
Backfilled the first three days from memory, which took an embarrassing amount of time, because I could remember everything. What she wore. What she said. The way she laughed at something Angela said in the break room, too loud, then covered her mouth like she'd been caught.
I want to be clear that I know how this looks. Hayes has told me how it looks. Hayes has used the word dossier, which I think is unfair, but also accurate.
But here's the thing about being a math nerd in love with somebody who isn't yours: numbers are the only thing that hold still.
Everything else about that woman moves. She changes her coffee order based on the weather.
She goes down conspiracy rabbit holes about timelines that don't exist. She was, for three years, in a committed relationship with a labradoodle, and I couldn't do a damn thing about any of it.
But I could count.
Eight hundred and seventy-four days on the evening I stood in a parking lot at Zilker Park and finally asked her why I'd never met Mike. Three years, near enough, on the morning I walked into my own office and couldn't look at her because I'd already decided to leave.
One thousand four hundred and sixty-one days, the day after tomorrow. Four years. Including the leap day, which counts, because I'm not going to be the man who rounds down on her.
I've had the ring since day 1,102.
I get in around eight, dead on my feet, and the house is quiet. That usually means that Mike is lying belly up in his memory-foam bed, snoring loudly. There's a light on over the stove.
She's sitting on the counter. My girl, in one of my old H & J Funds shirts, bare feet swinging, holding a coffee mug with something in it that is definitely not coffee.
And on the counter next to her, open, glowing, damning: my laptop.
Well.
Fuck.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi."
"So." She takes a sip. "You've been keeping a diary."
"It's a log."
"It's a diary, JD. It has feelings in it. There's an entry that just says rosemary mint and a store aisle number. What even is that?"
"Aisle nine," I say. "It took me eleven weeks."
"Eleven weeks?"
"There are a lot of shampoos, Chelsea."
“My shampoo.” She sets the mug down. Her eyes are shining, and her chin has that stubborn set it gets right before she cries, but then refuses to admit she's crying. God help me, I've loved that chin for four years.
"Why?" she says. "Why would you—for all that time, when you thought I was—" She stops. Swallows. "When you thought I belonged to somebody else. Why would you keep counting?"
I cross the kitchen. Put my hands on either side of her on the counter, the way I used to lean against her car, back when leaning was all I was allowed.
"Because you kept showing up," I say. "Every day, you showed up and you were funny and you were brilliant and you smelled like rosemary.
And despite the fact that I believed you belonged to someone else, you felt like mine.
I had to do something with all the little things I noticed.
And I figured, one day, one of two things was going to happen.
Either I was going to lose you." I brush her hair back from her face.
"Or I was going to get to tell you how long I'd been paying attention. "
The tears go, then. She lets them.
"You said something to me once," I go on. "On the couch in my office. You asked what starts the cycle. Whether there was some original timeline, before anybody knew anything, where two people just found each other on their own."
"I remember."
"I've thought about that more than I've thought about anything in my life.
" I take her face in my hands. "Baby, I don't want a different timeline.
I don't want the clean one where you don't lie to me on day one, and I don't spend three years jealous of a dog.
I want this one. Every stupid day of it.
All one thousand four hundred and fifty-nine of them so far. "
She laughs. "You're two days early."
"I know."
"There's an entry. For the day after tomorrow." She's watching me now, barely breathing. "It says ask her."
"It does."
"JD."
"I've had it since day eleven hundred and two," I tell her.
"In your sock drawer." She produces the little black velvet box from behind her and holds it out to me.
I raise my brows.
“I didn’t open it and peek, I promise. But I did make an alteration to the spreadsheet.”
I glance over at my opened laptop and see it:
Day 1,459 – She said yes.
I take the ring box from her and drop down on one knee on my kitchen floor. I open the box and hold it out.
"Chelsea Ward. I have loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you. I am thankful for every moment you’ve been by my side, even when you were with “Mike”.”
She releases a watery laugh.
"Technically, you’ve already said yes, but I’m still going to ask. Will you marry me?"
She slides off the counter and nearly knocks me backwards onto the floor. Her lips brush against mine and she says “yes” over and over again as she peppers my face with kisses.