Bonus Epilogue #2
Colleen’s nerves frayed suddenly, as if a tight bundle suddenly went limp.
“HEY!” Rachel waved them over to a food truck, the pink shade close to the color of the town’s police cruisers. “We’re over here!”
Love You Fried, the food truck said on its sign. When the little company had first applied for a business permit, Moore had asked, in front of Anne Petrinelli, if it were for a cannabis dispensary and that simple question had delayed their permit for three months.
Oops.
Moore and Colleen joined Rachel, Kell, Luke, Kylie, Dean and Deanna, all in line. No need for hugs as greetings because they all lived together now at the camp.
“Where’s Jordy?” Moore asked, looking around.
“Over there,” Deanna said, pointing to a spot near a bonfire, where his parents stood drinking from togo cups. Jordy was eating something like a funnel cake, but it was red with white powdered sugar on it, half the sugar on his black down coat.
“Great,” Moore said as Deanna gave him a conspirator’s wink.
Part of the concession they’d had to make when deciding to do a public proposal was telling Deanna in advance.
Colleen felt guilty that they were running off to get married later in secret, depriving her mother of the wedding she so desired for her only daughter.
Moore told her it wasn’t deprivation, as how they got married was their choice.
But still...
“This is weird,” Luke said flatly, staring at Moore’s arm around her waist as they waited in line for their deep-fried heart-shaped Oreos.
“Eating a heart attack on a stick voluntarily?”
“Watching you touch Colleen like that.” His eyes went to Moore’s hand on her hip.
“Are we making you question reality?” Colleen teased him.
Kylie was in front of Luke, ordering three deep fried treats. Harriet was off to the right, where a new “nature’s playground” had been installed a few months ago. A group of kids hopped from tree stump to tree stump, her dark curls bouncing along as she giggled in the group.
“Luke,” Kylie said, overhearing everything. “Quit being a grump.”
“I am not being a grump,” he said, sounding exactly like a grump.
“Get over it. They’re together,” she said with a laugh.
“I’m glad you guys are happy. Really. It’s still weird.”
Kylie nudged him. “My being here is weird, too. How do you think Dotty Chen feels when she sees little Kylie Hood with Luke Luview?”
“We’re different.”
“How?”
“We just are.” But Luke winked at Colleen, and then she got it.
Oh, geez.
Luke knew. He knew what was next. Had Moore told him? Did Rachel spill? Or Deanna? It must be their mother. Luke wasn’t a winker, so this was, well…
Weird.
“Yum,” Kylie said loudly as three trays of piping hot goodness were delivered to her at the food truck counter. “Luke? Help.”
He took two of them quickly and inhaled deeply. “This is why I love living here.”
“Deep fried Oreos?”
“It’s one of many reasons.”
Colleen shooed him away so they could order for her, Moore, and Jordy. Nerves were getting the best of her, and time was a’wasting.
Maybe she shouldn’t eat. Maybe her mouth should be clear for the moment he asked for her hand in marriage.
Maybe she should –
Loudspeaker feedback made the entire crowd groan, hands over ears as Selena Martinez winced.
“Sorry, folks! Technical difficulties! Before we bring the Luview Middle school concert choir on, we have a few announcements to make. Love You Kettle Corn is having a huge 2 for 1 sale back over behind Kendrill’s Market, so don’t miss out!
They’re closing for the season, so grab some yummy treats to get you through winter until they re-open in April! ”
In her peripheral vision, Colleen saw Jordy checking his wallet for money.
“And, well… we have a special guest. Guests,” she added in a sparkly, happy tone. “Would Moore Mottin and Colleen Luview please come to the stage?”
This was it.
This was really it.
“We’ll handle your orders!” Kylie squealed, her voice going high with excitement.
Smoothing her red coat against her belly and waist, Colleen then took Moore’s hand. Knowing he was about to propose took all the surprise out of it, but there was one thing she didn’t know:
What the ring looked like.
Moore had kept that secret.
As they stepped on stage, she looked around, eyes jumping from person to person, her mind pattern-matching, heart swelling. Nearly every face was someone she knew.
The Forsythes clustered in one area, near the Mottins. Cammie was the black sheep of their family, and generally speaking, the two extended families got along in parallel other than Jordy, who was the embodiment of their blending.
Her mom and dad, Kell and Rachel, Harriet with Kylie and Luke. There was Doc Blythe with his wife, Michelle, and Mel Chassi had Caramel and McPirate near the decorated Christmas tree by the flagpole.
Every person was so connected to the whole of who she was, even scowling Slicer, who watched Moore take the microphone with an arched eyebrow and a cynical expression.
But even he began to smile.
“I’ll make this brief, because you aren’t here to listen to me, and you sure as hell don’t want to hear me sing,” Moore began before the microphone stand, charm in his voice, the crowd laughing. Turning to Colleen, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the velvet box.
Collective gasps made the moment magical.
“Custom designing jewelry is my joy, but making this piece stumped me. How do you convey a life lived well within the loving friendship we’ve shared?
How do I show you with my hands how my heart beats for you?
How do I give you an object to wear against your skin until your last breath that carries the power of my love? ”
Tears filled her eyes, her throat closing as his words pierced her, love radiating from every pore.
“DO IT, DAD!” Jordy shouted, his whistle having strengthened considerably in the time he’d moved to Luview, Luke’s whistling assistance showing in the result.
The crowd tittered, Moore’s mom shushing the giggling teen.
Who caught her eye and smiled with his whole body.
Moments like this couldn’t be described.
Dotty Chen beamed at her, making Colleen remember being five years old and getting her first library card.
Yulia clapped from the sidelines, her friend from so many zany shifts at the hospital on Valentine’s Day now watching Colleen’s romance unfold in real time.
And then there was her mother.
Deanna openly weeped, begging her dad for a tissue, Dean searching his pockets and finding a rumpled Love You Coffee napkin.
All of that, Colleen caught in seconds, her body one big buzz.
Her heart vibrating even faster.
All of it attuned to Moore’s frequency.
“I love you, Colleen Luview. I love a Luview in Love You, Maine. Remember when we were kids and used that as a tongue twister? It was never a joke. It was how I told you my truth without taking a risk.”
“Oh!” she gasped as he dropped, slowly, on one knee, taking her hand.
His thumb tipped open the box.
It was a white gold ring, the band made of snowflakes, circling a glittery diamond that had to be two carats.
Enormous, it blinded her.
“Moore!” she gasped, losing her breath. “This is – ”
“For you. The snowflakes represent the snowstorm that brought us together. White gold for the snow, too. And the heart-shaped diamond doesn’t need to be explained. But look at the inscription.”
Slipping her hand out of her glove, she pulled the ring out, the heaviness grounding her. Peering carefully, she read aloud:
We broke the curse.
Sniffling and laughing at the same time, she hit him on the shoulder. Raucous laughter turned the serious moment farcical, until she finally calmed down enough to realize he was taking the ring out of her hand, voice rising as he was away from the mic.
“Colleen, we’re not traditional. At all. And I love that about you. About us. So let me do this a little differently. I promise never to eat the last mozzarella stick on an appetizer platter at Bilbee’s if you’ll marry me. Deal?”
“I’d say yes even if you did.”
The feeling of his shaking hand sliding the ring on her finger felt like a curse truly being lifted, magic shifting in the crisp air, the snow smiling in approval.
And when they kissed, blanketed by the sound of hundreds of hands lifting them up in community, she knew with her whole being that she would spend the rest of her life loving him more and more…
And Moore.
THE END
Are you ready for the elusive Dennis Luview? Because he’s coming back, and boy is his return a bumpy – and extremely intense – ride.
Keep flipping the page to read Love You Now.