Epilogue
SIX MONTHS LATER
“Ithink it’s too white.” Mom looked over the wedding dress I was trying on and shook her head. “The color washes you out, Wylie.”
I frowned at my reflection. I’d fallen in love with the wedding gown the second I saw it. It wasn’t overblown, just a simple beaded bodice, and I was in no danger of tripping over the train because it was nonexistent. Tripping hazards were a reality in my life. There was no getting around it.
“I hate to agree with your mother,” Eleanor said from one chair over. “You really need something in a blush rose because you’re ridiculously pale.”
I glared at them in the mirror, but they were too busy chatting about their upcoming book project.
A return to the Galactic Empire of Coronado was in the works.
It had made all the newspapers. Thanks to the feeding frenzy that had followed the announcement, Huxley and I were now even more famous than we had been.
We were getting thanked for bringing our mothers back together.
Don’t get me wrong, I preferred them being friends to being enemies, but I could have gone without the paparazzi following me everywhere I went for a full month. I didn’t even know there were paparazzi in Georgia.
“I really like the design of the dress,” I said, drawing their attention back to me. “It’s simple.”
“It’s too simple,” Mom said.
“Way, way too simple,” Eleanor agreed. “We should get a designer on this. We only have a few months.”
If I had my way, they wouldn’t even get that long to fuss over a wedding.
They’d put their feet down, together, when they found out about the engagement, though.
Huxley and I had thought we were being smart when we started a video call to tell them the good news.
They’d taken over the entire thing with overblown plans within seconds of us breaking the news.
I would have been fine flying to Vegas and doing it up with an Elvis impersonator at one of the infamous chapels there.
I still wasn’t over the Star Trek Hilton closing before I had a chance to visit it.
Mom and Eleanor put the kibosh on that right away, though.
They absolutely refused to let us elope.
Because we were afraid of their wrath — me more than Huxley — we agreed to a small, tasteful wedding in Savannah. We’d even suggested the riverwalk as a venue. We’d been shut down there, too, however.
No, our mothers had taken their renewed friendship to heart and were completely controlling our wedding. I was starting to regret getting them back together.
“I’ll change,” I said dully as I stomped toward the dressing room. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know that they were exchanging amused looks. They enjoyed torturing their offspring — together and apart — more than should have been allowable by law.
I didn’t really regret them getting back together.
At first, it had been difficult. They spent a full week in Savannah, talking over everything …
more than once. They admitted to their faults, apologized, and then got in another fight right away.
They’d been so mean to one another that night, I was convinced it was all over, that we’d never get what we truly wanted.
They’d woken up the next day completely cleaned out, however.
All of the fight had left them after they hurled insults for two hours straight.
Suddenly, they were ready to start over anew.
Eleanor had divorced Jules. Everybody saw that coming.
Instead of immediately jumping into another relationship, however, she started therapy.
Mom even flew to New York for a month of intensive counseling, just the two of them.
Even though Mick had been at the center of their problems, he was left out of the therapy.
Once Eleanor admitted she never loved him, he was no longer the issue.
No, the issue was that they had been secretly competing with one another throughout their entire friendship, so that’s what they got counseling for.
I, for one, was glad for the therapy. It seemed to have done both a world of good. They were better friends now than they ever had been. It was amazing.
Except when they ganged up on Huxley and me as a unit. They were bossy as hell and impossible to deal with when that happened, which was how I’d ended up in this bridal store with both of them bullying me. They refused to trust me to pick out my own wedding dress.
The proposal had been a surprise, although not really. Once we’d told each other how we felt — and our mothers hadn’t imploded — it had been smooth sailing.
Huxley put his house on the market quickly. We didn’t know where we wanted to live. We just knew that we didn’t want to live there.
Bree bought it back because she couldn’t stand the idea of anybody taking over her hard-fought battle with the HOA and ceding victory.
Brody had finally given in, and they’d decided to add to the house.
It was his only option, and he knew it as well as anybody else.
So, they hired a contractor, came up with plans, and then got to work.
They were still living in the house Brody had purchased, but as soon as the construction was finished, they were moving into Bree’s house.
They were both happy with the outcome, even if Brody did think it was a waste of money. He would deny his wife nothing, though, so it was for the best.
Huxley moved in with me right away. We didn’t want to be apart.
Lucy stayed with us for a month before moving in with Hayley.
She could have afforded an apartment close to her college campus by that point — Mom was helping her out if she stayed in school — but she and Hayley were going strong and weren’t spending nights apart. It would have been a waste of money.
As for Lucy, she’d decided she wanted to be an artist after all.
It wasn’t a normal degree, though. Her major was creative business leadership.
I had no idea what she was going to do with the degree, but if there was any place to make a go of it with the credentials she would walk away with, it was Savannah.
The Savannah College of Art and Design, or SCAD as it was known locally, wasn’t easy to get into, however.
Especially when you hadn’t been studying for years, and your high school transcripts weren’t that impressive.
Thankfully for Lucy, although likely not for some other student, Mom and Eleanor had pulled some strings.
The good news was that Lucy was doing really well. The bad news was that she hadn’t suffered, not even a little, for her art. I felt as if she should have had to work harder before a solution was handed to her. That wasn’t how it came to fruition, however.
Once Lucy was out of the apartment, things started happening rapidly for Huxley and me.
I admitted I wanted to write straight sci-fi — while also publishing a sci-fi romance here and there — and he backed me all the way, including sitting down with my publisher when it was time.
I always got nervous and awkward during meetings with authority figures. He kept me on task.
Eventually, even though they were reticent, they signed me for one trilogy. It wasn’t as much money as I was making in sci-fi romance because they weren’t convinced I could do it. I had the opportunity I’d always wanted, though, and that was enough. At least for now.
Mom and Eleanor were delighted when they heard about the new deal.
They promised to promote it even though they hadn’t heard anything about the story yet.
It didn’t matter to them. If it would help their children — and we were both their children — then they were going to do it.
So, I had a year to write three books, along with another sci-fi romance that was due in a month.
It would be tight, but I knew I could do it.
Huxley knew it, too, and his faith in me did a lot for my confidence.
He wanted to branch out, too, but was happy sticking with his romance for now.
He wanted the money so we could buy a house, and we’d been actively looking.
We hadn’t found anything yet, but we weren’t too worried.
We could extend the lease on the apartment for another year and wait for something we truly wanted.
The apartment was comfortable, so waiting wasn’t a big deal.
What we didn’t wait on was the proposal.
I expected Huxley to drag it out for at least another six months when I found myself in the square across from my apartment building a month ago.
He’d decked it out with candles — our author friends helped — and he asked me to marry him in Klingon.
I was stunned to tears, and then he told me he used an app to teach him to speak clearly.
That was when I finally came through with the truth on where I’d gotten my extra money.
He was flabbergasted … and then he laughed for days.
He bragged to anybody we met now that I’d created an app to help people learn Klingon.
If they gave him a funny look, he told me they weren’t our type of people anyway.
When Brody and Nathan found out about the app, they were tickled. It turned out they’d both used it a time or two. Bree and Bella weren’t as impressed, although they weren’t unimpressed either. It just wasn’t their milieu, and that was okay.
As for Bella and Nathan, they were expecting another baby.
Something told me, given the way they looked at one another, that they were going to have a houseful of kids before it was all said and done.
They might not have realized it when they bought their house — they were mostly interested in location — but six bedrooms meant they had a lot of space for kids.
There was no doubt in my mind that they were going to take advantage of it.
I blew out a sigh and reached for the zipper on the dress, giving myself one more look before letting it go. Maybe they were right. Maybe it did wash me out.
The zipper was halfway down when the curtain opened behind me, and somebody stepped into the dressing room. I stifled a scream, but only because I recognized my future husband.
“What the hell?” I hissed, dragging him into the dressing room and letting the curtain fall shut. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m checking on you,” he replied, his eyes sparkling as he looked me over. “I was afraid that our mothers would be bullying you.”
That happened a lot. The bullying thing. They were good at it. Most of the time, it didn’t bother me all that much. When it came to my wedding dress, however, I was extremely unhappy.
“They said it washes me out.” I gestured toward the dress.
He looked me up and down. “I happen to think you look beautiful. Do you want that dress?”
He would whip out his wallet and pay for it right here — I had no doubt — but I shook my head. “You’ve seen it now. That’s bad luck.”
He frowned. “What if I don’t believe in bad luck?”
“Um … you did see me trip over my own Croc last week and do this, right?” I lifted my arm so he could see my scabbed elbow.
He laughed and shook his head. “That’s just you being clumsy.” He leaned in for a kiss. “I’m just sorry I wasn’t close enough to catch you.”
He caught me at least once a week. He was handy that way.
“They hate the dress.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my lips to his. “Your mom said I looked like a fish that had been left out of water for two weeks.”
He kissed me back and swayed side to side. “You’re beautiful no matter what you wear.”
“They said I need a blush rose dress.”
He pulled back far enough to look at me. “What’s that?”
“It’s just a pinker white that apparently won’t wash me out.”
“And you don’t want that color?”
“I wanted a simple dress.” I gestured toward the one I was wearing. “I don’t want a lot of bells and whistles. They’re talking about getting a big-time designer.”
“We could still elope.” He looked hopeful. “We could hop in the car and start driving. It doesn’t have to be Vegas. I bet we could go to New Orleans and hide among all the Mardi Gras revelers. They would never find us.”
The idea held some appeal … until I imagined our mothers’ faces when they finally did catch up with us. “I want to get married with our friends and family,” I admitted. “I just want them to chill out some.”
“You either want to get married with our friends and family, or you want them to chill out some. You can’t have both.” He was matter-of-fact.
“Right.” I rested my head on his chest. “How mad do you think they would be if we just disappeared?”
“I don’t know. Pretty mad. We could let them throw us a wedding party when we get back and send them pictures of the ceremony.”
I cringed when I pictured my mother’s face if I sent her photos of our wedding and didn’t invite her. “They might not speak to us for months.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
I giggled, then caught myself. “I say let’s do it. Even if they are mad, you’re right, they’ll get over it.”
“Yes.” He pumped his fist and looked up at the sky, as if thanking somebody for his good luck. “That’s exactly what I hoped you would say. I’ve already packed bags, and they’re in my Jeep.”
I was thrown. “You knew I would say yes?”
“I knew that you would want to say yes after an afternoon spent wedding dress shopping with our mothers. I didn’t know you would actually say yes, but I’m going to run with it.”
I smiled, my heart filling with so much emotion I thought it might explode. “I really love you.”
His fingers danced over my cheek. “QamuSha.”
It was Klingon, the closest thing in the language to “I love you.” It literally meant I un-hate you.
I had never been happier in my life. “We have to be careful when we’re escaping. If they catch us, it’s all over.”
“Oh, baby, we’re just getting started.” He gave me another kiss. “Now, come on. We need to get you out of that dress and then find the back door to this place. We’ll call them when we’re an hour outside the city to tell them what we’re going to do.”
“What if they follow us?”
He shrugged. “Good luck catching us, I guess.”
I grinned and threw my arms around his neck. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
His voice shook with emotion when he spoke again. “Oh, Wylie, that’s my line. I wasn’t really living until I found you again.”
“And now that you have?”
“We’re going to live the best way we know how, forever.”
And that was all I would ever need.