Epilogue Finn
“Is she pissed?” Faraz asks.
I stare at the screen trying, to interpret her all caps. “I’d say fifty-fifty chance she’s trying to make me sweat.”
He sets his beer bottle on the counter, taps his wedding ring against the glass, and nods.
I brush my hand just above the tender spot on my waist. I didn’t believe George when she said, Yeah, tattoos hurt, dumbass.
I nearly passed the fuck out.
“You think she’ll be mad?” I toy with my own beer bottle but don’t drink. I’m suddenly light-headed again.
Faraz laughs. His head back, voice booming. “Do I think Nora will be mad at you for getting a tattoo?”
“Yeah,” I say like So what.
“I think you could tattoo an asshole on your forehead, and the worst Nora would do is stomp her feet around the apartment.” He twirls his finger in a circle to encompass the whole condo.
“And then you’d be goofy and make her laugh, and it would turn into that weird foreplay you guys have done for the last five years. ”
I grin. He’s probably right.
“Well.” Faraz tips back the last of his beer. “I suppose.”
“Thanks for coming with me,” I say, holding out my hand to shake, then pull him in for a hug.
“And helping me set up.” I gesture at the abundance of battery-powered tea lights flickering around us.
I considered going full candle—Nora is a big fan of candles—but not this many.
She would have freaked about the fire hazard; rightly so.
He slaps my back. “You got this, bud.”
I know I do. I shouldn’t be so nervous. “Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten a last-minute tattoo,” I admit, following him to the front door as he shoves his feet into his boots and pulls his coat off the hook.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
“Shit.”
“What?” Faraz pauses, his hand on the door handle.
“George just dropped her off.”
Faraz’s eyes go wide. “Oh shit.” He steps away from the door. “What do I do? Is she coming up? Should I hide?” At the same time, we look at the small closet off the kitchen that houses our stacked washer/dryer.
“No. Wait. You can’t fit in there.” I point at the door. “Go.”
“She’s gonna see me in the elevator,” he whisper-hisses, like she might hear us, like I don’t already fucking know that.
“Take the stairs,” I whisper-hiss back.
“You live on the tenth floor,” he shouts.
Okay. This is dumb. Opening the door, I poke my head out. She’s not here yet. I hold it open. “Go. Take the stairs a couple floors and then take the elevator.”
He shakes his head as if this is the craziest plan I’ve ever come up with. As if I didn’t once convince him to hold on to the back of a city bus while riding our skateboards. This plan is fine.
He taps my chest. “Good luck, man.” He jogs down the hallway, the opposite direction to the elevators, and just in time, thank fuck. The bell that marks the arrival of the elevator on our floor dings.
Nerves sink like the Titanic into the icy depths of my stomach. Faraz was right. Nora won’t actually be pissed about the tattoo. And the rest? Well, the rest is five years in the making. Longer, for me.
But still. What if?
“Hey.” Nora stands at the end of the hallway, cheeks flushed from the cold, her hair pinned back with cute little barrettes.
A reusable grocery bag hangs from her fingers, a couple glass bottles clinking inside, the orange foil on their tops signifying that George splurged way too fucking much on champagne.
“What are you doing?” Nora asks, coming to a stop in front of me. She cups her hand around my waist, the place she always puts her hand when she greets me, lifting on her toes, presenting her red mouth for a kiss.
I wince. Shift away from her hand.
She settles back on her heels, frowning at my midsection. “What’s wrong?”
I wince again. “Tattoo.”
“You got the tattoo there?” Her voice is high and tight. “Why?”
I shrug, playing with the back of my hair. I got it there because she always puts her hand there, but I guess I didn’t really think that through. “You wanna see?”
She nods, a bit begrudgingly. I start to pull up my T-shirt.
“Not out here.” She looks behind her, like she’s expecting a platoon of paparazzi to pop up and capture the elastic band of my underwear in high-def.
“It’s fine,” I say, turning my hip toward her. The tattoo looks gnarly right now. The clear plastic bandage a window to leaking ink and blood.
“Oh.”
I laugh. Fuck, she’s funny. “It will look better once I take the bandage off and rinse it.”
She nods, her mouth a thin line. “And what…” She tilts her head to the side. “Is it?”
Fair. It looks like a bloody black blob. “You were doodling a little mirror ball the other day when you were on the phone with Bea, remember?”
She shakes her head.
“Party planning,” I prompt. We’re supposed to be hosting the New Year’s Eve party tonight and Nora had Bea on the phone for an hour, asking her about what time she and Meriah were coming, and would four different cheeses be enough.
She’d grown increasingly frustrated with Bea’s non-committal non-answers. “That’s what I used.”
She pauses, then inhales sharply, blinking up at me. “You used my drawing?” Her eyes are big, shocked. It’s wild, how she can still be surprised that I’m totally gone for her. Like I wasn’t ready to quit my job for her. Like I didn’t move back across the world to be with her, job be damned.
“But what if…” She trails off.
Hell fucking no. We’re not going to even finish that sentence.
“That’s actually a perfect segue,” I say. I was nervous before. Now I’m not. “About that New Year’s Eve party…” I open our front door.
Nora locks into prep mode. “Right, so George insisted on supplying us with some of the nice champagne, which I told her was completely un—”
It takes a moment for it to register: the candles everywhere; the flowers, a new bouquet of roses to join the ones I gave her for her birthday yesterday.
Faraz and I hung mirror balls from the light fixture above the kitchen island.
And there’s already a bottle of champagne chilling in the ice bucket, but I still appreciate my sister’s contribution to our night.
Nora turns to me in the entryway. “We have people coming over,” she says, almost apologetic.
I take the bag from her hand, help her with her coat. She toes off her boots but doesn’t step any farther into the room until I take her hand and pull her into the kitchen with me.
“We do have people coming over,” I agree. “If you want. I guess it kind of depends on your answer to this next thing.”
“Finn.” There’s a tremor in her voice, one that usually denotes nerves.
I rub her shoulders. “Nora. I know you’ve spent most of our friendship thinking I was a bum.”
“No.” She shakes her head vehemently. “No, you’re not.”
“Hey,” I say gently. “I’ve got a whole speech here.”
She bites her lip. “Okay,” she whispers.
“And I was. I am. I tease you and argue. I’m impulsive.”
She mumbles, then squeaks, her lips a firm line. “You’re fun.”
“Nora.”
“Sorry, sorry. I’ll shut up.”
I kiss her. A firm press of our lips, a reset.
“I am those things.” I squeeze her hands. “And I like that about me. But I can be serious. I’ve been serious about you since probably longer than you know.”
“How long?” Then, “Sorry.”
“Tenth grade.”
Her mouth makes a perfect, round O. “But you…but we…”
We always argued. I teased. She huffed. We just never found each other, right place, right time. “I thought maybe we’d always just be friends-ish,” I say. “And that was okay. But then.” I shake my head. “Then, I kissed you that New Year’s Eve.”
“I kissed you,” she insists.
“We kissed, baby.”
She giggles; the happiest fucking sound. A tear tracks its way down her cheek, and I catch it with my thumb.
“And kissing you felt like kissing the person I was supposed to kiss for the rest of my life. And I knew it might take some time, but I’ve wanted to be your last midnight kiss for a lot of years.
And I was hoping…” I take a knee on our kitchen floor because this is the place we have the most fun.
Where we cook, yes, but where we clean up afterward. Always together.
“Finn,” she says again when I present her with the ring. George helped me find it; she called it a “vintage starburst style.” I just call it perfect.
“I was hoping,” I say again. “That this time next year, you could be my wife.”
“Yes,” she says, without a second’s hesitation. Honestly, I thought she might make me sweat, just a little. She laughs, cries, so do I. She kisses me; the one bending her body to reach my mouth for once. “Yes. Holy crap. Yes.”
The ring is a little big, but she insists on wearing it anyway, before pulling me to my feet, dragging me toward the bedroom.
“Wait,” I say when tries to push me onto the bed. “Wait. The party.”
Her eyes widen with panic. “We’re still hosting the party?”
“We don’t have to. Bea is waiting for your call. If you want to host, everyone has prepared food and they can be here in an hour. If not…” I stare pointedly at the bed. “They’ll just go to her and Meriah’s place.”
She grins, looking between me and the bed. “How much time do we have?”
I check my phone. “Still more than four hours until midnight.”
She pushes me, and I let myself sprawl onto the bed. “I think we can do both.”
NORA BABY, DECEMBER 30, 2027
6:12 a.m.: Finn: Happy birthday, Eleanor
Thank you for reading! I hope you loved Nora and Finn!