Epilogue
EPILOGUE
Emma
“Oh my god, they actually did it,” Sabrina whispers as she pokes her head into the freshly-built building at the back of my new fixer-upper home.
She comes the rest of the way in with a little bundle in her arms, and I squeal just as loudly as I did when Laney arrived five minutes ago with her own little bundle.
“Can you believe this is real?” Laney’s turning in a circle, taking in the pine board walls, the ceiling that looks like it’s made of pine branches but is actually very sturdy above it, the plush Turkish rug under our feet, the windows overlooking the house and the yard, and the three easy chairs that take up two walls.
“It’s a little posher than our first clubhouse,” Sabrina replies.
I’m holding Laney and Theo’s baby girl while Bash jumps on the middle of the three easy chairs and Yolko Ono wanders around inspecting the treehouse.
Which is really a very large room supported on three sides by stilts, and reached by using the curved staircase that Jonas, Theo, and Grey built around the big pine tree that was chosen for us, leaving enough room for the tree to keep growing for years to come.
For our kids to use as a clubhouse.
“It’s also big enough for even Grey to stand up in,” I tell Sabrina.
She grins, and her little one makes a noise that has both me and Laney cooing as we cross the room to lean in and look.
Henry’s only two weeks old, though he might as well be a month, considering he was a full two weeks overdue.
And almost nine pounds when he was born.
“Welcome to your best life ever,” she whispers to him. “You’re gonna love it here.”
“I wuv it here!” Bash says.
He’s made the leap to the next chair and looks like he’s gearing up to jump to the third too.
“Are you getting any sleep?” Laney asks Sabrina, who nods.
“A surprising amount, actually. And when I don’t, there’s coffee. All of the coffee. All of the time. You?”
“We’re up to four-hour stretches. Fred keeps sneaking into her crib and waking her up, and we cannot figure out how. I love that cat, and he’s about to find himself with a temporary home with my parents if he doesn’t get his act together.”
Yolko Ono bagocks.
Possibly she’s indignant on Fred’s behalf, or possibly she hates him on principle.
Could go either way.
“Jonas showed me the kitchen plans,” Sabrina says to me. “I thought it would be weird that you’re fixing up my grandparents’ house, but I love it.”
“I used to feel funny about the idea of moving into Chandler’s grandparents’ house—anytime I’d think about it as his grandparents’ house and not your grandparents’ house—but I’ve realized I actually felt funny about the idea of living here with him .
Because he wasn’t right, and he would’ve ruined it for me eventually.
” I shrug. “That probably sounds weird.”
“That’s exactly how I felt about all of my ex-boyfriends,” Laney says. “I’d think about them moving into my house, and it would be like, this doesn’t fit, we’ll have to get a new house , when really, it was them.”
“All of your hundreds of ex-boyfriends,” Sabrina teases.
“The hundreds,” Laney agrees with a grin.
She was definitely not a hundreds of boyfriends person.
Henry makes another noise, and Sabrina looks at Bash. “Hey, little dude, I’m gonna need one of those seats to feed a baby. That okay with you?”
“You sit dere ,” he says, pointing to the chair next to him. “I hewp feed da baby.”
“If Aunt Sabrina lets you,” I remind him.
He scoots off his chair, grabs Yolko Ono, puts the chicken in the chair, climbs back up, lifts his shirt, and offers his nipple to the chicken.
“That’s not going to end well,” Laney says.
“It’ll end…some way,” I reply as the chicken hops into Bash’s lap and sits, facing forward.
“Doko Ono, you eat,” Bash says, pointing to his nipple again.
She ignores him.
“Do you need a blanket?” I ask Sabrina. “There’s a closet with old blankets that all of our parents donated.”
“Sure. Surprise me, please.” She shuffles the baby as she sits, and Laney and I gasp at the same time.
There’s something big and sparkly and how did we miss that? on her left ring finger.
“What—” Laney starts as I say, “ When? ”
Sabrina looks down at her finger, then grins at us while she flashes a view of her whole hand, massive diamond with an elaborate wrap and all. “Oh, this old thing?”
“Yes, that old thing ,” I squeal while Laney and I crowd into the last easy chair beside her. Laney’s baby is still sleeping like an absolute angel.
“Tell us everything,” Laney breathes.
“He wore me down,” Sabrina says dramatically. “I was one day shy of forty-two weeks, and he was all, you know he’s not coming until we get hitched, so we might as well just do it . Very, very romantic.”
“Liar,” Laney murmurs.
“If you don’t want to tell us, just say you don’t want to tell us,” I agree.
Sabrina laughs. “You know him too well, don’t you?”
“We do,” Laney and I agree.
“He proposed in the middle of the night three days after we got home from the hospital. So…just over a week ago? I got up to feed the baby and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I was avoiding the bedroom, because one of us should sleep, you know?”
“We know,” Laney says quickly.
I smile.
I remember missing sleep.
Seeing my friends with babies makes me want to miss sleep again.
“So he found me in the kitchen staring at all of my caffeinated coffees, and he asked me if I had to choose between marrying coffee and marrying him, which one would I choose?”
Laney and I both crack up, because we know exactly what she told him.
“Right?” Sabrina says. “As if there was a question. But when he got down on one knee and held out the ring and said, ‘But I don’t see the coffee offering you this,’ it was the sweetest, funniest, most perfect thing ever .”
And this is how we all know he’s her soulmate.
I love my friends’ chosen partners.
Sabrina’s still smiling. “So…I said yes, and I think I actually cried, and he’s letting me lie and tell everyone it was the lack of sleep that made me all weepy, and we took a day trip up into the mountains yesterday with my mom and grandpa and his grandma and Zen.
And now we’re officially legally tied together forever, and I did not have sex on my wedding night, which sucks donkey balls, but also, he’s never touching me with his penis again and he knows it, and he married me anyway, so here we are. ”
“Are you happy?” I whisper.
Her eyes go misty. “Oh my god, yes .”
Laney squeals.
I squeal.
Sabrina laughs and lets me wipe her eyes while she feeds the baby. “I never wanted this, but I love him so much ,” she tells us.
“Welcome to the club,” Laney replies with a laugh. “If you’d told me twenty years ago we’d be sitting here in a cabin that Theo rebuilt with your husband and Jonas Rutherford while we all fuss over our kids…”
“I can’t believe you got married,” I squeal again.
“I’m sorry we didn’t invite you two,” Sabrina says. “But it was?—”
“Exactly how you needed and wanted your wedding to be,” Laney interrupts. “Don’t worry. We’ll throw a party for you.”
Sabrina smiles. “That’s the best part anyway. Far less ugly crying and real emotions.”
Laney slides me a look. “And how’s life with our favorite movie star for you?”
“Just lacking a ring to make an engagement official,” I whisper.
And now it’s my two best friends who are squealing over me.
“Stop, stop.” I wave a hand with a laugh, pulling Laney’s little girl closer with my other arm.
I can’t get enough of this newborn stage, before she’s figured out if she’ll be like Theo and wreak havoc on the town or like Laney, quiet and reserved and rule-following, or somewhere in between.
“We’re enjoying you two being mothers first.”
“No, we’re enjoying all of us being happy,” Laney corrects.
“And you being involved with someone who worships the ground you walk on, as it should be ,” Sabrina agrees.
“I think we’ve all found partners who worship the ground we walk on. And that’s as it should be.”
“When’s the wedding?” Laney asks.
“ Where’s the wedding?” Sabrina corrects.
“We are not doing a destination wedding.” I shudder. “Been there, done that.”
“What if it was in Fiji?” Laney counters.
“Where you met?” Sabrina agrees.
“With chickens.”
“In a restored ancient Fijian village.”
“With chickens.”
“I’ll make sure Theo doesn’t sneeze.”
“Unka Theo sneeze woud ,” Bash says. “It scare Doko Ono.”
I laugh. “When we figure it out, I promise you’ll be among the first to know.”
“How did he propose?” Laney asks.
I squeeze my lips shut, but I’m still smiling. And then I pointedly look at Bash.
Both of my friends crack up.
So you were both naked . I can hear each of them saying it, and they’re not wrong.
“He, ah, asked again this morning,” I say. “And I said yes…again.”
They both laugh harder.
“Go, Emma,” Sabrina says.
Laney squeezes my shoulders in a side hug. “I’m so thrilled for you.”
“We won’t breathe a word,” Sabrina adds.
“It’s okay. There’s already speculation. We’ll release an official statement sometime, and then it’ll be old news until we release a wedding photo, and then it’ll be old news again.”
The press is not my favorite part of being involved with Jonas, but between his security team, the podcast telling our story, and an official statement from Razzle Dazzle about the Rutherford family being happy to welcome me and my son into their lives, this has been a lot different from the viral video that almost broke me.
I can handle the world knowing who I am.
I know there are people who are calling me a gold digger and an opportunist and a lot of worse things, but what I told Jonas when I hit go on that podcast is true.
I’m not alone.
I have him. I have Bash. I have family and friends and I can still mostly walk around Snaggletooth Creek without feeling like I’m on display.
Without feeling like the entire world is judging me.