Epilogue
Archer
One Year Later
A year on this mountain used to mean one thing.
Now it means Maya's boots by the door next to mine, a ring on her finger that catches the light every time she reaches for something, and a bar full of people who apparently cannot let two adults celebrate an engagement without turning it into a full production.
Simon and Autumn flew in for it. The man spends more time this year on video calls with Maya about engagement metrics than he ever spent checking in on me.
Fair trade, given what she's built. Marketing business with actual clients now, actual retainers, actual employees who report to her instead of the other way around.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, Simon watched what she did with The Lucky Tap's numbers and handed her every property he owns.
She runs social media for six bars now from a desk in what used to be my workout room, and I don't mind losing the space in the house to be delegated to the garage one bit.
She's behind the bar tonight for old times' sake, which Ainsley agreed to against her better judgment and everyone else's.
"You know this is a terrible idea," Ainsley says, sliding the whiskey across like she's handling evidence.
"I know it's a terrible idea." Maya rolls up her sleeves anyway, the ring flashing under the bar lights. "I'm doing it regardless. It's my party. I'm making an Old Fashioned if it kills me."
"It's four ingredients," Ainsley says.
"I'm aware of how many ingredients it is, Ainsley."
That's the part that gets me every time, watching her square up against this drink.
Four ingredients. A sugar cube, bitters, one large ice cube, bourbon.
The thing a first-week bartender learns before they learn where the bathroom is, and somehow, a full year in, it's the one recipe that still takes her apart.
She makes it through the sugar cube fine. Bitters, fine. Ice, fine. Then somewhere in the stir she loses the thread entirely, same as she's lost it every single time I've watched her try, and what comes out the other side tastes like it's holding a grudge.
Ainsley tastes it, diplomatic as ever. "Notes of regret."
"Still?" Maya stares at the glass as if it betrayed her on purpose. "I manage the marketing for four companies. I have a system for everything. This is a spoon and some sugar. I should be able to do this in my sleep."
"You think about it too hard," I say. "Same thing every time. You've got the steps memorized. You just won't trust them."
She looks up at that, something in her face going soft around the edges, because a year ago I wouldn't have handed her that observation without a smirk built into it. Tonight, I mean it plain.
"That's very wise for a man who alphabetizes his fishing lures."
"Different system."
She laughs, dumps the drink, and starts over. I watch her hands work the second attempt, slower this time, and something in the way she's holding the spoon is different tonight. Steadier. Less like she's fighting the drink and more like she's letting it happen instead of managing it.
It comes out right.
Not almost right, not diplomatically drinkable. Right. She stares at it a long second, not trusting it, then takes a sip herself, and her entire face does something I haven't seen it do in a year of watching her lose this fight.
"Oh my God." She sets the glass down carefully. "Oh my God, I did it. I actually did it."
"Beginner's luck," Ace calls from his stool, already grinning.
"I've made this drink four hundred times, Ace, there's no beginner left in this."
"Fine. Ending's luck." He toasts her with his beer, entirely pleased with himself for finding a loophole.
Lottie's got both hands on her cane, leaning in to inspect the glass herself. "Well. Would you look at that?" She sips it, nods slowly, the verdict of a woman who's never given anyone an easy compliment in her life. "Not bad, honey."
"High praise."
"Highest I've got." Lottie pats her hand, then turns that same look on me she's had since the night she stood in this bar and started a pool on whether the two of us would get together at all.
"I believe I won that first bet, if anyone's counting.
Three weeks, I said. Might've been off on the exact timing, but I wasn't wrong about the outcome. "
"You were off by a lot more than three weeks."
"Details." She waves it away with the cane. "The important part is that I called it before either of you did."
She's not wrong about that either.
Sunny and Beck made the drive down from their mountain for it, which surprised nobody. Sunny's got her hand looped through Beck's arm and a grin aimed in my direction that says she's been waiting the entire drive to say something.
"So," she says. "Wrong number to engaged. Should we start a support group?"
"Get in line," Beck says. "It's a whole trend up our way."
Maya waves her ring in Sunny's direction, delighted, and Sunny grabs her hand to inspect it properly, the way women do, turning it under the light, appraising it like women do.
"Okay, this is stunning. Where'd you even find this?"
"He made a spreadsheet." Maya says it like she's still not over it, a year later.
"An actual spreadsheet. Cut, carat, setting, budget, cross-referenced against pictures I didn't know he'd been screen-shotting off my phone for months.
Column for what I said I liked. Column for what I actually pointed at longer than three seconds without noticing I was doing it. "
"He didn't."
"I did." I won’t pretend otherwise. Man spends years busting down doors, and it turns out the thing that cracked him open was color-coding a woman's taste in diamonds like a supply requisition. "Seemed like the only way to get it right."
"He got it right." Maya holds her hand out again, admiring it herself this time. "It's framed. In our bedroom. Laminated first, then framed, because I'm never going to stop being the woman who laminates things, and now neither is he."
"Solid system," I say.
She comes around the bar to me, still smelling like bitters and orange peel, and settles in against my side like she's done every night for the better part of a year, easy, like there was never a version of this that didn't fit.
People say moving her into my cabin the week she got evicted was too fast, say the ring is too fast, say all of it happened faster than two reasonable adults should let it happen. Maybe it was, by anybody else's math.
I've stopped checking anyone else's math.
"What," she says, catching me watching her again, the way I do most nights now without meaning to.
"Nothing." I lift my glass half an inch. "Admiring the color-coding."
Her entire face goes soft at that, the callback landing the way I meant it to, no teasing left in it now. Just true.
"What'd I do this time?" she asks, quiet, just for me, the same question she's thrown at me for a year every time I go still and watch her too long.
It used to be a joke between us. Somewhere along the way it turned into something closer to a vow, both of us knowing what the answer is and asking anyway because we enjoy hearing it said out loud.
"Nothing." I mean it the way I've meant it every time since the first. "I'm just glad it was you. Wrong number and all."
Some things don't need a system to be right. They just are, from the first wrong number on.
***
Thank you for reading if you would like a bonus scene of Archer and Maya!