7. Epilogue

There should really be a “what happened next” for fairy tales, because that’s what I feel like I’m in for our very first week together. I saved the lost prince from the evil witch and now we’re supposed to ride off on his white horse, but it’s 2025. There are bills to pay, a cat to feed, and jobs to go to.

It’s terribly romantic, in theory, to dramatically save someone from a horrible witch of a “boy mom” mother, but I’d be lying if the words of the woman from Thrift Store Thrift Store didn’t haunt me. It’s not like he had a choice in who showed up to save him, and I’m just a woman with two jobs and a cat, barely making it on my own. But of course I don’t bring it up, and Matthew is busy trying to get his life together.

After a couple of trips to Thrift Store Thrift Store for some clothes and shoes, he disappears the next morning and comes back that night, having found a job loading stuff “off the books” until he can figure out things like IDs and social security numbers. It’s a completely different environment from the one he left behind in 1987. He had been working on tenure at a university, but he takes it in stride, saying it’s good to use his body. They pay him daily, and I start to find cash in my purse every morning. On his third day, he has enough saved up for a cheap cell phone, and I introduce him to the wonder that is the Internet. He is a fan of memes and immediately starts sending them to me every chance he gets—even the ones there’s no way he could understand.

We fall into routines.

He scoops Stanley’s box for me and does the dishes every night.

I wash his clothes with mine.

We sleep in the same bed every night.

I wake up every morning to him wrapped around me, his cock hard against my back. But there’s no more waking up to sex, which is polite, but weird. Is he just buying his time until he can leave? Does he feel an obligation to me because I saved him? Both of those ideas feel icky, but trying to broach the subject feels equally icky. I don’t mind him being there. He’s paying his way and helping out. I don’t want to back him into a corner when he can’t stand on his own.

Our routines quickly become very domestic—whoever is home first makes dinner. We sit and talk about our day, then I introduce him to all the shows and movies he’s missed. At night, we fall asleep talking about our lives, about what he’s missed, but we never, ever talk the future.

Valentine’s Day rolls around, and with it, thankfully, comes Dale’s show—a distraction from the awkwardness that’s surely going to surround the day as we continue to tiptoe around our situationship. I take a few hours of PTO so I can get ready for it without holding up Matthew—there’s nothing that makes me feel frumpier than going to a drag show and not having on a full face of make-up. It’s only four when I hear the key in the door, and Matthew walks in with a huge bouquet of red roses.

“Oh hey, I didn’t think you’d be home yet,” he says with a smile.

“Those are beautiful. Who are they for?” I ask, leaning over to sniff the bouquet in his arms.

He laughs, “Seriously?”

When I say nothing, he raises an eyebrow. “I bought them for you. It’s Valentine’s Day. That’s still what people do, right? For someone they like?”

“Yeah, but. Wait. You like me?”

He huffs a laugh. “That might be a tame word for it.”

His words take all the wind out of me for a moment. I can’t say anything, but I can’t break eye contact either.

He sets the vase down on the table and sticks his hands in his pockets. “Look, I don’t want you to feel obligated to me. You already saved me once. And I really wanted to be on more equal footing when I brought this up, but it’s Valentine’s Day and I won’t be an ass just because I’m afraid.”

“Afraid?” I squeak out.

“That the answer is no. That you don’t have feelings for me. That you feel sorry for me. That you are an incredibly kind and giving person and this is just what you do.”

I stare back at him. “Are you being for real right now?”

He gives me a half smile like he does when I use slang he’s not used to. “I’m totally for real,” he says.

This is seriously going to be the weirdest age-gap relationship.

Words fail me, as tears spring to my eyes, so I do the only thing I can think of, the only thing I’ve wanted to do this whole time. I wrap my arms around him and press my lips to his. His hands move to my face, and we stand in the way of Stanley, kissing until his angry MEOW to get the hell out of his way grows too loud and demanding.

“So I’m going to take that as a yes,” Matthew whispers against my ear.

I laugh and kiss him on the cheek as the doorbell rings. No one ever rings the doorbell, other than salespeople, so I’m tempted to ignore it, but Matthew, being of the eighties, does crazy things like answering outside doors.

“Hey, there’s an important-looking envelope for you,” he says, as he shuts the door.

He hands it to me and I check the return address. “Oh, it’s actually for you.” I tell him, handing it back. “I’ve been feeling bad that we haven’t been able to find much online about your brother and sister, so I asked my uncle if he’d do me a favor and look into it for you. He’s a private detective.”

Matthew’s eyes soften and he kisses me on the forehead. “Thank you so much. You have no idea how much this means to me.” He sits down at the table, tears into the envelope, and dumps out several pieces of white copy paper. They’re mostly print outs and copies of articles arranged in date order starting with the most recent. At the top is the obituary notice for his sister, Jennifer, killed in a car accident at 42. He stares at it for a long time before handing it to me. “She looked like my dad’s sister, Linda. Linda was the cool aunt. She’d always slip us cash and give us sips of her wine at Christmas.”

I squeeze his shoulder as he returns to the pile. There’s several more articles about Jennifer—a business she’d run, a charity she’d helped, a graduation notice. And then, come the articles about Matthew. Disappeared. Girlfriend and mom despondent. Searches were made, rewards were offered, but a body was never found. Matthew sighs. He’s about to stuff the papers back into the envelope when one final article drops to the table. The headline reads “Local College Student Missing After Announcing Engagement.”

“Is that your brother?” I ask as Matthew picks up the paper.

He nods. “My twin. We went to different colleges. He wasn’t a math and science guy.” The article is short and to the point.

Michael James Walker was reported missing by his fiancée, Sharon Johnson, on December 12, 1989. Mr. Walker had just proposed to Sharon and was traveling alone in his 1981 Brown Ford Crown Victoria to visit with his mother in Fort Williamson when he failed to arrive. Anyone with more information about Michael’s whereabouts is encouraged to contact the Fort Williamson Police Department.

He runs his fingers across the picture of Michael.

“It’s so weird how your situations were so similar. Weren’t you going to propose to original Kaitlyn when your mom…?”

He stares down at the paper. “You don’t think?”

“That your mom bound Michael?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “What the hell am I even saying? Of course she did.”

I rub his back. “I’m sorry. I think I just made all of this worse.”

He shakes his head. “No,” he grabs my hand and kisses the top. “Please don’t ever think that.” He pauses for a long moment, then looks up at me. “I want to find him.”

“Okay.”

He turns to look at me. “Okay? Are you sure? This is kind of—”

“Crazy? Impossible? Yeah, but I know a good place to start. And don’t forget, you’re talking to a woman who’s had sex with sweatpants. Crazy and impossible are kind of my thing now.”

He pulls me down into his lap and kisses me hard. “I’m such a lucky man,” he whispers when he pulls away at last.

I smile and kiss his nose. “You truly are.”

Curious about what happened to Michael? Check out My Date with a White T-shirt to read Michael + Annalise’s story.

A Note about Time in This Story

After I started having my friends and beta readers look over this story, I kept getting a similar comment… isn’t it 1987, not 1988? I realized pretty quickly that I’m one of the few people I know who is obsessed with time travel. (I guess not many little kids grew up obsessively watching Terminator and hyper-fixating on the time travel episodes in Star Trek the Next Generation) In my head, Matthew went to see The Princess Bride in October 1987 when it came out, but he’s meeting our Kaitlyn in on the same month and day she’s living in, just thirty-seven years earlier, putting the story barely in 1988. There was no really cool way to stick that in there without a monologue, and no one’s got time for that, so we’re just sticking with 1987 throughout.