Epilogue

EPILOGUE

2020

We got married!

July 14, 2020

Monroe Samuel Finlay & Jacob Casper Denver

…tied the knot on this fantastic day up in Big Sur. Please enjoy this masterfully edited video of our ceremony, attended by Haley Denver, Seth Diaz, Russell and Nikki Astor, and our children. At the end, you’ll find an invitation to one hell of a wedding reception that doesn’t have a date or venue yet. Stay tuned for the end of the pandemic!

Much love,

Roe and Jake

* * *

“Pleeeease! You see how I’m begging, Mom?” Colin peered imploringly into the laptop screen. “Cas! Come beg with me! We might crack them!”

I chuckled and stayed in the patio doorway.

Jake sat on the couch in the living room next to Colin, arms folded over his chest, reluctance written all over him.

And, of course, Cas came running out of their room and joined Jake and Colin on the couch.

“Please, please, please, please,” Casper pleaded. “And you know we have the best idea in the whole world!”

I sighed and scrubbed a hand over my mouth, and I exchanged a glance with Jake. We were understandably on the fence; Colin wasn’t even ten yet, and at this rate, Casper might start first grade in a couple weeks on a freaking computer. We’d crossed all our fingers for the damn pandemic to end, but it seemed unlikely this year. Everything was shut down.

Nikki coughed on her end. She and Russell were on their second week of being sick with Covid. “Jake, gimme your thoughts again.”

Jake shrugged and scratched an eyebrow. “They can still count their ages on both hands, and they can’t take something like this back. Once it’s out, it’s out. Doesn’t matter if it’s ‘just a YouTube series.’ They’ll be exposed to all our followers.”

“Until we get our own channel,” Colin added smugly.

Slow your roll, buddy. We haven’t agreed yet.

Yet.

I suppressed another sigh, wavering a whole lot. It wasn’t as if the boys were gonna do anything that might embarrass them in the future. It was a nature documentary for children, shot in our own backyard. But even so…they were incredibly young, and the internet wasn’t always a friendly place. If we eventually agreed, we would have to protect them from all the interactions. Plus, Colin came out strong but tended to fade quickly when it came to being in the spotlight. He could be just as introverted as Jake.

“It’s only ten episodies.” Casper flashed seven fingers. I wavered some more. My boy still thought it was fun to say episodies, for chrissakes. “It’s little.”

“And short!” Colin chimed in with. “Like, maybe twenty minutes long.”

Nikki chuckled through a cough. “Boys, can you excuse Dad and me for a moment? And get the good-cop daddy?”

I laughed. “I’m right here.”

“Why am I the bad cop?” Jake frowned.

As the boys scurried back to their room, I sat down next to Jake.

“How you doin’, hon?” I asked.

“Eh. Getting better, but it still sucks,” she replied hoarsely. “You can stop sending us Panera delivery, though. We have a fridge full of soup now.”

I grinned.

“I’m waitin’ for my answer here,” Jake pointed out. “Am I the bad cop?”

“No, you’re not.” I put my hand on his knee. “Thing is, if it weren’t for this damn lockdown, I would’ve stood firm way longer. But the boys are running out of things to do.”

The other three were easier to entertain. Between our backyard and the pool at the Condor Chicks house, they were having a great summer. We were teaching Sam how to swim, and the two youngest goofballs couldn’t get enough of being in the water.

“It would be a nice project for them,” Nikki agreed. “Jake, honey, I think it might be time to let them do this. They wanna take after you guys. It’s sweet.”

Jake furrowed his brow. “I don’t have any problem whatsoever with them running around with their cameras. Hell, I’m proud. It’s the whole taking things public that concerns me.”

Valid point; couldn’t stress that enough. But I had to mention something to Nikki, because I was so impressed by Colin’s mind. “We actually told them we could go camping and do a documentary just for us, and Colin was like, but we wanna do this in the backyard because lots of kids can’t go anywhere during the lockdown, and we can show them there’s wildlife at home.”

“Aww.” Nikki went into the “I’m melting” momma mode and looked to Jake. “Let them do the damn docuseries, Jake. I have all the faith that you and Roe will edit it into something they’ll look back on one day with pride.”

Jake was caving. He missed editing too. Right now, there wasn’t much we could do. We did have work waiting—and a larger project in the researching stage, though that was mostly my job. I was reading a fuckload this year, which, of course, had triggered our work brains. Everyone today was looking to books, TV, and movies to make the days go by faster. Seth had barged into the office one day and just exclaimed, “Push content! Push content, push content, push content!”

We needed content.

Our numbers were ridiculously high on our podcast and whatever we put on YouTube.

“Can we compromise?” Jake proposed. “Five episodes, fifteen minutes long, and we’ll see how it goes. It’ll take about a day to put together one episode, editing included—okay, maybe two days—so we can continue on short notice if we don’t run into trouble.”

“Absolutely,” Nikki coughed. “What does Haley think?”

“She’s on board,” I replied. “She suggested we could dedicate one day of the week to the boys on our Insta. None of us is ready to consider them having their own channels and accounts—”

“Definitely not,” Jake agreed.

“But if that day comes, Haley will find someone to manage it,” I finished. “Bottom line, the boys are too young to be exposed to social media interactions. Hell, Haley filters our shit too.”

“That sounds great,” Nikki said. “I can’t wait to see what you come up with! Our babies are growing up.”

“A little too fast,” Jake muttered.

Nikki logged off shortly after, and the living room became silent.

The boys would probably run back out soon to hear the verdict.

Jake leaned back against the cushions with a heavy sigh, and he pulled me with him. With my head on his shoulder, I glanced at him and waited him out. He didn’t look too troubled anymore. In fact, the corners of his mouth twisted up a bit, and he tilted his face at me.

“So this is it,” he murmured. “Our story ends, and the boys are the new stars.”

I rumbled a laugh. He could be funny sometimes. He might be the one who cared the least about stardom in LA.

His eyes flashed with amusement.

I reached up and kissed him. “The boys might become stars, but our story will never end.”

He smiled and kissed me back. “I like the sound of that.”

* * *

Sometimes, an author has to realize she’s no longer writing an epilogue. She’s writing a third book. If you want a glimpse into the next ten years of Jake and Roe’s life, written in the same year-by-year format, there’s an extended, 17,000-word long epilogue novella called This Won’t Hurt available here.

Excerpt

If someone told me…whatever, fifteen, twenty years ago, that one day, I was going to go on a honeymoon with my husband…and we would bring not only his ex but his ex’s husband and… I wasn’t even gonna finish that thought. To an outsider, it probably would’ve been weird. But here we were, in fucking Milan, with all our kids, Nikki, Russell, Haley, Seth, and their boy. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

At the rental place, it was time to do car math, because driving around Italy in a giant SUV just wasn’t gonna happen. Or two, for that matter. No, this country was for tiny cars. Tiny cars for narrow streets and Italians who were…passionate drivers, even by my standards.

“Okay, listen up!” I held up the car keys. “Russell and Nikki, you take Sam and Callie in the green Fiat.” I handed Russell the right key.

“Yay! We go together, Sammie!” Callie cheered.

The sisters were happy—and not just about going together; they were with Momma Nikki.

“Let’s grab your luggage, ladies,” Russell said. “We’ll meet up at the hotel?”

“Perfect.” Jake nodded.

I turned to Haley and Seth. “The red Fiat is yours, and you can—”

“Me, Daddy!” Adam said, raising his hand. “I wanna go with Andy.”

Okay, fair enough. I was gonna suggest Colin because he was easy and little Andy was not, but maybe this was better.

I dipped down and kissed the top of Adam’s head. “All right, then Daddy and I will grab the blue Fiat and toss Colin and Casper on the roof.”

At least Cas found me hilarious. Colin, the preteen, graced us with a smirk.

Here we go. Honeymoon with the whole damn family.