Epilogue

EPILOGUE

One Year Later

I played with my cufflinks while my mind roamed. Mama Vivien had given me her sitting room above Neon Nights for the day. Her dressing room belonged to Rafael until the ceremony.

Butterflies filled my stomach when I remembered it.

The last six weeks had been a nightmare of planning. I had never been an assertive person with strong opinions about how things should be done, so when it came down to choosing a venue, someone to officiate, and creating a guest list, all my worst fears returned to haunt me. Rafael, on the other hand, followed his instincts and made all the right calls seemingly without giving them much thought. Cornflower-blue bow tie? Yes. Neon Nights as the venue instead of an upstate winery? Absolutely. Having Lady Vivien officiate? Not even debatable. Rafael tore down each wall I had been banging my head against .

I glanced at Mama Viv's large standing mirror and fixed my bow tie. It was a surprising touch on a light mint suit, one I had been poring over for days until Rafael returned home with a small black box with golden lettering embossed on the lid, containing the bow tie I now wore.

Someone knocked on my door, and I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, clearing my throat. "Come in." I sounded shaky even to my own ear.

Lucy entered the room. "Oh baby," she said when she saw me. "You look fabulous."

"Do I?" I asked.

My little sister shut the door and leaned against it. She wore a cream dress that reached down to her knees, her arms bare, her hair curled perfectly, and her makeup minimal and beautiful. "You're stunning, Luke."

I mouthed a thanks, my fingers trembling before I balled my hands into fists. "Where's Rose?"

"Tony's got her," Lucy said. "And also, you need to slow down and breathe."

"Huh?" I raised my eyebrows, my mind running a hundred miles per hour.

"You're just worrying, baby," she said. "And because there's nothing to worry about, you're fussing over Rose."

I let out a chuckle. "What makes you think there's nothing to worry about?"

Lucy crossed Mama Vivien's sitting room with an elegant stride. The maximalist furnishings didn't slow her down. "Everything is ready, Luke. Your soon-to-be husband is dressed and sitting in his room. Your officiant is glamorous. I heard talks of confetti canons being in place, and I didn't even know they had canons in the garden." She laughed and walked over to the window overlooking the backyard of Neon Nights. "It's beautiful, Luke."

I joined my sister by the white-framed window. Downstairs, people were moving around the space that was normally just the extension of Mama Vivien's bar. Our matron had rented white chairs to swap out her eclectic collection of wrought iron and wooden ones normally occupying the garden. The walls of the buildings that framed the courtyard were lined with immense potted plants and decorated with various graffiti and rainbow flags. The canopy that normally covered the courtyard was removed in favor of clear daylight on a hot August day. And to the far left was a rose-covered arch and a podium for Mama Vivien and us.

Something tugged at my heart, and I couldn't decide whether it was joy or fear. Low-simmering anxiety hadn't released its grip on me in a long while. The closer the wedding day was, the more acutely I felt it.

"Do you think I could talk to Rafael?" I whispered conspiratorially.

Lucy smirked at me. "It's your wedding, darling."

My heart tripped. "God, you just sounded like Mom."

Lucy put a hand on my back and gave me a soothing rub. "She would have been proud of you today. "

Would she? She had struggled so much to accept my sexuality during her life, although not in the ways parents often do. She hadn't cited any verses from the Bible or told me of morality. Instead, she had spent her life assuming I was straight, so changing her understanding of me had been the real challenge. Would this have proven it once and for all? I wasn't sure, but I chose to hope that it would have.

"So? What do you think?" I prompted Lucy.

"Babes, you're the one fearing bad luck if you see him," Lucy reminded me. "If it were me, I'd say to hell with tradition. They only invented it so that men couldn't run away if they didn't like the brides."

"Down with the patriarchy," I said, but my heart wasn't in it. I was afraid of bad luck. Nobody knew like me how much bad luck we'd already had. Ten years ago, on my eighteenth birthday, I ran into the most exciting and beautiful man in all of creation. Then I lost him. And I kept losing him every time our paths crossed.

The last ten months had been a wild adventure, the biggest one Rafael and I had ever had. In October, Rafael moved to New York to look for work that would fulfill him. Just like me, he refused to live off a trust fund or family heirloom, wasting his days. Soon after his move, the adventure began. It was one thing to love someone so large and beautiful and impossible, but another to live with that person. Rafael was not just a man. He was a river, a mountain, an ocean. He was like the sun, so brilliant and wonderful. And willful.

I loved him. His words returned to me whenever I felt a hint of strain. To love someone was to repeat the promise, to choose love over all else. It wasn't some divine guarantee that things would always be perfect; things rarely tended to be that way. So repeating the promise to be his for the rest of our days was the only way to tell the difference between what mattered and what did not. Small battles were nothing compared to the conquest of love.

Between seeking a bigger place to live here in Hudson Burrow, managing work, gathering a group of friends, and discovering we liked different flavors of coffee, Rafael and I had spent our fall and winter putting together a life together. And when we were happy—completely happy in the deepest corners of our souls, not merely smitten with one another like silly, young boys—we set a date for a summer wedding.

"Maybe I don't need to see him," I said. To be blindfolded gave me ideas that were better kept for after the ceremony. Instead, I proposed the only solution I could think of. And my sister agreed.

She walked out first, and I lingered by the window a moment longer. My publisher, editor, and a score of colleagues were down in the garden, enjoying refreshments Roman offered them. Rafael's parents had come from London, and they sat in the first row, chatting with Tony, who kept tossing my little niece in the air and catching her with a delightful laugh from everyone around. The other boys of Hudson Burrow, all of whom I had known for some time, had welcomed Rafael like one of their own, opening their group to new friends when we moved to the neighborhood. They flocked around Mama Vivien, who wore pink regalia and an immense pink wig. In so many ways, Lady Vivien Woodcock deserved to be called Mama Vivien by all the boys in the neighborhood. Even at twenty-eight, I went to her for advice and help. Two elderly men in gorgeous brown suits occupied seats in the second row on Rafael's side, and I knew them to be Christopher and Henry, finally married and together, and probably unaware that their happy ending was partly responsible for me believing in happy endings once again.

I turned on my heels and walked out of the sitting room, down the hallway, and to where Lucy kept the door wide open. It was Rafael's room, and my sister nodded once before walking away. She winked at me just before she was out of sight.

The door of Mama Vivien's dressing room was wide open, but there was no one I could see inside. The red carpet over the dark hardwood floor matched the heavy red curtains. A lavish chair was pushed in front of the makeup table, and a large mirror was mounted on the wall. Wardrobes lined the walls. The creaking of a floorboard alerted me to Rafael's presence just a moment before I heard him draw a breath. "Hello, my love," he said from the other side of the door.

"Hey," I said, resting a hand on the door, somewhere around the middle, imagining him doing the same.

"You didn't get cold feet, did you?" he teased.

"Never," I said as seriously as if he was truly asking.

He chuckled softly. "Good. In case you didn't realize it, you're completely stuck with me. Forever."

"If you're trying to scare me, it's not working," I said .

We shared a laugh and let a moment of silence pass. Rafael's hand on the door was confirmed when the door moved a little toward me. "Lucy said you looked worried."

"I'm not worried about spending my life with you," I said right away. With him, there was never any need to speak around a topic.

"That's settled, then," Rafael said with a teasing laugh.

I inhaled a deep breath of air and held it for a little while, my fingers instinctively tapping the door until Rafael tapped it on his side. I could feel the gentle tap, tap, tap exactly under the palm of my hand. "This is what I have wanted since I met you."

Rafael let out a soft hum. "When I saw you reaching for the top shelf, your arms stretched so high, I knew I was gonna marry you, Luke."

I laughed. That was an outrageous lie but a welcome one. "Fate stole you away so many times."

"And you fear it's gonna do it again today," Rafael said. The very fact that he could read my mind so effortlessly was proof that we were made for one another. "Luke, I promise to marry you in, ah, lemme see…twenty-four minutes. Nothing's gonna stop me, baby. There's no god who would dare stand in my way, I swear."

"I love you," I whispered.

"I love you, too, Luke," Rafael said in a fiery voice.

Feeling my heart grow twice its size in my chest, I tapped the door again. "I'll see you in twenty-three minutes, baby. "

I turned away and walked straight to my room. Pacing, I knew that every word he said was true. Still, that nagging feeling made me want to move from one end of the wall to the other. Seconds ticked away until footsteps passed my door, and I knew that Rafael was moving to take his spot at the altar. A glance out of the window showed me Mama Vivien getting up to the podium and waving her big red fan for everyone to take their places.

Taking a deep breath, I turned on my heels and walked out of the sitting room. Nothing bad had happened. Nothing had come between me and all I wanted. Although a lifetime had passed since the first inkling of this wish had sprouted deep in my soul, I cherished all the years we'd had, even if we hadn't spent them together.

We had passed the hardest test of all, Rafael and I. We had found our way home whenever something threw us into the middle of the ocean.

Descending the stairs into the bar, I spotted Roman leaving a tray behind the bar. Our fiery friend winked and lifted a thumb up for good luck, then hurried to pull the door open for me. As I passed into the backyard of the Neon Nights, the light of day brought all the colors and brightness to the forefront of my consciousness. For a moment, colors were all I saw, then the shapes sharpened before my eyes and all dimmed around the brilliant figure of my almost-husband standing tall and happy at the altar.

As I reached the aisle leading me to my happy place, my gaze locked on Rafael. Wearing a dark and subdued red suit, brown shoes, and a white shirt, he was the fulfillment of every dream and fantasy of mine. He was the other half of my soul and heart. He was the completion of my being. He was, in all his beauty, the love of my life.

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The End.