I nod quickly and wipe the tears from my eyes because I want to see everything. I want to see him.

“Do you remember kissing me?”

I nod again.

“I went out the next day and got you this ring because I knew…”

I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t anything.

“…I knew we’d eventually be here. I’ve been carrying it around with me ever since, waiting for the right time…”

I look over at my dad, a man who stepped up and took me in, no questions asked. Then I look over at Ella, a woman who loves me as her own. And then to Tommy… my best friend. “Now, Daddy?” he asks, pulling out a plastic, green ring from his pocket.

Josh’s eyes penetrate mine, searching, questioning, reminiscing. Then he smiles, allowing me to drown in the joy of our memories “Now, Buddy.”

In sync, they get down on one knee, each holding one of my hands.

I force time to stand still so my mind—my heart—can capture the moment.

Josh places the ring on the tip of my finger, and the words leave his mouth, each one spoken with purpose, with clarity, with confidence. “Coast with us, Emerald Eyes?”

Epilogue

—Becca—

The house with the green fence and the long arch driveway was ours. Josh said he’d been in town for a whole week prior to my awards night, dealing with realtors and finding us the perfect space. And it was perfect. A little on the big side, but Josh said it was the only house he could find that had everything he wanted: a basement apartment for my dad to stay in when he was home from work so he didn’t have to pay rent for his old house, a small cottage for his mom at the back of the property by the pond. Yes, a pond! He didn’t want to leave his mom alone in North Carolina, and having her with us meant she could be close to Tommy and help out when he was traveling—which he did a lot less of. He didn’t want me carrying the weight or the so-called burden of taking care of Tommy once I was done with classes and work, and he still wanted me to enjoy being a college student, drinking at the bar with my friends until the early hours of the morning. I appreciated that, as much as I appreciated him.

Tommy enrolled at the local elementary school and started attending actual classes with actual kids, meaning he had an actual routine to live by. It was hard on him at first, not being the center of attention, and mixing with kids his own age, but after a while, he settled in, and a few months later, Natalie and Justin bought their first house as newlyweds only four blocks away. They wanted to be close to Tommy, and Tommy—he couldn’t be happier.

Ella, though—she was going out of her mind with boredom. Even though she worked at Say Something, running the art therapy classes with me and managing the sales of my work through Views Of Emeralds, she still couldn’t find enough things to occupy her time. So one night, we sat down, just her and me while Tommy was spending the weekend with his mother, and decided to start the Walk For Chaz Charity, a sub-section of the Henry Warden Foundation. After a few glasses of what we declared “Jesus Juice,” we had a plan set out. So, every four months for the past two years, we collect donations from Josh’s sponsors and hand them out to the less fortunate. We have one branch here, one in North Carolina run by Josh’s aunt Kim—Josh’s old garage apartment being the headquarters. We decided to lease out Grams’s house and give the profits to her church. Josh and I found the perfect tenant. A seventeen-year-old single father who stepped up to take care of his daughter. Josh has never admitted it, and I’ll never ask, but I highly doubt our “tenant” has ever paid rent for that house. Still, the church seems to get a check once a month from Grams’s estate—an estate she left in Tommy’s name for when he turns twenty-one. We also have a branch in California, the heart of the skate scene, run by Nico’s crazy grandmother who, by the way, loves the “Jesus Juice” as much as my Grams did.

After a year of living in the house, Josh built an indoor skate park on our land, because… why not, right? And because he wasn’t traveling as much, he spent his days in there training while I was in class, and Tommy was at school.

College, classes, homework, tests, finals—all of it sucked. Bad. Especially since I had big plans after graduation and I kind of just wanted it to be over. It wasn’t only the year of travel and adventure that Josh, Chris, and I had mapped out—plans that included Tommy coming with us as much as possible—but there was also that small little detail called the wedding.

Josh and I married a week after I graduated—a small ceremony on an island in Hawaii where Chazarae had grown up. We invited our family and a few close friends that included Sandra and Pete and Josh’s teammates, plus Chris and Josh’s manager and of course, Blake and Chloe. Tommy invited Nessa, his “long time” girlfriend who was, by then, cancer free.

I’d never really thought about my wedding day. Not in detail. Dawn, my therapist, who I still see, along with Lexy, my voice therapist, suggested that maybe I didn’t give myself the false hope because I didn’t believe I’d be around to see it. Maybe they were right. No, I’m sure they were.

The day went by so fast I barely remember it, but I do remember one thing—Josh and Tommy waiting for me at the end of the aisle—an aisle made of sand and rose petals. They wore identical outfits, identical smiles, and identical hopes for our future.

It was fitting, right? That we’d spent years apart, searching for the coast… and ended up marrying on one.

* * *

Traveling with five guys plus Tommy was not as fun as it sounded. Swear, by the end of the first trip, I was able to differentiate the smell of each individual’s fart. Dudes are gross. Seriously. But that’s the only real complaint I had about that entire year. I got to see so much of the world, got to experience so many different places and people and food… oh my God, the food! I think, by the time the year was over, even the guys began to appreciate the things they’d been taking for granted. They saw things through my lens, so to speak. And that first year with my husband, my husband, my husband—sorry, I just like saying my husband—brought us even closer. We learned things about ourselves, about each other, about us. Josh was wrong when he said that he loved me once, and that he’d make me love him twice, because during that time together, I fell in love with him over and over.

In all ways.

For always.

I guess maybe that’s why I chose to stop taking the birth control pills as soon as we got home from our last major trip. In my heart, I knew that even though being Josh Warden’s wife felt like a fantasy, and being Tommy’s step mom was a dream, I wanted more. And I knew that if I’d find myself falling because of my wants, they’d be there to pick me up, to help me walk. To help me soar. To help me coast.

Six months after that decision, I waited impatiently at the airport for him to arrive home from a short trip to Denver and drove him straight to the rooftop of Say Something. I didn’t have to tell him, didn’t even have to lift my hands. He already knew. Because he knows me. He sees me.

* * *

I clasp my necklace with my sweaty palm, allowing the five rings—the two Josh had given me, plus my engagement, my wedding, and the plastic ring from Tommy—to dig into my hand. I focus on that pain, and that pain alone, and try to ignore the one between my legs.