EPILOGUE
Three years (and some change) later
“LI! I’m home,” Daniel calls, to no response. From the foyer, he spies a bowl of popcorn and two unopened beers on the table: one sour and one India pale ale. It’s Monday, which means they’re supposed to be watching twenty-five men attempt to seduce one woman—Liyah prefers this to the inverse, as she thinks the “fragile male egos” make for better drama. Having sampled both over the seasons, Daniel must agree.
He walks past the framed picture of their camp cohort. Third row on the end is a tiny Liyah making even tinier bunny ears behind Daniel’s head. It was Kayla’s birthday present to him this year—though he uses the word present loosely, given how unfortunate he looked at that age. It can’t be good for your mental health to stare at a picture of thirteen-year-old you, mid-blink and metal mouthed, over coffee every morning.
Two beers, but no Liyah. The bathroom is empty, as is the bedroom, where he drops his gym bag.
Come to think of it, Sweet Potato didn’t greet him at the door. It’s not a strange occurrence on nights when Liyah gets home first; the cat learned that he’ll come to wherever she is soon enough.
The last room to check is the office/library/indoor jungle that once belonged to Lora—who the fuck spells Laura that way? You go by Leah, spelled L-I-Y-A-H! Shut it, DW.
The door is slightly ajar, and when Daniel pushes it open, he’s greeted with an excellent view of Liyah’s ass in his favorite jean cutoffs of hers. As it turns out, they were made—or at least tailored on Neen’s sewing machine—specifically for her. She’s kneeling on the fire escape, presumably holding their cat just beyond his view.
“Drop it, Sweep, I’m begging you.” Liyah decided about a month into their official relationship that Sweet P. didn’t roll off the tongue easily enough and began calling her Sweepy instead. That bastardization was eventually converted to Sweep, which has evolved into the occasional Bristles, Broomstick, or once even Mop Bucket. Liyah rule number 32: do not point out that those names are syllabically identical to or longer than Sweet P.
“What’s she got?” Daniel asks, leaning on the doorframe.
Liyah yelps and whips around, stopping just short of slamming her head into the half-open window she’d climbed through. “God, Daniel. You scared me.”
“Sorry.”
“She has a dead mouse in her mouth. It’s so big I thought it was a rat.”
“I hope you thanked her for her pest control services.”
“She tried to drop it in my lap, Daniel. My lap.” She dips her head and whispers, “Thank you, Sweet Potato,” anyway. It’s one of those moments that makes Daniel fall in love with her all over again.
“Here, let me try.” Daniel folds himself through the window, joining Liyah on the steel grate. Sweet Potato blinks up at him, pupils round and innocent, a mouse the size of her head dead and bloodied between her jaws. “Hold her over the railing a little more, but don’t drop her.”
“I’m not going to drop her!”
He reaches his hand under Sweet Potato’s neck, careful to avoid the rodent carcass, and gives it a soft tickle. Sure enough, she drops her prey, and Daniel and Liyah watch as it sails to the empty sidewalk below.
“I swear I tried that three times already,” Liyah grumbles, finally ushering the cat back inside. “You just have magic fingers. Also, hi. You smell good.”
“I’m all sweaty from climbing.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
Daniel grins. “You loooove me,” he sings.
“That I do,” she replies, and slips back through the window. He’s glad, otherwise that ring box he hid in the pocket of his suitcase for this year’s trip to San Francisco will be a horrible waste.
When they’re both firmly on solid ground, she pulls on the chest of his dry fit shirt, drawing him into a sweet kiss hello.
“Shower quickly, I need to know what happens between Matt S. and Matt C.”
He does as he’s told, mixing in a dollop of Liyah’s lavender conditioner to his own. Her hair products are heavily moisturizing and leave his hair weighed-down and greasy—he learned from experience—but he loves the scent so much that he found a way. They never talked about it, but at some point, Liyah stopped buying her aloe deodorant and started using his Old Spice instead. He likes the thought of them carrying little bits of each other around each day, a pleasant reminder whenever he frustratedly runs his fingers through his hair at work. He supposes that means she’s reminded of him when she stress-sweats, but he tries not to think about that too hard. It’s cute. It’s definitely a cute couple thing.
There’s a lot he loves about living with Liyah. Perhaps his favorite is waking up next to her every morning, no matter how grumpy she is. He loves that she pokes fun at him, always keeping him on his toes, but is so nonjudgmental about the things that matter. The first time she caught him talking to his dad, she introduced herself, kissed Daniel on the cheek, and left the room. He loves that he can be there to hold her, skin to skin, coaching her through deep breaths when a nightmare wakes her. He loves that she’s always willing to talk or listen when he needs it, how she never rushes him to figure out his emotions. He loves how much she loves his cat.
There are hard things, too. Like when he pushes her away on bad days and she snaps at him, or how she sometimes goes silent instead of asking for the love she wants. But they’re always trying, and the good far outweighs the bad.
“Dee-Dubs, your beer is getting warm!”
DANIEL EMERGES FROM the shower, hair wild from his always aggressive towel drying, in naught but a pair of boxer briefs. Liyah had to acclimate herself to his propensity for walking around shirtless when he moved in. How he doesn’t freeze under the air-conditioning, she’ll never know, but rain or shine, he’s half-naked at the first opportunity. She’s come to see the rolled shirtsleeves as an incredible exercise of self-restraint rather than self-indulgence.
She’s come to see a lot of things about Daniel differently. All of them make her love him even more. It’s amazing how long you can spend getting to know someone; she’d always assumed that once a relationship was counted in years instead of months, there would be little left to discover. For the first time in her life, she’s happy to admit that she was wrong. She’d like to keep learning about Daniel indefinitely, if he’ll have her. Maybe one day, she’ll make Neen her Theyd of Honor (the name is a work in progress, bear with her). Shockingly, she wouldn’t mind if it were soon.
“Which Matt are we rooting for, again? C.?” Daniel asks as he takes his usual spot on the sofa, leaning against one of Lora’s atrocious throw pillows. Or Daniel’s, now, as he spent fifteen whole dollars to keep them when Lora moved out. Liyah wishes he had withdrawn the money in cash and set it on fire instead.
“No, S.! C.’s the one who started it.” His hand falls to her thigh; she fiddles with the friendship bracelet Avi made him during his freshman orientation at Northwestern.
“I still couldn’t tell half these white guys apart if there was a gun to my head.”
“Maybe that’s secretly the producers’ intent. If they all look the same, then it’s the one with the best emotional connection that wins out.”
“Yes, it’s truly about the depth and complexity of human relationships, that’s why they’re expected to get engaged after approximately twenty-two hours together,” he deadpans.
There’s no real argument there, so Liyah glares at him and presses play. She loves these Monday nights, when the workweek has yet to render either of them too tired for extended conversation, and they can flirt and banter and yell at the TV, Sweepy periodically switching between their laps and the cat tree that’s nearly Daniel’s height. They usually rush to their shared bedroom the moment the episode ends, but often they don’t make it off the couch, Daniel having traced too many tantalizing circles on Liyah’s skin for her to resist. On occasion, they make it halfway, ending up on the floor or against a wall.
Together, they’re still worthy of poetry and prose.
Tonight is a couch night. Afterward, having decided that popcorn was not, in fact, a suitable dinner, they stand naked in the kitchen eating cold pizza straight from the refrigerator. A clump of cheese falls from Daniel’s slice. Sweet Potato races toward it but he scoops her up before she can get there, holding her unnecessarily high above his head. In a panicked voice, he asks Liyah to pick it up before it can upset his baby’s tummy. Liyah laughs hysterically, and it’s one of those moments that makes her fall in love with him all over again.