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I laugh. “No. Sorry. Next year, I’ll make sure to give you cash, though.”
“Next year, huh?” Jake asks. “Already making long term plans for yourselves?”
Andi bites her lip, eyes big as she looks at me.
I shrug. “I’d be crazy not to.”
She pulls open the envelope and lifts up two plane tickets. “Plane tickets?” she asks.
“I thought we could go to New York for a little while. You could introduce me to your friends there, tie up loose ends, and show me around. If you want, that is.”
She’s crying again as she rushes in and hugs me. “This is so thoughtful, Jesse. Thank you.”
Carter is back up on his scooter trying to do tricks. For some reason, he’s making futuristic sound effects every time he does a lame little hop. He nearly knocks over the tree, but Nolan manages to play goalie and catch it before it tips.
“Okay, okay,” Andi says, wiping at her eyes. “You all wait here. Nobody move.”
She runs out to the guest cabin and comes back with six thin, flexible presents wrapped in gold paper. She goes around, handing one to each of us with a huge, shit-eating grin on her face. “I didn’t really know about sizes, so hopefully this works.”
Carter already has his opened. He’s holding up a glittery gold thong in front of his face with a gigantic smile. “Fuck, yes! Lucky gold thongs!”
Maddox lifts an identical thong, grinning. “This is awesome, Andi. Mine was running low on juice.”
Liam sets his down on the armrest of his chair and gives Maddox a disgusted look. “Maybe not the best word choice, Maddox. Mojo? Luck? There are dozens of words and you went with thong juice?”
“Fair,” Maddox admits, nodding his head.
I tilt my head at Andi. “How did you know about the lucky gold thong? Actually, don’t answer that.” I laugh. “And none of you are going to model these for her.”
I press my palm to my face when I see Carter has already slid his up over his sweatpants. He’s aiming his ass at Maddox and asking him how it fits.
We all burst out in laughter.
45
EPILOGUE - ANDI
* * *
I hold Jesse’s hand for the entire flight back to New York. I wondered if it would feel like going home, but so far, it doesn’t. In two months, Frosty Harbor has started to feel like more of a home to me than Manhattan ever did. I’m excited to go back and see old friends and old places, but I’m just as excited to get back to my new life in Frosty Harbor when we’re done here.
“I keep worrying I’m going to wake up,” I say to him suddenly. I’m leaning my head on his shoulder and watching the clouds pass by out our window. He got us tickets for First Class, which is new for me.
“You can sleep. I’ll wake you if anything important happens.”
I smile. “Not like that. I mean, like, this all just feels like the most perfect dream. It’s like those mornings when you wake up in the middle of a dream and you squeeze your eyes shut, just praying you wind up back in the same story. This feels like that, and I keep worrying it’s not real.”
“I know what you mean,” he says. He’s so unbelievably gorgeous. The sunlight is casting a glowing outline around his profile and his full lips. He has a few day’s scruff on his jaw, just the way I like. He’s got on a turtleneck I bought for him, with his money, and jeans that hug his muscular legs. “But if I wake up and find out this was all a dream, I’m just going to go and find you again.”
I laugh. “What do you mean?”
“If I’m only with you in a dream, then I’ll wake up and find you again. Over and over. As many times as I have to.”
I wrap my hands around his arm and hug him, smiling into his shirt. “Then it’s a deal. If this isn’t real, we’ll just keep finding each other again.”
He lifts my hand and kisses the back of it. “That’s right. Because you’re mine. In your dreams. In my dreams. In reality. It doesn’t matter where.”
“Jesse?” I say after a minute or two of silence.
