Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 68987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
I pulled back, giving him an incredulous look.
“Kidding,” he insisted, beaming at me. “Although that would be cool, wouldn’t it?”
“It would be super fun,” I admitted.
It turned out over the next couple of hours that Charlie had plenty more surprises up his sleeve, though. A while after we’d arrived, Stevie and Aaron arrived with a whole group of frat brothers, descending into Jade Brewery ready to party. Everyone came to give me big hugs, congratulating me on finishing my exam. They’d put together a playlist of my favorite songs from the last four years of college, and convinced Rush to put it on the brewery speakers.
After eating some delicious food and going in on a few billiards games with a rotating group of people, I ended up sitting at the center of the bar next to Charlie. Our chairs were facing outward toward the room, watching everyone and taking a moment to relax.
“You want to know something weird?” I asked him.
“Always. The weirder, the better,” he said, turning to face me.
“For my whole life, I’ve been working toward a good future for myself,” I said. “Good grades, good extracurriculars, always being on time, yadda, yadda. But I never actually thought about my future.”
His eyebrows raised. “Really?”
“Not at all,” I told him. “It was this big mystery that I was just preparing for, at all costs. Trying to always do the right thing. But in the past couple of months… I’ve slowly been able to start envisioning what I might actually want that future to look like.”
“If it involves being surprised by strippers, I promise you, that’s not one of the surprises I planned for tonight.”
I snorted, shaking my head at him. “No.”
“What does your future look like, then?”
“It has you in it,” I said, another wave of unexpected emotion hitting me. “My future doesn’t feel like a big question mark anymore because I know I want you in it. And when I think about it, I just see you. Wanting to make you smile. Wanting to make sure you know how good you are. And wanting to have simple, stupid, easy fun with you for as long as you’ll let me.”
He paused for a moment, reaching a hand out to gently touch my leg.
“Well,” he finally said, his voice a little raspy, “I’ve always thought about my future. And you know what? It’s never looked as good as it does now. Not even close.”
Love had seemed like some grand, far-off concept for so long. But if this was what love could be… maybe I’d been made for it all along.
Charlie leaned against my shoulder, and it was such a small gesture, but feeling him right here with me, leaning on me, suddenly meant the world to me.
I’d been in groups for my whole life—with my family growing up and then also groups I joined, with all of their messy, lovable chaos.
But I’d never had this.
I’d never had one person who felt like mine. Who made me feel like the most special person in any room I was in.
That had been how Charlie always made me feel, when I really thought about it. He’d never been afraid to show me all of him—the good, the bad, the ugly, and so many more things I’d never be able to thank him for enough. And I didn’t care if it took a year or ten years or the rest of my life—I was going to show him exactly how worthy he was of something real.
EPILOGUE
CHARLIE, ONE YEAR LATER
“Hello, you,” I said as I walked into the house, tossing a couple of grocery bags onto the ground. My muscles ached after a long day of pouring and setting concrete for a new build project, and I’d just stopped at the grocery store, but coming home to see Jax always gave me a little burst of energy.
Currently, he was in his favorite spot on the couch, right under the bronze reading lamp. He had one textbook open in front of him and a stack of others on the side table nearby, with sticky notes and flags poking out of the pages. He was wearing a simple tight blue athletic long-sleeve, but as always, he looked like a movie star even just sitting on the couch.
“And hello, you,” he parroted back to me, a smile passing over his face. “Do I look like a madman right now?”
“You look very studious,” I said, kicking off my boots near the rack by the front door and pacing over toward him. I dipped down to give him a slow kiss, sighing softly. “I thought college Jax was the best student of all time, but it turns out that grad school Jax is even better.”
“Grad school Jax is terrified for a test tomorrow, more like it,” he said.
Jax had gotten into a Master’s program at a small college just north of Boulder University. He still had plenty of coursework, internships, and licensing exams to pass, but he was well on his way to becoming a professional counselor. And one day, maybe a clinical therapist.