“I can’t believe you’re going to be here.”
He pushed up from the desk and stepped close to me. Too close, but I couldn’t push him away any longer. I didn’t want to fight it anymore.
“I wanted to be closer to you,” he said softly, “and I figured out a way I could.”
“We weren’t even talking. How in the world could you make all these plans—”
“I planned on fixing that,” he said quickly.
“What if I didn’t let you?”
He stepped closer, his lips inches from mine. “That really wasn’t an option. But I would have waited for you to forgive me, however long it took. I didn’t plan on giving up so easily. I knew I loved you. The second I realized that, it was all over for me. I had to make things right between us. I love you, Jules. I love you so damn much.”
I didn’t just look into his hazel eyes as he spoke, I dove into them, drowning in that dreamy sea without a floatation device. I didn’t want to be saved.
Leaning toward him, I said softly, “I love you too.”
His chest rose quickly before his mouth covered mine. It was all he needed. Hell, it was everything we both needed. Forgiveness, acceptance, and a willingness to move past this, all wrapped up in four beautiful words that spilled from my lips like a promise. Words I meant with my entire heart, that fickle organ I no longer hated.
And as we kissed and broke in Cal’s new desk, I knew things would be okay. The sense of impending dread that had weighed me down when I first met him flitted away. Now I was filled with something else entirely.
Hope. And I knew we were going to make it.
Epilogue
Jules
Cal commuted between Boston and LA for the next eleven months. It had to have been hard on him, but he never once complained. He even found an afterschool program here where he could volunteer, which I knew he truly loved.
His bosses were extremely supportive when it came to letting him move out here full time. They knew it made sense to expand their offices to the West Coast, and the fact that Cal brought in a boatload of money made
their decision easy. And when his celebrity client roster doubled soon after he opened the office, how could they complain?
By the time Cal moved out here to run things full time, he brought Lucas with him. There were too many clients for him to handle alone, and after Lucas’s first trip to visit us, he’d become relentless in his pursuit to move here, badgering Cal every chance he got.
The only problem was that while Cal had quickly become comfortable with dealing with celebrities, Lucas was still a bit starstruck and practically creamed his pants whenever a hot actor came in for a meeting. I kept telling Cal that Lucas would eventually work through his wide-eyed phase, but honestly I wasn’t so sure. Sometimes being around celebrities was too much for certain people. I guess we’d see, though, because Lucas was here now, taking over Cal’s lease and moving into his apartment.
When Cal told me he needed a place to live here, I urged him to sign a year’s lease on a furnished apartment in West Hollywood, wanting to be smart about our relationship. As happy as I’d been that he had come back to me, I wasn’t ready for us to move in together. In my opinion, it was way too soon for that. We still needed to get to know each other better.
To my surprise, he hadn’t even argued. Instead, he tricked me, staying at my house night after night and slowly moving some of his things in the same way Tami had. Before I realized it, he had nearly a whole rack of work clothes hanging in the guest room closet next to Tami’s dresses. And the guest bath’s shelves that had once been filled with only Tami’s products now held just as many of Cal’s.
About a month after Cal and I got back together, the three of us were sharing a pizza one night and Tami had glared at him.
“Don’t even think about asking me to move my things out of this room, mister,” she’d said with some heat, and he laughed.
“I wouldn’t dream of it. I love sharing a closet with you.”
“This is still my room. Tell him, Jules, that it’s still my room!” she’d shouted at me.
“It’s still your room, Tami.” I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t like Cal would be sleeping in there anyway. Unless he was in trouble, of course.
I still kept in touch with Robin, who wanted to fly out and “kiss me on the mouth” when I told her that Cal was moving here. “Best thing you’ve ever done, and I mean that in every way possible,” she’d written me in an e-mail. She threatened to come visit all the time, but said that now that Cal was here, she had a real reason. Robin, Tami, and Lucas all in one place might be the death of me. Or the life of me. It was a toss-up.
A month before Cal’s lease was up, he convinced me to let him officially move in. To be honest, it didn’t take much convincing on his part. I had been dying for us to move in together for months. I’d wanted to play it safe and take things slow at first, but I soon realized that when you were with the right person, slow didn’t make anything better. And it definitely didn’t always make the most sense.
So today was moving day, the day we moved the rest of Cal’s things to my apartment. Admittedly, it didn’t take long. He’d already stuffed so much of his belongings into the guest room closet, he didn’t have much left at his own apartment.
“Where’s my room?” Lucas said as he dropped one of Cal’s boxes at my feet. “Tami and Cal have a room. Why don’t I have one?”