Page 96 of Boyfriend
Epilogue: Totally Worth it
Weston
“Westie, what room are we sleeping in?” Abbi asks as we drive through the back roads of Fairlee toward my father’s house.
“Oh baby, we’re taking that double bed again. Stevie and Tamar can take the bunk room.”
“Hmm. Are they down with this plan?”
I shrug. “Doesn’t matter if we get there first.”
“Devious, Griggs. I like it. I don’t know if we can make sex noises this time, though.”
“What?” I gasp. “It’s a tradition. Besides, they’d be real sex noises.” I nudge her with my elbow, because I’m subtle like that.
“No way,” she says. “I have to be able to look your brother and Tamar in the eye over the turkey tomorrow.”
“You’re forgetting something, though. Stevie and Tamar might be making their own sex noises. They won’t even hear us.”
Abbi thinks this over. “Maybe if we’re very quiet.”
“Uh-huh,” I agree. The old bed squeaks like a piglet on cocaine, but I’m too smart a man to point that out right now. “Five more minutes until we get there,” I say instead. “Just enough time for a singalong. Cue up the Avett Brothers?”
Abbi claps her hands. “’Ain’t No Man!’ Yes! Another tradition.” She taps furiously on her phone, and a few seconds later the intro kicks in, and then we start to sing.
I actually slow down the car so that we won’t arrive before the song is over. We really go for it, too, singing loud through the chorus and into the verse.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, but this year I didn’t hang up my sign to advertise for a date. I already have the perfect date.
Although we’re not on our way to Dalton’s house this year. And I’m no longer avoiding family holidays. This year we’re headed to my dad’s. And this way Dalton can host Price—who no longer lives in his home—and keep peace with his wife.
Dalton had asked Abbi first, though. He’d extended an invitation, explicitly stating that if we wanted to join him for Thanksgiving, that Price would not be included. Dalton and Lila have finally figured out how “tough love” for that asshole works, but I hear that it wasn’t easy.
The Price situation actually sent Dalton and Lila to marriage counseling for a little while, until Lila learned how not to be her son’s enabler. But I guess things are better now.
Abbi gently turned down Dalton’s Thanksgiving invitation, though, telling him we were already spoken for. And so Dalton is taking us out to dinner on Sunday night, “just to catch up,” he’d said.
Dalton and Abbi are in a good place lately. And neither of us needs a fake boyfriend or girlfriend anymore. We’re just in it for the turkey and the stuffing this time. And Aunt Mercedes’s cheesy mashed potatoes. And whatever pies my father bought from the bakery, because that man doesn’t often cook.
I love Thanksgiving. Always have. But I love it even harder today, with my best girl singing her lungs out in the passenger seat beside me.
Even the car is different this time. Three months ago we traded in Abbi’s heap of a car for a used Subaru Outback.
Yup, we bought a car together, which is a pretty big commitment. But next year—if everything goes according to plan—we’ll probably live together, too. I’ll be in medical school, and moving out of the hockey house. She’ll be working her way toward world domination in the flannel industry. Sharing an apartment just makes sense.
I honestly can’t wait. We spend most of our nights together anyway.
The final chords of the song resonate as I turn into the driveway and park behind my dad’s car.
“Whew!” Abbi collapses against the seat. “That was a good one.”
“The best,” I agree, killing the engine. There’s no snow on the ground yet, and the lake shimmers between the distant trees. Abbi and I came to stay here a few times over the summer. We had some fun swimming in the lake and roasting marshmallows in Dad’s fire pit.
And I made gorilla noises on the paddleboard, just for old time’s sake.
Abbi removes her seat belt, but I grab her hand before she can climb out of the car. “Happy anniversary, baby.”
She turns to me with wide eyes. “It’s sort of true, right?”
