Page 77 of Love Unexpected
He shrugged, his tone playful. “They wanted to help. Turns out everyone who works for me was already on Team Rosie.”
***
The next day at work, what seemed like half the warehouse crowded into the chop shop to watch the final cut of the road trip video.
“Remember what I said,” Isaac said, squeezing my hand. “Anything you don’t like, we can take out before it airs.”
Vinnie sat down beside us, offering me a wide grin and two thumbs up as he lowered himself into his chair. The gesture brought a surge of warmth to my chest. Vinnie had believed in me from the start.
The video included some of the same parts that had been in the one Isaac had made for me, just with more stuff about the car and its retrofitted engine, the places we had lunch and breakfast, and the hotel we’d booked in Nashville. The way it was edited, you couldn’t really tell that I’d bailed halfway through the trip—they’d just used footage from the previous day scattered throughout so it appeared as though I’d made it all the way to Kansas. There were plenty of flirty clips between Isaac and me, all of them building nicely to the moment in my old bedroom when he admitted he had wanted it to be me. The video concluded with a shot of Isaac sitting on the hood of the car inviting people to send in their own stories and apply to be featured on the show so they could make their own meaningful and lasting connections.
It was fine. Great, really. But it wasn’tright.I shook my head. “You can’t end it like this.”
Isaac raised his eyebrows. “Like what?”
“The whole segment is about making connections. And yet, at the end of the video, you’re alone.”
He squeezed the hand he was still holding. “What do you suggest?”
I scoffed. Wasn’t it obvious? “I need to be in it. We need to be together.”
Isaac studied me for a long moment. “Are you sure you’re okay with that? You don’t have to, Rosie.”
I pursed my lips to the side. “What video editing software do you use?”
“Pro Direct,” Vinnie answered from his corner of the room.
I walked toward his desk. “Perfect. I know that one. Can you pull it up for me?”
Vinnie glanced up at Isaac who must have nodded his approval because Vinnie immediately pulled up the video, then yielded his chair to me.
I scrolled through the video until just after the clip of Isaac in my old room when he’d admitted that he’d wanted Ana to be me. I tried not to dwell on the fact that he’d cried actual real tears when he’d found out. It might make my heart explode, and that would grossly interfere with what I was trying to accomplish. I froze the shot and added a filter that fuzzed out the image until it looked like gray and white static you might see on an old tv, then added in a low volume audio track of staticky white noise. On top of that, I layered on some text that read:Censored for privacy. But just because I know you’re curious…there was kissing.
Isaac chuckled behind me. “That’s great.”
“Now we end it with a shot of the both of us sitting on the hood of the car. You could be eating licorice or something to tie the moment back to the first half of the trip. We just both need to be there.”
“Together,” Isaac said.
I nodded. “Connected.”
“How did you know how to do all that?” Vinnie said. “You just did stuff in Pro Direct that I don’t even know how to do.”
I shrugged. “Oh. Um, I did a little video editing in college.”
Isaac laughed and wrapped his arms around my waist, apparently not even caring that his entire editing team was staring at us. It was exactly the kind of attention I generally shied away from, but for once, I didn’t mind so much. As long as I was in Isaac’s arms, they could stare all they wanted.
“You are entirely unexpected, Rosie Crenshaw,” Isaac said.
“But in a good way, right?” I said.
He leaned in and kissed me one more time. “In the very best way.”
Epilogue
Isaac
I had no doubt in my mind thatRandom I’sviewers and fans would love to be a part of the day that I had planned. The road trip to Kansas had been a big hit—it had the highest views of any video I’d ever posted—and Rosie was a fan favorite.
