Waves - Book #2 [completed]

Epilogue

Epilogue
noun
A section or speech at the end of a book or play that serves as a comment on or a conclusion to what has happened.

ONE year later

"How are you holding up?"

Rathi's head flies up, her eyes are big and the slight sheen of sweat at her hairline tells me 'barely'.

"Fine," she mutters instead, turning away from me which turns out to be not as easy as she might have thought because the train of her beautiful wedding gown is too long and gets all tangled up behind her. She lets out a frustrated huff.

"Here, let me." I jump up and deftly pull the lace free from under her. "Do you want me to get Danny?"

She makes a sad face. "No. He can't see me yet."

I raise a brow at her. She's not usually superstitious about stuff like that. "Sameen then?" I ask carefully.

Rathi's expression softens when I mention her daughter's name. "Yes, please."

Kissing my best friend on the cheek and squeezing her hand, I turn to find the little cutie-pie. "Be right back."

We parked Sameen with her uncle Mason for the day because at sixteen months she's a handful and wouldn't give her mother rest to get ready and fully concentrate on her big day. Plus, convincing Mason to watch her wasn't a challenge. He and Sameen adore each other, so he gladly called himself the babysitter like one would call shotgun.

She's precious, too. All big, dark eyes and luscious tufts of black hair that's usually decorated by a polka-dotted yellow bow as big as her face. Mason and I live vicariously through Danny and Rathi, happy to babysit whenever and spoil that little cutie-pie, but also glad to be able to hand the screaming toddler back to her parents if needed.

We had the talk, and we don't see our own children in our future. At least not anytime soon. Sometimes I can imagine it – especially when Mason's shimmying in the kitchen with a kid with the look of awe in their eyes on his arms – but more often than not I feel overwhelmed and not well equipped nor in the right headspace to have a child of my own. And Mason doesn't either. We love travelling and sleeping and spending our entire day in bed when we can. Still, our little family is growing too. We adopted another dog from a shelter six month ago – Archie. I was a nervous, restless wreck when we drove up to Gold Coast to get the black-furred fluff-ball of energy and almost hyperventilated on our way back because of what happened the last time I made that trip. The only thing that kept me afloat was the tiny shivering puppy on my lap. So, I tried to get a grip on myself and stoked the poor little guy's chest to calm him – and myself. When we arrived back home, I frantic-cleaned and sanded down a surfboard before bursting out in tears. I felt imbecile and small as I sat there on a folding chair on our porch with my face in my hands. With every tear that slid down my cheek I felt something tense leave my body and when Mason found me with a shocked gasp, he tucked me into his hard body and didn't let go until I stopped crying.