She shakes her head. “My real question is this.” She shifts to prop herself onto an elbow, head in her hand. “Will you be mine?”
And the answer is . . .
“Yes.”
In the morning, I reach for the door, ready to take off. Bellamy glides up to me, kisses my jawline, then my nose, then my lips. “By the way, you were wrong about something.”
“Me? Wrong? Hard to imagine.”
“I hear it happens now and then,” she says saucily.
“Do tell.”
With a grin, she grabs my shirt. “I love both plays and musicals equally.”
“But I was right about Hemingway, wasn’t I?”
She rolls her eyes. “Like that was a real puzzler.”
I laugh, then grab her hip and haul her close. “I love you.”
“And I love you. And I especially love that you came to my podcast and professed it on air,” she says.
“I always make good on my bets.”
“That’s not why I liked it,” she says, turning more serious.
“Why did you like it?”
“Because . . . I love love.” She spreads her hand over my heart. “And that’s what you gave me last night.”
That heart thunders under her palm, and I give her the kind of kiss she deserves. When we separate, I think back to last night one more time. “By the way, who was that guy Monroe? Someone you work with?”
She laughs lightly. “He’s in the same biz. The romance biz. Have you heard of Doctor Romance?”
“No, but that’s a great name.”
“That’s Monroe. He’s sort of an underground romance . . . guru.” She brings a finger to her lips. “But keep it quiet. He’s kind of a secret, but he has a long list of clients who swear by his services. If they’re lucky enough to get on his roster.”
“Like you need a secret handshake?”
“Exactly. I’m pretty sure he has quite a story to tell.”
“Maybe I’ll hear it someday. Until then . . . dinner tonight?”
She gives me her yes, and I cherish it.
The next weekend, I grab a stool at The Lucky Spot before happy hour and open my wallet. From behind the bar, Spencer asks what’s up? with his eyes.
I don’t say a word—just fish through the bills.
The first one, then the next, then another.
“Oh, yes, come to Papa,” Spencer says, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. “Why don’t I call Nolan? Let him join in the pay-off.”
“Be my guest.”
A minute later, our friend with the glasses smiles gleefully on Spencer’s phone screen as he walks past a purple Victorian home in San Francisco. “I’ll take my payout via Venmo, thank you very much, Easton. But I do like the way greenbacks look. Thank you for showing me some hot money porn.”
I waggle ten bills in front of him. “One thousand bucks gets you hard?”
He lets his tongue loll out. “I just came.”
Spencer cracks up. “Classy, Nolan.”
“That’s me. I’m always a class act,” he says, then a feminine hand comes down on his shoulder.
“He’s literally never classy,” Emerson says, popping into the shot.
“We know that,” Spencer and I say in unison.
“Hey! There’s the food truck I want to check out. Be right back,” she says, then dips out of the shot.
Nolan’s gaze follows her for a few lingering seconds before he returns to us. “I predicted you’d cry in your cereal when you let Bellamy get away,” he says, then holds up a finger. “But good on you, man. You got her back.”
Across the bar from me, Spencer lifts a glass of water. “Let’s toast to knowing when you’ve got the real thing and being smart enough to hold on to it.”
I lift a glass. “I’ll drink to that.”
Coco isn’t the loudest at her birthday party. TJ isn’t either. Nor is Bellamy.
The winner of the most raucous award is my little sister as she orders a lap dance from Leo at Stallions and Studs.
And does he ever give her the business.
“Take it off! Take it all off,” Rory hoots.
“Get it, girl,” Bellamy calls out, then scoots nearer to me, pressing a kiss to my cheek.
Coco leans closer to us. “Watch out for Rory. She’s going to be such a troublemaker.”
“I think she already is, Coco,” Bellamy says.
“She was always the wild child,” Grandma says, then lifts her wine glass and swirls it. But she doesn’t take a drink because a shadow appears next to her. It’s a tall man in jeans and a leather jacket.
“I believe you ordered a lap dance for your twenty-ninth birthday.”
The deep, raspy voice comes from the owner of the club, who stares lasciviously at my grandmother.
“Did I? I don’t recall doing that, Rod,” she says, with exaggerated coyness.
“Then, consider this your birthday surprise.” Then my grandmother’s new beau—Rod and Coco have been dating for a few weeks now—gives her the owner’s special, gyrating his hips for the octogenarian.
TJ shouts his approval. “Get it, Coco,” he calls out, then he leans in, tapping his chest. “I ordered it for her.”
“Aren’t you just the Secret Santa for strippers,” Bellamy tells him.
TJ smiles. “Yes, I am.” Then he settles back into his chair and holds up a glass of champagne. “Here’s to love. Whenever it comes.”
Bellamy lifts her glass. “To taking a chance on it.”
I clink my glass to hers. “Most of all, to keeping love.”
And treasuring it too. That’s what I plan to do.
Epilogue
Bellamy whistles her approval when I stride into the kitchen, doing up the last button on my shirt.
“Looking sharp, cowboy,” she says, spinning away from her notebook and setting down her pen at the kitchen counter. She lives with me now, and I love seeing her in my home day and night.
“A host has to look good,” I say.
She sashays over to me. “And you do. You look positively fuckable.”
I drag her against me. “Don’t put any ideas in my head, woman. I have to get to work.”
She smacks my ass. “I know you do. But bring that cute ass home to me this evening so I can do bad things to you.”
“Sounds like a deal. But pretty sure I’ll be doing the bad things to you.”
I’d do them now, but have a party to host this evening, one of a new variety Carpe Diem has just introduced.
Our parties are now more open to many. I launched this style of event last month, hosting romance mixers at pool halls, and in parks, dive bars, arcades, karaoke joints. The membership fee isn’t platinum level. It’s affordable, and those parties are taking on a life of their own. Coco and I have been hiring hosts and hostesses throughout Manhattan so we can throw a handful of events each weekend. Soon, I’ll expand to other cities.
I still contend that in-person events are better than online dating. I haven’t changed all my stripes. But I do want more people to experience what I’ve been lucky enough to have in my life.