Page 105 of Pictures in Blue
“Always,” I answer and hop on his back into a position wholly familiar to us.
The bells I love so much jingle above us as we make our way home. Together.
EPILOGUE
AVERY
FOUR MONTHS LATER
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Charlotte,” I say in a serious tone, telling her I’m actually leaving this time, which I have been trying to do for the past hour, but every time I try to leave, she has something else that has to be discussed immediately.
“But we still need to go over the dark room des—”
“Nope! Not today. I’m done! I have a date with Hudson, which he’s kept secret and,” I add, glancing at my watch showing 6 p.m. “I’m already late. Elias knows more about that anyway.”
“But—”
I open the door and signal her to go through it. My keys are already in the lock ready to do their job and let me go home. “Tomorrow,” I cut her off.
She groans and glances at her phone again. She’s been looking at it every five minutes for the last hour. “Fiiiine,” she finally says. “Let’s go.”
“Thank you.”
She leaves the studio and I close the door, turning the keys to lock it. “I promise everything will be here tomorrow and we can tackle it then.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says unconvincingly.
“If you’d just call Elias like anormalhuman being, you could get it sorted out sooner.”
She scoffs. “Hedoesn’t listen to me and just does whathethinks is best.”
We still have a long way to go, because Charlotte can’t seem to decide on what exactly she wants the space to look like. I don’t either. I left the designing completely up to her since she was so adamant on doing it. She did, however, get settled in the space upstairs for now. We left the weekend after Hudson asked me to stay and came back with all of our things in one U-Haul. I don’t know what it is, but there is something about seeing your whole life packed up in a truck to move it to a different state.
We both fully moved into our new spaces, with the help of Hudson’s family—besides Elias since there were a few architect projects that required his attention at the time. I still haven’t had a chance to introduce them in person. Both of them are always busy when the other is free and suspiciously, they haven’t run into each other in town yet. They’re clearly avoiding face-to-face contact and nobody knows why. I’ve tried to ask Charlotte about it, but she changes the subject every time, so I let it drop for a while.
“Heowns the building. Can you just try to get along with him? You kind of have to considering he’s doing all the architecture stuff for free. And you’re the interior designer, so you have to work together.”
“He’s impossible.”
“I think you both are,” I mumble.
“What?”
“Nothing. Look, Charlotte, you two have to move past whatever you have going on and meet in person. Because we still have a ton of work to do on the studio and I was hoping we could have it done before Christmas.”
Which is only two months away,I almost remind her.
She sighs, “Fine, I’ll try. But only for you.Nothim.” She turns to walk around the building toward the stairs on the side leading up to her apartment above. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she calls back.
I roll my eyes and they land on the sign hanging above the entrance. A lantern sits on the far right side of the wooden sign, a soft flame inside.Pictures in Blueis scrawled to the left of it in the loopy lettering I squealed at when Hudson showed me. Every time he revealed a new design, I would bite my lip in trepidation of telling him I didn’t like the font.Again. And he would smile, plant a kiss on my cheek and start over. My corrections and idea changes didn’t faze him, they inspired his creativity further, determined to make it perfect for me. Down at the bottom sits Sarah’s dedication, something I suggested that I think finally allowed Hudson to loosen his grip on his grief a little bit more.
Fuck, I love him.My mind moves to a very different place as I get into Hudson’s truck to drive home to him. Over the course of four months, we have only grown closer in every way we could. Emotionally, mentally, and definitely physically. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a surface of the house that has not been graced with Hudson’s ass—or mine—and I am not complaining.
I pull up to the cabin before I realize it, the time on the road passing with images of us in the kitchen, me sitting on the counter, Hudson’s heads between my legs, hands bracing my thighs. Once on the stairs when we couldn’t make it to the bedroom, him holding me up against the wall, my legs wrapped around his torso. The lazy mornings where we make love slowly, still sleepy from the night, making each other come in slow, gentle movements.
My favorite.
I smile and start walking toward the door, ready to jump him as soon as I get in, but the lights are off, which isn’t unusual. I have been staying late at the studio the past week or so to try to help Charlotte get the layout right.
