Maybe someone does, I think as I watch them go.
Maybe all that shit we’ve put up with for the past ten years is about to come back around. Only maybe this time, it’s not the Misters who have to stand in front of the fan while people throw shit.
Maybe it’s someone else’s turn.
Epilogue - Nolan
“Just be nice,” Ivy says as she straightens my tie outside her parents’ house.
“Hey,” I say, “they don’t call me Mr. Nice for nothing.”
“They don’t call you Mr. Nice at all, Nolan. Now stop.” She shoots me a sideways grin as the word comes out. We haven’t had another rape fantasy. And I’m not saying we’ll never do it again, but I’m over it. It was fun, but it was a stressful fucking night. And every time I think about yellow rope, I see Ivy’s foot, tied to that bedpost as the guns went off and that sick fuck, Boring Richard, shot her.
I don’t need to prove I’m innocent to Ivy. She knows.
I don’t need to prove anything to anyone, I decide. Fuck them all.
The front door opens and the Reverend William Rockwell stands there looking very much like a pastor’s daughter’s father.
Well, except him, I guess.
“Come in!” Sophia, Ivy’s mother, calls. Ivy slips past her father and leaves us there together. On the front stoop. He doesn’t invite me in, so I shift my feet a little, wondering why I’m letting this conservative dinosaur make me nervous.
“You’re not good enough for her,” my father-in-law says.
I nod, pressing my lips together. “Yes, sir,” I say. “I know that.”
“And you eloped, so you’re never going to be good enough for her.”
I nod again. “I know. I don’t deserve her. Not one bit. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life thanking God for letting such a smart and beautiful woman be my wife.” I have apologized profusely on the phone and email for weeks about the elopement. “We’re already planning a real wedding, Mr. Rockwell. So we can make it official in your eyes.”
He’s never going to forgive me. Especially after I tell him she’s pregnant.
“Hmmph,” Rockwell says, stepping aside. “If you keep kissing ass like this, Delaney, then we might even like each other in about twenty years. Come in.”
I step into his house and immediately feel at home. Ivy is everything my life was missing these past ten years.
And together we are building the best motherfucking resort the Southern California desert has ever seen. Ivy’s marketing plan was a whole lot more than free rooms to pique interest in the San Diego corporate community. It was cooking class weekends with our professional chef. It was golf lesson weekends with our new resident pro. It was dark-sky stargazing with guest astronomers. It’s a place for parties, and weddings, and anniversaries and corporate events.
In fact, my new career looks almost nothing like my old one. I might not have ever gotten that art degree, but I got something much better instead.
And it was just what I needed.
A beautiful new life with my beautiful new wife, Mrs. Romantic.
WANT THE NEXT BOOK?
Mr. Corporate by JA Huss
GET IT HERE
Weston Conrad is the best headhunter in the business. That handsome smile goes a long way towards convincing most people to trust him with their future.
I’m not most people. I’m his direct competition. And it doesn’t hurt to be just the kind of woman he’s been looking for.
I’m gonna flash you these legs, Weston Conrad.
I’m gonna wear low-cut shirts and micro-mini skirts.
I’m gonna dazzle you with wit and conversation and kiss those lips like they’re exactly what I’ve been waiting for.
So don’t hate me when you figure out my secret.
You understand, right? You’re Mr. Corporate and this is just business.
END OF BOOK SHIT
Welcome to the End of Book Shit (fondly called the EOBS in my little pond), the place where I get to say anything I want and readers have to listen. ;) Just kidding. I bet most people don’t even bother reading these.
OK, so like most of my stories this one started out based in fact. If you read the Rock EOBS you know that I got a lot of the original premise from real life and if you read the Social Media series, you might’ve suspected I based it off something that really happened as well.
The Mister series is loosely based off another real event. All the characters are made up in my imagination. The settings are made up, the scenes---all fiction. But the basic premise—a group of guys get accused of something and suddenly their lives are turned upside down because the court of public opinion pronounces them guilty—is real.
My premise takes place ten years after the “big event” that changed their lives. And my questions are valid ones I think. What happens to people who endure social outrage on a vast scale? People who might not just get national attention, but global attention? How do they go on when the dust settles?
Well, this my version of how that scenario might play out. Mr. Perfect made pretty good use of his ten years between then and now, but Mr. Romantic? He’s not so sympathetic. And the way it affected him is definitely not sympathetic.