Page 115 of Over & Out
I don’t walk. I run. No, I sprint back down the carpetwith zero chill, picking Chris up and swinging her around like it’s only the two of us here. As far as I’m concerned, it is.
“You came,” I croak as I look up into her beautiful, sparkling, tear-filled eyes.
“Of course I came,” she whispers. “How could I not after you told me everything?”
“I won’t keep anything from you again, sweetheart. I promise.”
“Even if you think it’ll hurt?”
“As long as you let me tell you all the ways I love you first.”
“You can do that anytime,” she laughs.
“I love you. I love you, I love you, I?—”
She shuts me up with a kiss. One that feels like all the atoms in heaven and earth are swirling between the two of us, lighting my insides up with pure, unadulterated sunshine.
It’s her, lighting me up. It’s Chris who has my whole heart, body and soul.
“Well, folks,” says the interviewer as we break the kiss. She’s followed me over here. The cameraman is sweating like she told him to sprint too. “I guess that’s as definitive as it gets,” she says. “Tell us, Hopper. Who’s this mystery girl?”
“Her name is Chris,” I tell the woman, the camera, and the world. But I keep my eyes on Chris. “She’s my dream girl. My bangles. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”
I swallow down the emotion threatening to choke me. And I say to Chris, “She’s the love of my life.”
“Wow!” says the interviewer, looking, if I’m being honest, just the tiniest bit green.
“And would you call Hopper the same thing?” she asks Chris.
Chris grins as she wipes a tear from under my eye. “Nah,” she says. “I think I’ll call him Dirtface.”
Epilogue
Chris
THREE AND A HALF YEARS LATER
It took me six months to look at the trust account. Another six months before I gave up arguing with Hopper about keeping the million dollars inside. He told me if I didn’t want it, I could donate it.
“Youdonate it! It’s your money!”
“I already did,” he said.
I folded my arms. “So I’m a charity now?”
“For loving me? Obviously. You’re a saint.”
The thing is, even though he makes self-deprecating jokes, he’s still doing so much better than he was. He believes in himself. He makes his own decisions about his future and his career. Mabel had him in a chokehold that trickled through his whole business.
Still, he doesn’t hate her.
We visited his mom’s plot together last year, in Ontario. It was the sticky peak of summer, but the flowerson her grave were fresh, the water topped up. Peonies—her favorite. We knew Mabel moved back home after she was let go from Hopper’s team, and it wasn’t likely to be his dad, so it made sense it was her.
While Hopper doesn’t harbor anger toward Mabel, I do, but I don’t keep it stoked. I see how she thought she was helping. But don’t we all? Hopper’s dad certainly did when he dragged his kid out of school to go on those auditions. He thought he was a saint. Mabel made Hopper feel like he was a bad guy, like the things he did required concealment. She’s a big reason he carried so much shame around.
But he’s been going to his therapist regularly—a new one he found himself. I have too. We’ve both come a long way in processing our various traumas, and we do it side by side.
Hopper still hasn’t read the whole letter his dad wrote. He had me skim it and fill him in on the pertinent bits.
