Page 61 of The Flirtation

Epilogue

Luke

Iopenup my Skype app and start a video call with Avery. It’s early morning where she is, and I know she’s still in bed. The call connects almost immediately, and I see her beautiful sleepy face on my phone. “Morning, darling,” I say. “Coffee, tea, orme?”

“All of theabove.”

“Right, then. See you in a bit.” I hang up the phone, pour her a mug of coffee and a mug of tea, and I carry them both back up from the inn’s lobby to ourroom.

We’re on an island off the eastern coast of Canada. We meet here (somewhat half-way between London and Manhattan), once a month, and each month we take turns flying to each other’s city. A direct flight to this charming place is just under six hours from London, and just under seven hours with one stop from NYC. It’s either that or Greenland, and the Wi-Fi is better here, or so we’ve beentold.

We’ve been doing this for six months. Maintaining a long-distance relationship hasn’t been all that bad for us—we’ve put as much effort into being awesome at it as we do our careers. We leaned into it. As Avery would say: “We are totally crushing this transatlanticrelationship.”

We’re working together on a couple of transatlantic mergers and acquisitions, so we do a lot of Skyping, and we do a lot of Skyping for other reasons too. Soon I will be moving to Manhattan, to work as a consultant at a prestigious firm that heard I might be interested in hopping the pond in a more permanent way, and made me an offer I could not refuse. Turns out I had so many New York-based clients, it actually made sense for me to move there. My mum and her husband and my sisters and their husbands are all only too happy to come visit us in the BigApple.

Time spent together with Avery in the same space is deeply cherished, but our time apart is just as romantic and sexy in different ways. We write each other epic love letters, sometimes electronically, sometimes via ye olde postal service. Avery occasionally worries that I’ll get sick of her when we move into our new flat together. When she does, I just remind her of the relationship advice we both gave to Bucket and Ingrid, and I tell her that I love her. If we keep doing that, I know that nothing will keep us apart, not distance or fear or her ridiculous old Snoopy pajamas or me stealing the covers andsnoring.

So far I have not made any promises to Avery that I haven’t kept, and plan to keep it that way. I will take her hand and jump into pools of water and have adventures in different worlds with her,always.