Note from Ian Snow -- Thanks to those who have stuck with me through the New Man/Fantasy Man series. If you haven't, it's recommended you read those first as this is a one-off epilogue to Fantasy Man and a finale for the characters of that universe. but it's not necessary. Enjoy.
* * *
"Dane proposed. We're getting married!"
Brooke's mind totally short-circuited at the news. Just bam, there went the lights, the Internet, everything. She blinked at the potted plant in the corner of her office. Its name was Turducken. Why she named it that, she had no idea.
Thinking about the plant meant Brooke wasn't thinking about her best friend and ex-girlfriend Sasha getting married.
Married.
Blink. Blink. There, the ol' mental batteries finally kicked to life.
"That's fantastic!" she said, trying to squeal. Wasn't that what she was supposed to do in situations like this? Go all high and Valley Girl on Sasha? How had she handled it when all her other friends got married? "Oh my God, I need details, I need details now!"
"Whoa there," Sasha said, laughing. "It was the most romantic thing at the most romantic resort. The sun was setting, there was this live band playing right on the edge of the beach, we were dancing. Then I realized the band was creeping closer and closer and they started playing our song."
"My Sharona?"
Sasha laughed again and sniffed. "Adele. And, and, and... Dane got down on one knee and I'm just blubbering the whole time, more water coming out of my eyes than there is in the ocean, and it was just... it was just so perfect."
Brooke picked up the chopsticks from her bento box and fought the urge to stab something. No, she was happy for Sasha, she really was.
But she was so tired too. Her entire adult life, she was the one who got hurt, and in some pretty wildly explosive ways, too. At eighteen her high school boyfriend of four years, who was supposed to go to college with her in the fall, who she thought was her everything, decided instead to get religion, date the pastor's daughter, and become a youth minister for what Brooke was fairly certain was a cult.
Then, in her freshman year of college came Chad, the hunky soccer stud, who made her feel like the only woman in the room, who would strum his guitar and nearly make her drench her panties -- and who cheated on her when she thought, again, she was his one and only. Fucking Chad.
In her later years of college came Kenny Kilton, the most infamous of her boyfriends. True, Kenny didn't exactly break her heart -- they were kinda sorta living together but that was about it -- but he was an asshole on a whole new level, nearly raping one of Brooke's best friends Jessica until an acquaintance stepped in and stood up to Kenny. A part of the coaching staff, he was thrown out of the school, his career ruined.
Oh. That acquaintance? Only the greatest guy Brooke had ever known.
Corbin Block was everything Brooke wanted in a guy. He was sort of geeky, quick to laugh at himself, kind, smart, and with Jessica's help, one serious stud. Jessica taught him everything from how to take care of himself to how to really treat a girl in bed. She even roped in Brooke to help out when it came time to teach Corbin how to eat a woman.
That had been the sweetest mistake.
Over the course of the school year, Brooke fell head over heels in love with Corbin while he and Jessica, in turn, fell madly in love with each other. Brooke and Sasha were frequent guests in their bedroom, but at the end of the day, it was always about Corbin and Jessica.
It would have been a lie to say Brooke didn't resent them that, but she tried to let her pain go in the years that followed. That relationship led to an even stranger situation, seeing her and Sasha become the girlfriends of a middle-aged playboy, his wife, and an army of beauties. Lionel was not Corbin. He was rougher, tougher, and well off. But he and Corbin shared one heartbreaking trait -- they were slavishly devoted to their closest loved ones, and Brooke, like with Corbin and Jessica, wasn't a part of Corbin's inner circle.
But.
Sasha, her college friend, had been right there with her, both through the phase with Corbin and the later one with Lionel. And while Corbin might have been Brooke's ultimate guy fantasy, Sasha was, hands-down, her very favorite woman in this entire universe. Her feelings for her friend were far from platonic. They did things together that would make an erotica writer blush.
Over their time with Lionel, Brooke came to realize a very simple fact, one that ripped open all sorts of old wounds. She loved Sasha. Unlike the great big unhealthy blaze of a bonfire that was her feelings for Corbin, Brooke loved Sasha at a slow simmer, one that warmed her whole spirit for years.
Brooke said the words "I love you" many times to Sasha throughout the years. They were as reflexive as "how was your day?" or "hand over the Cheetos," but they never talked about her actually loving Sasha in the way she truly did. Brooke tried to figure out how to show Sasha the real depth behind the words. She thought she had time. She didn't.
Sasha made the announcement one day at a gathering at Lionel's for brunch. She'd met someone, she said, Dane, and would be leaving the group. There were congratulations, laughter, tears. Brooke could work up nothing to say, smiling but struck speechless. Even afterward, when they walked home, Sasha asked Brooke about her thoughts and all she could do was say, "I've been thinking about moving anyways."
Brooke had, sort of. But it involved telling Sasha she loved her, then the two of them riding off into the sunset to... well, wherever would take a mediocre coach and a brilliant young professor.
Sasha looked stung by her response. Brooke shrugged off her attempts to draw her out and fled as fast as she could. She quit her coaching position at Agramonte High -- her pay sucked anyways. She accepted the first job that came along, teaching and coaching at a high school in Wisconsin. That lasted two terrible semesters. The kids were some kind of spectacularly awful and she hated it there. Brooke shifted careers, at least for the moment, and picked up a lower management position in a tech center. She spent her days stopping petty arguments between her employees, talking down irate customers, and most of all, trying to convince herself she'd done the right thing in leaving Agramonte and Sasha behind.
"That's amazing. I cannot wait to meet this guy," Brooke said.
"I hope you're serious, because that's what I want to talk to you about."
"Huh?" Brooke asked, more internal lights kicking back on after the total system shock of hearing the news. Thankfully, Sasha didn't seem to notice her disorientation, or had grown so used to it she just ignored it.
"I was thinking, Memorial Day's coming up, three-day weekend and all, why not come down and stay with us a few days? Or we could come up there. Or neutral territory."
Oh God, it would hurt to see Sasha again. Agramonte too. The suburb bordered a much bigger city but it had always been Agramonte that held her love. It was quirky, a little bit upscale, a little bit college town. It was a place she thought she could live in forever, but heartache won out.
But counterbalancing the pain of seeing Sasha and her favorite city was the burst of joy the thought brought about. Brooke's relationship with Sasha might be in the past, but they still had years of love and friendship between them, and of course she would come calling if Sasha wanted to see her. The happiness made the pain so very worth it, even if it was just a few days together and not the lifetime she wanted.
"I'd love to," Brooke whispered. She realized she'd whispered, then cleared her throat loudly. "Sorry. Damn frog in my throat."
"Yeah," Sasha said, a relieved laugh escaping her. "Same. So you'll come?"
A memory. Sasha, forehead to forehead with her as they were eaten out from behind by the sultry twins London and Dakota, panting, "Come, come, baby, come, your face is so beautiful when you do..."
Brooke shivered. Her mind told her this was a mistake, she'd just be hurt again, but her heart, the stupid thing, was always up for being kicked around. And unfortunately, Brooke's heart always won out over her mind. "Yes."
* * *
Sasha hung up, and twisted to look at the man in bed behind her. Dane was sprawled out, nude under the sheets. They'd made fervent love after she asked him the most important favor of her lifetime, the big no-turning-back favor, the one that could have ruined them.
The "honey, I'd like to try to entice my old college lover into coming and living with us because as much as I love you, you know I still love her too" favor. The one he'd listened to studiously in the near ten minutes it took to explain where her heart was at. The one he said yes to, so long as he still got to marry her and so long as they kept it between the three of them.
Sasha Windsor was marrying the greatest guy in the world. Period.
"She's coming?" Dane asked.
Unable to speak, Sasha nodded. She leaned in and kissed him, and he kept her there with his lean, muscular arms. His lips pressed to her forehead as she snuggled in tight against him. Her leg slid over his, and she reached around him, hugging as much of Dane as she could with her body and resting her head against his chest.
The bedroom used to be her mother's. Her father's too, Sasha supposed, but she hadn't really thought of the big house as belonging to him since he cheated on her mother. The furniture was all different, the curtains airier, and the lighting modernized, but it was still the same room where she would crawl into bed when she had a nightmare, where she would sit in front of her mother's vanity and wish with all her might she was as pretty as the older Windsor, where she would crash out and read side by side with her mom.
