Under Control.

epilogue (chapter seventy three).

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Julian first hears about the opening of the art fair floating on the air across a crowded room.

He's dizzy from the stage and barely knows up from down, but there's a chorus of disembodied voices, excited and overawed, talking on and on about this amazing new thing. And at first, he thinks — 'No, it's just happening again. It's the ghost of her, she's back. I'm wishing too hard, I forgot to forget her.' — but then it happens again the next day, in the studio, and the whispers are bodied this time, and they belong to Fab and Nikolai.

They saw her, this past weekend. And he thinks, 'Oh — that's where they were.' And then he stops to wonder in the way he rarely allows of himself, these days — about her, and how she is — just as Fab exclaims in a hastily smothered whisper, 'She fucking nailed it.'

She's happy. And he's happy she's happy.

And that's how it's always been.

But this time, it's enough just to know.

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The next time he thinks of her, it's because she's made the arts section.

He's alone in the apartment that's now just his and the painting she left behind is staring him down while she stares back at him out from the newsprint, and she's beautiful, and he misses her. But, fuck, he's so proud.

He could call. And for a moment — and then for the whole rest of the day, every time he walks past her smiling face staring up at him from the folded-open paper he's left turned up on the kitchen counter — he thinks about it. And he almost does. Because, he has her number, and she has his.

But what seems better is just to send her some flowers — a bouquet of forget-me-nots, just to remind her that he's still out here, remembering, and hoping that she does too.

And it will happen like that a lot, in the years that follow.

He never sees her, not in person, not again, not for a long time. But he hears things. And he's always glad to know that's she out there too, because there's a little bit of her that lives inside of him always, and it's nice to be reminded.

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They send her an invite, in the end.

It's out of the blue and the decision is last minute, but it feels right. And even though she doesn't come, she sends in her place a bouquet of wildflowers that looks like a sculpture — one that's strangely soothing, exceptionally beautiful, and that they revel in having in the new apartment just to look at and to be made calm by in the lead up.

And with that beauty comes a letter, telling them both how glad she is for them, how excited she is to know that they've found something so sweet together, and what a lovely thing it is to know that it was just waiting patiently for them notice it, all along.

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Nora moves again, after she moves out. First to Miami, and then after a while, back to France.

It takes him a while to hear about it at first, because he's married now, and what remains of Nora are glad memories and the blue forget-me-nots she left behind that he still totes around with him from place to place.

But then, Fab lets it slip one day that she's shacked up with some guy, and he's beautiful, he says, and his job is wine.

(Which, Julian thinks, newly sober, is hilariously ironic.)