Chapter 6: Epilogue
The manuscript was a PDF attachment for months. An inert digital thing. Then it was a stack of bound galleys with "ADVANCE READING COPY" stamped on the cover in stern letters. Holding the physical object was like holding a grenade with the pin already pulled. The cover was minimalist: a stark, slightly blurred photograph of an empty hotel bed, the sheets tangled. The title, in clean black type: The Education of a Fool.
Nikki placed her copy on the coffee table. She hadn’t read the final draft. She’d said she didn’t need to. “It’s your education,” she’d shrugged. “I lived the graduation.”
But there were surprises. Two of them.
The dedication page was simple. For Nikki, my home. And for Kayla, my truth. I’d written that. What came after was not mine.
On the next page, in italics, was a separate section.
Christian asked me to write a dedication. I told him to go to hell. Then I thought about it. So here it is: To the fool—thank you for being one. Your spectacular failure with me was the best thing that ever happened to my life. It sent me straight into therapy and then straight into myself. I am happier, stronger, and richer (literally, my studio is killing it) because you were too blind to see what you had. So, thanks, asshole. Sincerely, Kayla.
I stared at it. My throat tightened. It was pure, undiluted Kayla. It was perfect.
Nikki saw my expression and picked up the book. She read Kayla’s words, her lips twitching. Then she turned the page. Her breath caught.
There was another.
My husband thinks this book is about his past. He’s wrong. It’s a map of how he got to me. Every wrong turn, every dead end, every crash was a step in the direction of this address, this bed, this life. So, to all the women in these pages: thank you for the directions. You can keep the souvenirs. I have the prize. Love, Nikki.
I looked at her. “When?” was all I could manage.
“The night you emailed the final file to the publisher,” she said, a sly smile touching her lips. “You were asleep. I added it. Figured it needed some balance. A little grace.”
I pulled her to me, burying my face in her hair. The grenade in my hand felt less like a weapon and more like a relic. It had our fingerprints all over it now.
Publication day was a Tuesday. A non-event, globally. But in several separate apartments, in different cities, the world shifted a millimeter on its axis.
Jazz Richard saw it on a table at McNally Jackson. She was in New York, choreographing an off-Broadway show. The title stopped her. The author name confirmed it. She bought it, took it to a café, and read it in one furious, scalding gulp. When she got to her chapter, to the description of the mirrors and the handcuffs and the competition, she didn’t blush. She smirked. Then she read his analysis, his confession of emptiness. The smirk faded. She closed the book, ordered a double espresso, and texted her current lover, a percussionist with gentle hands. Come over tonight. I need to be quiet.
Isabella “Bella” Rodriguez got her copy in Berlin. A friend from the States mailed it with a note: Isn’t this your old flame? She opened it on her sun-drenched balcony overlooking the Spree. She read it with a painter’s eye, admiring the prose, the vivid colors of memory. Her chapter made her laugh aloud—the paint, the blanket, the messy, feeling fuck. She felt a warm nostalgia, no sharper than a dried flower pressed in a book. She took a picture of the dedication page, focusing on Kayla’s words, and sent it to me. The message read: She’s right, you know. You were a glorious fool. Glad you learned. P.S. The cerulean blue period was worth it. She then went back to her canvas, the memory dissolving into the smell of linseed oil.
Tammy Adams found out via a Facebook post from a high school friend who thought it was “scandalous.” She ordered it on her Kindle that night, reading in the glow of her tablet after her kids were asleep. Her hands trembled as she read her pseudonymed chapter. She saw herself through his eyes: the comfort, the complication, the “dead end.” It hurt. It felt reductive. But then she read Nikki’s dedication. You can keep the souvenirs. Tammy thought of those stolen afternoons, the sweat on my old couch, the feeling of being wanted in a way her life lacked at the time. They were souvenirs. She had a husband now, a good one. She closed the app, rolled over, and kissed his sleeping shoulder. She kept the memory, but she let the hurt go.
Leah, the BBW who rewired me, discovered it on a bestseller list. She downloaded the audiobook, listened to it on her commute to the tech campus in Austin. Hearing my voice narrate the story of our night, her lesson, her body, her command to “eat your dinner,” she burst out laughing in her car, a full-bodied roar that made the driver next to her stare. She listened to the end, to the analysis she’d inspired. At a red light, she texted a single line to an old number she hoped was still mine: A+. You finally passed.
That night, in our bedroom, the air was different. The ghosts were no longer ghosts. They were readers. They had reviews. Nikki was restless. The bravado of her dedication had morphed into a raw, exposed nerve.
“Did she text you?” Nikki asked, staring at the ceiling. “Bella?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She said the cerulean blue period was worth it.”
Nikki laughed, but it was thin. “She’s not wrong.” She rolled onto her side, facing me. Her eyes were dark pools in the low light. “I feel them in here tonight. All of them. Reading their chapters. Knowing what I know.”
“They don’t know what you know,” I said, tracing her jaw. “They know their part. You know the whole story.”
“I want to erase them,” she whispered, a sudden, fierce heat in her voice. “I want to fuck them out of this room, out of this bed, out of your cells.”
She pushed me onto my back. This wasn’t the victorious claiming of before. This was exorcism. There was a desperation in her hands as she ripped my boxers down, taking my already-hard cock in her fist. She was wet already, her arousal a sharp, clean smell cutting through the perfume of the room.
“Watch me,” she commanded, straddling me. She didn’t guide me in. She positioned herself and slammed down, taking me all in one brutal, breathtaking stroke. She cried out, a sound of pain and triumph.
Her movements were frantic, pistoning up and down, her head thrown back, her breasts bouncing. “Mine,” she chanted, a ragged whisper. “You’re mine. Say it.”
“I’m yours, Nikki. Only yours.”
“Fuck! FUCK!” she screamed, her orgasm ripping through her suddenly, violently. Her inner walls clamped around me like a vise, rhythmic and punishing. The intensity triggered my own release. I came deep inside her, a hot, surging flood that felt like being emptied of every last ghost, every echo.
She collapsed, spent, her body slick with sweat. But she didn’t let me slip out. She held me inside, her muscles still fluttering. We lay there, gasping, our heartbeats a wild, synced drumroll against each other’s skin.
In the quiet aftermath, she spoke into the hollow of my throat.
“The book is out there,” she said. “It’s done. Now what?”
I held her tighter. “Now,” I said, “we live in the present tense.”
Down the hall, on the coffee table, the book sat quietly. A closed thing. A story that had finally, mercifully, ended.