Moving Forward - 16. Epilogue

Epilogue

It has been thirteen years since Scott died. I still love him, and miss him, and think about him every single day. It was hard at first. Much harder than I would have guessed it would be, given all the notice we had and the time to steel myself for his death. Almost impossible, even. Honestly, I do not think I would have even survived the loss of my husband if it weren't for the love and support of my friends and family.

Much has happened in the intervening years. Zach and Joanna had a daughter, Trisha, about a year after Scott died, and Shannon and Melissa both gave birth two years later. Their kids were two weeks apart, but they called them 'the twins', because they were implanted the same day. They named one son 'Alexander' after my middle name, and the other 'Scott'. I did not have to ask why they named both children after us. Melissa's family had disowned her after she came out, and we had quickly become something of surrogate parents to her. She was as devastated by the death of Scott as the rest of us, despite being new to the family.

As for me, my hair is thinning and any semblance of the rock-hard jock physique I had worked so hard to achieve when I met Scott is long gone. I could probably chalk it up to now being sixty-six, but if I was being honest, when Scott's cancer came back, I gave up spending time working out so I could spend every last minute with him. When he died, I never picked it back up. I miss it. Maybe I should talk to Kyle about us getting gym memberships or something. Probably not. I just cannot really see him being willing to work up a sweat, and I am not sure I would be able to motivate myself to go alone.

About three years after Scott died, the kids started pushing for me to start dating again. Well Zach pushed; Shannon would invite me to a restaurant for dinner, only it was a setup for a blind date. Stupidly, I fell for it over and over again, much to her amusement. It's amazing how big of a sucker I am for, "No it's not a setup this time, I swear, Daddy!"

For the most part, it stayed very casual. The blind dates were rarely interesting enough to warrant more than a kiss on the cheek and a brief hug at the end of dinner. However, a few guys were interesting enough to result in a handful of dates. A few times, I even got a bit lucky. Before I met Kyle, though, nothing lasted more than a month or so. I was not looking to open up my heart. I had been dealt enough heartbreak and suffered enough loss for one lifetime, thank you very much.

I met Kyle in a coffee shop about three years ago. I was reading the paper while sipping on some coffee, and he asked if my seat was taken. I looked around, and the place was packed, so it was only fair to give him a place to sit. We started talking and sort of hit it off. He seemed interesting – well as interesting as a fifty-year-old accountant with little social skills can be. We had a good conversation, and when I had to leave, I did not want that to be the last time we spoke. While I had been on a few dates that were not blind setups, this was the first time since Scott that I actually took the initiative and asked another man out.

Kyle and I dated casually over the course of the next six months, meeting for dinner, a movie, drinks, or whatever, once every few weeks. We would hold hands, and dates would end with a nice kiss, but there was never much of a push for more. I liked it. It was easy. There was no pressure; no overwhelming emotions to deal with. Just light conversation with good company, and even when the conversation petered out, the ensuing silence was comfortable as well.

That all started to change somewhere around the six-month mark. I invited him back to the house for some after-dinner drinks. That was the first time we had sex. It was easily the best sex I had had since Scott. Granted, I could probably count on both hands the number of times that had happened, but still.

The next morning, I awoke to an empty bed. I thought Kyle had freaked out and bolted, but I found him downstairs in the living room flipping through our old family photo albums. Despite how much the world had gone digital, and the fact that I owed my fortune to the Internet Age, I had always insisting on filling album after album of physical photos. It was so much better to flip through page after page of pictures, the weight of the book in your hands, as the story of our lives unfolded.

I had purposely not talked about Scott too much to Kyle at that point. He knew I was a widower and had two married children and five grandkids – ranging from eight to fifteen – but he never really asked for more details, and I did not provide them. As I said earlier, things between Kyle and I had been fairly light and casual.

"Everything ok?" I asked Kyle, sitting down beside him on the couch.

"Yeah… I guess…" he replied.

"You sure? I hope I didn't freak you out last night. I had a good time."

"I did. It's just… I knew you were married, and I knew you had a life before me, obviously. It's just that I didn't know…" he said, looking down at the photographs.

"Didn't know what?"

This was probably the closest we had come thus far to heavy conversation, and he was barely able to string words together. A hint of irritation must have come through my voice.

"Oh… Sorry. I just realized I'm going through your photo albums as if I live here. I didn't mean to intrude. It's just I woke up and wanted to get something to eat, and then I didn't want to wake you up or anything so I just decided to explore a little," he said, suddenly even more nervous. I put my hand on his shoulder as he began to stand up. Had I not done so, I am certain he would have bolted out of the room.

"No, it's fine. I told you to make yourself at home. I'm not sure I meant go through my pictures, but it's not like they were hidden away in some drawer. What did not realize until just now?"

"I guess it just dawned on me that I don't really know you. But I guess you don't really know me too well either. And I don't even know what 'we' are…"

"You're right, Kyle. We don't know much about each other, but I want us to. The truth is I don't even know what I'm looking for. I've enjoyed our relationship as it has been, but I'm definitely not opposed to being more serious. I haven't really opened up about my past because things were so light and easy-going, and I didn't want to screw that up by talking about things like my children or my dead husband."

Kyle just nodded, but didn't respond.

"What are you looking for in our relationship?" I guided after a minute.

It took a minute before he responded. I could tell he was gathering his thoughts, so I gave him the time he needed.

"Noah, last night was amazing… possibly the best night of my life. You were simply incredible."

I gulped a little at that. The sex had been good, but I definitely would not have called it earth-shattering.

"I want that. I want a full relationship. I want to know everything there is to know about Noah Hudgins, and I want to tell you everything about Kyle McKinnis. I want to meet your children and your grandkids – not today, or even next month, but eventually. I want to become someone important in your life, not just something casual or easy."

I wrapped my arm around his waist and scooted closer to him.

"I'd like that too," I replied, leaning in to kiss him.

That day, I told him the entire story of me and Scott. I told him about Zach and Shannon, and the five wonderful kids they had blessed my life with. He, in turn, told me his life's story as well. Kyle had been in a series of committed relationships, over the years, but they all seemed to peter out after about five years or so. I only know his side of the story, but the impression I got was that it was not like Kyle mellowed out as he got older. Instead, he has always been the sweet, but calm and reserved guy I met. He never said it, but I distinctly got the impression the relationships failed because his partners got bored with him. That hurt me when he was telling me his past, and it hurts me when I think about it now. Kyle is a wonderful guy. Sure, he will never be the life of the party, but he is far from boring.

Over the next few months, he met my family. No surprise, they all welcomed him with open arms. Both Shannon and Zach told me privately they seemed surprise I was getting serious with Kyle, since, in Shannon's words, "he's super boring compared to Dad."

I guess Shannon was right to an extent. Compared to Scott, Kyle is very boring. But I like that about him. Things between us are easy. There are no big arguments, and conversation comes without any difficulty. He's good in bed, but there's nothing compared to the spark Scott and I had in the bedroom – and everywhere else the mood struck us. The only thing I truly missed in our relationship was the type of banter Scott and I always had. Whenever I try to shoot a smart-assed retort at Kyle, he just looks at me like I grew a second head.

It sounds like I'm not happy with Kyle. That couldn't be further from the truth. I honestly do love the man. It's just so hard to write all that I've written about my life with Scott and then not compare that to the life I have built with Kyle over the last three years. My only complaint is that whenever the topic of Scott comes up, Kyle seems to be a bit uncomfortable, as if he is concerned that Scott will somehow come between us. He always denies it whenever I bring it up.

Hell, now it sounds like I am settling. I am not, or at least I do not think I am. What Scott and I had was… once in a lifetime. I am not fooling myself to think that I could find that again, and I am not trying to. I love Kyle, and he makes me happy. It is not like he is opposed to hearing stories about the kids growing up, and he is quick to comfort me, and listen as I ramble about my past when my emotions overtake me, which still happens on occasion. Who knows, maybe it is all in my head. I just feel like whenever I start telling an anecdote about my past Kyle just gets a distant look in his eyes. Like I said, he always says he is fine, but I just know deep down that it bothers him, so I try to avoid it as much as possible. The reality, though, is that it is hard for references to a twenty-eight-year relationship to not come up once in a while.

This is a very roundabout way of explaining why I decided to write Moving Forward. A little over a year ago, Kyle asked about us moving in together. I had already been contemplating selling my house. It had been perfect for Scott and me when we bought it. The location was amazing, it was the perfect size for our growing family, and it was more than capable of handling the ever-rotating visiting friends and family. Now, on the other hand, the kids were grown and had moved out to start families of their own. Scott had died, and it was just me. Nostalgia led to me holding onto the house for far longer than I should have, but it was time to move on. The house was still far more than Kyle and I needed, so I agreed to move in with him.

As I was packing up a bookshelf in our bedroom, I stumbled upon something I had not even thought about in many, many years. About a year after Scott and I reconciled, he decided to pay to have the story he had written as a therapeutic exercise professionally printed and bound. It was crammed in among all the journals he had filled in our years together, along with the couple of journals I had written.

Carefully, as if I was worried I would damage the bound book, I pulled it off the shelf. I sat down on the floor and rubbed my fingers over the embossed title. Moving On: How I Lost the Love of My Life and Found My True Love, by Scott Hudgins. I opened the cover and started reading. I did not need to read it to know what was in the book. I read it when Scott and I first began the process of reconciling. Hell, I had lived it. But I read it anyway. I must've fallen asleep, because I awoke on the floor, the book still in my hands.

I knew then that I owed it to Scott to finish writing his story. I needed to tell how he had broken my heart and managed to repair it. He deserved to have the rest of his life detailed as lovingly as he had documented the beginning of our relationship.

Once I had finished moving in with Kyle, I began poring over our journals. I made page after page of notes, including my own memories that weren't always documented in the journals. And then I began the long process of slowly turning everything into this story. It took me nearly a year. As I said earlier, I try to minimize casual reference to Scott around Kyle, and this story is more than a casual retelling of an anecdote. Instead, it is something of an autobiographical love letter to my late husband. As a result, I have mostly worked on this during the day when Kyle was at work. He knows I have been writing, but he has not asked for any specifics, and I have no plans to share it with him.

It does hurt to be finished with this lengthy retelling of my life with Scott and being unable to show it to the man I love, but I think it is for the best. I'm so proud of this story. It's a wonderful and enduring legacy to Scott, the first love of my life. I love Kyle and all, but I just know he would not understand. For all I know, that may change one day, and I keep thinking of showing it to Zach and Shannon. I am sure Shannon would get far less out of the finished product than Zach would, but I feel like both of them would enjoy reading the stories that Scott and I wrote.

Kyle has also been dropping hints recently about getting married. I do not think that I'm even ready to contemplate that with him. That makes it sound like I question my feelings for him, which I do not. I never compare the relationship I have with Kyle to the one I had with Scott – that would not be fair to either man. Well, I guess that's what I've been doing here, but it's unavoidable in this instance. And I am not opposed to possibly being married again, but I mean, honestly, I'm in my sixties, so if it is not Kyle, I feel like the prospects are relatively bleak to find that. At the end of the day, however, if I were to agree to marry someone again, I am not sure descriptors of 'easy' and 'comfortable' are appropriate ones for a husband, and they are honestly some of the best descriptors I have of Kyle. Instead, I would want something like I found in Scott.

- Noah Hudgins