The Girl Who Read [And the Boy Who Kissed Her]: epilogue

❝Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.❞

― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

She rubbed her upper body that was clad in his hoodie. She twisted and twirled the silver band with the diamond stud around her fourth finger. The metal was cool against her skin as the memories burned into her brain once more.

It had been his birthday, his nineteenth. Their families were squashed into the rounded corner booth at Frankie's diner and stuffed their faces with different, various brunch foods. Spencer's brother's wife was obviously pregnant, as her plate was piled with foods of different arrangements, her stomach slightly bulging. Her smile was glowing, her husband rubbing her neck softly. Skylar sighed at the action. You could feel the love radiating off of the couple. It was simply magical. She glanced at Spencer, who sat beside her, his hand in hers. She wondered if they'd ever have a family together.

His eyes were breathtaking; the hazel eyes seemed to swirl with sudden spots of gold. His eyes seemed to be twinkling with laughter, a dimple popping up on his right cheek. His coffee brown hair was so soft and curled a little over his eyes. He had slight shadows of freckles across his nose and cheeks. His smile was everything to her. His teeth as white as the snow, his lips, the lips that caressed hers every so often, would turn in a giant, heart warming grin. He caught her eye and winked.

She felt her heart flutter, the same flutter as always, and looked back at her food, flustered.

She ate in silence, listening to the two families chitter and chatter over random nonsense. Everyone soon finished their meal, waiting for the check.

Beside her, Spencer stood up. Still holding onto her hand, his fingers now intertwined with hers. She looked up at him, with a sort of pride. He was hers. She was his.

"Thank you all for coming. I wish I could say something more than what I'm about to say, but I can't." He looked directly into her eyes, and whispered to the table, "I'm... I'm leaving, tomorrow, for the army. I enlisted a while ago, and... I don't want to leave any of you, I really don't. I'll write as much as I can. I'm sorry to kill the mood."

Her heart was being jabbed by blunt-edged knives. Her throat clogged up, and her stomach tossed and turned and flipped. She let go of his hand and got up from the table.

"I'm sorry, I-I need to go."

She ran in a blind rush to the bathroom in the diner, her head pounding and her heart being ripped up and clawed. She heard her name being called but she ran regardless. Tears blurred her path but she didn't care. Arms wrapped around her waist just before she reached the bathroom and she kicked and pounded on his chest, knowing it was him by the masculine smell of cologne. She broke down in his arms in the diner, tears soaking his chest. He was leaving her.

He drove her to his house in silence, and they spent the time they had left with each other in the tree house.

She was curled in his lap as she cried loudly, tears wracking her body in sobs. He attempted to muffle her tears by stroking her hair slowly, shushing her softly.

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" She screamed out, letting her emotions finally run free, hitting him on his solid chest.

"I'm so sorry baby, I... I'm so, so sorry."

Eventually, hours later, her tears subsided slightly. She could see that his eyes were slightly red and puffy.

He got out from under her, and stood in front of her, stooping a bit, since he was much taller than the roof of the tree house. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a box. A maroon, velvet box. With fresh tears flowing down her cheeks, she looked up at him, her eyes wide and her mouth open. Her lips trembled as she covered them with her hand.

"Skylar... I know we haven't dated too long, but... I-I love you, and I can't lose you."

He got down on one knee and opened the box. A beautiful silver band with a diamond in the middle lay in it. She choked a little at the sight.

"Now... When I come back, for good, I'll propose to you for real. This is a promise ring, but not for long. Skylar, baby, will you stay with me even when I'm gone?" His hands were trembling, holding the ring box. His eyes looked vulnerable, and he gulped, biting his lip.

She tackled him to the ground in the tree house, hugging the life out of him. He put the ring to the side and hugged back, whispering, "So I guess that's a yes?"

After a while of hugging, she carefully placed the ring on her fourth finger, trying not to squeal.

They wanted to cherish the last moments they had together, until he left. He wrapped his arms around her waist, and she wrapped hers around his neck. Her head lay in the crook of his neck, and she felt him press a gentle kiss to her forehead. She didn't want him to leave. God, she didn't want him to leave at all. She needed Spencer.

They fell asleep holding one another in the tree house, cherishing each other's warmth one last time.

He hadn't come home. There had been letters sent here and there, with frequent 'I love you's, but he hadn't come home.

He was supposed to today. He promised it would be today, in her last letter from him. After today, he would be done with the army. And she would have him again.

It had been four years.

She hadn't seen him in four years. Four years.

So, while she sat in her mother's bookstore, a ring wrapped around her finger, her phone in her hands, she worried.

What if he hadn't come home for a reason? What if, after all the time apart from her, he finally realized that he could do so much better than her? She was stressing herself out. Skylar inhaled deeply and shakily exhaled. He's coming home. It will all be okay.

Clicking on her phone, she saw her lock screen with the picture of them Charlotte had taken. It had been their first 'real' date, and she remembered every second of it.

"Come on, Sky. We're gonna be late," Spencer called to her from the bookstore. She gulped, smiling a bit, and quickly slid his hoodie (she still hadn't returned to him) over her Harry Potter shirt. She was nervous.

She had no reason to be nervous, because, come on, it's Spencer. But it was their first 'real' date, and she didn't want to screw it up.

Skylar nearly tripped down the stairs, leaping with excitement. He was waiting for her at the bottom, a grin on his face. She returned it gratefully. She hollered a speedy goodbye to her parents and hooked arms with her boyfriend, heading to his truck.

As always, he had something up his sleeve. Skylar was clueless as to where she was being taken.

It was around two hours when he finally reached their destination.

She raised an eyebrow when he came to an abrupt stop in the Barnes & Noble parking lot.

"I literally live in a bookstore, Spencer. Why are we going to one for a date?"

He winked at her, making her heart feel like it was going through the wash, being stirred and flipped and spun and tossed and turned. He led her closer to the front doors of the giant bookstore, and she yelped.

"No way."

"Yes way."

He smirked at her, bringing her inside. She was in awe at the mountains of books upon books in the room. The sight made her knees weak and her chest clench and her fingers curl knowing that this was where she belonged. This was her.

But the sign on the main doors had made her absolutely love Spencer a hundred times more.

'Sophie Claflin, international best-selling author, here on November 26.'

He had taken her to see one of her favorite writers. She blinked back the tears of joy that were so close to escaping and lightly pressed her lips onto his cheek in pure ecstasy.

"Thank you so, so, so much, oh my gosh Spencer. I'm never going to be able to make it up to you."

He chuckled. "I love you. That's what people do for the ones they love. They try to make them happy."

They spent twenty minutes waiting for her idol to show up by reading random books in different accents. "Better not to give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart," she mocked in a British accent. He grabbed another piece of literature off of the shelf, grinning as he flipped through it, searching for a specific page. He looked shyly at the paper and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Clearing his throat, he began in an Australian accent. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you."

She gulped and bit the inside corner of her mouth. How do you respond to that?

Life, however, fortunately saved her from a very embarrassing attempt at romanticizing, by bringing the one and only Sophie Claflin into the bookstore at that precise moment.

She gasped and clutched Spencer's wrist with a strength no human should come into contact with, and held back her screams and squeals.

"Hello, everyone..." Her favorite author waved into the large crowd that now surrounded her. "I'm Sophie Claflin, as you may know."

Skylar led Spencer to the front with her, and the whole date, they cuddled together, listening to her favorite author give writing tips and read passages from upcoming books and past works. She absolutely loved it.

She turned off her phone.

Skylar reached for the book closest to her, ignoring the title and flipping a couple pages forward. Her finger tapped viciously against the wooden table and her foot drummed against the carpeted floor. She tried to focus, but the words just looked like a big blob of letters and she fingered through the book without processing anything. Her eyes burned as she tried to concentrate, memories resurfacing without permission. She forced them down.

'See you at the movies, yeah?'

'Spencer, I told you-'

She blinked and shook her head, backing up a couple words. Spencer?

'See you at the movies, yeah?'

'Caleb, I told you-'

What had happened there? She was going insane, literally now. She bit her lip and held back her tears. She couldn't wait much longer for him to come home.

Her phone buzzed.

She tiredly glanced at her iPhone and froze.

She fumbled and trembled as she slid the lock screen and read the message.

Spencer: hey baby

Her fingers shook and her jaw went slack and she closed her eyes, feeling tears seep past her eyelashes. Her phone buzzed in her hand again and she eagerly devoured the message, freely crying now. This was the most she had heard from Spencer in forever.

Spencer: go look beside the cash register, assuming you're in the bookstore.

She nearly leapt out of her chair, but paused when her pocket buzzed once again.

Spencer: love you

She smiled in glee. He still loved her! She raced around the bookstore to the checkout, where, low and behold, a ratty, ancient, black, little notebook lay.

She gasped and rubbed the side of her face in almost disbelief. How on Earth... She walked cautiously up to it and curled her fingers around the yellowing, crinkled papers. The pages pricked her fingers as she observed the intricate stories she had written as a teenager. She reached a page that had the top right folded and scanned it.

It was something she had scribbled out after the kiss in the rain. The excruciatingly amazing, undeniably astonishing, unbelievably mind-shattering, magical kiss.

Spencer touched her cheeks daintily before ducking his head down and connecting their lips, while her fingers reached up and stroked his coffee brown hair that was silken to the touch. They ignored the rain dribbling down their noses and cheeks as they blocked out the world, enclosed in the pure bliss that was their kiss. Their real kiss. His lips were like velvet, smooth and-

She stopped reading her old writing and skipped to the bottom where she spotted familiar handwriting that was not hers.

This page is all about kissing. Go to the place where we first had ours?

She lightly closed the journal and casually sprinted to the children's section, where she spotted a small bottle in the center of the furry rug surrounded by books.

She couldn't stop the tears flowing down her face by now as she uncorked the bottle, quivering and wavering while she unfolded the rolled up notebook paper stuffed inside.

Dear my beloved Skylar,

I cannot express how sorry I am that I never came home. I apologize deep within my heart that I rarely wrote back to your letters. And I am absolutely ashamed for the reason I did this.

I was a coward, Skylar. A coward.

If I had so much as heard your voice over the phone, I would not be able to continue in the Army. Never mind if I had seen your beautiful, beautiful face. I would have never been able to go back.

I was too selfish, Sky. I hope that one day, you will be able to forgive me.

You were all I ever talked about to the friends I made there. They know our whole story. They know even the smallest details about our dates, to the number of freckles you have running down your nose. They tease me about it, but I don't care. I told them how you finished writing a book on us. How you called it The Girl Who Read [And The Boy Who Kissed Her]. How I helped telling you my point of view because you claimed mine was 'more interesting'. Ryder, one of my buddies, says that he will be the first to buy it when you publish it, but he's wrong, because I will.

Skylar, I love you so much. I love you more than Augustus Waters loves Hazel Grace Lancaster. I love you more than Percy Jackson loves Annabeth Chase. I love you more than Peeta Mellark loves Katniss Everdeen, or more than Finnick Odair loves Annie Cresta.

These years have been hard. Without you, I've been dead inside. My mates claim I have bags under my eyes and my lips are always in a frown. Sometimes, when I talk about you, I faintly smile.

It's been a living Hell, babe. And I'm so glad that I can finally come home to you.

I love you. To Pluto and Back.
Spencer

It took a while for her to finally properly begin breathing again. Her breaths were choppy and her face felt damp. She rolled up the letter again and stuffed it in her back pocket. She rubbed her eyes.

Footsteps. They followed quickly after the faint ring of the bell, and they became louder. Heavier.

She dried her tears on the sleeve of his hoodie and got up. The bookstore was closed today, so it wouldn't be a customer (that they seldom got, anyway).

She turned around. "Hello?"

She saw nothing. Walking out of that book section, she crept stealthily down to teen fiction. But she heard the heavy footsteps following her, and she halted. They paused as well. She slowly whisked around.

Without another second wasted she nearly dove at her boyfriend that she hadn't seen for four years and leapt into his opened, now completely ripped, arms.

He was still wearing the camouflage. His large hands were holding up her thighs as they were wrapped around his waist. Her arms wrapped around his neck, her head tucked neatly next to his. She sobbed so hard. So hard.

Her body felt on fire as she hugged him to death. He looked a lot different. Sharper jawline. Shorter hair. But he was still her cheesy, adorkable, (not so little) Spencikins.

She heard something drop to the floor that she assumed had been in his pocket.

"I missed you so damn much," she heard his voice, his voice.

He felt like yesterday. He smelled just like before, like home. And his voice, his deep, now incredibly mature voice that completely turned her on even more than before, was like a dream. She hadn't heard that voice in four years.

"Something fell out out of your pocket," she mumbled with a laugh while tears dampened his jacket. The first words to him in four freaking years.

She felt his hot breath on her left ear. "Oh, shit."

"What, why?" She questioned, getting down from his hold.

Her head whipped to the ground where a velvet box lay. The box ha flipped open and there was a silver band, very much like the one one her finger now, nestled in the box. A diamond was embedded in the middle. It gleamed in the faint sunlight streaming through the windows.

"Shit," she whispered, slightly gasping. "Holy shit."

Kneeling down, Skylar silently picked up the velvet box.

"Surprise?" Spencer muttered wincing, scrunching up his face, awaiting her response.

When she finally shook off her initial shock, she punched him in the shoulder. Damn, that actually hurt her fist. "Redo it. I'll pretend to be surprised."

He blinked at her but grabbed the box out of her hands. "S-Sure."

He nervously wiped his sweaty hands on his pants and knelt down. Her heart accelerated and her mouth slightly dropped open. She was supposed to be acting, but this was actually somewhat shock. The reality hadn't sunk in.

He opened the box. And the waterworks began once more.

"Skylar Elliot Jackson..." He began. "W-Will you marry me?"

A laugh bubbled up through her multitude of tears. "Yes, Spencer. A million times yes."

♡❤♡

They sat beside one another in the back of his truck once more. This time, as fiancés.

The ring felt heavy on her fourth finger, now replacing her promise ring, that now rested on her middle finger.

She lay on top of Spencer, chest to chest. He softly stroked her blonde hair as her ear rested on his chest.

Bum bum. Bum bum. Bum bum.

She took one last glance at the stars that twinkled in the sky like his eyes when he laughed or smiled at her, and closed them slowly.

He kissed her lips once again and she smiled.

This time, it was even more than perfect. It was love.

a/n please read the whole thing

Thank you all, so, so, so much for this entire expirience. Writing this book has been incredible, and the characters have truly made my personal goals in life come out and just... I don't even know what to say. All of you fans have been completely and utterly amazing, you are all so so supportive of me and this book and my writing, and i cannot thank you enough. To write this at thirteen and get people to read my works and actually think that it's good, it completely inspires me to become the author I one day want to become. I have to be honest, I never expected this story to become somewhat popular, like people actaully reading it. I love you all, and I can't even fathom... I can't put how much I love you all and want to thank you into words. I've worked on this book for a while, a year...? And I can't believe some of you stuck with me until the end. Now, as I said I might, I wil be doing a one-shot competition. The rules/imformation is coming right up! also, finishing facts/Q&A.

For Q&A, I will be taking questions! Any questions you have to me about writing this, any questions you have for Spencer, Skylar, anyone mentioned in the story, or any quesions you had about the plot, ask away! I'll be taking all questions, so go right ahead!

Thank you all so so so much, again, for supporting me and my characters throughout this book. I hope to write to you later! I will be editing this story. Vote and comment if you liked the epilogue :p

One shot information coming up.