Fly With Me | ✓

epilogue

"Oh, Everleigh Jane."

Everleigh turned around. Smiled. If the whole world stopped in that moment, and she got to look at Maverick for the rest of eternity, she would do it with her last heartbeat.

"You're really making me go?" Maverick asked, voice soft. "While you're wearing that?"

Everleigh had worked with Indy on this dress, the one time in her life she ever wanted control. She was always one to keep her promises. With a slit in the thigh—a little ambitious for her, but she was trying—the dress hugged her body nicely. The fabric crossed like a stylized toga across her chest, the bodice below translucent with small opaque lines accentuating her stomach before the skirt of the dress draped around her. Peeking out from just below her breast was the small tattoo she'd drunkenly gotten one night but ultimately decided to keep—a spoon that was smaller than her pinky finger. (Maverick had a matching one along his pinky finger, the same hand that had Stevie and the L train.)

She never thought she'd step out of the house in a dress that she felt good in. There was not one moment growing up where she thought she wanted to be stared at by the world. Part of her still worried about the bumps and the curves and the unfortunate bruise on her knee from bumping it at work. But then there was Maverick. Maverick who picked her up and spun her around when she told him she'd gained five pounds and kissed her because she meant the damn world to him.

Indy hadn't given her pockets this time around—rather, Maverick had larger pockets on the inside of his coat so he could carry Everleigh's phone—but she had picked out the prettiest emerald green fabric Everleigh had ever seen. Tied it in well with the green accents she'd given Maverick for his tuxedo.

"I made you a promise," Everleigh said. "Green dress for the Oscars if you got nominated."

"And you expected me to survive?"

"I expect you to win." Everleigh took the folded piece of paper from the hotel counter, walking over to Maverick and tucking it inside his jacket pocket.

Maverick's hands trailed along her ribs, only the mesh bodice between his fingers and her skin. "What's that?"

"A speech, you spoon," Everleigh said. "Make it easier to fit the time limit when you start crying."

"I don't plan on winning."

Right. Mister Two-Songs-Nominated-For-His-First-Time didn't think he'd win. That's why they'd flown from their flat in Windsor to Los Angeles a month before when he won his Golden Globe, and then landed the night before for the Oscars ceremony and they were there for another week for the Grammys—he was up for nine, two for You Can't Kill Rock and Roll alone. How could she forget? Maverick wasn't on a streak or anything, he didn't know a thing about music. The fucking spoon.

"Hold onto it," Everleigh said. "Please?"

Maverick pressed his lips together and nodded. If she could wear that dress in public, he could fight the imposter syndrome. Everleigh tried her best to kiss his nerves away anyway. Try not to ruin her makeup while she did so.

"Are you ready to go?"

Maverick shrugged.

"What does that mean?" Everleigh took his untied tie in her hands, gently looping it through itself. "And don't say something horny."

Maverick laughed and motioned to his ears. Severely lacking their aids.

"You—" Everleigh took a deep breath instead of reacting the way she wanted to. She had told him to put them where he would remember, but maybe the nerves were taking over. Finished tying his tie and tapped his chest a couple times as she smoothed it out. "You've misplaced them or you haven't put them in?"