Following Isaac

by McMillin, Casey

  I had to wait at baggage claim for what seemed like forever, but Naomi was waiting in the loading zone when I finally got my bag. I'd given Uncle Greg enough airport rides to know my way around the loading zone at LAX, and I had a pretty easy time finding Naomi's car.

  "Did you see what your man posted on Instagram?" was the very first thing she asked when I opened the door.

  "No, my phone's dead. Pop the trunk so I can put this in there. Then you can tell me all about it."

  I heard the airy sound of the trunk popping open and I hustled around the back of the car, lifted the trunk, and swung the baggage in quickly.

  "Do you have a charger?" I asked sitting in the passenger's seat. She started digging in the console while I fished my dead phone from my purse.

  "Hi," I said, remembering just then for the first time to greet her.

  "Hi," she responded. We glanced at each other with a smile before she took her phone off her lap and handed it to me. "Look at my Instagram," she said. "He posted it a few hours ago."

  "What is it?" I asked, opening the app and scrolling through all of the recent photos.

  She didn’t answer me since all of her concentration was focused on merging into traffic. She was following a ton of people on Instagram, and it felt like I had to scroll forever to get to the ones that had been posted a few hours ago. The name @newyork_nicky popped up on her screen and I stopped scrolling immediately. It was a video and I clicked on it to watch. Since so much of his job was about fitness, he often posted video montages of a workout. Instagram had a fifteen second limit on videos, and Shane would put together clips of his workout and set them to rap music.

  I watched the full fifteen seconds twice before asking the obvious. "Are you talking about this workout video? He posts those all the time."

  She cut me a confused look. "Did you even read the caption?"

  The instant she said that, my eyes went to the bottom of the picture where he'd written a caption. It was mostly blocked, and I had to scroll up to see it.

  He wrote: Lonely for my baby. #shesonaplane #wantherback #gonnamarrythisgirl Tears stung my eyes as I quickly read it about ten times in a row. My eyes welled, and I looked up, trying to blink them away.

  "Did you read it?" she asked.

  "Yes." I said, doing my best to steady my voice.

  "He's talking about you!" she said.

  I squealed. I just couldn't hold it in. We both cracked up as she maneuvered through traffic headed for the freeway.

  "Did you read all the comments?" she asked.

  "I don't know if I want to."

  She smirked at me. "Why not? I think it's funny. It's not like they can do anything."

  "They can smack my face with a door and pour a drink on me."

  She took her eyes off the road just long enough to glance over at me. "Really? What the heck happened?"

  "It's not really a big deal, but I have to be aware that some haters have more than just keyboards for weapons."

  "Somebody poured their drink on you?"

  "Yeah."

  "For being with Isaac?"

  "Yeah."

  "When?"

  "When I surprised him at the club that Saturday night."

  "Did you kick her ass?"

  I laughed. "I wish. It surprised me so much I was pretty useless."

  "What did Isaac do?"

  I shrugged. "He came to check on me, but there wasn't much else he could do. We left right after that and he was so super sweet. I made him take me to a restaurant so we could have the fat talk before I went home with him."

  She laughed and shook her head. "I can't believe you did that."

  "I had to," I said. "I would have constantly lived in fear that he would have found out, and I honestly thought it would be a deal-breaker."

  "I told you it wouldn't," she said.

  "I know, but I had to do it."

  "Are you moving over there?" she asked. She seemed in good spirits when she said it, but I knew the news would make her sad.

  "Probably," I said. "I told him I'd finish school and we'd see about it next summer."

  "Does he want you to move in with him?"

  "Yes." The word and the assurance with which I said it sounded weird coming from my own lips, but Isaac left me with no doubts that I was the one he wanted. In fact, he made me promise not to doubt. That was easier said than done, but I was slowly starting to realize that I wasn't going to wake up from this dream.

  "I'm so proud of you, Becks." She reached over and punched my leg. "You saw what you wanted, and you went after it. It's amazing. I'm gonna miss you, but I'm so happy for you."

  "I told him I lost weight specifically to meet him."

  She slapped her hand to her forehead. "I thought you were just gonna tell him you lost weight. Why'd you have to go ahead and tell him all that?"

  I laughed. "I don't know. I guess I got nervous."

  "What'd he say?"

  "He didn't even care. He just blew right past it in the conversation, saying something about being relieved I wasn't an axe murderer."

  "Okay, that's all you're telling him," she said. "You can't push your luck with confessing all your embarrassing shit. There are some things better left unsaid. He's a famous model, for crying out loud Becca, you've got to hang on to a shred of mystery."

  "You mean I shouldn't tell him I get really bad yeast infections every time I take antibiotics," I asked, pushing her buttons.

  She put the back of her hand to her forehead like she might swoon. "Please oh please don't ever tell him that."

  "How about the time I got scabies from a movie theater seat?"

  "Nope."

  We laughed and gave several more examples of things I should never in a million years tell my boyfriend, including a few things she'd seen me do or say.

  Naomi and I walked in to find Uncle Greg in the living room putting together some sort of contraption that looked like you might eventually drop a marble onto it and watch it roll down a series of events.

  "I said you'd either come back married or crying, so which is it?" he asked without looking up from his project.

  "Hey Uncle Greg," I said.

  "Hey Greg," Naomi added.

  "I'm neither," I said.

  That caused him to glance at me. I could tell he was taking in my appearance, so he could figure out what exactly happened if it was neither of his suspicions.

  "More to the married side," Naomi said, to ease his curiosity.

  He raised an eyebrow at me, and I smiled and threw my hands up. "What? I can't help it if he mentioned wanting to marry me on Instagram."

  He smiled. "Oh he's famous on Instagram, you know," he said, quoting me. "He's got almost a million followers."

  "He does have a million now," I said. "Over a million."

  "Yeah, and all of them want to have his babies," Naomi said. "You should have seen some of the comments when he said that bit about wanting to marry her."

  We talked about that this weekend," I said.

  "About what?" Naomi asked.

  "I told him I didn't expect him to come out with our relationship on his social media since so many of his fans were girls."

  "Obviously he didn’t listen to you," Greg said, before turning back to his project.

  "I have souvenirs for you guys," I said. I hadn't checked to make sure the snow globes made the trip, and I hoped I'd find them intact when I opened my bag. They made it fine, and one by one I handed them to their new owner.

  Naomi's was a sculpture of the New York skyline with the Statue of Liberty as the main focal point. It was a beautiful scene with fine snow that floated down like the real thing. She was still staring into it when I handed Greg the one I got for him. It was equally as nice, but his was a New York skyline scene built from card houses. He stared into it for several long minutes. In fact, I went to my room to put my bag down, and when I came back they were both still staring into them.

  "How serious are you, Becca?" Uncle Greg asked when
I came back into the room.

  "Pretty sure I'm moving there in May."

  "Wow," he said. "She wasn't lying when she said closer to married."

  "Yep," I said. I was as lost in the memory of the weekend as they were in their snow globes. We all three sat there, mesmerized.

  "I think we love each other," I said.

  Epilogue

  Becca

  I moved to New York that May after I graduated. Those five months apart were hard for both of us, but it forced us to get to know each other in a different way. We had conversations you might not necessarily have in person, and I thought this time apart might actually work in our favor in the grand scheme of things.

  I moved into his apartment with very few belongings. I was a little worried about how his friends and family would accept me, but there was never a time when I felt like they didn't want me around.

  The fans, however, were another story. I've been in New York for two years now, and had several run-ins with fans that wanted me out of the way. My car has been keyed twice, once with the popping of my tires as an added bonus. Once a girl tripped me, and I was quite often elbowed or shoved "accidently".

  The longer we were together, the less frequently things like that happened. It seemed like people started getting less hostile about it about a year into the relationship. It helped that I was getting better and better at seeing the threat before it happened, and could easily dodge a shoulder from a hater.

  Isaac was serious when he said he wanted me to do MMA, and I'd been doing kickboxing and a little Jiu Jitsu as exercise. I wasn't a fighter, but I had enough training and cardio that I could easily kick a normal civilian's ass if I needed to. Isaac wanted me to drop somebody who got aggressive with me one day, just so he could see me do it, but I'd always gotten by with averting trouble.

  I got a job doing plantscaping for someone else's company just like I'd been doing in L.A. My goal at some point was to have my own business, but for now, it was easier to work for someone else. I didn't travel with Isaac every time he left town, but I did like to pick up and go with him every once in a while, and it was nice to be able to get someone to cover my hotels when I was gone. I figured I'd eventually want to work for myself, but for now I liked the flexibility of working for someone else.

  It was times like these I was glad for that flexibility. Isaac and I had been in L.A. for two weeks, and weren't planning on going back to New York for yet another two.

  A month off, you ask. Why would she need a month off? Well, maybe it's for my WEDDING and HONEYMOON. Yes, you heard me…

  Six hours ago, I became Mrs. Isaac Charles in front of about fifty of our closest friends and family. Isaac knew he was shooting a campaign in L.A. in June and thought it might be a good time for us to get married. He says he saw our future in my eyes next to that window in the ballroom at St. Andrews, and that's where he wanted to get married. We set the wedding date a week after the campaign he had scheduled, and his friends and family from back east flew out to join us.

  We hired a photographer named Alex who Isaac had worked with before. I'd already seen a few of the shots, and was so excited about how they came out. Thanks to a brilliant stylist, I looked as if I might actually belong at his side.

  "What are you thinking about?" he asked, coming into the living room to find me standing there spacing out.

  "I was thinking about those photos Alex showed us," I said. "I love my dress."

  He threw the keys onto the table by the door and started walking toward me. We were standing in a multi-million dollar beach house in Malibu with our own stretch of private beach. It was ours for two days before we went on our real honeymoon to Greece. (Freaking-a, right?) Anyway, this house was loaned to us by one of his connections at Tang, and it was probably the most beautiful house I'd ever seen.

  "I love your dress too," he said, closing the distance between us. He'd already loosened his tie and unbuttoned the first few buttons of his shirt. He still had his jacket on, and he closed the gap between us, looking every bit the stunning male model he was.

  "You must be a figment of my imagination," I said, feeling a bit breathless as he came to stand close to me.

  He wrapped a hand around the back of my neck and whispered, "Could your imagination do this?" He bent and put a kiss on my mouth. And, now my breath was officially taken away. I stood on my tiptoes to prolong the kiss when he pulled back.

  "No," I said.

  "Could it do this?" he asked. He grabbed my backside and pressed our hips together.

  "No." I said.

  His mouth was so close to mine that we shared the same breath.

  "So this must be real."

  "Did we really just get married?" I asked.

  "Yep."

  "That's crazy."

  "I know, I kind of regret it," he said, acting all nervous and shifty-eyed. His expression was deadpan, but I knew he was messing around.

  "Me too," I said, with a fake, worried expression.

  "Annulment?"

  "Yeah," I said, "but it can wait till morning."

  "Of course," he said.

  We both let our faces break into the grins we'd been holding back. Then he scooped me up, causing me to let out a shriek. "You're magic, you know," he said as if he was just stating a random fact.

  I smiled. "You said that in your speech tonight."

  "You caught that?"

  "Where'd you learn to work a crowd like that? Did you take a public speaking class or something?"

  He smiled. "No, I just know a great deal about the subject matter."

  "Which was me?" I asked, sounding vulnerable like I was in the right state to be taken to bed and ravished.

  "Yes, it was you, baby."

  "I love you to my toes, Isaac Charles."

  "I hope so, cause now I'm all yours."

  "Damn skippy you are," I said.

  He smiled. "Dig my phone out of my pocket." I reached around him and fished around till I came up with his phone. He told me to hold it out and get a selfie of us like that, and we tried a few positions before finding one that looked good.

  "Now post it and write on there that I'm about to take you to bed and mark my territory."

  I laughed, knowing I'd never do such a thing, and gently tossed his phone onto a nearby couch. "I'm not gonna write it, but just so you know, I don't mind considering myself your territory."

  He smiled down at me. "We got this," he said.

  "Yep. We're gonna make it." I smiled and rested my head on his chest, secure in the knowledge that it was the truth.

  The End

  Thanks for reading Following Isaac!

  For the latest news on upcoming releases, please visit my Facebook page at:

  https://www.facebook.com/caseymcmillinauthor

  Tom Kelly's Boys series: (3 books)

  Book 1 Finding the Magic

  Book 2 Steal My Girl

  Book 3 Tattoos and Angels

  How to Tame a Heartbreaker series: (4 books)

  Book 1 You're Dangerous

  Book 2 A Few Little Scars

  Book 3 Better with Ben

  Book 4 The Real Me

  In Too Deep Series: (5 books)

  Book 1 Three Years Later

  Book 2 Seeing Clearly

  Book 3 Second String

  Book 4 Mind the Gap

  Book 5 Three Months and You're Mine

  Stand-alone romances:

  Julien's Book

  Feels Like the First Time

  Much love and happy reading!

 

 

 
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