Ella absentmindedly follows me. Once I get her into the hallway and out of my mother’s gaze, I stop us and whirl her around to face me.
“Okay, what’s wrong?” I ask, examining her watery eyes.
She stares over my shoulder at a few framed pictures of my mom and me hanging on the wall. “It’s nothing.”
I place my hand on her cheek and force her to look at me. “It is something; otherwise you wouldn’t be about ready to cry.”
“I don’t…” Tears bubble in the corner of her eyes and her voice cracks. “It’s just that… God, this is so stupid.” She rubs the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Nothing you say is stupid,” I assure her, wiping a stray tear away with my thumb.
She frowns doubtfully at me. “Even when I told you that I was pretty sure we could push to one hundred miles per hour when there was a foot of snow on the road?”
“Yeah, well, we all have our drunk moments,” I say, recollecting the night she’s talking about. How she was a little drunk and a little excited over the fact that some dude told her she had a nice ass. She would never admit that was what was making her all cheery, but I could tell it was and it was fucking annoying.
“Go faster,” she’d begged from the passenger seat with her head against the dashboard as she watched the night sky through the window. “Go, like, a hundred.”
“No way,” I’d replied, shifting into a lower gear as the engine grumbled. The road was dangerous going twenty-five, the car barely able to keep any sort of traction as we slid up the vacant street, heading home.
“Oh come on, Micha Scott.” She sat up and ran her fingers through her hair. She had on a leather jacket and a black shirt underneath it that had a low collar and I could see the curves of her breasts. The sight made me hard, which pissed me off because another guy had put a smile on her face. “Just try it. If things get too crazy, you can stop.”
I shook my head, ripping my gaze from her cleavage. “You’re drunk and thinking stupid.”
“Hey, that’s not very nice.” She’d pouted. I hated when she pouted because she looked ridiculously sexy and it made it difficult to deny her anything she was asking for, even if it meant us getting killed. She propped her elbows onto the console and leaned over, putting her face only inches away from my cheek. “Come on, just do it. For me.” She had this amused, drunk look on her face. She was too gorgeous, perfect, beautiful for her own good. If I could, I would have told her that. Told her how amazingly perfect she was and how I could spend thousands of hours writing lyrics about how beautiful she was and it wouldn’t even begin to describe it.
My eyes may have been on the road but all my attention was on her. “Pretty girl, I’m not going to kill us, no matter how hard you beg.”
Her lip popped out even more as she slumped back in the seat. “Fine. Don’t have any fun.” Propping her boots on the console, she’d slouched back against the seat. “And I don’t know why you keep calling me that.”
“What, pretty girl?” I smiled amusedly as she nodded with a frown, her eyelids drifting shut as exhaustion took her over. I took a chance, telling her the truth, knowing that she probably wouldn’t remember it by morning. “It’s because I think you’re beautiful, but I can never get away with calling you beautiful without you kicking my ass, so I settled for a more milder version of the truth.” I sighed as she passed out, her knees slumping to the side and falling off the dash and onto the floor. Then her head lowered down against the console and she wiggled it to the side until it was pressed against my ribs and her hair was on my lap. Smiling, I slowed down the car and took my time getting home. The night actually turned out to be pretty fucking perfect.
“I’ve had a lot more stupid moments than you.” Ella’s voice jerks me from the memory.
“Oh, I doubt that,” I argue, bracing my hand on the wall beside her head. “And I doubt that whatever you’re going to tell me is going to sound stupid.”
She rubs her hand over her face, leaving red lines on her skin. “Part of the reason…” She clears her throat. “I’m just thinking about mom stuff. That’s all.”
“About the journal?”
“No… about getting married… without a mom around.” She wavers. “It’s part of the reason why I wanted to get married here. So we would be close to her.”
My heart sinks into my stomach. Through all of this, I’d never even thought about that. About how she must be feeling about her mom not being around for all of this.
“See, I told you it was stupid,” she says with a heavyhearted sigh. “I should just keep my mouth shut.”
“No, it’s not stupid. Not at all.” I pause, considering my next words carefully because they’re important. “Do you want to have it somewhere near the cemetery?”
She quickly shakes her head. “No, I like by the lake. It’s just nice knowing she’s in the same town. God, this is so weird. I’m talking about her like she’s still alive.” Her voice quivers at the end and she looks away, avoiding eye contact with me.
“Hey.” With my hand, I turn her head back toward me. “Nothing about wanting your mother near you is weird, whether she’s alive or not.”
She smiles sadly, but it’s nice to see her smile while we’re talking about her mom, even if it’s a sad smile. “Well, I still want to have it at the lake,” she tells me. “And my dad will be there, so I guess it won’t be so bad.”
“What about Dean and Caroline?” I ask. “Should we invite them?”
“Caroline’s pregnant so I’m not even sure she could and it’s super short notice,” she says.
“It’s up to you.” I give her a quick kiss on the lips and then step back. “If you don’t want to invite them, then fine. But, I mean, you do get married only once, you know.”
Her lips creep into a malicious grin. “Oh, I plan on getting married a lot. At least ten to twenty times. You’re just my practice husband.” She playfully nudges me with her shoulder.
I embrace her and catch her off guard as I tackle her to the floor like I used to when we were kids. My hand snaps out before we hit the carpet and I catch her weight. Then I hold my body up slightly away from her so I don’t crush her.
“Micha.” She laughs, her legs opening up so my body falls in between them. Her fingers span across my shoulder blades as I press on her lower back, our legs entangled. “Get off me. We’re too old for this.”
“No way,” I say. Heat radiates between our bodies and her hair is sprawled around her head and across the carpet, and the tears that were in her eyes moments ago are gone. “We’ll never be too old for this. Ever. I will still tackle you when we’re ninety years old.”
She stares up at me for a moment, her expression unreadable, her pulse hammering through her fingertips. “You make me happy,” she says in a shaky voice.
It may seem like such a simple statement, but for Ella to admit she’s happy is a huge, major, life-changing event and gives me hope that everything will end up okay.
“And vice versa,” I say and then kiss her.
Chapter 13
Ella
Telling Micha’s mom was a piece of cake. Well, except for the part when I told Micha my strange thought process about having the wedding in Star Grove because I’d feel closer to my mom. That was a little weird. But Micha being… well, Micha, he made me feel okay about feeling that way. Lighter. Which is good, because there’s a chance that after I tell my dad, not just about the wedding but about my grandmother and the box she sent me, the lightness may shift to graveness.
Micha goes over to my house with me, our fingers entwined like we’re kids about to tell something really bad to our parents. But we’re not kids and getting married isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes talking to my dad can turn that way. Although it hasn’t in a while. He’s actually been really nice and chatty lately.
When I enter the house, I nearly drop dead on the floor because it’s clean. There are no alcohol bottles littering the yellow and brown countertops. He’s bought a new kitchen table, too, a new-used kitchen table anyway. It’s white and has a bench on one side and two chairs on the other. The floor is still stained, but it has recently been swept and mopped, the air smelling like Pine-Sol mixed with cinnamon. There aren’t any past-due envelopes on the counters or table. I remember the last time I was here how the house was going to get foreclosed but he managed to get it out of it, working overtime and paying the amount past due.
“Wow,” Micha says as he turns in a circle, rubbing his jawline as he examines the kitchen. “I feel like I’ve entered an episode of The Twilight Zone.”
I let go of his hand and cross the kitchen to the table, picking up a decorative ceramic rooster. The head pops off and it starts to make a loud rooster noise as I glance inside. “Oh my God, there’s homemade cookies in it.”
Micha laughs as he strolls up behind me. “You sound so adorable.” He sweeps my hair to the side and his lips caress the back of my neck. “Getting excited over cookies.”
I take a cookie out, put the rooster head back on, and then set it back down on the table. “So what? The only cookies I ever had when I was growing up were Oreo cookies.” I bite down on the homemade chocolate chip cookie and turn around to face him. “And you would always make us share those and then would take the half with all the filling. You always gave me whatever I wanted except when it came to those damn cookies.”
He steals a big bite of my cookie. “What can I say? I may love you but I love frosting just a little bit more.” He swallows the cookie and then opens his mouth to steal another bite but I stuff the entire cookie into my mouth, lifting my eyebrows, giving him an arrogant look.
Arrogance rises on his face too and then he covers my mouth with his, slipping his tongue between my lips, trying to steal bites of chewed-up cookie.
