The Secret 04 The Ever After of Ella and Micha (18 page)

She lands on top of me, her body falling on mine, and then she quickly pushes up so she’s sitting on me with one leg on each side. Her hands come down beside my head as she stares down at me, her hair veiling around our faces.

“That is for all the times you wrestled me to the ground,” she says, seeming very pleased with herself as she pants for air.

I shake my head as I sneak my hands to her hips. “Have I taught you nothing?” With one swift movement, I flip us over so she’s on the ground and I’m lying on top of her. “I always win at wrestling.”

Then I kiss her.

* * *

Hours later we’re lying in my bed, our bodies tangled together as she lies naked on her side. She hasn’t read the journal page yet and I’m not going to push her. Instead she has her sketchbook out and she’s scribbling lines down on a fresh sheet of paper, attempting to recapture a photo of her mom sitting on her bed, looking sad. On the other side of the sketchbook there’s a picture of what looks like me with the words
My everything
written on the bottom.

“What exactly are you working on?” I ask her as I trace a path up and down her spine, and with each stroke she shivers. “I know this one’s your mom”—I tap my finger on the drawing of me—“but what’s this one about?”

The pencil briefly stops moving across the paper. “Can I explain it to you later?” She peers over her shoulder and wisps of her hair fall into her face. “I want to finish it first and then tell you everything.”

Everything.
What does she mean by “everything”? “Can I have a hint?”

She studies me, chewing on her lip, and then she directs her attention back down at the drawing, covered with angled lines and dark shades. “It’s about our past… and our future.”

Our future.
I’m surprised by her honesty and feel guilty because she’s been so honest with me lately and I’ve been keeping a huge secret from her. Well, not exactly a secret, but I’ve been withholding information, concerned about how she’ll react, fearing she’ll say she’ll go even though she doesn’t want to. Or she’ll say she won’t go and that will be the end of my music dream. But it’s time to stop avoiding the decision, especially when she’s being so straightforward.

I let my finger trail up her back a few more times and then I drape my arm over her side and press my face against the back of her neck, folding my arms around her. “I have to tell you something,” I say, and her body goes as rigid as a board. “Calm down. It’s not bad. It’s just news… a decision we need to make.”

I hear her drop the pen onto the paper. “Okay.” She sounds anxious.

I kiss the back of her neck and shut my eyes. “I got a call from Mike the other day.”

“Oh, yeah? What’d he want?” She’s trying to act calm but I can tell she isn’t.

I open my eyes and press my cheek against her skin. “You remember that Rocking Slam Tour that I was telling you about a while ago?”

“The tour you really wanted to go on but didn’t think you were good enough to get on?” She rotates over onto her back and looks at me. “The one with all the bands and singers who you idolize?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

She pauses. “Did you get on?”

I nod slowly. “I did.”

A smile gradually rises on her face. “I’m so happy for you.” She smashes a cheerful kiss against my lips, shocking me, and I’m too surprised to even kiss her back. When she pulls away, she looks confused as she assesses my reaction. “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you happy about this?”

“Because…” I trail off, searching for the right words. Finally, I sit up and bring one of my knees up, resting my elbow on top of it. “The tour starts in a few weeks and goes for a few months.”

She sits up and hugs her knees against her bare chest, trying to look okay about it but sadness fills her eyes. “So you’d be gone for a few months?”

I nod, staring out the window at the glow of the Christmas lights shining against the ice on the house. “And I’d have to cancel our honeymoon.”

She presses her lips together, like she wants to say something, but she’s trying to fight it. Then she lowers her head onto her knees. “I don’t care about the honeymoon. I want you to live out your dream.”

I’m silent for a moment as I work to pick up on her vibe, the real one that she’s trying to hide from me. “Pretty girl, tell me what you’re thinking?” I ask, because I can’t read her very well at the moment.

“I’m thinking you should go,” she says, lifting her head up. “I’m not going to hold you back. I promised myself I’d never do that.”

“You wouldn’t be holding me back.” I scoot closer to her and put a leg on each side of her. “I want to be with you no matter what.”

“I know you do,” she says, taking my hands in hers. “And you will. We’ll just be apart for three months, which we’ve done many times.”

“And I was miserable all those times.” I pull my hands back only to put them on her legs so I can spread them open. “I don’t think I should go.” I pull her toward me and wrap her long legs around me, feeling a ping of disappointment, but knowing it’s right. If she’s not going, than neither am I.

“No, you’re going to go and you’re going to love it. I’m not going to have it any other way.” She looks me straight in the eyes like she means business. “I won’t marry you if you don’t.”

I don’t know what to say. I know her well enough that I know she’s probably not one hundred percent okay with this, but she’s trying to make me happy. But I don’t want to go without her.

“Come with me,” I sputter out abruptly, sounding like an idiot.

Her eyes widen. “On the road for three months?”

I nod, getting a little excited at my sporadic, yet brilliant idea. “It could be fun. You and me and the car and the road. It could be our first adventure as husband and wife. We always said we’d go places when we were kids. In fact, we promised one day we would. This could be our chance.”

“For three months?” she repeats. “That’s a long time on the road and I have school and work.”

“You could take a break from work and take online classes maybe,” I suggest and then feel like an ass for even asking her to do such a thing.

She gets quiet, thinking about what I said, looking panicked and lost and excited all at the same time.

“You don’t have to decide now,” I tell her, not wanting her to feel pressure to do something she doesn’t want to do. “Just think about it for a few days.”

She hesitates and then conclusively nods. “All right, I’ll think about it, but only if you do one thing for me.”

“Anything.”

A slow grin spans across her face. “Play me the song.”

Go on the road for three months with him? Really? It’s crazy to even think about, yet at the same time I want to go. It’s not like I’d truly miss my job at the art gallery and I could finish school online. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I wonder why I’m even thinking about it at all. I should just go with him. Live life to the fullest. Draw. Be happy. Relax. I’ve never done that before, never thought I could. But suddenly it hits me: I can. Holy crap. I could just do whatever I want. Travel on the road with him, listening to him play, watching him up on stage as his words move me the way he always does whenever he sings. It seems so damn easy, so why am I hesitating?

I decide after he plays me his song I’ll tell him that I’ll go with him. That way he won’t have to worry about leaving me behind, because I know he is.
Oh my God, I’m seriously going to do this.

Dressed in only his boxers, Micha gets his guitar from the closet and sits down at the foot of the bed. Holding the guitar his lap, he wraps his long arms around it, and then plucks at the strings. “You know, I’m sort of nervous.” His eyes skim over my body as I relax against the wall with only a sheet draped over my naked body. “I never in a million years imagined you’d be naked when I played you this.”

I can’t help but smile as I fluff up a pillow and lean against it. “You know, I’m not going to even be surprised if somewhere in your song you talk about me being naked.”

“No way.” He lowers his head, his blond hair hanging down into his aqua eyes as he positions the guitar. “This song was not about my horny feelings for you. Only about my love.” He peers up, grinning, but it’s underlined with nervousness.

I roll my eyes, but my stomach flutters. “So sappy.”

He wiggles his eyebrows at me and then he grows silent, holding his breath. “Are you ready for this, Ella May? Because it’s super intense.”

I nod excitedly. “Bring on the intensity.”

His fingers start moving gracefully across the strings, and everything around me, the room, my thoughts, my body blurs away into something that I never thought I could be. When he sings the first few lyrics, the soft, melodious sound of his voice blankets me and I float away to a place of memories linked to emotions that connect his soul to mine.

He starts to pluck the strings with more passion, the volume increasing as he closes his eyes, his voice intensifying as he reaches the chorus.

He pauses as he plays a few more intense notes and then opens his lips again.

The pitch of his voice is a little uneven at the end, but it still sounds beautiful and his fingers keep playing, his eyes still shut.

His voice drifts off as he plucks a sequence of notes and then finishes the song. He sits quietly for a moment, his chest rising and falling before he opens his eyes. Then he takes one look at me and his eyes widen in alarm.

“Shit.” He shoves the guitar aside and scoots across the bed toward me. “Baby, you don’t need to cry. It wasn’t supposed to be a sad song.”

I touch my fingers to my cheeks and they’re soaked with tears. I hadn’t even realized I was crying or when I began to, but I’m guessing probably from the start because each word hit me powerfully in the heart.

“I’m not sad,” I tell him, wiping the tears away with my hand. “I just didn’t know you felt like that all the way back when you were fifteen. It means you felt like that for a really long time.”

He traces his fingers down my cheeks, erasing the tears, but the feelings behind them still linger in me and I’m glad. “I couldn’t even understand the lyrics myself at first, but when I finally did I realized I loved you and I’d do anything to make you happy.”

More tears flow from me and I don’t even try to hold them back—I couldn’t even if I tried. Too much emotion was in that song and it still burns in my heart, too fresh, raw, but in the most wonderfully real way. I think about all those years where it was just him and me and all the many more years we have ahead of us.

As I climb onto his lap, I circle my arms around him and hug him tightly. “Just so you know, you were the one who didn’t let me drown. If it wasn’t for you, I probably would have given up,” I say and he rubs his hand up and down my back. “And I’m glad you didn’t let me.”

I wasn’t expecting her to cry. I knew the song was really intense and emotional, which is why I’d never sung it to anyone before, but Ella’s not a crier and her tears only added beauty to the moment.

I hold on to her as the sun disappears behind the mountains and the room shifts to a dark gray, the lamp the only source of light in the room. Finally her tears subside and she moves away from my chest. Her eyes are red and puffy as she dabs her fingers across her cheeks. “So what did you find in my mom’s journal?” she asks.

I raise my eyebrows. “You want to read it now? I thought you wanted to wait?”

She brushes her hair out of her face. “I guess so, since you said I had to read them before the wedding and it’s tomorrow.”

I smile as she traces the cursive lines of the tattoo on my rib cage. “Tomorrow and you’re all mine.”

Her lips itch to smile as she stares down at the tattoo. “I think I was yours a long time ago.”

“You think so?”

“No, I know so, at least I do now.” She tilts to the side and grabs the journal off my nightstand and then hands it to me. “Will you read it to me… the page you said I need to read?”

I nervously nod, hoping she’ll take what I read as a good thing, and then I lie us down on our sides, facing each other with our heads on the pillow and our legs tangled together underneath the sheet. Her fingers fold around my ribs as I hold the journal up, turning it to the page that I marked. “I think it’s the vows she wrote right before she married your dad.”

“Really?” She seems shocked. “Are you sure they’re her vows, because it didn’t seem like she was too eager to marry him.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure this is about your dad, since it says
To Raymond
on the top,” I say with a smile. “And it’s nice, what she wrote. Short and simple, but nice.”

“Is that how our vows are going to be?” she asks, peeking up through her long lashes, giving me a hopeful look.

“They can be however you want them to be,” I reply. “And if you still want to back out, you can.”

“No thanks.” She nestles her head into the crook of my shoulder. “ ’K, I’m ready. Read what she wrote.”

I take a deep breath.

I stop reading and look down at Ella, checking her reaction. She looks like she’s going to cry again and then suddenly she sits up and moves out of my arms.

Before I can respond, she’s climbing out of bed and pulling a shirt over her head.

“What are you doing?” I ask, sitting up.

She slips on a pair of jeans, shimmying them up to her hips, and then she fastens the button. “Going to talk to my dad.”

I’m puzzled, but I don’t want to press. She doesn’t look upset, only eager as she puts on her boots and reaches for her jacket hanging on the bedpost. Then she takes the journal from me, rips out the page I just read, and stuffs it into her pocket.

“I’m going to give this to my dad.” She leans across the bed and presses her lips to my mouth. “I’ll be right back,” she says, breathless with enthusiasm as she hurries to the door, leaving me alone in my room and a little stunned.

I wasn’t expecting her to be so enthusiastic about it, but I’m glad she is. I want her to be happy. I just hope I can keep doing that for her, make all the right decisions, keep her smiling, laughing, keep any pain away, just like my lyrics begged her to let me do.