The Prelude of Ella and Micha

  “What the hell, Micha?” Tammy seethes from behind me. “That so didn’t even count.”

  Ignoring her protests and Renee’s scowls, I wrap my fingers around the glass bottle. I’ve played it enough that I’m fairly confident I can pull off what I’m about to do. What I’m not confident in is how Ella is going to handle.

  Still, I do it.

  I spin the bottle with just enough force that it goes around the circle one time and a little over, landing right on Ella.

  Her eyes widen as it points to her then her gaze cuts to me. Her lips part to protest, but I quickly shrug like what are you going to do? Then I kneel down on the carpet in front of her, noting how excited I am to kiss her, like I was at fourteen. I never get this excited for a kiss. Ever. Ella’s got me two for two.

  “It won’t hurt. I promise,” I feel the need to say as I lean into her because she looks absolutely horrified. Maybe I should back off. Not be so selfish. Walk away because this might be too much for her to handle.

  But I want it. Badly. Want her. Even in front of a room full of people who are gawking at us like they’re about to watch a porno.

  “Micha,” she whispers as I dip my lips toward hers. “I think …” She trails off as I move in closer, her chest ravenously heaving as she struggles for oxygen. Her hands come up, her fingers folding around my arms, her nails piercing into my flesh. The heat of our breaths mixes as our lips inch closer.

  When only a whisper of air is left, she lets out the softest whimper that nearly sends me soaring through the roof. I place a hand on each side of her, pinning her between my arms, my fingers gripping at the carpet for support. Fuck, I haven’t even touched her yet, and my body feels like it’s going to combust.

  Back away.

  Don’t do it.

  Stop ...

  Oh, my God …

  Our lips connect and her hold on me constricts, begs for me to keep her together. I want to, but I feel like I’m about to collapse myself. Because, just like that, I’m kissing my best friend. I’m kissing my best friend who I’m in love with and who might not love me back—at least, not in the same way. But I don’t care. I want to do more. I want to kiss her while laying her back and spreading open her legs so I can grind my hips against her like we were doing on the dance floor only a half an hour ago.

  There’s not even any tongue to the kiss, yet it’s consuming, savoring, heart stopping. It’s a kiss I wish would last forever, but as quick as it started, it ends as Ella springs back.

  “God dammit, Micha,” she curses as she turns and trips to her feet. Then she bolts out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  “Jesus, what a freak,” Tammy mutters. When I glare at her, she narrows her eyes at me. “What? She is.”

  Shaking my head, I chase after Ella, disregarding Ethan’s protest to just let her cool off. By the time I make it to the living room, the crowd has doubled, and the air is so stuffy I can barely breathe. Still, I search for her in the sea of bodies, needing to find her, to fix this.

  But how exactly are you going to do that?

  After doing countless laps around the house, I finally stop inside the kitchen, getting discouraged. “Fuck!” I growl. Finding Ella is going to be nearly impossible with this many people around.

  Pissed off at myself, I shove through the people, heading for the back door so I can go outside and smoke. Maybe a little fresh air and nicotine will clear my head. When I step out the door, though, I find exactly what I was looking for.

  Ella is sitting on the icy bottom stair of the porch with a cup in her hand with her jacket off and goose bumps dot her flesh. For a brief moment, I stand at the top of the stairway, staring at her, trying to figure out what the heck to say. I’m sorry? Yeah, I don’t think so. I’m the opposite of sorry. That kiss made me realize just how much I was missing out on—behind the connection of lips, there’s supposed to be emotion, passion, heat, and intensity instead of boredom.

  “What are you doing out here without a jacket.” I sink down beside her and reach for the zipper on my hoodie. “You’re going to freeze to death.”

  Her body jolts from my appearance, and she drops her cup. Clear liquid spills across the snow as it rolls down the steps and into driveway. Her eyelashes flutter furiously as her gaze locks on me.

  “What are you doing out here?” she asks, her breath reeking of vodka.

  Jesus, what did she do, drink a whole damn bottle in the twenty minutes it took me to find her?

  “I’m saving your ass from freezing.” I shuck off my jacket and drape it over her shoulders.

  “I’m not cold.” It takes her a moment before she stubbornly gives in and slips her arms through the sleeves. Then she lowers her head into her hands. “Why did you do that?”

  “Do what?” I ask, even though I know exactly what she’s talking about.

  She scowls at me. “You know what. Make that bottle purposefully land on me.”

  “You know me better than I thought,” I respond, searching her eyes for an indication that I haven’t fucked up our friendship. But she’s indecipherable. “Was it really that bad, though?”

  “Depends on why you did it.” Her voice wobbles the slightest bit.

  I shrug, stretching my legs out as I stare up at the stars. “Out of curiosity, I guess.”

  “Curiosity of what?” She lifts her head. “We’ve already done the whole curious kissing thing. Why do we need to do it again?”

  I rub my chilled arms. “Maybe I just wanted to see if things had changed.” If my feelings had changed. My feelings for you. And they have. They really, really have. More than I realized.

  “Micha, I …” Her breath puffs out in a cloud in front of her face as she begins to panic. “Please, just say you did it for fun, and it didn’t mean anything,” she whispers, pleads, begs. “Because I can’t handle anything else.”

  My heart breaks.

  Shatters.

  Scatters across the ground.

  Like fragments of ice.

  “Well, you know me.” My voice is dry, humorless as I stare at the ground. “I’m all about the joking and random kisses.” When I’m finally able to look at her again, I come to an excruciating realization. Even though the kiss happened, it can’t ever really happen. Ella and I can’t really become anything more than what we are, not right now, anyway. Ella is relying on me to say so; otherwise, she’s going to break apart. And, if I really do love her, I’ll do everything in my power to keep her together like I’ve been doing for the last twelve years.

  “I didn’t want it to land on Tammy.” I swallow hard, aware that this might be the first lie I’ve ever told Ella. “And Ethan has a thing for Mara. Plus, there was no fucking way I was going to kiss Renee.” I causally shrug, even though my insides are wound tight. “You were my safest option.”

  She relaxes a little.

  And I die a bit inside.

  “I’m so glad to hear you say that. For a minute there, I thought …” She quickly shakes her head. “It was weird, right? The kiss.”

  All I can do is nod.

  “You know what we should do.” She spits on her hand and my heart withers inside my chest even more. “We should make a pact to never, ever kiss again.”

  I can’t make that pact.

  I grind my teeth as I stare at her hand. “I have a better idea. How about we make a pact never to speak of this kiss again.” It’s the only way I can think of to get around this.

  She considers what I’ve said then nods. “Okay, that sounds good to me.”

  I spit in my hand, then we shake on it. Part of me is saddened that I’ll never get to speak of this night again because that kiss was the kind of kiss I want to relive over and over again, even if it’s through words. But the other part of me is relieved because I don’t want to relive the pain I’m feeling right now, over and over again.

  The pain of heart break.

  The only thing that keeps me from breaking down is the fact that I tell myself things cou
ld change. Ella and I have years to spend together, and in time, her fear of commitment could change.

  It has to change.

  Chapter 3

  Seventeen years old…

  Ella

  I can sense trouble coming from a mile away. Why? Because I’m exhausted, and that usually leads to trouble. It’s been a long week. Summer is nearing an end. My dad’s working less, so there’s hardly any money to pay bills and buy food. Dean is gone and that leaves me to take care of the household. And my mom’s having one of her rough days today. It’s Saturday, and I spent the entire afternoon searching for a photo of when our family took a trip to the sandy beaches of California, even though the photo doesn’t exist. But I have to look for it until my mom is satisfied that it’s lost; otherwise, she’ll continue to have a panic attack until she has a meltdown.

  “Ella, please find it,” she begs as she follows me into the small, disordered living room, tugging at the roots of her reddish-brown hair. Her eyes are enlarged, her pupils dilated. I’m starting to worry she might have snuck an extra dose of her medication again.

  “I’m trying to find it, Mom.” I lift up the couch cushions and check underneath them before I rummage around inside a few boxes stacked by the front door. “I think it might be gone, though.”

  “I have to find it, Ella.” Her voice trembles as she starts to pace the length of the room, maneuvering around the ashtrays, beer bottles, and my dad who’s passed out drunk on the floor in front of the television. “Please, I need to remember what happened that day. It was a good day. I know it was. I know they exist.”

  “They do exist,” I play along, unsure if it’s the right thing to do or not, but I’ve spent enough time with her that I know she’ll calm down eventually. “And that day was a really, really good day. I promise.”

  “How do you know for sure?” She stops in the middle of the room and crosses her arms, her eyes skimming the boxes, walls, and windows.

  “Because …” Sighing heavily, I wind around the coffee table and move in front of her to keep her focused on me. “Because I remember going, and I remember Dad, Dean, and I saying that we had a great time with you.”

  She rocks back and forth, hugging her arms tighter around herself. “Good, but … I can’t remember it. Please, help me remember, Ella.”

  “Well, it was a really sunny and warm day. The air smelled like salt and water and all the scents of the ocean … We spent all afternoon collecting seashells and building sand castles.” As I create a story for her, I find myself wishing it was real. My family hasn’t taken many trips, but it would have been nice to, if only once, go somewhere for fun, like an amusement park, or hell, I’ll take just a park at this point. The only place I can recollect going for a vacation was to the zoo back when I was six and money and life wasn’t as bad as they are now. It was a time when there was less yelling, and my mother’s delusions and manic depressive episodes hadn’t manifested.

  A minute later, my mother starts to settle down, her arms relaxing at her sides while her posture slackens. “Did we have a picnic near the shore? Because I remember having one.”

  I nod, relaxing myself. “Yeah, we had one right there on the beach, and we ate under this really large, yellow umbrella.”

  “Oh, it sounds like we had fun.” She almost smiles.

  So do I. “We did.”

  “Good, I’m glad.” She pauses, rubbing her hands up and down her arms like she’s cold, even though it’s the nearly eighty degrees outside. “You know what? I think I flew that day, too, like I did at the bridge.”

  I swallow hard. My mother’s obsession with flying has been growing worse over the years. Whenever she gets stuck inside her own head, she insists she can fly. There was one day not too long ago when she left the house, and I found her on the old town bridge, trying to actually fly. It was one of the most terrifying days of my life, and it was also the day I realized just how severe my mother’s condition is. If I hadn’t showed up when I did … Well, I don’t like to think about it too much.

  As her eyelids start to lower, I know she’s veering toward the energy crash she always has after a panic attack. “Baby girl,” she says, dragging her feet toward the stairs, “I’m going to go take a nap, just for a little while. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  “Okay.” I follow her up the stairs anyway, just to make sure she gets there. Then I help her get into bed and pull the covers over her.

  “I’m pretty sure I can fly, Ella May,” she whispers right before she passes out.

  After I tuck her in, I pick up the dirty dishes and food wrappers on the dresser, cleaning up. By the time I walk out of her room, she’s fast asleep.

  Relief washes over me as I shut the door behind me. I feel a pang of guilt over being glad she fell asleep, but deep down, I know it’s a good thing because I’m tired, and eventually, I would have snapped at her and made the situation worse.

  I wander downstairs to put the garbage in the kitchen trash can and clean off the plates. Then I pick up the collection of alcohol bottles and put them in the trash bin. I sort through the bills, making a past due pile and a ‘can be put on hold for a little while’ pile before dragging my ass to my room and collapsing onto my bed. The house is quiet. Still. And I feel completely alone. I always do whenever I’m home.

  As my eyelids drift shut, I think of another place, another world, another life where my only concern is school, myself, and what I’m going to do on Saturday night.

  Stretching my arms out, I reach beneath my pillow and let my fingers brush against the envelope I hid there a couple of months ago, right before graduation. It’s the one piece of mail I was actually happy to receive—my admissions letter to the University of Las Vegas. Quite honestly, I was surprised when I got accepted. Although, the financial aid I received wasn’t that big of a shock. Still, the money doesn’t cover the cost of everything. But I have some saved up from a few part time jobs I’ve had here and there. Once I get down there, I’ll get a job and work my ass off to survive. I want to—want that ticket out of here. I’m still not sure if I can do it, though. Bail out on my mom. Leave her behind with only my alcoholic father to take care of her. And then, of course, there’s Micha.

  Micha and our pact to leave this town together.

  I haven’t worked up the courage to tell him that I even applied to colleges, let alone that I got into one that’s over twelve hours away.

  What the hell am I going to do? How am I going to tell everyone? How can I just leave all of my responsibilities behind?

  Sighing heavily, I bury my face in my pillow and briefly consider not coming up for air again. Maybe I’ll just stop breathing. Giving up would be simpler. Letting go. Saying an eternal good-bye instead of facing the tough choices ahead of me, whether I stay here or decide to go to Vegas.

  Ultimately, when my face becomes too hot and my lungs ache from lack of oxygen, I flip over to my side and suck in a deep inhale. Then I glance at the alarm clock on my nightstand. Six thirty-seven. Shit! I was supposed to meet Micha at six. Hopefully he hasn’t left, because I was really looking forward to getting out of the house today.

  I start to push up from my bed, but a second later, my window creaks open and sunlight filters through the room.

  “What are you, like seventy?” Micha jokes as his boots thud against the floor.

  “What are you, a creepy pervert?” I retort, rolling over and pressing my cheek against the mattress, while fighting back a smile. “Creeping into my room like a weirdo.”

  “Yep. And damn proud of it,” he says cockily. Moments later, the mattress concaves as he climbs onto my bed and nuzzles up against me, aligning his chest and hips to my back and butt. “What are you doing in bed?”

  “Sleeping,” I murmur, snuggling into his body heat. “Can’t you tell?”

  “And sleep talking apparently.” He chuckles as his fingers slide up the back of my bare thigh and pinch my ass cheek that’s peeking out of my denim shorts.

  “W
hat the hell, Micha!” I squeal, flipping over to my side to glare at him.

  He’s sporting a black T-shirt with a green logo on it, dark jeans secured with a studded belt, and boots with the laces untied. The look is topped off with his classic I’m so charming grin.

  “That’s for calling me a creepy pervert,” he says. “If you’re going to call me one, then I’m going to act like one.”

  “But you’re a pervert all the time,” I point out. It’s the truth, too. He only gets away with it because he’s cute and charming.

  His aqua eyes darken as his fingers curl around the curve of my hip. “Call me that again, and I’m going to show you just how perverted I am.”

  Ignoring the stupid flutter in my stomach, I roll my eyes and pinch his arm. His eyes crinkle around the corners as he laughs.

  As his laughter silences, he rakes his sandy blonde hair out of his eyes and stares down at me. “So, I know we were supposed to go to the party tonight, but I was thinking maybe we could go racing instead?” He traces a line down my cheekbone with his finger while nibbling on the silver ring ornamenting his bottom lip.

  The stupid flutter in my stomach emerges again and panic soars through me. Like always, I’m not even sure what to make of the damn sensation. It’s been manifesting a lot lately, especially when Micha touches me or sucks on that lip ring of his. I find the flutter a bit revolting. Unwelcomed. Exciting. Terrifying. Confusing. Too many things, honestly.

  Micha arches a brow at me. “What’s wrong?”

  I realize how profusely I’m breathing while staring at his lips like a creeper myself.

  Blinking out of my daze and composing my erratic breathing, I roll over onto my back to put some space between us. “I’m not sure I feel up for racing tonight.” I stare up at my ceiling, trying not to pout. As much as I love racing, I am eager to let loose at the party and dance and drink until my body and mind are numb.

  “Pretty please?” he begs, lowering his tone to a soft purr, using the voice on me. The damn flutters drive me crazy again. “It will be my first time racing since the accident, and I want you to be there with me to hold my hand.”