the sound of Ethan’s voice causes me to open my eyes.
“Where are you going, man?” he says as Micha heads off toward the turnout area where the taxi dropped us off.
He shakes his head, holding up his phone. “Ella just called, but the reception here sucks and dropped my call.” He doesn’t seem worried or anything but all I keep thinking about is how worried Ella looked when I left her at the house.
We wait around for a while, and the minister’s starting to look worried, too.
“What if something’s wrong?” I ask, glancing back in the direction of where the turnout area is.
“I’m sure it’ll be okay,” he says with a shrug, but there’s a hint of doubt in his tone. We’ve both seen so much happen between the two of them—and with our own lives—that we know better than to think everything will always work out.
“Hey, quit worrying,” Ethan says, hooking his finger underneath my chin and forcing me to look at him. “It’ll all work out.”
“How do you know that, though? I mean, what if it doesn’t?”
“It will,” he insists, gazing out at the ocean. “Now would you relax?”
“I’m trying.” I sigh, fidgeting with my hair.
The sunlight reflects in his eyes as he contemplates something deeply. “You know what? I have an idea that will get you to calm down.” He steps toward the cliff, grabbing my arm and hauling me with him. “I say we jump, like how Ella and Micha did right before she moved the ring.”
I blink at him, stunned. “They jumped off a cliff right before they officially got engaged. Who told you that?”
He shrugs. “Micha did.”
I sigh, wishing Ella would have told me herself. “Well, there’s no way I’m doing it.”
Ethan grins at me as he reaches into his pockets, takes out his wallet and cell phone, and tosses it on the ground. “Why not?”
I warily glance over the cliff, watching the waves crash against the rocky shore. “Because it looks dangerous and I could drown.”
“I would never let you drown,” he says earnestly. “I’d never let anything happen to you.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” I say and I mean it. Whether he’ll admit it or not, he saved me, not just from the drugs but from myself. I place my hand in his, trusting him, and we inch toward the edge. “We’ll be wet for the wedding,” I say. “What if Ella gets mad?”
He rolls his eyes. “I doubt Ella’s going to get mad at you for being soaking wet at her wedding. In fact, she’ll probably love you for doing something as dangerous as cliff jumping.”
He’s right. She probably will, so I nod and clutch on to his hand. Neither of us counts off, yet somehow we manage to jump at the same time, like we’re in tune with each other’s thoughts. When we land, he still has my hand and we swim to the top together. We burst through the surface and I gasp for air, looking back up at the cliff.
“God, I can’t believe I just did that,” I say, raising my hands above my head, my body dripping with water. I feel so liberated.
“Feels good to be bad.” He grins and winks at me. Water drips down his hair and his face, pooling on his eyelashes. He moves his arms, paddling to keep himself afloat as waves lull against the rocks.
“It kind of does.” I swim after him, then float just in front of him when he stops moving.
He smiles at me. “So what’s next on your bad-girl list? We have you out of those stuffy clothes, you cut your hair, and we’ve got you looking for a job.”
I consider what he said as the water laps against my body. “How about a road trip?”
His expression is blank as he stares at me, the water hitting against his back. “You think you can handle that?”
I shrug. “If you think you can handle being with me like that.”
He’s emotionless for only a moment, but then lets a grin emerge from his lips. “I can handle that and more.” He grabs my waist and drags me to him, crashing our lips together as powerfully as the waves hitting the sand.
I kiss him back, only pulling away for a moment to whisper, “Okay, then, it’s a deal.”
I return my lips to his and kiss him while the sun lowers in the sky, casting rays of pink and orange across the sky. The moment is perfect, even to a girl who never really believed in perfection, but who kind of does now. Ethan is perfection in a strange sort of way, if I really look at it, because he’s real with me and I love him. He’s not artificial and not what I’m supposed to have. In fact, if my mother were here, she’d tell me a thousand reasons why he’s wrong for me, from the fact that he had tattoos to the fact that he’s poor. He’s the opposite of everything I was, but not what I am now, and that’s all that matters.
He’s what I want. What I need. He’s the only guy who’s ever made me worthy of love. He changed me in the best way possible and showed me that it was okay to love someone. That not everyone out there will break and crush my heart. And the best part of all, the thing that I will forever love him for, is that he showed me that I was worth loving.
After we finish kissing, we swim to the shore and then hike back up to the path that leads to the cliff area we jumped from. I’m so happy at the moment, I can’t stop smiling, until we get up there, then all my happiness diminishes.
The minister is gone and Micha is sitting there by himself on a rock with his phone in his hand. His shoulders are hunched over and his head is hung low.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, rushing over to him.
He raises his head up and it looks like he’s about to cry. “I can’t get ahold of Ella. I don’t think she’s coming.”
“Of course she is,” I say, wringing the water out of the bottom of my dress. “She’s probably just running late.”
He shakes his head. “That still doesn’t explain why she won’t answer her phone. And she was acting weird this morning, too.”
I bite down on my bottom lip because I noticed Ella’s weirdness, too. I turn to Ethan and stick out my hand. “Give me your phone.”
His forehead creases as he walks backward and scoops up his phone off the ground. “Why? What are you going to do?”
I take the phone from him and smile. “I’m going to get ahold of Ella and get her down there, so these two can finally get where they should have been a long time ago.”
He smiles and then leans in to give me a deep, passionate kiss that warms me from head to toe and it fills me with the determination that Ella and Micha are going to work out, just like Ethan and I hopefully will. Because he makes me happy and loves me, like Micha makes Ella happy and loves her, and really when it all comes down to it, happiness and love are what’s most important and what makes life worth living.
The Ever After of Ella And Micha.
Chapter One
Micha
I’m trying not to think of all the messed up reasons why Ella wouldn’t show up to our wedding, but it’s fucking hard. After everything we’ve been through, she didn’t even call or leave me a note. My thoughts keep drifting back to the day after we kissed on the bridge and afterward how she told me that she loved me. I’d gone over to her house the next morning, ready to talk about it—talk about us—hoping she hadn’t changed her mind
