Marrying Ember

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  The swooniest, sexiest, smartest women (and men) around.

  “It was never a question of if I was going to marry Ember, it was the matter of when. Five minutes after I met her may have been a bit hasty, but I swear to you that’s how I felt. Like I wanted to sew her to my side and keep her there forever. We just … went together.” I took a deep breath, smiling at my words. Not because they were well-crafted, but because they were real. They were us.

  I continued, reading from my composition notebook. “Then … some stuff happened. The kind of stuff that had the back of my mind questioning if we could really have a forever kind of life together. If we could really carry on an eternal relationship if the minutia of everyday life was bogging us down.”

  “Eeeerr!” Georgia made a very realistic—and very loud—buzzer sound with her voice. “Christ, Cavanaugh, are you trying to propose to her or serve her with divorce papers?”

  We were in her bakery, she could talk to me however she wanted.

  I looked to Regan, who covered his mouth, hiding a smile.

  “Et tu, Regan?” I held out my arms, teasing him. “Shit, who am I kidding? That sucked.”

  I crumpled up the useless piece of paper and sat in the booth across from Regan and Georgia. We had one weekend off in between the two parts of our summer tour with The Six, and these precious minutes were few that I was able to steal away from Ember. We’d been on tour for weeks in the southern part of California, and after this weekend we’d be heading north. Wine country, Ember touted any time it was brought up.

  Regan cleared his throat. “Let’s, uh, take a look at what worked. That if and when statement? Perfection.”

  “Yeah, if he was proposing to every other girl on Youtube that got engaged this year. They all say that, Regan. Every single one of them. Shit, my Facebook feed blows up a few days a week with oh so sweet! Look how much he loves her! And, you know what? They all say ‘I knew the second I met her,’ or ‘It was just a matter of time before I knew …’ Tell me, were you going to have Michael Bublé playing in the background?” She dramatically leaned her head back, pointing her index finger at her temple and pulling the imaginary trigger as her eyes rolled to the sky.

  “I get it, I get it.” Regan held up his hands. “Don’t propose to Georgia on Youtube. Or with Michael Bublé playing in the background.”

  She shot up in her seat. “I didn’t say that. Get your act together, Kane. Every girl wants to feel like a celebrity for five minutes of her life.”

  Regan held out his hands. “You’re not making sense!”

  “You act surprised!” she shot back, cracking into laughter right along side him.

  Even though they’d only been together for a few months, Regan and Georgia had an easy banter between them. It was light and sarcastic and just what they both seemed to need.

  I whistled and pointed to myself. “Help!” I pleaded. “I need to get this right.”

  “Right for who?” Georgia turned serious.

  “Huh?” Regan and I said in unison.

  Georgia leaned forward, placing her elbows on the table, and sliding a plate of cookies to the side. “Who do you want it to be right for? I mean, this is you two, right? I’ve only seen you guys in action for a couple of months, but you do things your own way. As it should be, don’t get me wrong, but what’s right?”

  I leaned back with a heavy sigh. “I just want to marry her.”

  “So fuckin’ marry her. She knows all of the shit you went through. God, even I know more than I need to about all of the shit you went through. She doesn’t need to be reminded of that. She doesn’t need to know what happened, she just needs to know why you want more. What you have planned for your future. Together. Just marry the girl and get on with it.”

  Unplanned and definitely uncool, Regan and I sniffed at the same time. Georgia rolled her eyes.

  “God, let me out of this booth. I’ll leave you ladies to it. Does anyone need a tampon while I’m up?” Georgia nudged Regan so she could get out.

  She didn’t wait for our response, instead making a beeline for the supplies in her kitchen. She started whipping up a batch of who-knows-what, though I knew it would be delicious. I watched Regan for a few moments as he stared at her.

  “It’s nice to see that look on your face, bro.” I realized that adding “bro” to the end of the sentence didn’t really beef it up any, but I let it hang there in the air.

  He turned back to me, half grinning, half grey-looking. “It’s not … weird for you?”

  I shook my head. It wasn’t that I’d seen sparks between Georgia and Regan from the first minute. In fact, they’d both seemed to be doing their damnedest to stay away from each other. The more time they had spent together, though, it became clearer that he found peace with her.

  As we sat in Sweet Forty-Two, in La Jolla, California, I found myself smiling. And not just from the permanent sugar high Georgia had me on.

  “It’s really not. It would be weird to me if you wallowed around all pale and mopey. Rae would think Georgia was a riot, which she is.”

  Regan swallowed hard. “It’s been almost a year. Sometimes it feels like years ago, and sometimes it feels like we’re still sitting on the floor of that hospital, doesn’t it?”

  My heart raced as I nodded my agreement. My sister had been gone for eleven months and four days. She and Regan had only been together for about two months, but he felt more like a brother to me than anyone else. I was glad when he decided to return to the US and maintain our friendship after his post-funeral hiatus from reality.

  “It’s bizarre. Do you still dream about her?” Admittedly, I’d been jealous when Regan was having frequent dreams about Rae. I didn’t want to wake up screaming like he sometimes had, but I hadn’t really dreamt about her at all—maybe one or two times—and I just wanted to see her once in a while. Hear her the way he could in his dreams.

  “Sometimes,” he conceded. “Less now than a few months ago, though.”

  I sighed. “Ember and her parents would ask if she ever said anything specific to you. You know, like it’s actually her visiting you in your dreams.”

  Regan grinned. “Are you going to ask me that?”

  I picked up a chocolate chip cookie and took a bite. “No. Not today, anyway.”

  “Can we talk about you asking the love of your life to spend the rest of it with you?”

  “Argh,” I groaned. “I’m a mess. I can verbalize awesome variations of my feelings to her on a whim. But, planned? Planned I just sound like some underprepared candidate.”

  “Have you called Monica?”

  Oops.

  Regan’s eyes grew wide. “You haven’t called Monica?”

  “Who’s Monica?” Georgia shouted from the kitchen as she slid a baking sheet into the oven.

  “Ember’s best friend. Like best friend.” Regan darted his eyes between me and Georgia. “I only know that because of how Ember’s droned on and on all summer about how I am really great to talk to, but she needs her best girlfriend. Not that I don’t love listening to your girl, Bo, but damn can Monica talk. Is there a way to get her out here?”

  I chuckled as Regan went off on his tangent. Regan and Ember had a great relationship that I was grateful for for both of their sakes.

  Georgia walked into the cafe area, wiping her hands on her apron. “You dumb sack of shit. You haven’t talked to her best friend? Whatever you do, don’t tell her you already talked about this with someone else. She’ll be offended.”

  “She will,” Regan agreed. “I only know this because Ember, at one point, regaled the story of Josh and Monica’s engagement to me, and mentioned not-so-kiddingly that she forgave Josh for not cluing her in.”

&n
bsp; Georgia snapped her fingers. “Both of you can it. Here comes Ember now.” She tilted her head toward the door just as the sound of bells rang through the bakery.

  “There you guys are!” Ember sounded breathless. “Anyone ever hear of answering their cell phones? Fuck!” She sat next to me, planting a chaste kiss on my cheek.

  I grabbed her face and kissed her long and hard on the lips. I loved the little noise she made deep in her throat when I caught her off guard. “Hey you.”

  “Hey. Sorry for being all stormy there. I’ve just spent far too much fucking time with my mother today. Who doesn’t like it when I swear. Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck.” Ember snatched a cookie off the plate and took half of it in one bite.

  “Feel better?” Georgia quipped.

  “Yes,” Ember mumbled with a mouthful and pointed to the half cookie still in her hand. “Can we get some of these in our next order?”

  Georgia nodded with a smile. “Your boyfriend already made sure of it.”

  By the time the summer tour with The Six started, Sweet Forty-Two was cranking in the orders. Georgia was flat out from the time she woke up at 4:00am until the door was locked at 6:00 in the evening. Before the tour had started, Regan lent a hand in the kitchen whenever he could. Once we left, though, she was on her own.

  She sent us care packages every few days, whenever we got to a new location. Also, she closed the bakery on Wednesdays and Thursdays so she could catch up with us wherever we were. When we started the northern leg of our tour, it would be a little too far to drive, though.

  “Will you be able to visit us at all during the next half of our tour?” Ember finished the cookie and looked to Georgia.

  Georgia shrugged. “Depends. Are you guys going to be in Napa or Sonoma?”

  “Both. I made sure we were booked there for extended dates,” Ember said as if the decision was business-based and not grape-based.

  “As long as you’re not there over Labor Day weekend, when I’ve got a fuckload of orders, count me in.” Georgia smiled, and went back into the kitchen when the timer on the oven dinged. Ember smiled back as I sighed a breath of relief at the possibility of not being forced to drink wine for three days straight.

  Ember and Georgia had come a long way in their relationship over the last few months, as well. It was a rough go for the two of them, given the perceptions they each had about the other, and how protective Ember was of Regan.

  “So why’d you track us down, Em? You seemed to be on a mission.” Regan refocused the conversation.

  “Oh, right,” Ember grumbled. “Willow.”

  Regan and I groaned. The war of words between Willow and Ember was never ending. I knew Ember was struggling with the bombshell Willow had dropped on her months ago that she and Ember were actually biological half-sisters. That was Willow’s statement, and not based on any facts we were aware of. It tore Ember up for a while, but she decided to put it on the back burner until we could all get through the tour and she could decide how she was going to approach her parents. Or if she was going to. Still, things were icy between the two former best friends, and Regan and I did our best to run interference as often as possible. Especially after Willow tried to make a pass at me earlier in the year.

  “Keep it up, you guys. You’ll really be moaning in a second. Get this. Willow will be joining us for the entire second half of the tour.”

  Georgia let out a sarcastic laugh from the kitchen, Regan thumped his forehead onto the table, and I screamed internally. Angry that my plans for a romantic proposal on the last night of the tour just got a little more complicated—if not impossible—with the unwelcome presence of Willow Shaw.

  “And how’s my favorite socialite-at-large?” Monica chirped playfully into the phone.

  “Oh, God,” I groaned.

  Sometime shortly after Ember and I got together—the first time—Monica’s background check led her to stumble upon an article in The New Yorker discussing my family’s estate. The article was supposed to be about DROP, and it was—to some extent—but they seemed to err on the side of “Wealthy Eligible Bachelor Quietly Carries Out Family’s Mission.” She promised she’d never let me hear the end of it.

  “Just kidding, don’t get your money in a bunch. Anyway, it’s about damn time you called me,” she snapped. “This whole year I’ve heard about you from Ember and have seen texts you’ve sent Josh but … me? Just forget about me, I guess.”

  “Sorry, Mon,” I played along remorsefully.

  “Oh no you don’t, mister. You don’t get to call me Mon until you grovel.”

  “I want to marry Ember.” The words tumbled out like Yahtzee dice.

  Silence.

  “Groveling over,” Monica said flatly. “Tell me everything.”

  “That … is everything.” I looked around the beach that called itself my back yard. “You can’t tell her, Monica. I’m serious. Regan and Georgia said I had to call—”

  “Regan and who did what? Others know?”

  Shit. I’d been instructed—by Georgia nonetheless—not to say anything to Monica about her knowledge. Fail.

  “I … I was just talking to them about the speech …” I trailed off.

  Monica snorted into the phone. “With any luck they told you to ditch the speech all together. You know better, Cavanaugh. Come on, where’s your A-game?” She sounded like my high school football coach.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t want it to be cliché, but I want it to be special. Ember’s—”

  “Stop,” she cut me off again. “Slow your roll and just breathe.”

  I took a deep breath, chuckling a little at the end of it.

  “Something funny?” Monica questioned.

  “So you, Regan, and Georgia all know that I want to propose to her and no one has batted an eyelash about the fact that we’ve only been together for just over a year, and that includes a long … break.” I winced as I said it. Ember and I rarely, if ever, discussed the time we’d spent not together. It was a hiccup. That’s how we referred to it.

  “No one’s batted an eyelash because even relative strangers can tell how in love you ar. Remember, you yourself said a thousand lifetimes.”

  For as long as she lived, Monica would never let me—or Josh—forget what she called the most romantic words she’d ever heard uttered from another human’s mouth. Sometimes she’d tease Josh for not saying them himself to her, and he’d call me an asshole for saying it at all.

  She was right, though. I hadn’t worried much about the actual time we’d been together, because it was like our souls were joined long before our bodies ever met.

  “I want you to be there,” I said. “While it’ll be about me and Ember, I want all the people she loves there. I want the whole thing to be about love.”

  “Of course you do!” Josh shouted from somewhere in the background.

  “Am I on speakerphone?” I nearly shouted.

  “Uh …” Monica stammered.

  I laughed. “You guys are a piece of work.”

  “Do you think you’ll be ready by the last week in August? We just booked our tickets to come out while you guys are playing in Napa.”

  My palms started to sweat, but my words highlighted the truth. “I’ve been ready since I first kissed her, Monica.”

  “I know you have, Bo. Just keep your cool until then. Whatever you do, do not ask her dad for permission until, like, right before you do it.”

  Her suggestion took me by surprise. “Seriously?”

  “My God,” she said, sounding frustrated, “the man can not keep a secret to save his life. That info will serve you well around her birthday, too. He totally blew the surprise twenty-first I’d spent a semester planning. He’s just so enthusiastic about life that he can’t contain his little self.”

  I laughed at full-volume. Ember’s dad was the full-on embodiment of a peaceful, hippie dad. He was super involved, über sensitive, and I could almost picture him helping Ember get ready for prom.

&n
bsp; “Thanks for the heads up.” That was precisely why Georgia said to call the best friend, I realized.

  “Just keep your hat on for another five weeks. Do you think you can do that?” Monica’s tone was calm, which I apparently needed as my palms continued to sweat.

  “Will do.”

  I hung up with Monica, tossed my phone on the bed, and wiped my hands on my jeans.

  “Who were you on the phone with?” Ember slowly opened the bedroom door and my stomach dropped, wondering both when she’d gotten home and how much she’d heard.

  “Josh,” I said causally. It was the closest thing to a non-lie I could come up with. If I’d said Monica she would have known something was up.

  “Oh! Did he tell you they’re able to come out for the Napa show?” Ember’s eyes lit up like they hadn’t in a long time. I hadn’t been conscious of how long it had been since I’d seen her so lively until she smiled like that.

  I held out my hands, leading her to me. “He did. You seem really happy.”

  Ember folded herself perfectly into my embrace as she sighed into my chest. “I haven’t seen her since January. It’s the longest we’ve ever gone without seeing each other since college, for God’s sake.”

  I rested my chin on the top of her head, rubbing her back. “I know Regan and I are certainly no substitute for Monica.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” Ember shook her head as she pulled back.

  “Oh, neither did I. I was serious. Sometimes I have no idea what the hell to say to you, and I wish I could have a hotline to Monica to ask. Really. I’m glad she’s coming.”

  Ember rested her head on my shoulder. “Everything with Willow … and now she’s coming with us on tour …”

  While Willow was an integral part of the recording of our album, her skills were studio based and not needed on the tour. The first half of the tour had given Ember a lot of breathing room from Willow and the dark cloud she carried around with her. Willow herself was always in a good mood, but that seemed to be at the expense of others, and, frankly, I was glad to have her out of my hair for a while, too.

  Despite the fact that I shook off her advances a few months ago, Willow kept an uncomfortable eye on me. She made sure Ember never saw it, and I’d certainly never draw Ember’s attention to it, but I wasn’t looking forward to dodging those glances again.