Chapter One
In my midnight confession
When I’m telling the world that I love you …
- “Midnight Confessions,” The Grass Roots
In my younger days, when I was still doing my best to live up to my name of Wilder – Gemini Wilder, to be precise – I had a soundtrack in my head. Snippets of songs would pop up, sparked by something I saw or said or heard. It was like an Elvis movie. Everything was a song cue, but only I heard the music.
I shut the soundtrack down thirteen years ago, after I changed my last name to Preston and turned my life around. At times I thought losing the music would kill me. Ironic, since it was also the only way to save me. Faced with the choice of songs or life, I had opted for living, even if it didn’t feel as vivid as it had with the music. But if I’d chosen otherwise, there was no way I would have been either alive or sober enough to land where I was at the moment – flat on my back in a hammock, watching the clouds build in what had been an unusually clear Syracuse sky.
“Beige,” I said.
Randy, my incredibly wonderful boyfriend, lifted his head from my shoulder and made some sound that resembled a question. Even that much of an answer was impressive. No one ever told me that sex in a hammock would take three times more energy than sex on a sofa, a bed, or the washing machine.
“It’s a joke.” I shifted slightly to the left. The giant multicolored buttons that had prompted me to buy this flippy denim skirt weren’t quite so attractive right now, digging into my butt. “What’s the difference between a hooker, a mistress, and a wife?”
His hmmm floated warm and sleepy across the bare skin of my chest.
“A hooker says, faster, faster. A mistress says, slower, slower. And a wife says, beige. We should paint the ceiling beige.”
He groaned and burrowed tighter against me. Fine by me. In the hour it had taken us to unpack Randy’s birthday hammock, set it up in his backyard, and then give in to the temptation to christen it, the first warm Sunday afternoon of April had cooled dramatically. A couple of degrees lower and my nipples would be boring holes in Randy’s chest.
“We’d better get up before the neighbors come home,” I said, but he didn’t move significantly, even when I poked him in the ticklish spot between his ribs.
“Come on, hon. I can’t breathe.”
At that, he rolled sideways, but with his arms tight around me so I tumbled, giggling, along with him. I breathed deep, relishing both the expanded lung capacity and the fresh scent of the first spring grass. You’d never catch me signing up for wilderness camp, or hiking the Appalachian Trail, but there was something to be said for quickies in a sunny back yard – even if I had the horrible suspicion that my new red sweater had landed in the last shaded pile of slushy snow.
“You warm enough to stay here for a few more minutes?” he asked.
“As long as you don’t care what happens when the Dempseys come home and look out their kitchen window.”
He shrugged. “They can’t really see us. The pine tree is in the way. I’m more worried about whether anyone had their windows open.”
“Oh, no. I thought I was keeping it quiet. Don’t tell me I did the Mariah Carey thing again.”
“You got it. Straight up the scale. I’m surprised every dog in the neighborhood didn’t come panting.”
Heat rose to my cheeks, then spread to warm the rest of my body. My mother never believed that anyone from our family could blush as heavily as I did. For a while I thought it meant I’d been given to the wrong family by a drunk nurse. Then my hippie mother told me I was born at home. Another hope bites the dust.
“As long as you’re warm enough,” Randy said, running a slow finger down the hollow between my breasts, “there’s something I want to talk about.”
“What is it?” His voice had dropped to a level just serious enough to make my heart skip back up to the tempo it had just abandoned.
“It’s about you. And me.” He punctuated the sentences by kissing a warm line along my shoulder. “And me turning thirty. And you liking beige.”
My heart fluttered, and for a second I found it as difficult to draw a full breath as when he’d been on top of me. Holy crap, was he leading up to what I thought he might be?
“It’s like this, Gem. We’re good together. When I’m with you, everything is better, like it’s finally the way it’s supposed to be.”
His mother’s triple chocolate cake lurched in my stomach as he twisted his fingers through mine.
“You remember what you said when we came out here, about how when the sun shines on your skin, it makes you feel like you’re glowing from the inside out? That’s what you do for me. And I don’t want to lose it. So I think it’s time we make this permanent.”
Permanent. Oh God, this was it. The M word.
He pulled me closer and rubbed his hands up and down my arms. “Damn, I knew I should have waited until we were inside. You’re freezing.”
“N – n – no. That’s not – not the cold.” It was because the bug thing from Alien was trying to burst through my abdomen.
A frown narrowed his hazel eyes. He glanced around, used his foot to snag his polo shirt from the far end of the hammock, then tucked it tenderly around me. “Good thing I’m not the type to go for long speeches, huh?” He grinned, then sobered as he cupped my chin in his hand. “I’ll cut to the chase before you get hypothermia. Gemini Wilder, will you marry me?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again, fast, ready to slap myself upside the head, because instead of giving him an answer, I’d been about to correct him – to remind him that it was Preston, not Wilder. Which was a totally idiotic response. If ever there’d been a time when I should be addressed by my birth name instead of the one I’d kept as the only reminder of my previous failed attempt at marriage, this was it.
Unfortunately, both names were loaded with enough matrimonial baggage to render me speechless. So with my throat clogged by too many emotions to separate out and my stomach leaping like a Mexican jumping bean, I did the only thing I could. I kissed him. Hard. Like I never wanted to stop.
But the longer I held on, the harder the bug thing pushed. And the more I knew that I was in deep trouble.
Randy finally came up for air, breathing heavy and grinning like a beloved fool. “Damn, Gem, I almost hope that’s a no so I can see what happens if I change your answer to yes.”
I buried my head in his chest and kissed my way up, buying myself a few more minutes, while deep inside me, something stirred. A long-buried voice began to whisper. It was the disc jockey to my Radio Wilder internal soundtrack, the personification of my unconscious (according to the one shrink who hadn’t tried to slap me on happy pills when I told him about it). It was the devil on my shoulder that used to rule my life, the relentless bequest of my uber-lover mother and her dysfunctional gang of merry-making sisters.
In short, it was my inner Wilder.
Randy, damn his dogged persistence, broke away from my attempts at distraction with a flustered laugh. “Hey, hold on, okay? I forgot something.”
“Keep forgetting,” I mumbled, but he was a man with a mission. He pulled away from my clinging arms and hung over the side of the hammock. I curled my fingers around his waist and tried to ignore the Monty Python-esque voice in my head screaming Run away, run away.
Then I spied the velvety box in his fist. My throat closed.
“If you don’t like it, we can take it back,” he said. “But I know you have a thing for sapphires, so I took a chance.”
There was just enough air left in my lungs to squawk out an “Oh my God.” He’d chosen my perfect ring. A marquis cut sapphire winked up from a thin platinum band set with smaller, lighter sapphires. There wasn’t a diamond in sight. It was gorgeous.
It’s a fuckin’ NOOSE.
The words from my inner Wilder rang as clear in my head now as they did back in the days when the voice almost led me to destroy myself. I tried to remind myself it wasn’t real, it was just my own fears and the undying remains of a life long past, but I was distracted by Randy reaching for my limp hand.
“There’s earrings that match,” he said. “I thought, if you liked this, we could get them for you to wear at the wedding.”
Wilders don’t do weddings, you idiot. Or marriage. Not the kind Randy wants. Remember?
No way. No way was I letting that voice run my life again. Been there, done that, have the divorce and the tattoos to prove it. Everything I wanted – this ring, this man, this future – hovered before me. Marrying Randy would be the final nail in Gemini Wilder’s coffin. All the more reason to say –
“Yes.” I extended my finger, braced for the touch of cool metal against my skin. “And not only because it’s your birthday and you get anything you want.”
He slipped the ring in place. I held my breath, not just because it was tight
I’m melting …. melting …
Mission accomplished.
“You’re sure you like it? You don’t have to pretend, you know. You’re the one who has to wear it every day.”
“It’s gorgeous. Perfect. Amazing, just like you.” I nudged him onto his back and clambered aboard. “I love it, and I love you, and I can’t wait to marry you.”
“Me either.” He kissed the bottom of my chin. “I love you.”
“And I love you. For real, forever, for always.”
We were getting married. Life would be wonderful. We’d live here in Randy’s house that I already loved, and I would stay home with our gorgeous healthy babies, and we would never, never forget how much we needed to be together. Everything would be perfect.
Unfortunately, I’d forgotten one small detail.
I hate beige.
