“What does age have to do with anything?” I talk faster when she tries to answer my rhetorical question. “Love is enough. It can overcome any obstacle.”
Emerson once said my optimism was one thing she loved about me the most, but today, it seems as if my words hurt her as much as the three words my brother spoke to me that fateful day.
She isn’t coming.
“But it didn’t overcome any obstacle, Mikhail. We?—”
I want to throw my phone over the cliff when it buzzes, cutting her off. This conversation will hurt, but it is inevitable. And, in all honesty, I’d rather it take place here than in front of witnesses who mean nothing to me.
My teeth grit when my phone buzzes again, my calendar as impatient as the man who set it.
“Sorry. I thought it was on silent.”
I cuss while pulling my phone out to silence it. It isn’t Kolya calling to berate me about losing the security detail, as suspected, or the alarms I set to remind me of the many appointments I made earlier today. It is an email from a company I contacted while waiting for Emerson at her family’s church for the second time in my life.
“What is it?” Emerson asks, moving closer. I see the conflict in her eyes, the desire for us to continue with our conversation, but she picks the civil route, also wary about bringing up a subject that will cause conflict so soon after we’ve reached an amicable pack to be pleasant. “Is that the suggested meeting time for the dress fitting?”
“No,” I answer before replying to the email and storing my phone. “It is far more important than that.”
“More important than me not wearing a potato sack to an event that charges twenty-five thousand a plate?” She scoffs, and it makes me smile. The disappointment the interruption caused is gone faster than I can snap my fingers.
“Wouldn’t be the first time you rocked the shit out of a potato sack. Doubt it’ll be the last,” I say before I can stop myself.
Emerson’s family lived comfortably throughout her childhood, but when things are tight, you toss a potato sack on your five-year-old, scrub some dirt on her face, and call it a costume.
We replicated her outfit many moons later, but instead of writing potatoes in thick black ink on the hessian bag coveringEmerson’s delectable curves, we wrote onions. I attended the party as the Grinch. I’ll let you guess why.
I stop recalling how badly we itched for days after that party when Emerson says, “I don’t think a potato sack will cut it this time. If my outfit isn’t perfect like the other attendees’, people will ridicule me for months.”
“Over my dead body.”
I’d never let anyone ridicule her. Not back then, and not now. But I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t wary of us attending this event. The last time Emerson and my father were in the same room, he mocked both her and our relationship. We almost came to blows because that exchange was the first time I didn’t immediately heel when barked at. I told him that either Emerson would become my wife or I would remain single for the rest of my life.
My bachelor status at the start of the week should clue you in on how that negotiation turned out.
Emerson smiles, grateful I still have her back, before she takes a final glance at the waterfall. When she pouts, disappointed the magic is over so soon, my smile augments. Her bottom lip lowered often when we dated. She isn’t a sulker. It’s because I threatened to bite her bottom lip anytime she did it.
Still moping, she repeats, “It is so beautiful.”
“It sure is,” I echo, still staring at her.
After twanging her protruded bottom lip, the only movement I can make that won’t expose the hand I’m meant to be holding close to my chest, I lead our trek back to the lot. “I’ll go first. That way, I can catch you if you fall.”
Emerson’s eye roll cuts off partway around when her wish to take the lead sees her non-hiking-approved shoes losing traction on a shiny rock.
Her mouth forms an O as she struggles to maintain her balance, and my heart stops beating. She’s close to the edge,teetering dangerously toward a life-altering drop, and I care too much about her to pretend I’m not filled with fear.
Faster than I can blink, I snatch her wrist and tug her into my body, plucking her to safety.
The briskness of my snatch-and-grab routine causes me to also lose my footing. I stumble backward, colliding hard on the ground with a thud. Emerson lands on top of me, her unexpected ribbing knocking the wind out of me.
“Are you okay?” A range of emotions fills her voice. The most notable is relief. For me saving her? I don’t know. I just know she is relieved.
While trying to replenish my lungs with air, breathless from the fear of her near-fatal fall, I nod. “You?”
After she nods, we lie still for a moment, stunned and thankful.
The torrent of the waterfall is nothing compared to the thumping of my pulse in my ears when our eyes meet. Emerson’s eyes are wide with shock, but they quickly haze with lust when it dawns on her how closely our bodies are aligned.
