“Of being a mom?” His hands clamp down on my thighs.

“And having a future.” Tears sting at my eyes. The words are striking a nerve. A painful, aching nerve, buried deep inside my heart. I massage my hand over my chest, trying to get the crushing pain out.

Sensing my panic, Micha quickly wraps his arms around me. The second I’m in his arms, I feel better, lighter. He hugs me as I breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. I bury my face in his chest and he supports my weight like he always does. Always.

“Are you really sure you want this for the rest of your life?” I mutter against his chest.

“More than anything, Ella May.” He kisses the top of my head. “I’ve known that since the day we met.”

The tears subside as I look up at him. “You’ve known you wanted the crazy girl next door to be your wife since you were four?”

He nods, holding my gaze. “Maybe not as a wife, but I knew from the moment I saw you that I wanted you in my life forever.”

Tears make their way back up, this time not out of panic but from the overwhelming abundance of emotions I feel for him. God damn it, it’s so intense. Too intense. Feelings built over years and years of history, starting with the moment we first met.

“You were always there for me,” I say. “No matter how much of a pain in the ass I was.”

He smiles. “And even though you won’t ever admit it, you were there for me, too, every time I needed you.”

I want to disagree with him, but I don’t because it’d ruin the moment. “Just you and me against the world,” I whisper as tears drip from my eyes and down my cheeks.

He fixes a finger underneath my chin, slants my head back, and leans in to kiss me. “Always and forever.”

Micha

Four years old…

I love spending time with my dad, especially when he works on cars ’cause it’s the only time when he really talks to me and does stuff with me. He’s working on the Challenger while I play with my toy car, driving it really fast back and forth across the Challenger’s bumper.

“Micha, can you hand me that wrench?” my dad says with his head tucked underneath the hood. It’s a really old car that he’s working on fixing up, but it seems like it’s taking him forever. I don’t know why he just doesn’t drive it the way it is now. I think it looks pretty fun and all the sides are different colors.

I jump off the bumper and dig around in his toolbox near the back end until I find the wrench and then I walk to the front and hand it to my dad.

“Thanks,” he mutters and goes back to working on the engine.

I get a juice box out of the cooler, lean against the fender, and stare at the next-door neighbors’ house. It looks a lot like mine, but there is a lot of trash and car parts are everywhere and it looks like nobody ever cleans up.

I’m about to head back to the trunk when the door swings open and the girl who lives next door steps outside. She looks like she’s going to cry, but she looks like that almost every time I see her. She’s got hair that’s the same color as our red mailbox and every time I talk to her, her eyes remind me of leaves. Her name is Ella and she always has tears in her eyes. I’m not sure if it’s because her mom is yelling at her all the time or because they make her take out the trash every day. Whatever it is, she always looks like she’s gonna burst into tears. I asked my dad once why the neighbors were always yelling and he said it’s because they are a messed-up family.

I grab another juice box out of the cooler and wave to her as I step out of the garage. She doesn’t wave back, but she’s usually shy at first, like she thinks I’m the boogieman or something. With her head tucked down, she wipes the tears out of her eyes and walks down the steps. She doesn’t have any shoes on and the cement has to be hot under her feet.

“Hey, Ella,” I say again, walking up to the fence between our houses.

She stands at the corner of her house with her arms crossed, staring at the ground. She barely talks, and half the time, even when she’s talking, she looks down at her feet or the ground or at the trees.

I hear her mother yelling in the house, telling Ella she needs to come clean up the dishes. My mom says I’m too young to help with the dishes, even though my dad says I should be helping out more.

Ella keeps wiping her eyes with her hand as her mom yells from inside the house and I wonder if she’s hiding from her mom. Finally, the yelling stops and Ella dares to look at me.

I hold up one of the juice boxes, offering it to her, hoping she’ll come over to my house for once. “Do you want one?”

She looks at me for a really long time and then she slowly walks toward me. She pauses at the grass, looking like she’s scared to come closer, so I reach my arm over the fence. She stares at the juice box, then runs up and takes it.

“Thank you, Micha,” she says quietly, stepping back as she pokes the straw into the juice box.

“You’re welcome,” I tell her, as she starts slurping on the straw.

I feel bad for her. I don’t think her parents take care of her because she always seems really thirsty and hungry every time I offer her a snack. I’ve tried to get her to come over and play a few times, but she always says she can’t.

“Micha, get in here,” my dad calls out from the garage and he sounds really mad. “I need your help.”

Ella instantly steps back, her eyes widening. “Bye, Micha.”

“You should come over,” I call out and hold my toy car through the hole in the fence. “This is my favorite one, but I’ll let you play with it.”

She eyes the car and then glances back at her house. “I think my mom might get mad at me if I do.”

“You can just come over for a little bit,” I suggest. “Then when your mom comes out looking for you, you can climb back over the fence. Besides it’s really fun watching my dad work on the car.”

She glances back and forth between the house and the car in my hand and finally she hurries back toward her house. I think she’s going back inside, but instead she grabs a plastic box that looks like the thing I keep all of my toy cars in. She drags it over to the fence and steps up on it. She takes a gulp of her juice box and then she hands it to me and I step back as she climbs over the fence. She falls down on her knees as she lands and cuts one of her knees a little.

“Are you okay?” I ask her.

She nods, looking like it doesn’t hurt at all as she wipes the dirt off and stands back up. She grabs the juice box and toy car from me and I smile as I walk back toward the garage with her, happy I finally got her to climb over the fence.

Ella

Six years old…

I like my next door neighbor Micha a lot. At first he was kind of scary because he was so nice and no one’s ever been that nice to me before. But now he’s not too scary. He always shares his juice and cookies with me at school and when Davey Straford pulled my hair and told me I was icky because I had holes in my clothes, Micha shoved him down and told him he smelled like rotten eggs.

The teacher got mad at him and then his dad got mad at him when we got home from school. He couldn’t play with me for three days ’cause his mom and dad said he was grounded, but it’s been three days and now I can go over again.

It’s a really hot day, so I get two Popsicles out of the freezer before I head over. My shoes have got holes in the bottom of them again so I don’t even bother putting them on. My mom yells at me to take out the trash as I walk out so I have to go back and haul it out of the trash can. She’s always yelling at me to take out the trash and do the dishes. It makes me sad sometimes because I get tired, but my dad says she’s sick and my brother and I have to be nice to her and help her out because he has to go out at night to “clear his head and take a break.”