I reach behind her to unhook her bra and the straps immediately fall off her shoulders. Her breasts spring free, her nipples perking as they hit the air. “God, you’re beautiful.” I leisurely take in the sight of her long legs and amazing body.

She shakes her head, like she always does whenever I give her a compliment, but before she can protest, I bend down and suck one of her breasts into my mouth, silencing her.

Her neck arches and her head falls back as she knots her fingers through my hair, moaning. “Micha…” She drifts off as I massage her nipple with my tongue while my hands wander to her panties. Hitching a finger in the top, I tug them down and she meets me halfway, kicking them off when they reach her knees. I return my mouth to her nipple as I slip my fingers up her bare thigh, not stopping until I’m inside her.

“Oh God…” Her knees start to buckle, her back pressing against the edge of the counter. I move my fingers inside her as my mouth makes a path back and forth between her breasts, sucking her nipples into my mouth and tracing circles with my tongue. Her hand glides up my back, gently scratching lines on my skin, and when she reaches my shoulders, she grips tightly, holding on to me.

I continue to kiss her breasts and feel the inside of her with my fingers as she veers closer to the edge, but eventually I crave more. Drawing my mouth away from her nipple and pulling my fingers out of her, I trail kisses down her stomach and her hands fall from my shoulders as I get down on my knees. She gasps as I bury my face between her thighs and slip my tongue inside her, my hands on her hips, gripping at her flesh. I taste her until it drives us both mad and her body tightens and her back arcs. She gasps in bliss as she clutches onto the counter for support.

By the time she returns to reality, I’m rock hard and desperate to be deep inside her. A groan escapes my mouth as I stand up, licking my lips before I seal my mouth to hers. Then I blindly steer us toward the shower, fumbling around until I find the curtain and pull it back. I break the kiss only to get us in the shower, and then once we’re under the showerhead, I go straight back to kissing her. Warm water rivers down our bodies, our skin soaked as our hands explore each other. We kiss until we can’t breathe, until my heart is slamming inside my chest, until she’s trembling uncontrollably, and then I delve my fingers into her hips, pick her up, and with one hard thrust I slip deep inside her.

She sucks in a breath, her arms looping around my neck and her legs wrapping around my waist, so she’s fully opened up to me. I pull slightly out of her and then sink into her again with my hand braced against the shower wall. With each rock of my hips, she clutches onto me tighter, her back bowing, her breasts pressing against my chest.

“I love you,” she whispers against my lips, shutting her eyes, our bodies moving rhythmically.

“I love you, too,” I say, holding onto her as we both come apart together.

Ella

I’ve opened Pandora’s box and there’s no turning back. After I got out of the shower, I started working on my portfolio some more, but I became really frustrated when I couldn’t get the creative juices flowing, so I decided to read my mom’s journal and now I can’t seem to stop. We’ve been at Micha’s house for only a day and I’m halfway through the damn thing, the house too empty and quiet to distract me from reading every last word my mother wrote.

Micha found out that this morning his mom was with Thomas and now she’s working the night shift at the diner so she won’t be home until morning and Micha and I decided we’ll talk to her when she gets home, announce the news. Micha and Ethan wandered off a couple of hours ago to the grocery store to restock the cupboards that weren’t full enough to feed their “hungry man bellies.” Their words not mine. And Lila’s taking a shower.

I’m sitting at the kitchen table, wearing one of Micha’s shirts and a pair of jeans. It’s chilly due to the fact that Micha’s mom always leaves the heat low to save money. It’s part of Star Grove life though, half the town is in poverty because a plant shut down a long time ago. We did it at my house, too, sometimes leaving the heat off intentionally and sometimes unintentionally when I forgot to pay the bill or there wasn’t enough money to pay it.

I have a cup of coffee in front of me, along with the journal. The first ten pages are fairly normal, talking about prom and her love for art, although her words are a little mopey. I never even knew she liked to draw but from the few drawings in the box, it looked like she had talent. It’s kind of nice to read about her like that, but then things start to get dark and the warm, fuzzing feelings I was having getting to know that artistic side of my mom shift into chills, especially when I get to the part about my dad. At first she seemed excited to be dating him. Like, really excited to the point where she almost seemed high. But then the excitement went quickly downhill, reminding me of all those times when she seemed okay and then suddenly she wasn’t.

I’m not sure who I am anymore. I feel like I’m lost all the time. When I look in the mirror, the person I see isn’t the person I used to be. Instead of eyes, I see two empty holes. Instead of a mouth, I see lips sewn together. I don’t know what’s happening to me. What changed in me. What made me feel like my skin is molting off as I turn into a different person who can’t even walk anymore without a lot of effort. If I had my way, I’d sit in bed forever.

Until I died.

But I can’t do that now. I have a responsibility. A child growing in my belly and a man who will be my husband in just a few weeks. It’s terrifying and not the life I think I want. But there’s nowhere else to go and really any other alternative is just as bleak as the one before me. Any future is, and sometimes just having one is frightening.

The entry was written when she was eighteen, right before she married my dad. She was pregnant with my older brother, Dean, something I didn’t know. Her thoughts are terrifying, especially since I’ve recently been contemplating my future and where kids fit into the mix. But I don’t get it. My dad once told me that she used to be happy in the beginning, but if that’s the case, then when was he talking about? When was the beginning? Because in the journal entry she’d known him for only six months and she already seemed to be falling into the dark hole of despair that I’m very familiar with, no matter what I do or try to change about my life. In the end, I have depression. It’ll always be with me—with Micha and me. I’ve known this for a while and yet I’m still going forward with him, always crossing my fingers he never regrets it.

But what if he does?

I take out a drawing that’s folded up in back of the journal along with a photo of my mom on a bed with her chin on her knees and her hair falling into her green eyes that look exactly like mine. She’s smiling, but there’s something off about the snapshot, like she’s forcing herself to look happy, or maybe that’s just what she looked like when she was happy. It’s hard to tell sometimes and most of the time when I knew her, she just looked lost. She doesn’t look lost here, but she doesn’t look like she’s someone who’s got everything figured out. I wonder if that’s what I look like?

The drawing is of this vase with a single rose inside it and the petals are cracked and wilting, piling up around the bottom. It hurts my heart looking at it, because as an artist, I can guess what place her thoughts were at when she drew it because I’ve been in that place.

“Oh my God, Ella, you did not ball up your wedding dress and shove it in a duffel bag.” Lila huffs as she stomps into the kitchen with an overflowing armful of fabric and a rolled-up magazine. She’s wearing a holey pair of jeans and a plain pink T-shirt, her blond and black hair damp. “Seriously, why would you do that?”