The Secret 04 The Ever After of Ella and Micha Read Free

I’ll be. I avoid these kinds of thoughts mainly out of fear of what I’ll see—who I’ll become—and most of the time I just don’t think I really deserve a future. But I don’t want to be that girl who’s so terrified of her past, who she is and the things she’s done, that she can’t move ahead in life. I don’t want to be stuck motionless in a world crammed with self-loathing. I want to be strong, be someone who’s worthy of love, who does things for the people they love.
    I thought I’d arrived at that place, but then the box showed up in the mail yesterday, sitting on my doorstep like an omen, from some guy named Gary Flemmerton, a name I don’t recognize, but what I did recognize was what was in the box—stuff that belonged to my mother. My thoughts got jumbled. I ended up doing something stupid. I stood Micha up at our wedding, not because I don’t love him. I do. So, so much. But I’m confused. About the box. About what’s inside it—the journal my mother wrote, her drawings, photos of her. It was her life, stuffed in a box, revealing things I never knew about her, like things that she drew or wrote.
    I should be happy I got to discover some of her past. But for some reason discovering this just painfully brought up the past and it made me question my future. I started thinking about where I was going in life. Where will I be in five years? Will I be mentally healthy? Where will Micha and I be in our lives? Will we still live in San Diego? Will he still be playing music? Will I be working in an art gallery or selling my art? Will he still love me? Will we be happy? Will we have kids? The last thought is scary. I’ve never pictured myself as a mom and the only memories I have of my mom are the ones where I’m taking care of her. I don’t want to do that to my own kids, make it so they take care of me.
    On top of the panic over my future, I started feeling guilty that we were having a wedding without Micha’s mom at it. I could picture her getting upset, especially since she was the one who pushed us to get engaged. Micha would end up feeling bad, because that’s what he does when someone feels hurt. Plus, there’s this one other thing… something that I know sounds crazy, but I sort of want my mom nearby but the only way it’s possible is to have the wedding in Star Grove where she’s buried.
    My mind was made up by the time Micha came back to the house but seeing him sort of unwound all the confused knots inside me. I’m still trying to sort through my thoughts, but I decide to take it one step at a time. After I get out of my dress and put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, I start packing up my stuff to go back home to Star Grove to have our wedding. I put the box with the journal into a large duffel bag to read later when I think I can handle it, along with my mother’s sketchings and the wedding band I bought Micha.
    “I think we should get married on Christmas,” Micha announces as he exits the closet with a bag in his hand. He took his tux off and put it in the black bag so we can drop it off at the rental store. He now has on a pair of faded jeans, a black T-shirt, his black leather watch, and boots. As sexy as he looked in the tux, I prefer him this way because he looks like my Micha. “It’s the perfect day,” he adds, setting the black bag down on the bed.
    “Yeah, I guess,” I say, pressing the fluffy wedding dress into the bag while trying to zip it up. It’s actually Lila’s dress. She leant it to me after we snuck into her parents’ house and took it out of her closet. I also got to meet her mother during our little trip and the woman seems like a real bitch. I remembered the time Lila showed up at my house crying and it all started to make sense why she showed up that night at my house in Star Grove over a year ago in tears. But it’s been a few days and she’ll barely talk about it and I’m not the kind of person to force people to have heart-to-hearts. “But