Page 14 of Malibu Rising

Mick and June walked along the Santa Monica Pier, the roller coaster and carousel just ahead. The worn boards creaked underneath their feet.

June was wearing a white dress with black polka dots. Mick was in trousers and a short-sleeved button-down. They looked good together and they knew it. They could feel it in the way people responded to the sight of them, the way cashiers perked up to serve them, the way passersby took an extra second to glance.

As they walked toward the water, with the Ferris wheel dominating the sky to their left, they were peeling pink sticky wisps of sugar off the mound of cotton candy Mick was holding. It had tinted June’s lips a rose-colored hue. Mick’s tongue was dyed as red as a raspberry.

He threw the empty paper cone of the cotton candy in the trash and turned to June. “Junie,” he said. “I wanted to run an idea by you.”

“OK …” June said.

“Here goes,” Mick said, as he got down on one knee. “June Costas, will you marry me?”

June gasped so hard she gave herself the hiccups.

“Honey, are you OK?” he asked, getting up off his knee. June shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said, trying to gain control of her breathing again. “I … just … I wasn’t expecting this today. Do you mean it? Really?”

Mick pulled out a tiny ring, a thin gold band, a diamond smaller than an apple seed. “It’s not much,” he said.

“It’s everything,” she told him.

“But one day, I’ll get you a huge ring. So big it will blind people.”

“Oh, wow,” she said.

“I’m on my way, I’m going places.”

“I know you are.”

“I can’t do it without you.”

“Oh, Mick …”

“So is that a yes?” he said. He was surprised to find himself finally nervous. “You’re saying yes, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m saying yes,” she said. “I think I was put here on this earth to say yes to you.”

Mick lifted her into his arms and spun her around. And June suddenly felt as if human flight was no big thing at all.

“I know that I can make you happy,” he told her as he put her down and put the ring on her finger. “I promise you won’t ever have to step another foot in that restaurant once you’re mine. And I’ll get you the house of your dreams one day. Two sinks in the bathroom, bedrooms for as many kids as you want, the beach at your front door.”

All she had ever wanted.

“Of course I will be your wife,” June whispered, tears in her eyes.

“It’s me and you, baby,” Mick said, as he pulled her close to him. She buried her head in his neck, inhaled his scent, pomade and aftershave. They held hands as they made their way up the pier and Mick kissed June with a passion and gravity that he’d never kissed anyone with before.

His parents had died when he was barely eighteen. But now he was building his own family. His own piece of the world. And they would be different, he and June.

When they got to his car, they quickly made their way to the backseat. And this time, when Mick slipped his hand up her dress, June let herself rejoice. She let herself be touched, the way she had so desperately yearned to be touched by him.

People act like marriage is confinement,June thought,but isn’t this freedom?She was thrilled to finally be able to say yes, to feel everything she wanted to feel.

As they pushed against each other, June guessed—from the confident way Mick held her, the finesse with which he moved—that it was not his first time. Her heart ached a bit to know he’d lied to her. But hadn’t she asked him to? She found herself drawn to him that much more, quenching a need to be the only one who mattered. Shelet him push himself into her, pulled him as close as she could, and she let it all go.

June was shocked—surprised, stunned—when he put his hand on her while he was inside her. She felt embarrassed and shy about being touched like that. But she did not want to tell him to stop, could not bear the thought of him stopping. And moments later, bliss ran through her like a bolt.

And somehow, as she lay there next to him in the back of the car, the two of them breathless, June understood that she could never go back to who she was even a moment ago, now that she knew what he could do to her.

“I love you,” she said.

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