Page 103 of A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

He wept and wept, his shoulders shaking and his eyes clenching shut. He wept loudly till his throat was raw and his eye sockets felt bruised. Great, racking sobs of the utterly hopeless.

“Jesus, baby. What’s wrong?”

Ezra’s eyes flew open. He whipped his head to the right. Ricki had rolled over onto her back and was staring up at him with bleary, barely lucid concern. Her coils were sleep rumpled, and her eyelids were at half-mast.

“What?What? WHAT?”

“Why’re you so worked up?” Drowsily, she sat up next to him.

She yawned.

She froze.

And then she screamed, her hands flying up to her cheeks. Frantically, she began patting herself up and down, all over.

“EZRA, I’M HERE! AM I ALIVE?”

“YOU ARE!YOU’RE ALIVE!”

And then the moment erupted into pure chaos. Powered by a bounding surge of pure joy and unfiltered shock, Ricki pressed her fingers under her jaw, feeling for a pulse and sob-shouting with glee as she felt her blood pumping in her veins. Simultaneously,Ezra’s hands roamed her body with a frantic, mad intensity, squeezing and clutching every piece of her skin he came across. He smothered her everywhere with kisses, from her face to her feet. He plunged his hands into her hair, tangling them into her coils. He couldn’t stop touching her.She was alive!

Ezra shot up to his feet and pulled Ricki with him, lifting her up in an exuberant embrace. Now that they were brimming with energy and feeling—their skin tingling, nerve endings awakening, minds sharpening—they realized how utterly flattened they’d been by grief this past week. Overcome, Ezra made a choked sound and chanted her name—“Ricki, Ricki, Ricki, Ricki”—over and over, praying a silent thank-you to a god he suspected was listening.

The roof seemed to quake beneath them. Maybe it was from Ezra and Ricki, shaking from their tremors of euphoria.

Finally, after they released each other from an endless hug, Ezra lowered Ricki back to the ground. He palmed her cheek, beaming ecstatically, eyes still wet. Ricki’s face was lit with joy. He bent down to kiss her, but before his lips met hers, she pushed him away.

“Ezra,” she gasped out. “Wait, why did I beat the curse? Who did you sacrifice? Did you kill someone while I was sleeping?”

He laughed in giddy relief. “Yeah, I snuck downstairs and…” Then he froze.

“What?”

“You’re alive! Which means that the curse is broken.”

“I know, I know!”

“So I must be… mortal?”

Clarity flooded Ricki’s face. She stood there in front of him, paralyzed.

I must be mortal.

“Where’s the wine bottle?” he blurted out.It can’t be.

Without understanding, she reached for the empty bottle to her right and quickly handed it to him.

“Stand back,” he demanded. And then he smashed the bottle against the roof, the glass shattering. Swiftly, he grabbed a shard and, before Ricki could protest, drove it into his palm. Blood instantly spouted from the wound. And it fuckinghurt. It hurt the way he remembered feeling pain a hundred years ago. It wasn’t the vague, quick-to-disappear itch that a Perennial feels. It hurt with an alarming, piercing clarity. The hope he hadn’t dared to hold on to started to grow.

With an agonized grimace, he held his palm in front of his face, blinking mutely in shock. The blood didn’t magically stop flowing as soon as it started. And the wound didn’t instantly close back up, healing itself. Very un-Perennial-like.

Ezra bled and felt the pain, just like an ordinary person would. Like a mortal would.

Ricki wasn’t sure what was happening, but she definitely wasn’t going to stand by while Ezra bled out in front of her. Thinking quickly, she ripped a pillowcase off a pillow and wrapped it tightly around his wrist, creating a tourniquet. She ripped off another one and bandaged his palm. This was insane. He felt things he hadn’t experienced in a century. Out of nowhere, his wrists ached from the tendonitis he’d suffered pre-curse, thanks to years of holding his hands the wrong way at the piano as an untrained kid in Fallon County. His lower right wisdom tooth smarted. Abruptly, he sneezed.

Dear God, he forgot he had allergies!

He erupted in unbridled, delighted laughter.

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