Chapter 101
REED
At the shocking sight of my mother’s latest painting, I inhale a sharp breath.
She’s painted something different this time.
I mean, not entirely. In some essential ways, this scene is the same as all those that came before: an idyllic setting—this one, a seashore—featuring Mom and me, and Mom’s many loved ones lost, who are all busy frolicking and making merry.
Other than those general similarities, however, this particular painting is strikingly different than its countless predecessors.
For one thing, my mother has painted herself at her present age.
With gray hair. For the first time, ever, not as a young mother enjoying a picnic with her two young sons.
Also, Oliver isn’t tethered to Mom’s hip, as usual. This time, for the first time, Mom has allowed the poor kid to run off and play. Specifically, Oliver is throwing a beachball with Mom’s youngest sister, down by the water’s edge.
Shockingly, I’m not sitting on Mom’s blanket, either.
And I’m not a little kid. For the first time, she’s painted me as a grown man.
I’m standing on the sand, wearing a tuxedo, and doing something that makes my head explode: exchanging wedding vows with a beautiful brunette who’s clad in a simple white gown and bridal veil.
It’s a good news, bad news situation, obviously.
On one hand, I’m elated and relieved to finally see something new in an Eleanor Rivers Original.
It’s huge progress. A welcome respite from the usual madness.
On the other hand, though, I feel like I’m going to stroke out with my rising panic.
Of all the days for my mother to have a massive breakthrough, she had to do it by painting me in a wedding scene with Georgina on the very day I’m whisking Georgina off to Sardinia to propose marriage to her?
Way to steal my thunder, Mom! Now, when I propose to Georgina on that beach at sunset, she’s going to think this painting forced my hand!
Or, at least, that it gave me the idea. Hell, Georgina might even think I only asked her to marry me to win my mother’s long-withheld approval and love.
Mom is presently babbling about where she wants to relocate her father in the scene, but I’m not listening.
My mind is racing far too much to focus on her words.
This is a catastrophe. I look at Georgina and it’s clear the elephant in the room is sitting on Georgina’s chest, every bit as much as it’s sitting on mine.
“And what do you think about yourselves in the painting?” Mom says, looking mischievous.
Georgina looks at me, wide-eyed and rendered mute, so I say, “We look great, Mom. And so do you. I love your gray hair. Have you shown this one to Dr. Pham?”
“Yes. She liked it. She said I should keep painting myself, and you, too, as we are in the present. And she also liked that I included Georgina.”
“So do I,” I say.
“Thank you for including me,” Georgina manages to say brightly. But her gaiety sounds forced to me. “I’m honored.”
“You’re family now.” She looks at me. “Although I’d be very interested to know when—”
“Well, we’ve gotta head out now,” I blurt. “Georgina and I have to get to the airport so we don’t miss our flight.”
“But I thought you said you’re flying private today. You always say the best perk of flying private is that you can never miss your flight, because everyone is paid to sit around and wait for you.”
My heart is crashing in my chest. “Yeah, but we’ve still got time constraints. You should take a nap, Mom. It’s been an emotional day for you.”
Mom exhales. “Well, that’s true. A nap sounds nice, actually.”
“Good. I’ll help you get into bed.”
I grip her frail shoulders gently and pointedly turn her away from her canvas and guide her straight to bed.
My breathing labored, I adjust Mom’s covers over her and kiss her forehead.
I say one last goodbye. So does Georgina.
And then, I grab my woman’s hand in a death grip and pull her out the door, with more gusto than intended.
But rather than turning left in the hallway, toward the front entrance, I turn right and practically drag poor Georgina toward the back door.
The last thing I want is for Georgina to doubt this proposal is my idea.
My desire. Or for her to think it’s some pathetic attempt to win my mother’s approval.
On the contrary, I need Georgina to know, without a doubt, I already had her ring in my pocket when I saw my mother’s shocking painting, and that I didn’t scramble upon landing in Italy to get something overnighted to me.
“Hey, Smart Guy,” Georgina says. “The front door is that way.”
“I need to talk to you about my mother’s painting before we get into the car. I want to talk to you about it in a private spot.”
“Oh, Reed. There’s no reason to freak out. I’ve read your Wikipedia page, babe. I’m not expecting—”
“Stop talking, Georgina. Please.”
“I’m just saying I’m fully aware—”
“Stop. Talking. If you love me at all, don’t say another word until I’ve explicitly told you it’s your turn to talk.”
Georgina flashes me her patented “Well, you don’t need to be a dick about it” look. But, thankfully, she clamps her lips together and stops talking as I guide her into a secluded corner of the garden.
When we come to a stop, anxiety rockets through me.
Fear of rejection. When I called Georgina’s father, Marco, to ask for his blessing two days ago, he gave it to me.
Thankfully. But he also gave me a piece of unsolicited advice: “If I were you,” he said, “I’d bring up the general topic of marriage with Georgina before popping the question.
From what she told me at her college graduation party, she’s not going to marry anyone before age thirty. ”
“Yeah, well, that was before she fell in love with me,” I replied confidently.
And from that moment on, I completely disregarded the man’s stupid advice and went about my business, buying Georgina’s four-million-dollar ring and planning the perfect proposal in Sardinia.
I mean, please. Why would I ask Georgina’s permission to ask her to marry me, when my favorite thing in the world is blindsiding her with surprises that provoke jiggling happy dances?
But now that I’m here, and the actual moment is upon me, I’m suddenly feeling a whole lot less confident.
Was Marco right? Should I have broached this topic with Georgina, the same way she broached the topic of having a baby with me?
Is that what normal people do? I don’t think Georgina will turn me down.
But, then again, I never thought, not in a million years, the FBI would raid my house that fateful morning and drag my father away in handcuffs.
“Are you okay?” she says, disregarding my request to remain silent.
And when I look into her concerned hazel eyes, what I see there chases away my anxiety.
She loves me. Totally and completely. The same way I love her.
For crying out loud, she promised me forever, with letters inked permanently onto her ring finger.
Which, I have to believe, whether she realized it or not, was her way of subconsciously asking me to put a ring on it.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I take her hands. “I was planning to say this to you in Sardinia in three days. But, now that I’ve decided to say it here, instead, I realize this is actually the perfect place.
Because it’s where I finally understood what it means to let down my guard all the way, and let someone in, without holding back.
” I take a deep breath and exhale a long, controlled breath.
“Georgie, you’re the great love of my life.
My queen. I’ll never want anyone but you. ”
She bites her full lower lip and whispers, “I love you, too.”
“I called your father a couple days ago and asked for his blessing to ask you to marry me.”
Her eyes widen like saucers as her mouth hangs open.
“And he gave it to me. Which means, I can now do this.” With another deep breath, I pull the closed ring box out of my pocket and kneel before her.
I look up at her, smiling. “Georgina Ricci, I’ll marry you tomorrow, if that’s what you want.
I’ll marry you in a year, or ten. Just, please, say yes to me today.
Be my fiancée. And whenever you’re ready, be my wife.
Say yes.” I open the ring box, revealing the fifteen-carat, Princess-cut, pink diamond I picked out for her, with CeeCee’s help.
And Georgina screams like I just poked her with a very large needle in her ass.
Laughing at her reaction, I choke out, “Georgina Marie Ricci, will you please marry me?”
Tearfully, she shrieks out her reply. The very thing I told her to say the first time I laid eyes on her at the panel discussion. “Yes, yes, yes!”
A shockwave of euphoria floods me. Quaking, smiling, swallowing down tears, I slip the rock onto Georgina’s shaking finger, lurch up, and take my fiancée into my arms. As I kiss her, joy of a kind and magnitude I didn’t know exists washes over me.
I feel like I’m on top of the world. Or, perhaps, in the Garden of Eden.
Because, surely, this moment, this place, and not any white sand beach in Sardinia, is paradise.
Finally, Georgina breaks free of our embrace to gift me with the best happy dance of her happy-dancing career. When she’s done, I scoop her up and swing her around, making her squeal and giggle. I put her down and grab her hand and we both stare in awe at the ring on her hand.
“It’s so big,” she whispers. “I swear I would have been happy with something so much smaller.”
I scoff. “Did you not understand the question? I asked you to marry me. Not go to prom. Go big or go home, baby. You know that.”
“Honestly, I’m going to be scared to wear it, unless you’re with me. I can’t go to the gym wearing a ring like this. Or to the grocery store. This is for, like, the Academy Awards!”
I laugh. She’s right, actually. It’s pretty over the top. “Okay, when we get back from our trip, we’ll go shopping and get you another ring—an ‘everyday ring’ you can wear to the gym or wherever, and you can wear this one whenever you’re dressed up.”
“What? No! I didn’t mean you should buy me a second ring! I meant we should return this one and get something less expensive.”
“You don’t like it?”
“No, I love it! I just can’t believe you—”
“Then that’s the end of the conversation. What I spend on gifts for you is none of your fucking business, per an exception expressly delineated in our ‘open book agreement.’”
She flushes and looks down at her hand again. This time, with unadulterated excitement. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“Why did you have it in your pocket, if you weren’t planning to propose to me today?”
“Because there was no way I was going to leave a ring worth more than a Bugatti in my luggage.”
The color drains from Georgina’s face. “No.”
“Yes. Not that it’s any of your business, of course.
” Laughing at her expression, I stroke her cheek.
“Georgie, you’re going to be the one and only Mrs. Rivers, forever.
I’m not going to give my future wife a ring worth anything less than the most expensive sports car sitting in my garage.
” I scoff at the very thought. “Now, come on, fiancée.” I put my hand in hers. “Sardinia awaits.”
We practically float through the back door, into the facility, the air between us crackling with our mutual elation.
“Your dad put the fear of God into me when I called him, by the way. He gave me his blessing, no problem, but he suggested I should chat with you about marriage, before proposing, because, last he’d heard, you didn’t want to get married to anyone before age thirty.”
Georgina scoffs. “Well, yeah. I said that before I met you.”
“That’s what I told him!”
Laughing, Georgina says, “It’s easy for a girl to draw imaginary lines in the sand before she knows Reed Rivers exists in the world.”
We reach my mother’s door in the hallway and poke our heads inside her room, thinking we’ll share our happy news before heading out. But Mom is fast asleep, so we decide to let her stay that way.
“We’ll call her after we land,” I say, as we make our way down the hallway toward the lobby.
“Let’s call my dad and Alessandra in the car, though,” Georgina says excitedly. “I’m bursting to tell them. I want to tell the whole world!”
“Me, too. We’ll call CeeCee in the car, too. She helped me pick out the ring.”
“She did? Aw, that means so much to me.” Georgina looks at her hand and giggles. “No wonder it’s so big. You and CeeCee shopping together must have been like fire and gasoline. I can only imagine how much she goaded you on to ‘go big.’”
“Sweetheart, I didn’t need anyone to goad me on to do that. Trust me. If anything, CeeCee kept me from buying something that would make your knuckles physically drag on the ground when you put it on.”
Georgina laughs uproariously. “What about Amalia? Did she know you were going to ask me?”
“No. Only CeeCee, Josh, Henn, Kat, Hannah, my sister, and Dax.”
“Let’s call all of them from the car! I can’t wait to tell everyone!”
We’ve reached the lobby now. But instead of heading out the front door, and straight to Tony’s waiting sedan, we pause at the front desk.
“Hey, Oscar,” I say. “When my mother finishes tweaking her latest masterpiece, will you do me a favor and ship it to me in California?” I scribble my address onto a piece of paper and hand it to him, along with a bunch of bills. “That’s for shipping and your trouble.”
“Thanks. Sure. No problem. If you don’t mind me asking, why don’t you want her latest painting tossed onto the heap, with all the others? Is there something special about this one?”
“Yeah, there’s something special about this one.” I look into Georgina’s sparkling eyes. “This one is going to be a memento, forever, of the happiest day of my life.”