Hold On

But my personal little secret was that I was a diva queen.

I certainly had a gift with banging my head to some Quiet Riot.

But with my vacuum in my living room, I was a goddess ready for the Vegas stage, belting it out with the likes of Aretha, Tina, Whitney, Donna, Linda, Janet, and Cher (the other one, who could actually sing).

And at that precise moment, I was killing it, accompanying the fabulous Celine in her version of “River Deep Mountain High.”

The music was too loud with a dual purpose. First, I loved that song, and it needed to be loud so I could hear it over the vacuum. And second, it drowned out my voice so I could kid myself about the fact that I could accompany Celine without sounding like a howling cat who would make the real Celine take off running on her two-thousand-dollar Valentinos.

I was preparing to let go of the vacuum in order to have both my hands free to do the air bongos (something that any living being should do when Celine’s bongo guy lets loose on that track) when, suddenly, the sound cut out completely.

I looked to the receiver in my media center. Then my senses, no longer being interfered with by the brilliance of Celine, refocused and I whipped around.

Merry was standing by my coffee table, my remote in his hand, looking at me, mouth curled up in a smile, his tall, lean body shaking with silent laughter.

Fuck, I hadn’t locked the door after I came home from taking Ethan to school.

Fuck! How had I forgotten to lock the damned door when I came home from taking Ethan to school?

Fuck! He knew my diva secret!

Fuck, fuck, fuck! He’d heard me singing!

I turned off the vacuum.

“Celine?” Merry choked out.

I stared at him.

“You, my brown-eyed girl, who’d see Tommy Lee lookin’ at her rack and smack him across his face for bein’ forward, causin’ him to write a song that’d have millions of women throwin’ their panties at him, listens to Celine fuckin’ Dion?” he asked.

His brown-eyed girl?

Garrett Merrick’s brown-eyed girl?

Me?

Garrett Merrick, estranged from me because I’d been a foul-mouthed, overreacting crazy lady, was standing in my living room calling me his brown-eyed girl?

I kept staring at him.

Then I whispered, “You’re here.”

The humor fled from him completely, his handsome face turned beautiful, and he replied, “Got your text, baby.”

My insides convulsed.

My text?

Oh shit, had I somehow accidentally sent my text?

Before I could play my life in rewind to figure out how that might have occurred, Merry bent and tossed my remote to the coffee table and walked my way. When he got to me, he pulled the vacuum out of my hand, swung it aside, and got in my space, chin dipped into his neck to look down at me.

“Your apology was sweet.” He grinned a small grin. “Your brand of sweet, considerin’ you dropped the f-bomb twice givin’ it to me. And I appreciate it, Cherie.”

Cherie.

Not Cher.

Not the dreaded Cheryl.

He gave me back his Cherie.

A weird but not unpleasant warmth I’d never felt started to creep over me.

“I appreciate it, but you didn’t need to give it,” he went on, lifting his hand to cup my jaw and bending so his face was closer to mine. “I knew before I left that you were sorry.”

I stared into his blue eyes that were looking into mine, communicating amazing things.

Somehow, that text got sent and there he was, in my living room, accepting an apology I didn’t know I gave.

Here was another boon that life had thrown at me.

And before I could think better of it, I latched on ferociously.

“I overreacted,” I blurted on a whisper.

The pads of his fingers dug into my skin gently. “I get that.”