Right now all the pages in my sketchbook are blank or have unfinished pictures on them because I wasn’t feeling it and stopped. It’s supposed to be full of pieces that mean something to me, that will make people experience emotion, tell a passionate story from the heart. I can’t seem to find my angle and everything I start ends up feeling forced.

I wonder if my mom had this problem.

“So I’m trying to decide whether to tell my mom or not that we almost went through with a wedding without her,” Micha says, slipping his fingers through mine, and the contact jerks me from my thoughts and I gasp, startling him and myself.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “You seem distracted.”

“Yeah I’m fine… and I vote no.” I set my pencil down and close my untouched sketchbook, since it’s too dark to draw anyway, and put it down on the floor beside my feet. I rub my tired eyes, then slant my head to the side and watch the stars in the sky stream by in various illuminating colors, trying not to think about the journal tucked away in my bag in the trunk. My mom’s journal and drawings. My mother who won’t be at my wedding. I want to scream at myself because it shouldn’t be such a big deal. She was hardly around when I was alive so what does it matter? Yet for some reason it does.

“What’s the matter, pretty girl?” Micha glances at me and there’s a tease in his tone. “Are you afraid she’s going to get upset?” He releases my hand to sweep strands of his blond hair out of his aqua eyes that are so strikingly beautiful even the darkness can’t conceal it.

“I’m never afraid,” I assure him as he returns his fingers to mine, bringing me instantaneous warmth. “I’m just worried she’s going to get upset and cry and then things are going to get awkward.”

He chuckles softly, and then delicately kisses my knuckles, causing my heart to flutter. “So you’re only worried about things getting awkward, huh?” The ring looped through his bottom lip grazes my skin as he moves his mouth away, and then he puts his hand to the shifter with our fingers still entwined. “There’s nothing else bothering you at all? Like the fact that you’re going to have to stand up in front of a group of people and tell them why you love me?”

I gape at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Our wedding vows,” he says. “Did you forget?”