Better Unwed Than Dead

BETTER UNWED THAN DEAD

by Laura Rosemont

Copyright © 2013 Laura Rosemont

Smashwords Edition

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“I hope today is just a hint of what’s to
come this summer.” Julia Ellery spread a red and white checked
cloth over a broad expanse of sun warmed stone. Kicking off her
flip-flops, she lay on her back and stretched her arms over her
head, flexing sun starved calves. “Winter never wanted to let go. I
was ready to suggest we move to Georgia and live with your mom and
aunt. But now I’m glad we’re right here, because right here is
perfect.”

Nick Brice, love of her life, set the picnic
basket down and stretching out beside her, propping his head on his
elbow. He nodded in agreement. It was a warm, picturesque June day
on Ohio’s Lake Erie coast. Marblehead Lighthouse towered just over
their shoulders in a white, fifty-foot column. Distant coaster
trains climbed and plummeted across the bay at Cedar Point. Cotton
puff clouds dotted an endless blue sky and boats slid across
Sandusky Bay with such lazy leisure that even their very masts and
sails must have known that ninety glorious days lay ahead.

“Mmm, right here is perfect. You ready to
eat?” He reached for the basket, filled with grapes, cheese and
French bread, as well as the finest Lake Erie’s wineries could
offer, smuggled into Marblehead Lighthouse State Park in a discreet
thermos.

“Not yet.” Julia closed her eyes and yawned
as a whip of wind kicked waves across the bay, sending a refreshing
spray over the jutting rock shelf she’d claimed as theirs. “I want
to just sprawl here and enjoy the sunshine for a while. It feels so
good.”

Nick abandoned his pursuit of the picnic
basket to admire his girlfriend. Between owning and operating
Peninsula Gifts and helping care for her elderly, senile mother—her
last living relative—she was always on the go. He enjoyed seeing
her enjoy a rare, quiet moment. As a middle school teacher, he had
the whole summer to enjoy such moments, but for Julia they were
harder to come by, no matter how much he tried to help.

He watched passively as one spaghetti strap
slipped from her pale shoulder and the breeze repositioned the hem
of her short red sundress an inch higher on her thigh. But when,
with eyes shut, Julia pulled her chestnut hair free of its ponytail
and fanned it around her head, Nick knew it would take a man with
far more willpower to simply let her be. He cupped his palm over
her knee and slowly slid along her thigh, pleased when his touch
elicited a slight sigh from her lips. “We can see Millennium Force
from here,” Nick commented, referring to the 310-foot tall roller
coaster dominating the landscape across the bay.

“You can see Millennium from damn near
everywhere,” Julia pointed out, catching his hand before it could
venture so far up her thigh as to expose her panties.

“No one can see us,” Nick promised. “No boats
are close enough, and for now we’ve got this side of the park to
ourselves. Don’t worry. I’m keeping an eye out.”

Julia lifted her head and peeked around. Sure
enough, the sailboats that had been drawing nearer were now farther
off and the man fishing off the rocky ledge nearby had moved on.
Shutting her eyes again with a slight smile, she let Nick’s hand
continue on its naughty path.

“Do you remember when I took you to Cedar
Point last August?” His fingers darted beneath the edge of her
panties, brushing her dampening labia. Julia’s breath caught and
she nodded with a small gulp and lick of her lips. Nick leaned in
to taste the moisture left by her tongue, his body aligning closer
so she could feel his firm erection through his jeans. “At thirty
years old you’d never been on a roller coaster, yet you grew up
across the bay from the coaster capital of the world. I took you on
Millennium Force and as the train careened around the turns and
over the dips, you screamed out that you loved me.” He ground his
knuckle against her clit and then slipped his middle finger inside
her.

Julia whimpered in pleasure, but could not
resist arguing. “I didn’t mean to say I loved you. I meant to say I
loved this, ‘this’ being the ride. But once I said it, you wouldn’t
let me take it back…Ah! Yes, right there.” She arched her back off
the rock and lifted her hips with the motion of his hand, fingers
searching blindly under his black t-shirt to grip at the muscles in
his lower back.

“Have you ever regretted that I wouldn’t let
you take it back?”

“Wha—oh, Nick, yeah, like that….”

Nick sighed. “Now I’m kind of regretting I
couldn’t keep my hands off you for a few minutes. I’m trying to
have a serious conversation with you, and you’re not
following.”

Julia opened her eyes and glared. “Focus on
one thing at a time, buddy. Finish what you started here then we’ll
talk.”

He grinned at her bossy tone and glanced
around, making sure they were still alone before throwing one leg
over hers. Unable to resist, he ground his throbbing cock against
her hipbone, pressing his lips to hers while increasing the
pressure and speed of his hand to just the way she liked. Her
primal cry of pleasure came quick, and was swallowed by his
kiss.

Recovering from the flaming hot orgasm, Julia
reached for Nick’s zipper, but he stopped her before she could work
it down.

“No?”

“No.” He gestured to a couple with three
young kids and a golden retriever heading their way.

“Later then, at home, I owe you big time.”
Julia winked. “I had no idea that’s what you had in mind when you
suggested a picnic, but you’re definitely planning all our outings
this summer, and every summer from here on out.” She straightened
her sundress and rolled onto her belly.

Reaching for the basket, she tried not
noticing Nick casually licking his fingers clean, fearing she’d end
up re-aroused and have to cut their picnic short so she could take
him home and pounce.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well what?”

“Have you ever regretted that I wouldn’t let
you take back telling me you loved me?”

Julia looked at him like he was crazy. “Hell
no,” she said with certainty, popping a grape into her mouth.
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, bar none.”

“Good.” Nick quickly stood and pulled her up
as well, sitting her on the jutting rock shelves behind them. He
fell to one knee. “Julia Ellery, will you marry me?” He looked up
from the sparkling diamond ring pulled from his pocket to Julia’s
stunned expression. He expected an answer in the affirmative. After
all, they’d been living together since the fall and the honeymoon
phase of their relationship was still going strong. He treated her
like a treasure and knew she found him exceptionally handsome with
his dark hair and dark eyes.

Speechless for a long moment, Julia finally
found her voice. "Nick, I—I love you! I absolutely adore you and
couldn't ask for a more wonderful man." She faltered when his face
lit up like Christmas. "But I cannot marry you. I really, really
don't dare.” Her tone shifted from apologetic to crisp, “You
already know that."

Nick rocked back as if she'd slapped him.
Julia felt as if she had, even though she’d given him fair warning
about her inability to wed soon after they’d started dating. She
couldn’t fathom why he would even ask now. Despite her bewilderment
and mild annoyance, tears stung her eyes. Both their gazes fell to
the open jewelry box in his hand.

"Julia--"

"Nick, you know we can't risk marriage. I
couldn't stand losing you. I thought you understood." Even as she
made the profession, she felt a terrible stab of longing. It was
such a pretty ring! An antique, like most of her bobbles, the
diamond was exactly what she'd have chosen for herself…if she could
ever safely marry. Nick knew her taste so well. In fact, he knew
every aspect of her so well—mind, body and spirit—that she couldn’t
imagine how he thought she'd readily accept a proposal. It was his
life on the line, for goodness sake!

Nick remained kneeling, glaring pensively at
the ground. Julia thought he’d flinch away when she fluffed his
hair, but instead he stiffly joined her on the ledge.

"This is about that ridiculous dress isn't
it?"

"You know it is, but it's hardly ridiculous.
Do you really want to die young? Because that's what would happen
if I got married in any dress but the dress."

"Honey, come on--"

"I told you all this last fall. You said you
understood!"

"I understood you had a family legend,
folklore. That there was a superstition connected to your great,
great whatever grandma’s wedding gown. But I’m not a believer."

"But I am! There's proof! Two husbands dead
before their time after their wives opted to not wear the dress on
their wedding day. My mother didn’t follow her mother’s good
example. She followed her poor grandmother’s example, and the
result… Nick, we can’t risk having what happened to my dad happen
to you.”

"Julia, come on, honey. I want to marry you.
I need to. I want our relationship to be official."

"And I need you to keep living.”

“What about when we have kids? Don’t you want
them to be legitimate? Or do you want them to be bastards like
me?”

“What difference does it make? Who would
label them illegitimate bastards when they’re raised in a loving,
two-parent household, marriage certificate or no?”

Nick rolled his eyes at Julia’s naivety.
“Plenty of people would, Julia. When you’re raised in the south by
a single mother and no one is quite sure who your daddy is, you
learn early the things people will say.” Elbows resting on his
knees, he scrubbed his hands over his face in frustration.

Julia rubbed her palm over his back, trying
to sooth him. “Ok, I do understand your desire to have our future
family to be legitimate—although I still can’t imagine who in their
right would call our children bastards—okay, maybe in a little
southern town thirty-five years ago people were that crass—but
still, it’s not worth risking your life over. As long as our
children are raised by us in a loving environment, a wedding won’t
make a difference.”

Nick wasn’t ready to give up so easily. "So,
let me make sure I have this straight. You’re truly never going to
marry me because you can't do it in a supposedly cursed moth eaten
sack?

Come on, Julia." He stood and began
pacing.

"Don't talk about it like that," she
whispered, looking around as if the spirit of the missing gown
might somehow overhear and dole out retribution. “And it’s not a
sack, and it’s not moth eaten. At least it wasn’t the last time I
saw it.”

"Why would you even want to be married in a
dress you fear so much? No, no. Don't answer. It's because I'd 'die
young' if you didn't." He groaned then dropped back onto the rock
ledge,long legs stretched out and his arms crossed over his chest,
looking very much to Julia like an overgrown, pouting child.

"Well, if I had the dress to wear, then there
wouldn't be anything to fear." God help her, why did the dress have
to stolen along with other valuables during the burglary three
years earlier? Why did she suddenly, desperately want to be Nick's
wife when just ten minutes ago cozily cohabitating and
out-of-wedlock babies hadn't bothered her? Julia glanced at the
small velvet box resting between them and knew the answer. When he
asked 'will you marry me' and flashed that ring under nose, her
long and stringently suppressed desire to be a bride, a wife, one
half of a holy union, had broken free like a bird from its cage.
That and it was an utterly gorgeous ring.

“Julia, don’t you ever think maybe it was
simply bad luck your dad was killed? And maybe your mom, in her
grief and developing illness, blamed an old family legend for his
death? Maybe she fixated on it a little too long and hard and
passed a substantial dose of that hysteria onto you.”

“You think this is hysteria?”

“Julia, the doctors diagnosed your mom with
Alzheimer’s when she was only in her fifties. Don’t you think maybe
the early stages of that, combined with the trauma of your father’s
death, played into the crazy things she told you when you were a
young child? Why exactly are you so convinced of all of this
now?”

For a moment Julia was stunned, but then her
anger rose. “Are you implying I’m developing Alzheimer’s or
something because I don’t want you to die? Are you kidding me?” She
tried not to get upset, but he was picking at one of her fears—that
she might inherit her mother’s disease. She’d been a late in life
surprise to her parents. Her mother and father married in their
early twenties but it had been two-decades before a pregnancy
occurred. Her father was killed before her birth. By the time Julia
was a teenager, her mother, in her mid-fifties, had been diagnosed
with the disease. Julia had grown up on a diet of scrambled
information, confusing conversations, vague recollections and
convictions of curses. She was nearly twenty and in counseling to
help deal with her mother’s deteriorating condition when she
finally accepted that the mother she grown up loving but often not
understanding had been suffering from a degenerative disease. She
managed to gain understanding over many perplexing things from her
upbringing, but she’d never been able to shake loose the fear of
the curse. She simply could not forget the sound of her mother
wailing, declaring herself a murderess for not wearing the heirloom
gown on her wedding day.