A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (101)

“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 fucking hurt. 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.

“Ezra, are you okay? What’s happening…”

“I’m not a Perennial anymore. I’m me, before the curse. I think?” He pressed the wound on his palm and flinched, sucking in air through his teeth. Then he sneezed again. “I haven’t felt like this since 1928!”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No!”

“I swear, Ricki,” he rasped, his voice tremulous with awe and wild surprise. “I’m a normal twenty-eight-year-old. Jesus fuck. Pardon.”

“Well. A normal, modern twenty-eight-year-old wouldn’t apologize,” she pointed out, grinning madly.

His face broke into a radiant smile. “Then I’m not fucking sorry.”

And then they crashed back into each other’s arms, melting into a raw, endless kiss. Drunk on their good fortune.

They were too impassioned to wonder where their good fortune had come from. They were too euphoric to care.





The two luckiest lovers in the world rushed downstairs to share their news. Ms. Della would be beside herself to see that they’d made it. Or maybe she wouldn’t be surprised at all, considering that she, like Tuesday, had utterly rejected the idea of the curse killing Ricki.

Ricki knocked on the grandiose oak door and waited. She rang the doorbell, and nothing. Did Ms. Della have her walking club that morning? She was definitely too ill to keep up with her walks. In her living room the other day, she’d looked horribly frail. Even her voice had faded, like she’d dissolve to dust from the effort of raising it a single note.