A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (90)
She caught herself going soft and rolled her eyes. “That’s a lie from the pit of hell.”
“It’s no lie,” he said. “Lately, I’ve been watching these floral design competition shows, just to understand Ricki’s business. And I learned that moss can hold up to four times its weight in water. Your performances were like that. You were so young, but the emotional weight you took on was greater than your years.”
This time, she allowed her delight to show. She flashed a dazzling smile. “Aw, you just wanted to drop your lil’ moss fact.”
He grinned. “That obvious, huh?”
“You love Ricki. That’s what’s obvious.”
Ezra glanced again at Ricki. “I love her too much.”
“No such thing,” said Tuesday. “Hey. So, uh, not to change the subject, but I’m writing this memoir. It’s so hard. I hate it, actually. But that was a great line, about my emotional depth. Can you repeat exactly what you said, so I can catch it on my voice recorder app?”
Ezra laughed. “Sure. But why write the memoir if you hate it?”
“To set the record straight about everything I went through in Hollywood. To tell my side of the story. But the deeper I get into it, the less I feel like I owe the world an explanation for a single fucking thing.”
“I reckon you don’t. If you could do anything else besides write it, what would you do?”
“Open a medi-spa,” she blurted out, breathlessly and without hesitation.
“A medi-spa! All right, now.” After a beat, Ezra asked, “And what is that?”
“A medical spa, with aestheticians to provide dermatological procedures. Lasers, facials, steams, Botox, dermaplaning. A through Z.”
“Oh, clearly you’ve thought about this.”
“I’m obsessed with skincare. I dream of complexion perfection. By the way, you’re virtually poreless. Kiehl’s?”
“Curse,” he said with a wink. “Tuesday, forget the memoir. You just lit up talking about this spa. Make yourself happy. Open your business.”
She beamed, radiating nervous excitement. And then it abated. “But I was really leaning into being a memoirist.”
“Maybe you were a memoirist.” Ezra shrugged. “But identity changes all the time, I’ve found. There’s a few more ‘yous’ you haven’t met yet.”
Tuesday took this in. Then she leaned in and hugged Ezra. She waved to Ricki and bounced out of the shop, excited to begin researching her new endeavor. As he watched her leave, Ezra realized that was the first non-Ricki hug he didn’t hate.
He liked it, actually. Growth had funny timing.
Steadily, the crowd thinned as the day went on. By 5:45 p.m., the last customers left the shop with an armful of delphiniums and snowdrops. Ezra locked the door behind the couple and then drew the blinds, but not before stamping their punch card and offering a courtly “Y’all come back, now.” It was his third night of closing. He was practically an expert.
As soon as the door shut, Ricki sank against her workstation table, depleted. She grabbed a plastic flute of prosecco from the table (she always offered wine to her customers after 4:00 p.m.). With a beleaguered sigh, she downed one flute and then grabbed another.
It took a physical toll, the effort to seem so la-di-da, business-as-usual for eight entire hours. Ezra could relate.
He stood with his back to the door, watching her in the shadows. Ricki looked up, meeting his eyes. There was nothing left to say.
Within two heartbeats, Ezra was in front of her, comfortingly large. He rested his forehead against hers. His touch was a relief, an exhale. She let out a small sound of surrender.
He bent down, sliding his strong arm around her lower back. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he picked her up. They melted into a ravenous, possessive kiss, a desperate blur of hands, tongues, teeth. Hungrily, he tore off her T-shirt. As she trailed kisses down his throat, he grabbed the bottle of prosecco, taking a lusty swig. With a low growl, he kissed it into her mouth, liquid trickling down her chest, dampening the filmy lace of her bra. Ezra ran his tongue up her neck, making her shudder. Gasping, Ricki arched her back, clawing at his shoulders. Then they were kissing again with delicious urgency. Ezra hiked up the diaphanous layers of her skirt, and then—
Brrriiiing! It was the Wilde Things doorbell.
They froze, two pre-orgasmic deer in headlights.
“Maybe they’ll go away,” he rasped.
The bell rang again. And then there was an urgent pounding on the door.
“Who could that be?” hissed Ricki.
They disentangled themselves from each other. Ezra hurried to the bathroom as Ricki straightened her skirt, threw on her T-shirt, and rushed to the front door on extremely wobbly legs. So annoying, but actually it was five minutes to closing—Wilde Things was technically still open.
Pasting on a customer-service-ready smile, Ricki flung open the door. And let out a bloodcurdling yelp.
Almost instantly, Ezra came flying back into the shop, shirtless and brandishing a candlestick.
The three women standing in the doorway gasped. They all had the forty-something version of Ricki’s face but were taller—over six feet in stilettos—and intimidating in their austere, monochromatic designer fashions. Individually, they would have been a force. But together, they were an impenetrable wall of icy glamour. Even if Ricki’s sisters couldn’t agree on the color of an orange, they certainly presented as a unit.