The Sometime Bride

before making a beeline for the bathroom. Carrie slammed the door at her back and fell to her knees.
    Mike trailed Carrie to the bathroom, only to have the door slammed in his face. Poor thing, she looked positively awful. White as a sheet. Holy cow. What was happening here?
    Mike tapped lightly at the door. “Carrie? Honey, you all right?”
    “Fine, fine,” she muttered through running water. But she sounded less than perfect.
    Mike looked down at the two bags clutched in his hands, thinking that neither the new ice cream he’d just picked up nor the wine would look too appealing to Carrie at the moment.
    After a few minutes of silence, he tried knocking again. “Carrie?”
    Finally, she pulled back the door, looking ghostly.
    “Oh sweetie,” Mike said, “come over here and sit down. You don’t look so hot.”
    She gave him a twisted smile, remembering the first time he’d said that. “Bet you say that to all the girls.”
    “No,” he said, depositing his bags on the coffee table and sitting beside her on the sofa. “Actually, it’s just the opposite…” He reached out and took her hands in his. “Is it the flu? Did it hit suddenly?”
    “You could say that,” she answered, smiling past her queasiness.
    “Stay put,” he said, releasing her hands and giving her knee a light pat. “I’ll go and get you some ginger ale.”

    “What did you bring me?” she asked when he returned from the kitchen and handed her the glass.
    Mike followed her gaze to the two paper grocery bags on the table. “Probably nothing you’d feel much like having now. How about I tuck them in the fridge?”
    Carrie nodded and took a very slow, small sip from her glass.
    Mike shook his head as he stored the wine and ice cream in the refrigerator. Sick? She was sick? After everything he had planned—rehearsed—to make this night perfect? Holy cow.
    Just when he thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, Mike heard the hard rhythm of rain beating against the kitchen window.

    Carrie wanted to curl up into a ball and die. Whatever he’d planned… All the trouble he’d gone to, and now she couldn’t even lift herself off the sofa. This was not the way she’d envisioned things at all. Maybe she was jinxed, or perhaps she’d already gotten her fair share of uneventful proposals. Whatever the reason, she was damned upset it was happening to her now.
    Carrie glanced up toward the ceiling, hearing a sound smacking the red-slate roof. Perfect, it was raining.
    “Penny for your thoughts?” Mike said, coming back over to the sofa and sitting beside her.
    “Oh Mike,” she said, her voice breaking up, “I’m so sorry…”
    “Hush,” he said, bringing a hand to her lips and gently stroking her chin. “You can’t help any more that you’re sick than I can the color of my eyes.”
    Oh, she wished she could believe it. But no, she felt responsible. As if the whole disastrous evening, one that could have been the most memorable ever for the two of them, was all her fault. If only she hadn’t worked herself into such a tizzy. If only she’d had a regular dinner. If only…
    “Carrie,” Mike said, laying a hand on her forearm. “How do you think the air would do you?”
    “Air?” she asked, not understanding.
    “I was thinking of the porch swing.”
    Carrie agreed that it was a fine idea and that being outdoors might actually help her. So she accepted Mike’s assistance and leaned on him heavily as he helped her outside and onto the porch swing, all the while thinking that this was how life would be. The two of them leaning on each other, growing old together. Each one forever supporting the other.
    Carrie felt the moisture on her cheek and raised a casual hand to her eye, hoping Mike hadn’t seen. He already thought she was falling apart. Why give him further proof?
    “Need a blanket?” he asked as a heavy gust of wind dusted a spray of rain in their direction.
    “Just your arm,” she said, smiling up at him.
    Mike sat and wrapped his arm around her, scooting in close. Carefully, slowly, when he felt her capable of tolerating the motion, Mike sent the swing into a gentle rock.
    Far away, the mountains dripped and bled color in the evening rain. And, closer at hand, an occasional whistling wind across fresh flowers sent lazy summer fragrances wafting onto the porch. Mike held her and stroked her shivering arm until it steadied in his warmth.
    Brushstrokes of light streaked into blackness in the