Page 134 of Wicked Pickle

Symphony splashes and laughs, and I can already imagine my next project in what I see, the sunset gold over the blue waves, her emerging like Aphrodite.

“Let’s head up to the bike,” I tell her. “It’ll get cold once the sun goes down.”

She catches up to me near the shore, and we retrace our steps back to the bike.

Merrick and Marietta have been here, just like we planned. There’s a picnic basket on the beach next to my bike. Blankets. Wine. A small fire crackles in a circle of rocks.

“What is this?” Symphony moves close to the fire, the yellow-orange flames lighting her skin against the dwindling twilight. Another painting in my mind. I may never be finished with her.

My brain falters. Merrick left the ring in the basket, and Symphony is already poking around inside it. She hasn’t noticed the rocks arranged on the shore beyond the circle.

And should we do this naked? It seems unusual. But maybe not for us. Sunset is falling fast.

I’m about to suggest we wander closer to shore when a beam of light breaks the gloom.

“Oh, shit,” Symphony says. “Eek!”

She dives behind the bike, scrambling for her bikini.

I slide my shorts back on. Is that Merrick? I peer at the figure with the flashlight.

Shit, it is. And Marietta, too. They don’t seem to realize we are by the bike.

“I told you we needed more rocks!” Marietta hisses. “All you had to do was theme!”

“I’m getting them!” Merrick hisses back.

Symphony emerges from behind the bike wrapped in her coverup. “Was that your brother?”

The two of them freeze. I step between Symphony and the shore. “Should we see what’s in the basket?” There’s a full dinner in there, all her favorites.

And the ring.

I hope.

“Hey!” Symphony calls. She steps around me. I reach for her, but she’s already gotten past me.

Merrick and Marietta take off over the dune and disappear.

Symphony turns to me. “Did you see that? Was that your brother?”

I don’t know what to say. The plan is way off. I reach into the basket for the ring box. It’s there, at least. I can salvage this.

“What is all this?” she asks as she stumbles on the rocks aligned on the sand. She accidentally kicks several of them out of place.

I stand beside her as the last vestiges of the sun cast a glow across the beach.

She tilts her head. “Mar me?” She lets out a laugh. “Looks like someone chickened out in the middle of a proposal.”

“Maybe we should fix it,” I tell her. I pick up a few rocks from our fire circle and finish out the letters.

“Much better,” she says. “I wonder if she said yes. Or he.”

I guess it’s now or never. I drop to one knee and pop open the box. “What would you say?”

She fiddles with the rocks with her foot, not looking my way. “I’d say some alien creature has inhabited your body.”

I wait, sweating it out. Finally, she turns to me as if expecting me to laugh, but then her face changes when she spots my position and the glint of the diamond in the box. “Diesel?”