Happily Ever After: (A Cinder & Ella Novel)

by Kelly Oram

  My mouth went dry as I created a vivid image in my mind of the picture he painted. Ellamara as my mysterious, exotic, magical, wild faerie goddess… Holy shit, did I ever want those pictures. I wanted that entire day on that set. Hell, I wanted to play the role of the helpless lost woodsman under her spell. I wouldn’t even have to act the part. Forget Cinder and Ella as superheroes. I had a new fantasy. And if anyone could bring it to life, Nash Wilson could.

  “That does sound beautiful.” Ella’s quiet, shaky voice pulled me from my daydreams. “I…I’ll think about it, okay?”

  Nash, with a small, accepting smile, released her hand and sat back. “Come by my gallery sometime. I can show you plenty of examples of the kind of exposure I’m talking about, though I don’t think any of them hold a candle to your potential. We could discuss every detail of the shoot beforehand—no surprises—and you could have final approval on every photograph released in any capacity.”

  Ella nodded again, lifting my spirits a little and giving me hope that she might find the courage to do the photo shoot. It would be so good for her, because Nash knew how to do his job well. Ella would, indeed, look so stunning that not even she would be able to hate the pictures. She would finally see herself as beautiful the way I see her. And the world could shut the hell up and leave her alone.

  “I’ll do that,” she said. “I won’t make any promises about doing the photo shoot, but I would like to see some of your work.”

  Nash grinned. “It’s a date, beautiful. And…I suppose you could bring the boyfriend along, if you must.”

  His eyes briefly flicked to me, making my adrenaline spike. Was he going to invite me to join her? I knew better than to ask, but damn it, I wanted in. He must have seen the desire in my eyes, because his lips twitched before he looked back at Ella. “We might even be able to find some room for him in a picture or two, if you agree to the shoot.” He glanced at me again, and his smile turned crooked. “You wouldn’t look so bad bare-chested with pointy ears, wearing a pair of leggings.”

  Hell yeah! An elf is way better than a woodsman.

  Ella snorted. And not softly. “If you think you’re scaring him with the threat of tights, you’re sorely mistaken.”

  Everyone laughed, and I shamelessly puffed up my chest, flashing them all a proud grin. “Oh, I’m all in. And unlike my modest girlfriend, I have no problems with nudity.”

  As I knew she would, Ella slapped her hand over her face and groaned.

  The whole month of January was one big blur. The first thing I did was sign an agent. I met with several, but in the end, Harvey Buchman was the only one I trusted to consider my personal concerns and help me build the career I wanted versus building the one that would make me the most rich and famous.

  Once it was official, we squeezed as much into the two weeks prior to my surgery as we could. We started contracts on a movie deal, and a documentary, and Brian and I did a few talk show appearances. Then, my surgery and all the extra physical therapy took up most of the second half of the month.

  Any free time I had I spent plotting the layout of the new Ellamara’s Words of Wisdom with Scott. We’d made a great start, and Scott had convinced me right away to start some kind of webisode series. I decided to start a sort of video diary. I called it My Fairy Tale Life. It was just little five to ten minute episodes where I chronicled all the craziness of my life now that I was suddenly a celebrity. People were eating it up.

  It’d been a crazy, hectic month but a very good one. And the best part about it was that I found a fantastic apartment. Now, it was February first, and I finally had keys. Today was moving day, and things had been severely complicated when this crazy delivery of random packages was dropped off from my agency’s office early this morning.

  Vivian, my good friend Rob, and I were all sitting in the living room, sifting through a sea of letters and packages when Juliette arrived. “Come in,” I shouted when Juliette knocked, because I was buried in stuff and unwilling to risk knocking over any of the piles I’d sorted or tripping and killing myself in the chaos. “Thanks for coming. You’re just in time to help us sort through everything.”

  “Just in time?” Vivian laughed. “You’d be just in time six hours from now, too. We’re going to be here all day.”

  “Whoa,” Juliette said when she stepped inside. “What is all this?”

  I looked around at the clutter and sighed. “It’s a combination of get-well wishes, fan mail, and housewarming gifts.”

  Juliette blinked at the mess. My living room, which didn’t even have furniture yet, was filled to the brim with cards, balloons, flowers, and all sorts of random household items. It looked like I was opening all the gifts from the world’s largest wedding reception.

  “Remember how in last week’s webisode she gushed about how excited she was to be moving into her first apartment?” Vivian asked.

  “And then,” Rob added, “she naively joked that she was going to be sleeping on the floor and eating off paper plates forever because she couldn’t physically go shopping for long periods of time, and she didn’t have any of her own stuff yet?” He waved at the pile of gifts. “Meet the result of that joke.”

  I groaned. Having over five million subscribers on YouTube had repercussions I’d never expected. I’d been posting one My Fairy Tale Life video a week since the beginning of January, and in just one month, I was already ranked in the top 300 most popular YouTubers. It was insane.

  After last week’s webisode went live—the episode where I got to take the bandages off after my surgery and I introduced my rehab team to the world—the fan mail and gifts had started arriving by the next day. The only physical address anyone had for me was my new management team’s offices, so that’s where people sent stuff. Because my agent was the head of the entire company, they’d been kind and stored the stuff for me, since I wasn’t in my apartment yet. But when they’d dropped off a truckload of mail this morning, they’d kindly asked me to invest in a P.O. box and warned me they would be forwarding all deliveries to my apartment from now on. I didn’t blame them.

  When Juliette finally got situated on the floor with us, Vivian handed her a giant stack of envelopes to open. “Here. You can start with these. A lot of them are from retailers and have gift cards as housewarming gifts in them. Keep those. We’re going to collect them all and donate them to a battered women’s shelter or a children’s group home or something.”

  “And I’m going through all the actual stuff,” I said, holding up a small crystal clock that would look great on a bookshelf…as soon as I had a bookshelf. “You’re all welcome to go through it, too, and then we’ll donate the rest of it with the gift cards.”

  “Wow,” Juliette breathed as she tore through the seal of an envelope. “This is crazy.”

  “Oh, and skim the fan letters,” Vivian added. “Ella can’t possibly reply to everything, so we’re just looking for anything that seems important. If it’s like little ten-year-old Marcie who is a car accident survivor like Ella and sent a thank-you letter with a picture because she’s in a wheelchair and is trying to learn to walk again and Ella’s an inspiration, then keep it. Ella wants those. But if it’s just normal gushy You’re so pretty and funny fan mail or nasty, perverted stuff, toss it.”

  “Unless it’s so creepy and stalkerish that we need to give it to the cops,” I joked.

  Juliette glanced at me, stunned. “Have there been a lot of those?”

  “None yet.” I laughed. “I’ve just been on a Janice Bishop kick since Christmas, so my mind keeps going to all these dark, twisted places.”

  Juliette shook her head, both scowling and laughing. “That’s not funny. It’s only a matter of time before some psycho really does try to go fatal attraction on you, you know.”

  “Sorry. I guess it’s not that funny when you put it that way. But hey, I’m safe here. Promise. The security in this building is really tight. Brian wouldn’t have let me move in otherwise.”

  “Yeah, I not
iced the security.”

  Something in her voice made me look up from the box I was opening. “What is it?”

  Juliette hesitated but quickly broke. “Dad came with me today.”

  My eyebrows jumped up my forehead so high my face hurt. “Dad was here?”

  She nodded gravely. “He was going to come up and try to talk to you, but he wasn’t on your approved list of visitors. The front desk guy said he could call you and ask if he could come up, but Dad said no and stormed out because he didn’t think you’d say yes.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I wasn’t as angry with my father anymore as I had been at first, but I was resigned to a life without him. I was even mostly convinced that I was better off.

  Juliette sighed. “He’s going crazy. It’s been over a month, and you still haven’t answered a single phone call or e-mail.”

  I ground my teeth. “That’s kind of the point of disowning someone.”

  Juliette nodded, but she looked sad. “I know, but he feels so bad. He didn’t mean for you to sever all ties. He was just angry that day because of all those things those jerks said about us. He was scared, Ella. He didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  I closed my eyes and let out a long breath as I shook my head. “He never means to hurt me, but he always does.”

  I didn’t think Juliette would mention anything else about it, but she very quietly said, “I think he’s learned his lesson this time. I get it if you can’t forgive him, but I really wish you would at least try.”

  When I finally looked at her, her eyes shone with a layer of moisture. “He’s a wreck, and we all miss you. Even Ana does. She was finally starting to warm up to you.”

  I frowned. “But I still see you all the time, and how much can Ana really miss me? I’ve said to invite her every time you’ve come over since I left.” I looked around the room. “I notice she’s not here…again.”

  Juliette’s eyes flashed with anger. “It’s not the same, Ella. You were part of our family, and now you’re not. And Ana is just embarrassed. She feels guilty. The lingerie thing was her fault. Even Brian said so. She thinks you both blame her and hate her.”

  “Oh, come on. Brian was just pissed at Dad that day. He even apologized right away.”

  “Yeah, but he still thought it enough to say it.”

  I sighed. “Well, technically she did start it, but in her own way she’d only been trying to help me, and if not for Erik Clarke—which she had no clue about—it would have been fine. We don’t blame her. You know we don’t.”

  “Yeah, I know you don’t. But, have you ever tried to tell Ana that? Have you spoken to her at all since you left, or just invited her over through me?”

  Juliette held my gaze with unrelenting directness while I mulled over her scolding. That was one of the things I loved about her. She spoke her mind. She loved me and supported me and was my friend, my sister, even. But when she was mad at me or disappointed in me, she let me know it. This time, she was right.

  With a nod of acceptance, I pulled out my phone and dialed Ana’s number—quite possibly for the first time ever. Juliette quirked a brow, but some of the light came back to her eyes and the side of her mouth twitched, threatening to turn up into a smile.

  “Hello?” Ana’s voice had an edge to it and held a fair amount of astonishment, but she’d answered, and it hadn’t been with a What the hell do you want?

  Figuring Ana wouldn’t appreciate some sappy apology, or even for me to bring the topic up at all, I simply said, “Get your bony butt over here. Dad brought Juliette over, so I know you have a car. Juliette will need a ride home eventually, and I need another minion to come help me sort through all this junk. And before you snark, minions get to claim any treasures they find that I don’t want—of which, I assure you, there are plenty—so hurry up, before everyone else snags all the good stuff.”

  Amused grunts and snorts sounded all around me. One even came through the phone, and Ana said, “My butt is not bony.” There was a short pause, and a less certain voice said, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  I wasn’t surprised when the call cut off. “There,” I said, as I texted her the address and parking instructions. “She’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

  I got a bunch of curious looks, but no one said anything. We all just got back to work. Juliette decided to break the silence as she ripped open a letter. “So I’m sure Rob didn’t mention that he’s seeing someone.”

  “What?” I gasped, whipping my head to my strong and silent friend. “You didn’t tell me that!”

  Rob rolled his eyes. “It’s not serious.”

  “It’s totally serious,” Vivian said, earning a look of annoyance from Rob.

  When I grinned, he shot that annoyance at me. “We’re just kind of hanging out right now. It’s nothing worth all their fussing.”

  He nodded toward Juliette and Vivian and went back to concentrating really hard on the envelope in his hands.

  “Does she have a name?” I teased. “How did you guys meet? What does ‘hanging out’ mean? Kissing? Dating? Exclusive? Are you smitten? Come on, I want details. I hate that I’m so out of the loop now that I don’t go to school anymore.”

  “Her name’s Marian Fitzwalter,” Juliette said, giggling hysterically. “Just transferred to Beverly Hills Prep after Christmas break. She’s a super cute brunette who seems kind of sweet but feisty.”

  “Kind of like someone else we know.” Vivian laughed, giving me a pointed look. “Seems our coveted soccer captain has a specific type.”

  Rob shook his head at the jest and tossed the letter in his hands into a bulging trash bag before reaching for the next one on his pile.

  I grinned when I noticed the slight blush on his cheeks. Rob had crushed on me for a while. People made it out to seem like it was this huge, epic crush, and I’d been afraid when I had to let him down, that I’d break his heart. But if he’d been left pining, he’d never shown it. We’d easily remained close friends. I was glad he’d found someone else.

  “Wait,” I said, as something occurred to me. “Robin Loxley is dating a girl named Marian?”

  Juliette and Vivian burst into laughter, as if they’d been waiting for me to make the connection this whole time.

  Rob groaned. He hated Robin Hood references, and still hadn’t forgiven his parents for naming him Robin when his last name was Loxley. They thought they were being clever, but instead, they’d simply cursed their son to a lifetime of torment. His only defense was that his last name was spelled differently than the old heroic outlaw from folklore. He always mentioned that, but it totally didn’t help. The poor guy. He’d started punching anyone who called him Robin somewhere around the start of middle school, and the teasing mostly stopped after that. Rob has a mean right hook.

  Deciding not to torture my friend any more than I’m sure he’d already been teased since the development of this new relationship, I settled for shaking my head. “What a crazy coincidence.”

  “Or maybe it’s fate,” Juliette said, eliciting another groan from Rob.

  He ripped into another envelope with a sigh, muttering something about ridiculous parents and then sprang to his feet when the apartment’s phone rang. “I’ll get it.”

  He moved so fast that we all burst into laughter. After a quick exchange, he handed me the phone. “It’s your doorman.”

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Miss Ella?” I grinned at the greeting. My doorman was a sweet little Puerto Rican man named Yeriel. I’d gotten pretty familiar with him when the surprise delivery truck showed up. I’d told him that he could just call me Ella, but he couldn’t seem to drop the Miss. “I have another delivery for you.”

  “Another one?” My stomach clenched. Would they just keep coming? I’d have to hire a whole team of people just to deal with my mail, if this kept up.

  “Yes, Miss Ella. Not to worry, though. It looks like it’s just your furniture. Shall I send them up?”r />
  “My furniture?” I hadn’t ordered any living room furniture yet. I hadn’t had time. Furniture was supposed to be my main to-do this week starting this morning, but I’d been sidetracked by the mail. “Um…is there a note or a card or something?”

  “Hold on. I can check.” I started to explain what was going on to my friends when Yeriel’s voice came back with an understanding “Ah.”

  “Ah, what?”

  “It appears the furniture is another gift. Would you like me to refuse it?”

  “Uh…” I honestly didn’t know what to say. “Someone sent me a whole living room set? Seriously?”

  “Is it ugly?” Juliette yelled.

  “What?” she said, when I frowned at her. “You don’t have any living room furniture yet.”

  Over the phone, Yeriel chuckled. “It looks very tasteful, Miss Ella,” he said, having heard Juliette. “And expensive. It’s nice. You might like it.”

  I sighed. “All right. Send it up, I guess.”

  Yeriel laughed again. “Straightaway, Miss Ella.”

  When I hung up the phone, Vivian was pointing my video camera at me. “Dude,” she said. “You just got sent living room furniture as a housewarming gift from a random stranger. This totally belongs on My Fairy Tale Life.”

  “Well, watch where you point that thing. Juliette doesn’t have a signed waiver from her parents to be on my webisodes, and I seriously doubt Dad is going to let me put her on the Internet.”

  Juliette frowned. “I have to get permission?”

  I nodded. “Scotty’s making me do everything by the rules. Something about not wanting to get sued. Everyone who appears on the show has to sign a release form. You aren’t eighteen yet, so you can’t sign it yourself.”