No Faerie Tale Love
Faerie Series, Volume 1.2
Mercedes Jade
Published by Mercedes Jade, 2018.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
NO FAERIE TALE LOVE
First edition. September 30, 2018.
Copyright © 2018 Mercedes Jade.
Written by Mercedes Jade.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
Chapter 4:
Chapter 5:
Chapter 6:
Chapter 7:
Chapter 8:
Chapter 9:
Chapter 10:
Chapter 11:
Chapter 12:
Chapter 13:
Chapter 14:
Chapter 15:
Chapter 16:
Chapter 17:
Chapter 18:
Chapter 19:
Chapter 20:
Chapter 21:
Chapter 22:
Acknowledgements:
Also By Mercedes Jade:
About the Author
To my magical unicorn.
Chapter 1:
IT HAPPENED ON FRIDAY.
The roller rink had no single cohort it served, making up for declining interests by offering something for everybody. There were the fifties and sixties nights that had now morphed into the seventies and eighties nights. The age of the skaters made a broken hip a bigger concern. Ladies night and rock party were popular and the under eighteen crowd owned the Saturday night dance fever. It was more modern than it sounded, mostly tweens and pop blasting from an updated speaker system.
Fridays were left for freaks like me.
Don’t be offended by the derogatory tag. I knew I was different, and freaky was better than the brainwashed norm that most of the other people my age tried to fit into from leftover high school roles and cliched expectations written into our yearbooks.
I’m that odd girl that sat in the back of your English Lit class a few years ago, not quite a prep, nerd, or jock, definitely not a cheerleader, mostly too ordinary, like the Bic pen you discarded the first time it bled on the page, and I’m rather easily overlooked when the person beside me offers you a fancy gel pen in mauve. Who writes their class notes in purple anyway?
Back to skating. The rink played what they generously termed ‘variety music’ that was supposed to reflect all comers but was mostly top forty with the odd top ten oldies thrown in from a decade or two in the past. People usually had somewhere better to be on a Friday, so the rink didn’t try too hard. I enjoyed the relative solitude.
Although, I would rather listen to metal or rock than the latest pop group, I didn’t come here for the music. Once I had my skates on and pushed off onto the rubber floor, I could glide mindlessly amongst the rest of the misfits that didn’t suit the other theme nights. No one tried to talk to me or asked to hold my hand for a couple’s skate.
No touching strangers was a rule.
If the odd rock song played and I really got into it, then I could veer into the center of the rink and do a couple of spins or backward crossovers until the referee came over and hollered at me to skate in an orderly fashion. He was a grumpy ass who thought anything more than putting one skate in front of the other was ‘fancy tricks’.
I hadn’t been a stupid teen for a couple of years now and I never wanted to impress anyone, but Fridays were boring without at least one whistled non-regulation move. The ref should thank me for giving him something to break up his tedious circles around the rink.
Nothing was the same as skating for letting me zone out. It was a self-prescribed therapy for my personality quirks, which I’m sure some high-priced psychiatrist would love to diagnose. A few hours of skating once weekly, rinse and repeat. It was still under ten dollars a treatment.
I loved to read to relax as well and I did it voraciously, sometimes downloading books only based on intriguing titles and staying up all night because I’d been drawn in by a new author. That kind of distraction, while pleasant, lacked the lasting power of physical exertion, the hard pounding my muscles needed to drain and soften. Perhaps that was one of my quirks: a need to push myself until I dropped.
Jogging might come closer to achieving that zone with a runner’s high, but gyms had become the new social meeting place and the streets were crowded with cars and people walking their dogs. They always wanted to tell you about the last cute thing their darling pet did for your entertainment. I felt bad for the dogs leashed to their yapping owners.
No running was another rule.
Skating was my salvation. Not that I was religious, but I’m sure spinning wheelies with my red roller skates was as good as whatever prayer or new age meditation did for other people.
Naturally, I didn’t respond well to anything that interfered with this weekly enjoyment. I might be a tad fractious on purpose, speaking as little as necessary and downright curt if need be to discourage any conversation longer than asking me about a coat check. It wasn’t them, it was me.
Don’t talk to strangers. Yes, another rule, although sometimes this one had to be bent for me to function independently.
At one of my jobs, I made it so I worked alone in the clean room in the middle of the night to avoid my colleagues. I’m sure my boss also preferred it that way, as technically he shouldn’t be letting a high school dropout in his lab. I claimed to work better alone. It was easy enough to convince my boss; a few snide remarks and messing with the supplies my colleagues needed for their experiments until everyone wanted me out of their hair. Free help was irresistible to a scientist even if he was now making the big bucks in pharma. He still thought in terms of the next grant and ways to cut the budget corners.
Manipulating my genius-moronic boss had been child’s play. I was good at rearranging things to accommodate my quirks. Interactions could be automated instead of personalized. Why pay in person when you can bank online? Why talk to a human when a machine or the touch of a button can get you what you want? I even ordered my groceries online and picked them up at Walmart, parking my car in the spot intended for busy mothers but that was also perfect for agoraphobics.
I let people believe what they wanted. Some mistook me as shy, others as mentally disordered, like the Walmart clerk when I refused to lower my window fully to talk to him and pointed to the trunk to drop my groceries. I can’t be bothered to explain personality traits versus dysfunctional anxiety.
I coped. This was an adaptation. Whatever. The clerk’s cologne had been overwhelming, even if that hadn’t been why I was avoiding him.
No eye contact was another rule.
I won’t smile and thank you for opening the door. I don’t want to know how you are doing. Please, let me walk past you with my hoodie pulled up or quietly stand alone in line looking at trashy magazine covers and chocolate bars as you talk to anyone else. I’m not as shy as I seem, but does it really matter? I don’t want to draw attention to myself.
Most people look around me, letting me go unnoticed while I do the everyday errands even I can’t avoid. I keep my appearance very plain: no makeup, medium length, black hair with a few natural waves that I bind in a simple ponytail and have cut straight across every twelve weeks, framing washed-out, pale skin and a sprinkling of freckles—pretty much everywhere—that make me look a bit younger than twenty-one. I have ID and I’m not afraid to flash it.
Clothes are the best part of my disguise. Uniforms make us blend into the whole, the ultimate no
rmalizer. I wear jeans every single day. The dresses in my closet are so old that I’ve outgrown the hemlines, but my mom bought them for me, so I’ll never throw them out. I mostly topped the jeans with t-shirts almost as old as I was, and I had a hoodie collection for when I had to go out. Nothing pierced or tattooed, and I didn’t dress completely in black like a little goth reject, mainly because that would draw attention. All black certainly would be easier to coordinate.
He noticed me.
Alarm bells should have gone off. All I can say in my defence is that I had my guard down because I was in my comfort zone that Friday. The rules got broken. I should have run sooner. I could have hidden longer.
All the rules were to protect me, but nothing could save me from myself.
Chapter 2:
METALLICA’S Nothing Else Matters was a surprise offering from the booming speakers. If the skating rink was going to play Metallica, then the expected song would be Sandman. I had been sitting on one of the benches to loosen my laces. They were new, and I had accidentally gotten the waxed kind that gripped like, well, wax.
He sat down beside me. In retrospect, he still had his street shoes on, which was strange for the middle of a four-hour skate. The rink didn’t give refunds or discounts.
I hadn’t startled, more intent on getting the circulation back into my foot than the other freaks taking a break on the benches. It wasn’t like I owned the area in a five-foot radius around me, no matter how I wished it.
I think he tried to talk to me. He was quiet, and Metallica was on and they are never played on a Friday night. I had to fight back a smile of happy pleasure at hearing the slow, building intro that could be misinterpreted as an invitation if someone else saw me grinning, hurrying to fix my skates until one of the girls in a group that sat on the other side of me squealed.
“Couple’s song,” tween one announced.
I gritted my teeth, half smile forgotten. This was not a couple’s dance. They didn’t play them on Fridays and the tweens were clearly here on the wrong night.
“Ask him. Ask him!” shouted tween girls two and three in high-pitched unison.
“Excuse me,” said tween girl four. Her sickly-sweet voice was the most poisonous of all to my ears. “Do you want to couple skate with my friend?”
She shouted over me to the guy on the other side, whose shoed feet hadn’t been noticed yet. We weren’t together or anything, but it still was rude. Oh, she could embarrass her friend all she wanted to try to score her a skate, but couldn’t she wait until I was gone, so I didn’t have to be in the middle of it?
Giving my laces a final yank and my numb toes a wiggle, I got up. There was a wall of male in my face.
Damn.
My hands sweated a little, fisted by my sides, and I forced myself to keep breathing slow and even. I’m not claustrophobic but I like my personal space to be occupied solely by me. He was tall enough that I could avoid eye contact and talk to his chest. The words were pulled out of me like rusty nails. I’d have to get a drink after this skate.
“Move.” The chest stayed immobile. “Now,” I added, saying my magic word.
This is why the ‘no talking to strangers’ rule had to be bent sometimes. Monosyllabic was best. A grunt sometimes sufficed.
The wall of male wore a shirt that was made of unbleached cotton with simple wood buttons and hand-stitching clearly visible. It was probably some anti-designer, organic-cotton chic that people forked the big bucks over to replicate a third-world peasant look. He’d obviously been too cheap to buy the bigger size his chest needed.
“Eloden,” rumbled the chest.
Did he not speak English? His voice was deeply accented. I remembered how frustrated Ms. Chang had been trying to get her superintendent to fix the leaking tap in her bathroom. She only spoke Cantonese with a few terrible words of English. The leak had been minor, but the drip-drip-drip noise had been driving her daughter, Ai Lung, crazy as she grimaced and grunted on the bed. Ai Lung couldn’t get up and leave because she was bed-bound with advanced Huntington’s disease. I had to get a wrench and Googled the faucet fix myself because their prick of a superintendent wasn’t only unilingual, he was prejudiced too.
I felt a tiny sliver of doubt crack my frozen heart and looked up.
See, this is what comes of breaking rules. I exchanged words in what could be loosely termed a conversation with a stranger and then I made eye contact.
Brown eyes met my green ones and didn’t let go. Hair as black as my own hung in loose, thick waves to his shoulders. It should have made him look feminine, but the five o’clock shadow he also sported gave maturity to his strong jawline and left no doubt to his masculinity. Dark, thick brows slashed down to draw attention to his eyes and the merriment that he couldn’t hide. Tanned skin showed paler lines that crinkled from a genuine smile that was repeated often enough to leave its mark on him.
He was the hot, young professor all the girls wanted to meet after school to discuss their year-end paper alone in his office, especially if you added glasses. Those soulful eyes really needed some shielding. Clark Kent knew to keep dangerous weapons like that locked up.
I didn’t hyperventilate because I stopped breathing for one heart-stopping moment, mesmerized.
“He’s going to skate with the goth, Jen.” wrong-night tween girl number one said, breaking my stare. I blinked as I lowered my head. Two rules were broken in under thirty seconds. I didn’t care if he came here right off the boat. This was way too dangerous for me. He could find some other sympathetic soul to appreciate his deep, chocolate eyes while communicating with hand signs.
Using some fancy moves the referee would whistle at if I was on the floor, I tried to back up and turn to get myself pointed in the direction of the closest no-male zone. The women’s washroom was a straight shot down my right.
Eloden with the soulful eyes stopped me and not by grabbing. He spoke again, still heavily accented but I understood him enough to make out my own name. I froze halfway through my escape maneuvers, foolishly catching my skate on the side of a back wheel.
How did he know me?
“Eve, are you ok?” he said, repeating my name. His hands tightened as he caught me before I hit the floor. I was completely freaked out now.
This was a puzzle best dealt with at a distance. I head-butted him. He was staring down at me with concern and I was trapped in his arms. It was either fight and flight, or I fainted. If you knew me, my choice was a no-brainer.
He smiled at me again with a big, stupid, red mark on his forehead that I’m sure matched mine, and his grip tightened.
“Sweetheart?” he asked, deep voice carrying to our audience.
My ears heated with embarrassment. Everyone was staring at us and I’m sure all the wrong night tweens girl clique pointed and laughed. This would be a nightmare if only I was completely naked and trying to do some sort of public speaking, but unfortunately, this was all too real. I was the center of attention and bombing it.
The floor did not swallow me up.
Eloden stared at my red ears, which only made them tingle and heat more. His hair blocked out the rest of the rink like a dark curtain as he bent over me, lips inches from my own. My breathing sped up to match my heart rate. He better not kiss me.
I tried to wiggle out of his grip, willing to take a fall to escape. My roller skates kept sliding without purchase at the awkward angle and Eloden’s hands clamped on my ribs like a vice. He wasn’t quite hurting me, just short of squeezing too tight, but there was no way I would suddenly drop to the ground. It should have made me feel safe, may have even looked romantic to others that had witnessed his quick rescue as I had fallen.
Only I knew it was really a trap.
“Try to kiss me and I will chew your face off like a rabid chihuahua,” I threatened him.
He understood English, hesitating to close those last crucial inches.
“You don’t look canine,” he said, sounding puzzled like he made some sort of transl
ation error or misheard me.
“Arf. Arf,” I barked at him. May as well. I had been completely humiliated anyway.
He looked more confused.
That made two of us. So much for the hot professor. His lack of sparkling conversation was dropping him to the high-school phys-ed teacher and rapidly plummeting.
“Your ears are showing,” he whispered, reaching out to touch one. Then, he said something much too pretty to be English and my one ear cooled down.
I yanked my head away. He had his hands all over me but that one icy touch sent shivers down my body. The ‘no-touch’ rule was non-negotiable except for a sardined ride on the subway. I really might bite to get away.
A loud, intrusive whistle interrupted our touchy-feely moment. I had never been so glad to hear that rink rat whistling me down for an infraction. Come and get me, ref, send us to the penalty box, our corners, time out, whatever, but please, separate us.
I sighed in relief as Eloden straightened up, putting me back upright on my skates. All was right with my world once more. I made some sideways steps with my skates. No touching, no eye contact and I wasn’t saying another word.
“You’re obstructing the aisle,” the referee complained. He bellied up beside us, his impressive girth doing its best to put some G-rated distance between our bodies and forcing Eloden to release me from his grasp.
“She slipped,” Eloden said in that lovely, accented baritone. I could appreciate it more now that he wasn’t imprisoning me.
I chose not to speak at all, examining the fluorescent orange stripe that clashed with the referee’s maroon leisure jacket with rollerz rule emblazoned on it.
“It’s hand holding only during a couple’s skate and no backward skating or tricks,” the referee said, wagging a finger at us.
Despite his timely rescue, I gave the finger an eye-roll.
“Tricks?” Eloden repeated, pitching the question a little higher.
No Faerie Tale Love (Faerie Series Book 1) Page 1