by Julie Wright
“Thanks!” she wrote. “I needed that! So what book are you working on?”
I made up something. That was my job, wasn’t it? We chatted for a while longer about her newest work in progress before we finally signed off.
She ended with, “Be sure to tell your agent about me!”
“Right. Sure thing.”
I shut my laptop lid.
When I saw Anders next, his shoulders slumped in rounded mounds I didn’t understand. His voice carried a hint of despondency and resignation. He’d taken a small break from overtime while his sister was in town, but with her gone, he was now buckling down and getting to work.
When he’d told me he was taking all the extra overtime, I hadn’t realized how much extra he would be taking. He would basically be living at the station.
But it would only be for another month, and then he would quit so he could get his life together and regroup. And sure, regrouping would take time, but not anywhere near the same amount of time as this new work schedule.
“My sister’s having a baby,” he announced when we’d settled at the table to eat.
“Wow!” I just about dropped my fork with that news. “That’s amazing! I wish I’d known so I could have told her congratulations.”
He lightened with this bit of news-sharing. “She’s going to be a great mom.”
“She really will. Some people are meant for that sort of thing. And then there’s . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence in a way I normally would have. I normally would have made a declaration about not seeing myself in his sister’s situation. I would have made a comment about it being impossible to imagine being a mother when I’d never had an example of what being a good mother looked like.
Anders had heard it all before: all the reasons why getting married and having a family were for other people but not for me. My time with him in a dating relationship had me imagining something else.
Anders likely wouldn’t have thought anything about me tallying all the reasons regular family life would not be mine, but he noticed the trailing off. He noticed the absence of my no-family-life-for-me rant.
He made it obvious that he’d noticed by the way he smirked at me. “And then there’s . . . ?”
I looked down at my food and busied myself with stabbing vegetables and placing them into my tortilla. “Then there’s people like my mom.” I groaned. “Do you want to know what’s weird though?”
“I would love to hear what’s weird.”
I put my fork down again. “My relationship with my mom is the definition of toxic. She never approves of me. She hates the whimsical, light-hearted, and fun—”
“And therefore hates everything you love,” he said.
“Right. But she raised me. And I don’t think I turned out that bad.”
“I don’t think you turned out that bad, either, but we’re not really talking about that, are we?”
“Kat called again. She wants to move in with me.” She’d actually called twice more regarding it. I’d kept making the joke about them investing in cutlery and guns, but the joke had worn thin. Kat wanted a real answer. My mother was getting more invasive in Kat’s life. She kept laying down rules Kat didn’t like. I would have said yes. I meant to say yes every time. But I never actually got the word to pass over my lips.
“And you’re worried that if you do things differently from the way your mother raised you, you might mess her up.”
“I’d accuse you of reading my journal when you come up with responses that seem like you’re mind reading, except I don’t keep a journal.”
Anders did his slow smile—the one that said he knew he was clever. “That settles it, then. I must be a mind reader.”
When I didn’t laugh, he put his hand over mine.
“Lettie, you would not destroy Kat’s prospects for a bright future.”
“Mom’s changing though.” I sucked in a sharp breath. Had the day come when I actually defended my mother? “I think Kat’s okay there. I think she’s helping Mom to change. And Mom’s rules aren’t necessarily bad. Not liking rules isn’t the same thing as the rules being unreasonable, right?”
“That’s an interesting viewpoint,” he said. “A little change and a little rule-keeping is good for all of us. As long as the change doesn’t make us lose sight of who we are.”
We weren’t talking about my mom any longer.
Later, as he was leaving, he said, “Write something for you, Lettie. Something with a dark forest and a fierce main character. Write the you I know you are.”
“Don’t I always?”
He didn’t answer but kissed me instead. There was something missing in that kiss as well. But there was also something added. The kiss held hope.
“Is something wrong?” I asked when he broke away.
“I don’t think so. I think things will get better.”
When I scowled at him, he smirked back at me. “Everything’s okay, Lettie.”
But he was wrong.
I tried doing what he told me, but the next morning, as I sat at my computer to write, an email popped up from Jen. I clicked the email open and began reading.
It was a rejection letter from a publisher. In the email, Jen apologized. She’d been holding out hope that this one would be an acceptance.
This one.
Meaning she’d received other rejections. Further down in the email, she confirmed that the manuscript had now been rejected by all the publishers she’d sent it to, and she’d sent the manuscript to all the first-tier publishers. All of them. And they had all turned it down. “I didn’t want to distract you with the rejections,” she’d written.
“That said,” she wrote, “Melissa said they would love a sequel to The Cinderella Fiction. I think that would be a good opportunity for you to get some more writing experience in. After that, let’s discuss something new for you to work on—something we can use to wow and woo publishers. I fear your other manuscripts that I’ve seen are too similar to the one on submission. Let’s go in a different direction. Call me if you have any questions. Melissa would love an answer on the new book as soon as you can.”
Ache.
They wanted another book.
Pain.
They just didn’t want the “another book” that I wanted to write.
After the success I’d received, was it possible to get another rejection?
I didn’t call Jen. I called Lillian. She answered on the second ring and listened while I wailed out the entire story to her.
“So what are you going to do?” she asked once I’d emptied myself of all my complaints.
I didn’t answer right away. “I’m going to write the second book. I mean what choice do I have?”
“You could tell them no.”
I grabbed a fistful of my hair and groaned. “I can’t though, can I? The public loves it. The reviews have been nothing short of miraculous. I mean . . . I know you’re used to that sort of thing, but it’s all new to me and—”
“You’ve decided to stick with the safe bet,” she interrupted.
“Should I tell them no?” I asked.
She didn’t answer right away. “Lettie, I want you to tell them whatever it is that you want. If another nonfiction is the direction you want to go, then go. If you want to write something else, do that. You are financially independent now. You can choose the direction you go without anyone else pointing the way. And whatever you choose—if it’s what you want—then it won’t be wrong.”
She moved the discussion to safer paths, discussing possible plans for the holidays, and her children and how grateful she was that they were holding down the fort while she was away on her own tour. She planned on going to her mother’s house in New Hampshire for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Her mom and sister would be doing all the food, since Lillian had been on book tour and
they didn’t want to burden her with more work. When she asked what I was doing, I stammered over a noncommittal answer that hopefully sounded more committed than it did pathetic.
We hung up.
I didn’t write.
Not anything new for my own pleasure, and not a sequel that the publisher wanted either.
I scrolled through social media posts instead. I answered questions, made bright and witty comments, and updated my personal pages with new photos from the tour and snippets of reviews that had come in while I’d been away.
I scrolled down my own page and considered the girl in the photos, who had been so carefully manicured to be flawed in a way that the public could accept and love and admire but who wasn’t accurate.
I scrolled and wished Anders was home. And wondered what I would say to him if he were.
Chapter Seventeen
“Shoes are not the answer. Remember that Cinderella’s sisters cut off toes and heels for a shoe, and Cinderella likely had to go to physical therapy for the back damage caused from dancing on high-heeled glass for a night. Shoes are not the answer when you own a perfectly comfortable pair of socks.”
—Charlotte Kingsley, The Cinderella Fiction
(The “Live in Your Own Skin” Chapter)
Anders worked all the time. When we were together, there never seemed to be the right moment to bring up the comments he’d read with his sister, when I’d declared him to be nothing all that important in my life. Since he hadn’t yet brought it up, I didn’t really want to. Maybe he’d forgotten already, and bringing it up would just make things harder for both of us. After a week of being continually pathetic, I did what Anders would want me to do, and what I needed to do, and sat down to start writing.
The sequel Melissa had requested won out. Because what if they didn’t want it later? What if right now was all I had? Though the writing this time went more slowly and felt more painful, the first chapter was pretty well hammered out by Thanksgiving.
Anders had signed on for working the Thanksgiving holiday, since the pay was double rather than just time and a half. I went to my mom’s house for dinner. Not because my mom called and asked. Not because Edward called and tried to guilt me into it. But because Kat texted one word: please.
The problem with holiday dinners was that they included all the family: my mother’s hypercompetitive sister showed up with her new plastic-surgeon husband, and Mom’s hypersensitive brother showed up with his dog.
My mom hated dogs.
On Edward’s side, his mother and her friend—that Kat referred to as a geriatric male escort—came late, which ticked my mom off, since we all had to wait on dinner until they arrived. And nothing ruined Thanksgiving for my mom faster than the food not being served at exactly the right temperature.
The mixed company made for an eventful evening of barking, glaring, and one-upping.
I didn’t mind. Not really. It was nice to have the dog, the new husband, and the geriatric male escort serve as distractions for the other guests so they didn’t ask me questions about my life.
At least it was all fine until they did start asking me questions about my life.
It happened all at once. One minute, I was eating a second helping of candied yams because, really, my mom might’ve had her flaws, but her cooking wasn’t one of them, and the next minute, a seemingly choreographed mass-ganging-up-on-Lettie-and-her-newfound-if-underserved-fame rose up from the crowd.
Mom loved my newfound fame; it helped her one-up her sister, whose only child was currently serving time for grand theft auto, and it gave her something to recommend to her hypersensitive brother, who needed a good self-help book. Even the geriatric male escort couldn’t look down his crooked nose at me.
It fascinated me how some people wanted to hear all about my writing and others wanted to know nothing. I’d discovered that a lot of it had to do with other people’s insecurities. The less secure they were, the less they wanted to hear about success belonging to anyone else.
They did want to know about my romantic life, which I refused to discuss. Kat and Mom, taking the cue from my lead, also remained quiet on that subject, which led the others to decide that our silence meant there was no romantic life to speak of. More tongue-clucking and head-shaking.
“Do you know what you really need?” my mom’s hypercompetitive sister asked.
“A muzzle for all of you,” Kat whispered so only I could hear.
Instead of laughing, I let out a strangled snort. “And what’s that, Aunt Gwen?”
“You need to settle down with a nice boy and forget all this competing-in-a-man’s-world nonsense.”
This comment was the perfect opening for my feminist mom and my Stone Age aunt to go to war.
I escaped to the kitchen to start dishes. Kat joined me. “When I see your mother’s family, I feel sorry for her,” Kat said.
“Yeah. Me too.”
I drove home feeling displaced and uncertain as to why.
I called my dad to wish him a happy Thanksgiving and to hear him say, “With a name like Charlotte Kingsley, you must be royalty.”
When I told him about the book situation, he said, “My dear Lettie, I’m sorry they don’t see you for who you are.”
A tear rolled silently down my cheek, and I was grateful to be inside where it couldn’t freeze there. “And who am I, Dad?”
“You’re the storyteller, Lettie. You’re the little girl who saw whole universes in a single canvas. Don’t let these people tell you who you are. You show them who you are.”
It was enough to get me through the night and then the weekend.
I had a single night with Anders the following week that filled my emotional well for a while longer. He was tired from all the work he’d done, and he’d been witness to enough sad tales of holidays gone wrong from the paramedic point of view that I didn’t bother him about my family craziness or even the book situation. My troubles looked pretty silly through the lens of someone who’d seen people die. Instead, I gave him a foot massage and a bag of grapes wrapped in palm fronds as a joke. He laughed and gratefully accepted the foot massage and then gave me one in return. Had he ever looked so haggard? Had his shoulders ever been so slack with exhaustion?
I knew it was more than just work. Other thoughts seemed to weigh him down from the inside. I thought about ways to cheer him up. The past couple of years, we’d picked out our Christmas trees together and then helped each other decorate, but when I brought up the idea of continuing the tradition, he said, “I’m so tired, Lettie. When I come home next, we can, okay?”
“Sure. Of course.”
Jen called me the following Monday. “Congratulations!” she said.
“On what?” I asked.
“Well, it was announced that The Cinderella Fiction will be given the Literature for Society award due to its ‘calling society to action for self-improvement.’”
The words all sounded nice, but I hadn’t ever heard of such an award. “I don’t know what that means,” I admitted.
“It means that on December 27th, there will be an awards gala where we get all beautiful in fancy dresses and the press will be there and the dinner will be subpar, like those sorts of dinners usually are, but the sales of your book will be guaranteed to double.”
“Double?” That was a sobering thought, since sales had already surpassed projections. Double. Double meant a lot of money for me, for her, for every one of us involved.
But it also meant more readers. It meant my words mattered. Since I was still licking my wounds from hearing that publishers had passed on my fairy tales, I needed that validation.
“Double,” she confirmed. “Honey, you knocked this one right out of the park.”
“Wow!” I said. “What will you wear to the gala?”
She laughed. “You mean what will we wear.”
�
��I get to go?” My heart stuttered in my chest. Another author bucket list item. Check.
“Of course you’re going!”
I hung up the phone and let my fingers hover over Anders’s name. Every time something wonderful happened, he was the first person on my list to tell.
“I love you, Anders,” I texted him. In between those words were all the other ones, the ones of me missing him and wishing we could go back to the days when he didn’t look like he carried a mountain on his shoulders.
“I love you, too, Lettie.” His immediate text back startled me.
“When is the last day of extreme overtime sports?”
“Soon. And . . .”
Nothing followed that, so I typed, “And?”
“And I need to talk to you about things.”
“If you’re dumping me, I don’t accept.”
“Haha. Not anything like that.”
I leaned back into my couch and tucked my legs underneath me. “Oh good. When do you want to get together?”
“Tomorrow night. I’ll have the evening off. I’ll come to you.”
“Sweet. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
An award and a night with the one person I wanted to celebrate with.
The next morning, I went shopping for my dress to the gala. Yes, there was time until the event, but what was the point in waiting? I’d never experienced great luck in finding clothing that worked well with my fire-red hair and pale skin, so it made sense that I could spend every day until the night of the gala searching and still not be able to find anything suitable for the event.
The Christmas season had come to Boston while I hadn’t been paying attention. The world was decked out in evergreen and red bows. The smell of spiced cinnamon escaped from the doorways of expensive boutique stores, and holiday shopping was in full swing.
Where had I been when all this holiday cheer kicked off?
My bad luck in matching clothing to my hair meant it legitimately shocked me when, at the third store, I found a gown that I loved.
The cold-shoulder cutouts in the sleeves of the silver gown and the way it draped, cascaded, and shimmered as the fabric moved over my fingers compelled me to the dressing room. When the zipper was at the top and I turned to face myself in the mirror, my mouth fell open.