by Julie Wright
I looked like, well . . . like someone worth knowing.
I couldn’t say for sure how long I stared at myself in that mirror, but it felt like I’d given Narcissus some stiff competition. Shopping without looking at price tags was not something my muscle memory allowed, so I almost swallowed my tongue when I saw the numbers on the price tag, but I removed the guilt by repeating “double the sales” over and over in my head as I laid my credit card on the counter. I think Toni would have handed me a diploma and shed a tear for me finally graduating into the sort of person she’d been trying to create online.
An hour later, I had a dress in a fancy dress bag that could only come from a store that charged too much for their gowns, and a pair of silver heels that Cinderella would have called magical. When I made it into my apartment building with my packages, Shannon glared at me, and I glared back, as was our typical greeting of one another.
It bothered me that Shannon had Christmas carols playing in her office, their tones trailing out into the hall. She wasn’t ignoring the holiday that celebrated peace on earth and good will toward man. What did that mean about which one of us was the monster in our relationship?
In my apartment, I called up The Thai Guy to order food. It had been a long time since we’d eaten takeout, and Anders was sure to be hungry and very likely to be too tired to go out. Pravat himself answered. When I said hello and started to make an order, he said, “Look who finally calls? I about thought you’d broken another phone and a laptop, too, because I never hear from you anymore.”
“Hi, Pravat. Sorry. I’ve had a lot of free time so I’ve been indulging in doing my own cooking.”
“I don’t approve of such indulgences.”
I laughed. Pravat was a good guy. “How’s the head injury?” I asked.
He laughed, too. “Your boyfriend does good work. I didn’t even look like Frankenstein’s monster after all those stitches.”
We joked around some more before I gave my order and hung up.
Still thinking about Shannon and her carols, I decided my apartment could use some kind of Christmas cheer. Anders likely had decorations at the station, and so he wasn’t thinking about his own personal space. It was weird that the holiday had so far escaped me without him there to keep the celebration in it.
I tugged a box off the top nearly impossible-to-reach shelf of my bathroom closet and opened it, trying to not breathe in the dust that flipped up off the cardboard closures. A small, pre-decorated tabletop tree from my college days took up the bulk of the room in the box. It had been a gift from my dad. The ornaments were miniature fable and fairy-tale creatures along with tiny crowns, glass slippers, wands, and red apples.
I streamed some Christmas carols and sang along with them while I straightened all the branches, placed the tree on the end table next to the couch, and then crawled behind the couch to plug it in. The miniature white fairy lights still worked. The first Christmas miracle of the season!
Or maybe the second if I counted finding the dress on the first day of searching, which I did.
Not too long after that, Anders showed up. He had the Thai Guy delivery bags in hand. “You’ll never guess who I ran into on my way into the building.”
“Shannon?” I asked.
“Well, her too.” He grinned at the bags in his hand. “I guess this means you had a good writing day?”
My mind drew a blank before I said, “Oh. Yes. Writing day. It was a good day for this writer; that is for certain.”
He put the bags down and folded me up in his arms. “I am so glad, Lettie. I’ve been so worried about you.”
I breathed him in and melted against him. “Worried? Why?”
He laughed. “I don’t know. You’re just so much happier when you’re writing. Lately, you . . . well, you don’t act happy.”
“Huh. Are you trying to tell me I’ve been moody?”
“How about unpredictable?” he asked.
I snorted at that and wriggled out of his arms.
“Okay, you don’t like that one? How about . . . I can smell the Jekyll and Hyde on you.”
I gave him my best flat-eyed stare. “I’m about to donate your dinner to Shannon.”
He put his hands up. “I kid! I kid!”
I almost kidded him back about his own moodiness but decided not to go there. His moodiness felt more like that of a sleeping bear. Poking that bear could end up with me losing a limb.
“I’ve missed you,” I said. “Enough that your dinner is safe from Shannon’s evil clutches.” I picked up the bags and carried them to the kitchen.
Anders followed me, before he slowed his step and stopped altogether. “You didn’t get a tree,” he said.
I set the bags on the counter and returned to him to survey my living room. The little tree on the end table wasn’t much. “It’s no fun to do those traditions by myself. I figured I’d wait for you to have time.” We’d always picked out potted trees to decorate for the season and then donate to be planted. It was our way of helping to make peace on earth and good will to man.
He tensed so slightly that someone who was not schooled in the every-movement-of-Anders would have never noticed it.
I noticed.
“What?” I asked.
He licked his lips. “Let’s maybe sit on the couch for a minute.”
“Okay.” I wanted to throw out a sarcastic comment, something silly to lighten the mood, but my brain could only think of the way he’d licked his lips and averted his gaze for that briefest of moments.
I sat on the couch.
He sat next to me and took my hand in both of his, his thumb tracing a circular pattern on my wrist.
He didn’t speak.
I didn’t either.
But it seemed we were both waiting for the other to do something, so I tightened my fingers around his.
“I’m moving to Sweden.” The words expelled from his lungs in the same way they had when he’d told me he might be engaged. Fast, mystified, terrified.
It was like he’d injected ice into my veins. I shivered involuntarily from the sudden cold. “What? Why?”
But I knew. As soon as I asked. I knew. His grandfather. Hadn’t Magdalena come to town to discuss how to handle the care of their grandfather? It all fit. Even before he offered a word of explanation, I knew. Why else would he decide to work such insane hours to save up money?
He then explained everything I had already understood without him speaking at all. How his parents had gone for a few months but really were too old themselves to be making such a move permanent and needed to get home to take care of their own affairs. How Mags had so much on her shoulders with the clinic and the new baby coming. How that left only him.
When he was done, I said, “You’re leaving me.” Not a question.
He didn’t respond right away. I slipped my hand from his and edged away from him on the couch.
“I don’t want to leave, Lettie, but I have to. He’s all alone. He’s sick. He needs a twenty-four-hour caregiver.” He scrubbed his hand over his blond hair, those Asgard golden locks that I had always loved. “I’m not going forever. But no one is better qualified to take care of him. I have medical training. I have a job that isn’t as set in stone as my sister’s. But I’m not leaving you, not like you make it sound.”
“How else is it supposed to sound?”
“I’d like you to come with me.” As soon as he saw my immediate shock at those words, he amended them. “Not to live—not unless you want to live there. But no. Just to stay for a while. For the holidays. Come with me from Christmas through the New Year.”
“You’re leaving so soon?”
“I have to. He needs help now. Mags is there at the moment, but she can’t stay. I fly out in a week and a half.”
“And when were you going to tell me?”
“To
day. Right now. I’m telling you right now.” He reached for me, but I shifted out of his reach.
“But you knew before now,” I countered.
“Not really. Mags was going first to assess the situation and see if he was well enough to travel to Canada to live with her, because I didn’t want to leave you and my life here. But when she got there, she found he was so much worse than we believed. He can’t move much most days. So we’ve been discussing things to see what to do.”
“But you started working overtime forever ago.”
“Because I figured I would be needed somewhere at some time. But I didn’t know when. Not really.”
“Anders, how am I supposed to function without you?”
He smiled at that. “We’ll work that out. Let’s take this a step at a time. Kind of a first-things-first thing. Will you come to Sweden for the holidays?”
The holidays.
The award ceremony.
My bedroom door was open wide enough to let me see the edge of the dress bag on my bed.
My book was receiving this once-in-a-lifetime award. Once in a lifetime was exactly that. The rejection letters Jen had finally decided to send me were evidence that this might be my one and only chance at a night where my work would be recognized and praised and awarded.
Going with Anders to Sweden meant missing that chance.
There was only one choice to make.
“Of course. You know I’ll always be there for you.”
Because that’s who we were. We were best friends who dropped everything for each other—even the important things. Because nothing else was more important.
Chapter Eighteen
“Glass slippers and dreams have a lot in common. They are both beautiful and breakable and endangered by midnight deadlines.”
—Charlotte Kingsley, The Cinderella Fiction
(The “Make Your Own Magic” Chapter)
Anders’s relief at my agreeing to go with him for the holidays showed in his every movement: the way his shoulders rolled back instead of slumping forward; the way the creases between his eyebrows had relaxed to smooth skin; the way his fingers stopped raking through his hair, leaving blond spikes sticking out from every angle.
Here he was again. I had the Anders I knew and loved back. I’d been so worried that he’d decided he was done with me. It hadn’t occurred to me that his altered personality might have come from the many stresses of job and family responsibility and not because of me. Kat’s texted responses to the news that I would be out of town for Christmas weren’t exactly supportive, but my family all seemed to understand my need to go to Sweden with him.
He was scheduled to move out of his apartment the day after his photography exhibit. Months ago, he’d jokingly promised me a shoulder massage before the event. Instead, I got to help him pack up his apartment.
Every item we put in a box cracked open the tear in my heart wider. What would I do with my best friend on the other side of the world? I tried not to think about it. Anders said we’d work it out. So we would. Somehow.
The day of his exhibit, I stayed back and finished packing a few last odds and ends for the movers to pick up in the morning while he went to make sure everything was ready at the exhibit hall. He would be sharing this exhibit with three other photographers. They had done the right thing and changed the exhibit name from “Many Faces,” or whatever creepy thing they were calling it before, to “Masks.”
After everything I’d managed to overcome and become through my writing, the thought of his work out on display for everyone to see made me happy. Look at us, Anders, I thought, chasing our dreams and goals with ferocious grit and guts.
I checked my watch after the last box had been taped up and added to the stack for the movers. There was just enough time to get ready and get to the gallery. I showered and slipped into the dress I’d purchased for the awards ceremony. Letting a dress of that quality go unworn would be criminal. With my feet in the silver shoes, my hair pinned up in a half twist, and the skirt of the dress swirling around my legs like quicksilver, I was ready.
Everything was perfect until it wasn’t. Traffic on the Mass Pike was less than ideal. “I should’ve taken the T,” I muttered to my windshield. But to drag my dress through the subway? Unconscionable.
I was on track to be only fifteen-ish minutes late when the sudden flash of red brake lights streaked through my vision. I hit my own brakes but not soon enough. My car connected to the car in front of me with a dull thud.
We both pulled over to the shoulder to keep from furthering the traffic jam and got out to inspect the vehicles. The woman I’d run into was in activewear and had her hair up in a ponytail. She scowled at her bumper. “There doesn’t seem to be any damage,” I said, looking at my own bumper as well as hers. Nothing indicated any kind of altercation had taken place.
“We need to call the police,” she said with a stoic arch of her eyebrow at my desire to dismiss the whole thing by daring to say there didn’t seem to be any damage.
But there really wasn’t any damage.
Not so much as an exchange of paint on the cars.
The woman in activewear refused to be calmed. She wanted to call the police. So we did. The police showed up thirty-seven minutes later. Fifty-four minutes and a ticket for me after that, I was on the road again. I’d texted Anders to let him know what had happened, not wanting him to worry about me the way I’d worried about him when he’d missed my book launch. Since his exhibit was only a two-hour event to begin with, I would be catching the last few minutes.
And even then, just barely.
I parked my car in the hotel parking area, gathered my skirt so I didn’t get highway sludge on me, and exited the car. The exhibit was being held in one of the primary ballrooms. And if the crowd was any indicator, the evening had been well-attended. I stood still and took several deep breaths before entering the ballroom. Anders was talking to some people I didn’t know. Not wanting to intrude, I decided to give myself a tour of the work on display before going to him. The room was divided into four wide aisles, one aisle for each photographer. On one side of each aisle was the masked version of the photographers’ subjects. On the other side was the unmasked version.
The other three photographers showed obvious talent. I walked through their exhibits and enjoyed what I saw for the most part. One photographer’s work leaned toward the abstract in a clever way. One of his masked subjects was an apple. The unmasked version was apple seeds. His entire aisle was comprised of photos that were unexpected.
Anders had ownership of the last hall, and I wanted to make sure to walk through his last so I could savor his work properly.
His aisle started out in a way that could only be described as literal. There were several images of his paramedic friends wearing face masks. There were a few of kids in Halloween masks. He had a few abstract concepts as well, and then it got personal. Approximately halfway down, I stopped short and stared at the picture on the wall.
The picture staring back at me was me.
It was of me after I’d received the rejection letter that had led me to write The Cinderella Fiction. I was sitting on my old couch with the tub of ice cream in my lap and the scoop full of ice cream in my hand. Shiny tears lined my red eyes. Everything about the picture was vulnerable, broken.
So sad.
Without wanting to, I turned to see its masked version. It was of me dressed in Toni’s designer clothes with the auburn tinting in my hair and eyelash extensions. I was laughing in the picture, but, somehow, that laughter didn’t reach my eyes. In the unmasked version, the tears and the sad were all in my eyes; here, there was nothing.
Horrified, I stepped down to the next set.
Masked: my manicured fingers on my book. Unmasked: my chipped and uneven nails at my laptop keyboard.
The next set. Masked: my feet in strappy, green-c
lothed heels crossed on my new coffee table. Unmasked: my feet in my favorite green Yonder Castle socks on my old coffee table.
The next.
Masked: a bowl of organic mangoes on my counter. Unmasked: mango sticky rice.
The next.
Masked: me wearing the Cora original Toni had given me. Unmasked: me in my old six-impossible-things T-shirt.
Masked: straight, tamed auburn strands. Unmasked: my red curls, messy and tangled in the wind.
Masked: me looking soulfully out the window. When I had shown Toni the image, she’d told me to post it to Instagram immediately and caption it “Dreaming.” Unmasked: me amidst a background of fireflies, with my hands uplifted so it looked like a celebration of light and dark and me.
It continued on to the final pairing.
I started on the unmasked side, fearing what could sum up Anders’s feelings regarding my masked self. The unmasked was a shot of the title page of my fairy-tale book Daughters of the Sea. I slowly turned to see the masked, and found myself facing the cover of The Cinderella Fiction.
Everything. My whole life.
Anders had laid bare my entire life in a hallway of photos he’d taken of me.
My cheeks burned as I glanced around to see others in the area, others who were looking at pictures of me, prying into my soul with each image.
I ducked my head in case they looked my direction and recognized me as the girl from the series. I found a shadowy corner behind some potted trees and waited for people to leave, for the exhibition to start closing up. A text came in on my phone. Anders had written. “Where are you? I know you’re here by now, but I can’t find you.”
“I’m here. When people are gone, we’ll talk.”
He texted several more times, but people weren’t gone. It wasn’t time to talk.
Finally, when the many voices had quieted into a few, and my phone felt like it was exploding with texts from Anders, I texted him my location and waited. He found me instantly, his face shining. He wore a suit. I knew Anders wore suits every now and again, but it was rare enough for me to wonder if he’d considered doing a masked-unmasked photo exhibit of himself with the suit and his favorite Red Sox T-shirt. Who was wearing the mask now?