Broken Fairytales

by Monica Alexander

  Broken Fairytales

  by

  Monica Alexander

  Chapter One

  “You’re leaving?!” Rachel asked when I called to break the news to her. “Tell me you’re not serious.”

  “I’m serious,” I said, flopping down on my bed. My still damp bathing suit clung uncomfortably to my body, but I didn’t feel like getting up and changing. Visions of a house on the beach and a summer spent lying in the sun with my iPod and a stack of books had me wishing the next few weeks would fly by, and I couldn’t focus on much else. “Mom and Dad are whisking us away for eight weeks of fun in the sun and apparently some much needed family bonding time or something. Chase and Keely aren’t exactly excited.”

  “Neither am I,” Rachel murmured, and I could hear one of the chairs on her back deck scratch the hardwood floor as she pulled it out and collapsed in a huff. “Why the need for the sudden familial bonding and whatnot?”

  I sighed. “Because Chase and I are graduating in the spring and Keely’s off to college, so this is the last summer we can do something like this as a family. My mom’s feeling sentimental, I guess.”

  “When do you guys leave?”

  “The first of July,” I said, examining my stomach to see how tan I’d gotten in the four hours we’d spent laying out by Rachel’s pool that afternoon. After eight weeks at the beach, I’d be sporting a tan worthy of a suntan lotion ad, and the thought gave me giddy chills.

  “Shit. That’s in like two weeks.”

  Rachel was decidedly not giddy. She was bummed. In the background I could heard the methodical clicking of something that sounded like a lighter. I knew the sound all too well. My brother had smoked since high school and had a bad habit of clicking his lighter when he was nervous. Rachel’s intake of breath confirmed my suspicions.

  “Tell me you’re not smoking,” I said, hearing the condescension in my voice.

  Ever since Rachel had gotten back from New York, where she’d spent the spring semester studying at Columbia and interning at a music magazine, she’d been smoking when we went out at night. She claimed that everyone she met in New York smoked, so she’d picked up the habit. She swore she was just a social smoker, but it seemed she was moving beyond that.

  “I’m not smoking,” she said, very non-convincingly, although she inhaled deeply and blew out her breath a moment later, so I knew she was lying. “Spare me the lecture, Em. I know smoking is bad for me, blah, blah, blah, but whatever, I just found out my best friend is leaving me for the summer, and I’m not exactly thrilled.”

  “Fine,” I said, holding my tongue, but we both knew the judgment that was hidden behind that solitary word. “But for the record, you left me all spring, so you don’t really have much room to talk.”

  “Point taken,” Rachel said begrudgingly. “Although, that was for school, not for laying on the beach, partying and meeting hot guys.”

  I laughed out loud. “Yes, because my goals in life are to get wasted and hook up with random guys,” I said sarcastically. “You’d think after fifteen years you’d know me, but I guess not.”

  “A girl can dream,” Rachel sighed, but I knew she was being facetious.

  We’d been best friends since the first grade, and she knew better than anyone that I didn’t party, and I hadn’t dated anyone but my boyfriend Ben in five years. My plans for the summer were strictly PG Rated, and Rachel knew it, but she loved to goad me, especially about Ben since she felt we’d been together too long. She hated that we planned to get engaged and move in together after graduation.

  She’d been telling me for the past two years that I needed to experience more in life, including untying myself from the only guy I’d ever really been with. Only recently, had I started to wonder if she might be right. I hadn’t said anything to her yet. I needed to be sure about my feelings before I admitted them out loud, because honestly the idea of ending things with Ben terrified me, and once I put it out there, I couldn’t take it back.

  “I wish you could come with us,” I said, knowing it was a fruitless invite.

  Had it been possible, Rachel would have come with my family to the Outer Banks where my parents, not thirty minutes earlier, had surprise-announced we’d be spending the last two months of the summer. But she had scored an amazing opportunity to work for a local music magazine, and I knew she’d never pass up the chance to do what she loved. Her role at the magazine was small, but she coveted it. She was responsible for watching live music and writing about the bands. She was in heaven, even if she was only earning a menial salary and had to listen to some pretty crappy music a lot of the time. She got into the concerts for free, and sometimes even got me in with her, which was an awesome perk when it was a band I actually wanted to see.

  “What did Ben say when you told him you were leaving?” she asked, catching me off-guard.

  “Um, I didn’t exactly call him yet.”

  I could almost see Rachel’s eyebrows rise in mix of surprise and skepticism. For years, if I received any earth-shattering news, my first call would have been to Ben. Why I hadn’t called him first, I wasn’t sure. I told myself I’d spent the day with Rachel, so she’d been on my mind, but in reality, when my parents had dropped the family vacation bomb just a few minutes earlier, one of my first thoughts was that leaving for the summer also meant time away from Ben – and this was a positive thought. I wanted to kick myself for feeling that way, but I couldn’t help it.

  “Ooh, Prince Charming’s going to be pissed when he finds out you’re abandoning him,” she said, and I wished she could see my glare through the phone.

  I hated that she called Ben Prince Charming, but at least she never called him that to his face. She just did it to tease me. Having been friends since we were kids, Rachel knew that my childhood fantasy was to be a princess, so I could fall in love with handsome prince and live in a grand castle with a moat and a drawbridge.

  I attribute these far-fetched dreams to too many Disney movies and a mother who fully supported my desires by allowing me dress up as a princess not only for Halloween, but also for many other non-dress-up appropriate occasions. Trust me, I’ve seen the pictures, and as adorable as everyone says I looked, it’s a little odd to see Belle in all her yellow-ball-gowned-glory at a summer picnic when everyone else is in shorts and tank tops. But my mother knew how much I loved being a princess, so she fed into my deep-rooted wishes to live in a fairytale world where everything was perfect and birds dressed me in the morning.

  She even went so far as to dress my twin brother Chase up as any number of fairytale princes for Halloween until he was old enough to tell her no. The last year he let her do it, we’d been six, and he insisted he get to be Luke Skywalker since he was way cooler than Prince Charming. I was okay with it, because I got to be Princess Leia, complete with cinnamon bun twisted braids on either side of my head. After that, Chase refused to coordinate costumes with me, so I was on my own.

  Eventually, I stopped dressing like I was a Disney character, but the desire to live the life of a fairytale princess never really left me. I relished the day I was crowned Prom Queen my senior year of high school, because I got to actually wear a real tiara and a beautiful ground-sweeping pale pink gown. Ben, having been crowned Prom King, stood beside me, wearing a crown of his own, holding a staff and looking like a real prince. I knew in that moment, as we danced together, that I’d found my prince, and one day we would live in a castle – or a moderately sized single family home – together. I’d made the mistake of telling this to an intoxicated Rachel that night, and hence Ben’s nickname was born.

  Ignoring Rachel’s teasing, I kept that dream alive for the next three years, making the decisions that would lead me to the life I’d planned out wit
h Ben by my side. Everything was perfect. I could see, so clearly, what my future would hold when I made the decision to follow him to the University of North Carolina when he’d gotten a full ride to play football for the Tar Heels. I knew I was making the right decision when I’d stood in a circle of my sorority sisters and blew out the candle to signify that Ben had given me his fraternity letters to wear sophomore year. And I knew when we started to talk about the future, and our plans after graduation, that my life was right on track to have the fairytale ending I’d always dreamed of when Ben told me he wanted to marry me.

  Then one day I woke up and everything I had always dreamed of suddenly seemed wrong somehow, and I wasn’t exactly sure what had happened to make me change my perception so drastically. But I started to freak out.

  If I had to pinpoint an exact moment in time, I’d have to say everything started to feel a little off right around spring break when I’d gone to visit Rachel in New York. I don’t know if it was that my eyes were opened to a different world that was bigger than I ever dreamed of, or if after spending a week away from Ben, I didn’t really miss him as much as I’d thought I would, but suddenly it was like I wanted more out of life – more than I knew deep down than Ben could ever give me, and I’d been stewing about it ever since.

  “Ben will understand. He starts summer practices in a few weeks, so he won’t be here anyway,” I said to Rachel, but also in an attempt to pacify myself and stop the gnawing in my stomach that had involuntarily started as soon as the guilt washed over me.

  I rationalized that Ben was a captain this year and had responsibilities beyond his wide receiver position that would keep him busy. He was also a big boy and could survive a few weeks without his girlfriend.

  “Yeah, but being two hours away, you could easily visit him. It’s a little harder to drive five hours for a weekend visit,” Rachel reminded me, and I knew the added distance would have Ben pouting, which aggravated me.

  “Maybe the distance is what we need,” I said softly, so softly that I wasn’t sure if Rachel even heard me.

  She didn’t answer right away, but then she said with all seriousness, “Em, are you thinking about breaking up with Ben?”

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe,” I said, biting my lip as the words escaped without my control, but as soon as they did, a deep feeling of relief flooded through me. I’d been holding on to that notion for months, and it actually felt good to admit it outright. “I just have a lot going on right now, and I’m not sure what I want.”

  “Oh, Emily,” she said, and I could hear the concern in her voice. As much as she’d teased me about breaking up with Ben, I don’t think she ever thought I’d seriously consider it.

  I wish I would have told her sooner what was going on with me, but I just couldn’t. She didn’t know that I’d spent the entire plane ride back from New York, and the subsequent next four months, trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I knew I should be happy. The things I’d worked for and aspired to be all my life had come to fruition. I should have been elated, but I just wasn’t. Worse, I wasn’t exactly sure what was missing in my life or what I needed to change. I knew if I could figure that out, I could go after it, because that was how I did things. It was what I’d always done.

  So far, in my twenty-one years, everything I’d set out to achieve, I’d gotten. I was a stranger to disappointment, as it didn’t happen often to me. Some might say I lived a charmed life, but I always liked to think of it as being planful, careful, and making good decisions. I wasn’t ever reckless and didn’t take risks, and that helped me to stay on course.

  But what was I supposed to do when the course I’d set myself on for so long didn’t seem like the right one anymore? I definitely hadn’t planned for that, so how did I even begin to navigate through it? As the spring semester wore on, so did the nagging feelings that I was doing something wrong in the grand scheme of life. I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone about what I was experiencing because I wasn’t exactly sure what it was. I was definitely too young to be having a mid-life crisis, or even a quarter-life crisis, but I seriously felt like I was losing my mind.

  But even though I hadn’t told anyone what I was going through, they could still tell something was wrong. No matter how hard I tried to maintain my composure and pretend everything was great, I couldn’t help the times when my personal angst bubbled to the surface and reared its ugly head. It was to the point that my friends and family were starting to get suspicious.

  I was irritated a lot which led to me snapping at people and muttering sarcastic comments under my breath – two things I’d never done before. I was known for being sweet and kind and always collected. I was the girl who took care of everyone else, not the one who needed to be cared for, but suddenly, I just couldn’t seem to keep it together.

  Poor Ben had taken the brunt of my aggravation, and we’d started getting into arguments on a regular basis. I started to find his constant bouts of pouting annoying, especially when they were because he didn’t get his way. I felt smothered by his constant need to spend every waking moment with me, and I’d started to push him away. I wasn’t even sure he was really the issue or if he was just one of my problems that I’d found a possible solution to, even if the solution terrified me.

  “It’s fine,” I said, pulling myself together and checking my emotions. “I’m not going to break up with him. I’m just having a crisis at the moment. It’s stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid,” Rachel said emphatically. “Em, you have plans to get engaged to Ben, and move to Atlanta with him after graduation. That’s a big deal, so if you’re second-guessing if you want to be with him, you shouldn’t dismiss it. Let’s talk about this.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be telling me to break up with him? Isn’t that what you do, Rach?” I snapped, wondering why all of a sudden, my usually snarky, detached best friend, was being conscientious. She was supposed to give me tough love. It’s what she did. She wasn’t supposed to coax me into facing my emotions, and she certainly wasn’t supposed to want to talk about them.

  “Don’t be a bitch,” she cautioned, and suddenly she was the Rachel I knew and loved.

  “Just be honest with me,” I said, the exhaustion prevalent in my tone. “What should I do?”

  Rachel sighed, long and loud, and I heard her light another cigarette. “Moving to Atlanta with Ben is safe and easy, and it’s a mistake,” she said.

  “I have a job lined up there,” I insisted, thinking back to the summer before when I’d interned at Grabel PR. They’d essentially offered me the chance to come back after I graduated and take an entry-level position. Sure, they did PR for financial companies, which was a little dry, but it was a job, and jobs were hard to come by. Working for Grabel might have been safe, but it was also smart.

  “Em, I know you better than anyone, do I not?”

  “Yes,” I said warily, not sure where she was going with her question.

  “And because I know you better than anyone else, I also know that you are truly talented and will be wasting said talents in a job you’ll hate after three months. Which is why you should come to New York, live with me, and work in entertainment PR like I know you want to.”

  I sighed. “Rach, it’s so competitive,” I said softly.

  “Yeah, and if you break up with Ben, you might never find anyone else,” she said sarcastically, hitting on one of my deep-rooted fears.

  “Screw you, Rachel!” I said, anger boiling in my blood. “I’m sorry I can’t be as flippant as you and spit in the face of monogamy, but maybe that’s your problem. Maybe if you’d let someone get close to you for once, you’d realize what it’s like to really love someone and be sincerely afraid to lose them.”

  “At least I know when to cut someone loose,” she snapped back.

  “Yeah, as soon as you hook them, you throw them back. You don’t ever give yourself a chance to develop any lasting feelings.”

>   “Well, at least I’m not with a guy who’s wrong for me, who I should have dumped years ago because I’m holding onto some fucking fantasy of what I wanted my life to be like when I was five!”

  I sucked in a deep breath, knowing she was aiming below the belt and had hit me square on. Unfortunately, she didn’t stop her tirade.

  “You are so damn scared of making any decision without weighing out every single option that you never make any decisions at all!”

  “That’s not true,” I spat back in my defense.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot. You choose whatever is safe and easy. You do make decisions, but they’re boring!”

  Rage was boiling in my chest at that point. I was so mad I could hardly form words. “Shut up, Rachel! You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I seethed.

  “I know more than you think,” she said. “And if you think marrying Ben, moving to the suburbs and having 2.3 kids is going to make you happy, then you’re going to wake up at thirty-five and realize you sold out and you hate your life. You’re better than that!”

  I leaned my head back against my headboard and closed my eyes.

  “Dammit, Emily!” Rachel shouted, so loud that I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “Take a goddam risk for once, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll find out how happy you can actually be instead of faking your way through life.”

  “Yeah, and maybe I’ll fail,” I shouted back.

  “Yeah, well at least then you would have tried,” she said, and with that she slammed the phone down.

  Chapter Two

  I felt like I should cry. I hated fighting with Rachel, and usually I didn’t fight back, but ever since I’d started to fall apart at the seams, I’d started challenging her when she’d get on her high-horse and tell me what to do.

  I closed my eyes, waiting for the tears to come. My best friend had just berated me, I’d berated her, and then she’d hung up on me, but tears wouldn’t come. I knew deep down Rachel did what she’d done out of love, so I couldn’t bring myself to be mad, but she’d still pissed me off – mostly because I knew she was right. She knew me better than anyone else, and as she’d just proven, she knew me better than I knew myself at times.