Glass Slippers, Ever After, and Me

by Julie Wright

  The tunes went on as loudly as the late hour allowed. Upbeat tunes were the fuel housework ran on.

  I swept, mopped, scrubbed, and dusted every surface in my home. I reorganized my bookshelves so they were tidy and elegant instead of haphazardly thrown together with books crammed in to fit in every direction available. Since I didn’t actually have enough shelf space for all of the books I owned, the less-impressive titles went into a cardboard box that was stuffed in the back of my closet, where the hanging pants could cover them up and keep them hidden until the people with cameras left. Surely, they wouldn’t be taking those cameras into my closets, would they? Unfortunately, not all of my spare books fit in the box.

  The extra book excess ended up being used as decoration. Books went above the cupboards in the kitchen in that weird dead space that people usually reserved for fake plants and empty baskets they didn’t know what to do with.

  I stacked a few on my coffee table and on the side table in a way that looked artsy and fun. I stripped the bed and put on my newest sheet set that was in the best condition and felt grateful that the comforter was relatively new.

  I took down my curtains and had a moment of silence while I mourned the loss of them before I hung the new white curtains.

  Though the coffee table was purchased and on site, as dictated by the list, the couch had become another issue because it wouldn’t fit in my car, and to have it delivered meant waiting three business days. I knew Toni would never accept crummy excuses, so I called the only person capable of helping me.

  “You want me to use an emergency vehicle to pick up a couch?” Anders asked when I had explained the problem.

  “I don’t have access to any other truck besides this one,” I said.

  “Lettie, you don’t have access to this one either. First, a couch would never fit in it. Second, it’s ethically wrong.”

  “We really couldn’t make the couch fit?”

  “Did you even hear the ethically wrong part?”

  I slumped down to the comfortable couch that I loved but that had somehow offended Toni. “I just don’t know what else to do.”

  Anders was quiet on the other end of the phone call. “You’ve already bought it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lettie, it’s the middle of the night. I’m working a shift right now. Furniture stores are not twenty-four-hour establishments. We couldn’t pick it up until morning anyway.”

  I hadn’t thought about that part. Tired brains caused so many issues. “How do we know they aren’t open all night?”

  “Why would they be?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe if a member of the Mafia murdered someone on a couch, they’d need a quick replacement.”

  “Sometimes, you are a dark and scary person, Charlotte Kingsley.”

  “I’m not trying to be dark. I’m trying to get a new couch.” I mouthed an apology to my old couch.

  Anders sighed dramatically. “What time do they open?”

  I looked it up and found out they opened at eight in the morning. I gave him the information, and he promised I’d have the couch before nine. I hung up, trusting he’d do what he’d said. He was Anders. He always did what he said.

  At three in the morning, the place looked pretty good—a happy coincidence of timing because my body ached for sleep and I had nothing left to give. I set my alarm for eight-thirty. Five and a half hours of sleep would be more than enough.

  At least it would have been if I’d been able to get that much. At three minutes after eight, the prickly feeling you get when someone’s watching you brought me to consciousness. My eyes popped open. Anders stood over me, his smile warm and gentle.

  “You’re beautiful when you sleep,” he said.

  This was, of course, a lie. I had it on the good authority of my sister that I snored. The drool I swept off the side of my mouth acted as a second witness.

  “How did you get in?” I asked, though the fog of sleep cleared from my brain fast enough that I knew the answer even as Anders presented me with the key I kept hidden in the hall.

  He grinned when I rolled my eyes at him. “If you don’t want me to use it, then hide it somewhere else.” He picked up my legs, sat on my apparently unlovable couch, and settled my legs over his lap. “Why are you sleeping out here?”

  “I made my bed and didn’t want to mess it up.”

  He glanced around. “You got all this done last night? I’ve never seen your place look like this!”

  “I had a burst of energy. It helped.”

  “Wow. When you get that burst of energy again, feel free to come scrub down my place.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “We both know you’re the better housekeeper of the two of us.” Anders kept the kind of housecleaning schedule that my mother would approve. He was the kind of guy who even pulled out the refrigerator from against the wall every couple of months to sweep out the stuff that sneaked under it.

  He called himself tidy.

  I called him OCD.

  Anders shrugged at my comment, not arguing it because he couldn’t—not even to save my ego. “Well, this place looks amazing.”

  “Thanks.” I scooted myself to more of a sitting position and considered running my fingers through the tangles of my morning hair, but he’d already seen me and didn’t seem too horrified at the red dreads of morning. “It’s early.”

  “I have a couch all ready and waiting for you in the hall. Don’t ask how I got it up the stairs. The railing may or may not have some damage, but if you don’t tell Shannon, I won’t.”

  I threw my arms around him. “I can’t believe you were able to get it here this fast.”

  “As it turns out, when you gave me the name of the company, I remembered I had a friend there who owed me a favor. I got him to let me in early.”

  “Did you deliver a baby for him?”

  “Nope. I did a photo shoot for his sister’s wedding for free because his mom and dad were tight on funds after an unexpected layoff.”

  Anders really was a good guy.

  “And technically, Chad from work was the one who actually got it. He had a truck and didn’t mind leaving straight from work to pick it up.” Anders didn’t seem to mind accepting my enthusiastic embrace, even if he was giving Chad the credit.

  Anders didn’t stick around to cuddle. He maneuvered out from under my feet. Between him and Chad, the new couch was moved in and settled in its place. The old one that had been with me since I moved into the apartment now sat on the back of Chad’s truck. Chad said he needed a couch for his basement, so I offered him mine in trade for the service he’d rendered. Everything was done before the photographers came. I even managed to get myself dressed and ready.

  Anders didn’t stay long because he’d worked all night and needed sleep. They’d had a call in the night for an old man who’d fallen and shattered his hip. “Go home and call your grandfather,” I said when he told me about his night. The photographer was taking pictures of the knickknack things Toni had made me purchase, so I had a few minutes alone with Anders.

  “I’m sure he’s okay. A guy falling in the States doesn’t mean a guy is falling in Scandinavia.”

  “But you’re thinking about it. You’re worrying about it. I can see it in your eyes.” I gave Anders a gentle shove toward the door. “Go call him and then go to sleep. Lack of sleep makes you a worrywart.”

  He went to the door without further shoving. I followed him. He turned in the open doorway and I tugged at his shirt as I went up on my toes to kiss him goodbye. “Thank you for helping me with the couch.”

  He looked over to where the new couch stood in all its beige, vintage-1950s, and therefore modern, glory. He gave it the stink eye. “We are never going to be able to spill anything on that couch because there’s no way it’ll come clean if we do. Maybe I’ll bring in a camp chair for movies.”r />
  “I plan on keeping it covered with a big blanket. Consider movie night saved.”

  “I love it when you save movie night for me.” He agreed far too readily to be actually agreeable.

  “And that means what?”

  He turned his stink eye on me. “If we’re talking about you making me watch a ten-hour run of The 10th Kingdom with you, then maybe don’t worry about it. I still don’t get what you see in that wolf.”

  I laughed. “Wolf will always be my Hollywood crush. Be glad he’s not real because if he were, you wouldn’t get to do this.” I kissed him again, a slow meandering kiss that made me really hate the three people with camera equipment in my apartment. “Because he’d be doing it instead.”

  Anders grinned in a way that looked wolfish enough to make me laugh. “You do know that the actor from that is probably in his late fifties by now, right?”

  “Not on-screen. On-screen, he is trapped in youth forever, so I’m free to sigh over him.”

  Anders looked back to where Thomas had said he was ready for me. “You know I could have done these pictures for you, right?”

  A twinge of guilt stabbed me. I had asked for his help, but Toni had made her own plans. “I didn’t know this particular photo shoot was happening. I think this is just a jump starter thing for Toni to have material to work with immediately.”

  “We’re ready for you, Char,” Thomas said again.

  “Char?” Anders snorted at that.

  “Yeah, it’s my new identity online, I guess.”

  “According to whom?”

  “According to Toni.”

  “Miss Kingsley?” Thomas was apparently not a man of patience.

  “I’ll call you when I wake up . . . Char.” Anders let out a guffaw, dropped a kiss on my lips, and was gone.

  “I’m really going to hate that name,” I said under my breath as I shut the door and turned to the madness in my apartment.

  It was right to get my space cleaned up because they took pictures of everything. They wanted several of me in my “Everyone Needs Something to Believe in; That’s why Fairy Godmothers Believe in Chocolate!” apron that Kat had made for me after we’d had a late night debating whether or not mythical creatures believed in anything. They wanted pictures of me working on my laptop everywhere: in the bedroom, on the new couch, in the kitchen, on a chair near the window with my new curtains. I changed clothes a dozen or more times and had to restyle my hair several times because it “gave a feel of time passing.”

  They had me holding mugs of cocoa and laughing. Laughing. Seriously. As if I found myself to be hilarious all the time when I was alone in my apartment. They had me reading, putting my feet—in the freaky wool socks from the shopping list—up on the coffee table, and flipping through Lillian’s writing handbook while holding my pen ready to take notes. I actually did take a few notes, since pretending to read didn’t make any sense when I could actually be reading. Thomas the photographer didn’t just take pictures of me. He took pictures of things in my apartment—most of them things that had been purchased days earlier . . . or last night. I wondered if Toni had sent him a list as well.

  At the end of everything, Thomas sent the pictures to me and to Toni. She sent me a list of her favorite pictures along with dates and times to post them. “You’re a writer,” her email said. “Give each one a Pinterest-perfect caption.”

  It sounded like something Nicole from Frankly Eyewear would have said to me. I shook off the negative feelings that Nicole evoked and did as Toni told me.

  Anders showed up unannounced in my apartment a few days into my new social media me. “Should I be offended that your new online identity isn’t following me back?” he said as he sat on my new couch and scowled because he didn’t think it was very comfortable.

  It wasn’t.

  I squeezed my eyes shut as if I could make his question disappear by not looking at it. “Sorry. It’s not my fault.”

  “Not your fault that your account that you control isn’t following me? What, is Char too good for me?” He squiggled around in an obvious effort to snuggle into the couch, but the cushions weren’t made for snuggling. He pulled out one of the blue and green pillows from behind him and dropped it on the floor.

  “Toni’s in control of that account right now. She’s given me a list of people I’m allowed to follow.”

  “And the man who kisses you good night doesn’t make the short list?”

  I sat down next to him so we could snuggle into each other. The couch might not be comfortable, but we were comfortable to each other, even if Anders didn’t like Toni’s list of things I must do and must be.

  He relaxed against me, our closeness taking the edge off his irritation. “The pictures that guy from the other day took aren’t bad.”

  “Of course they aren’t. They’re of me.” I flipped my hair back and batted my eyelashes.

  “But they don’t really look like you.”

  “Ouch.” I pulled away from him and turned so he could see my full glare.

  He rolled his eyes and pulled me back towards him. “They don’t look like you, which is why they’re only not bad rather than absolutely brilliant.”

  “Nice save from my resident medic.”

  “So are you really never going to follow me?” he asked, resting his chin on my head.

  “Toni said after the book releases, my account will be free to do those sorts of things. She told me family and friends would be understanding about the need to establish the accounts for professional reasons and not personal ones.”

  He grunted, obviously not loving my response, but he dropped the subject.

  Unfortunately, Anders was only the first of several people who weren’t happy to not get follow backs.

  Kat was next, along with several of my friends from writer’s groups and from Frankly Eyewear. Luckily, my mom wasn’t aware of the new account, or I would’ve heard much more than basic grumbling. Wanting to make sure my mom found out about the book deal from me and not an online source, I invited her, Edward, and Kat all to dinner—my treat.

  We went to Mistral, a nicer French restaurant in the South End. It was my mom’s favorite, so the setting felt perfect. We arranged to meet at the restaurant. Breaking bread with the family did not mean I wanted to be imprisoned in a vehicle with the family.

  I arrived early, mostly because Mom hated tardiness, and if I was there before her, it would add another point in my favor. While I sat at the restaurant, absently smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles in the tablecloth, a text from Kat made my screen glow. “Your mom just asked my dad if he knew why you were taking us out to dinner. When he said IDK, she said it was probably to announce that you’re pregnant. I wanted to be the first to wish you congratulations.”

  I let out a loud-enough-to-be-embarrassing guffaw and checked to see if anyone had been disturbed by my outburst. A few heads turned my direction but turned away almost as quickly upon finding me not all that interesting.

  “What did you say?” I texted back.

  She sent me a smiling-devil-with horns emoji. “I didn’t say anything until she asked if I knew anything. I told her that your news definitely started with the letter p, but that it wasn’t my place to share your news. She’s now fretting.”

  I kept my laugh quiet this time as I texted, “You are evil.”

  “But in the best way, right?”

  “Of course.”

  They arrived several minutes later. Mom, who wanted her daughter to be the first woman on the moon, not just another number for unwed mother statistics, was definitely fretting. She rushed to our table, the staccato beat of her high heels on the floor. She pulled me up and hugged me hard. “We’ll get through this,” she said before I could say anything.

  Kat looked amused, Edward looked horrified, and I couldn’t say what I looked like. But I felt somewhere
between the two. “Mom, there’s nothing to get through. I’m fine. Sit down. Let’s order dinner.”

  The waiter gave us a moment to be seated before he approached us for the drink order. My mother had been pummeling me with questions but fell silent at his approach. She wasn’t the sort of woman who handled family matters in a public setting. She immediately picked up again as soon as he’d moved out of earshot.

  “Mom, calm down,” I said. “Whatever you’re thinking is wrong, so relax.”

  “I just cannot believe that in this modern day, where women have so many options—”

  “Mom!” I had to interrupt before she went too far down that road. She fell silent. “I brought you all here to be with me so we could celebrate my good news. I’m published.”

  She opened her mouth in what was sure to be a lecture on how I’d failed my family, my gender, and my liberal education when the words actually made impact with her brain. “You’re what?”

  “My first book is being published. It releases in October.”

  She waited a moment before responding—long enough to allow Edward the time to give me a hearty congratulations and a one-armed hug that nearly pulled me out of my seat.

  “Someone is actually publishing one of those fairy tales?” she asked.

  I sighed but tried not to take her words personally. It was how she communicated. “Well, not exactly. The book is called The Cinderella Fiction, but it’s nonfiction.”

  “How does a nonfiction book have the words Cinderella and fiction in the title and still qualify as nonfiction?”

  I explained it as best I could, but the explanation never hit its mark. She asked me how much I paid the publisher, to which I replied that the publisher paid me. She asked me who sent the book in for me, to which I explained that the entire submission process had been done by me, not by favors friends owed me. She wanted to know who was going to buy a nonfiction book with the word fiction in the title, to which I explained that I didn’t know but that I’d been paid enough to assume that a lot of people would be buying it. She wanted to know why anyone would be taking self-help advice from a woman who had an apartment full of hand-me-downs.