Glass Slippers, Ever After, and Me

by Julie Wright

  “Oh, hey, Lettie. Yeah, he’s in. He’s upstairs. Want to talk to him?”

  My heart took a freefall from my chest to my feet, where it shattered. Of course it shattered. What heart could survive a fall of that magnitude? “No. Thanks, Jazzy. I’ll talk to him later I’m sure.”

  I ended the call and considered making a new dent in my wall with the phone, except I was supposed to leave for my book tour in just a few days which meant I didn’t have enough time to order a new one. I needed my phone for directions, emails, reservations, and schedules.

  I yanked off my heels and threw those at the wall instead.

  He hadn’t even called? He hadn’t even texted?

  He hadn’t even shown up.

  My phone rang in my hand, startling me enough that I let out a scream. I looked down. It was his number. “Too late.” I dismissed his call.

  He called again. I turned my phone off. Now that he wasn’t dead in the gutter, talking to him was the last thing I wanted.

  He could talk to my voice mail all night because I was exhausted and needed to sleep.

  Except I didn’t sleep.

  There might have been tears.

  There might have been cursing.

  There definitely was ice cream.

  But no sleep.

  I awoke the next morning to the worst headache I’d had in my life.

  I rolled over in bed and pulled my phone off the nightstand to check the time. It took several moments to process that my screen was blank even though the phone had been plugged in all night. It wasn’t out of battery.

  The memory hit me hard in the stomach, an ache that made me curl into myself for protection.

  Staying curled into a ball of self-pity wasn’t an option. Packing had to be done to prepare for the book tour. I had to pack in a way that prepared me for all events. There would be interviews on TV, on the radio, and in front of groups of people. There would be the actual signings themselves. There would be the dinners and events with a whole list of people, and I wasn’t sure what half of them actually did. And then there was the casual time, when I’d be alone and want yoga pants and a sweatshirt.

  I’d come a long way from being the woman who had been terrified of going to a work costume party with Anders the year before. Though the thought of all of the social engagements that would be required of me terrified me, I knew that I could get through them. The Char persona so carefully created by Toni had shown me a level of bravery and confidence that hadn’t existed in me before.

  I stared at my luggage. The packing was important, but not most important. I needed to talk to Anders. I needed to know what went down before I decided to hate him or feel sorry for myself.

  What if there was a reasonable explanation?

  I unfurled my body but couldn’t seem to unfurl the ache. How could there be a reasonable explanation? He hadn’t been dead in a gutter, and he’d already taken the day off work. So why was he in the station when I called? No email. No text. No phone call. No actually being there.

  Stop it! Let him explain!

  But . . .

  With a grunt of disgust with myself for having such thorough and fully realized two-sided arguments with myself, I stormed downstairs to his apartment.

  I thumped his door hard enough to require me to apologize again to Ms. Schofield when she peeked out to see who was making all the noise. She grunted at me, mumbled something about liking us better before we were dating, and closed her door at the same time a bleary-eyed Anders opened his.

  “Lettie!” He looked surprised to see me. He then looked down at my clothes and frowned. “When was the last time you left your apartment like that? I almost didn’t recognize you without your full wardrobe, hair, and makeup.”

  I shoved the door so I could enter his apartment and didn’t feel bad when the door connected with his bare toes. “So you’re not dead, but you’re clearly trying to get yourself murdered.”

  “Are you planning on murdering me or just my toes?” he asked.

  His attempt at a joke irritated me. “I just figured that with all the promises you made to be there for me last night, maybe you’d died. It was the only logical explanation, seeing as how you weren’t there for me. And I needed you, Anders. I really needed you.” My voice cracked like ice too thin to hold the weight of my ache.

  “I can explain,” he said. His hands were up in that placating gesture he did whenever he worried I might throw something at him—which I hardly ever did, so his need for such a gesture was idiotic.

  What was I even doing in his apartment demanding an explanation? Shouldn’t he have been the one to come to my apartment to give that of his own free will without it needing to be extracted from him?

  I turned back to his door, rethinking this absurdity of mine when there was packing to be done and running away to be doing. Anders grabbed me around the waist and swung me back to face the inside of his apartment. “I tried to call,” he started.

  “You did not!” I squirmed out of his grasp and spun to face him. He now held the advantage of standing in front of the door to keep me from leaving. “You didn’t call until I called the station.”

  He closed his eyes briefly. Only in that instant did I realize how tired he looked. Of course, he’d worked a graveyard shift and this was basically his middle of the night, but the way he closed his eyes and dragged a hand over his face made him look tired in his soul.

  His demeanor shifted my anger into concern. “Okay, I’m listening. What happened?”

  He led me to his couch.

  “Doug asked me a long time ago if I would be willing to take his shift when his wife went into labor. I agreed. He’s my friend, and it’s not like the favor seemed to be that big of a deal. It was a long time ago, before I knew the launch date, but she isn’t due for another two weeks, so it wasn’t supposed to make a difference regardless.”

  I didn’t interrupt him when he paused. Listening meant listening. If I felt like my heart had been bruised by his absence the night before, he looked like his had been ripped out and flayed open.

  “But she went into labor last night. I was texting Kat to explain why I was at work when a call came. I was going to text you right after I texted Kat. But there wasn’t time. I figured I could still go to your launch party during my lunch break, but . . .”

  I tucked my hand into his.

  “She was only thirty-nine.” Tears leaked out of his eyes. “What kind of thirty-nine-year-old has a heart attack?”

  She was. Was.

  That meant she hadn’t made it.

  Anders stared at where our hands connected. “I couldn’t . . . I tried. Everything. Her kids were there watching from behind where their dad stood begging for us to fix his wife like I was some miracle man with more than CPR on my side. She was dead when we arrived. We couldn’t revive her. I’d just come back when you called. I was trying to decompress for a minute. I’m sorry that in all of that I forgot about the launch, but I did forget. I’m so sorry.”

  I wrapped my arms around him, feeling the scratchy bristles of new-beard growth against my cheek.

  He sagged against me and let me hold him for a long time.

  His reasons for ditching me were worthy. He murmured a few things in Swedish—always reverting to his childhood language when he hurt. I tightened my grip on him, letting him know that we were okay. Whatever else he had going on inside him, on the outside, I was here for him.

  Grief is a poltergeist. It seemed to haunt Anders for the rest of the day and into the next. I knew he was putting on a brave face because I was leaving and would be gone for several weeks, so he tried to keep that poltergeist in his back pocket where I couldn’t see it. But Anders wasn’t good at hiding things.

  Anders needed a pick-me-up to get his mind off the things he couldn’t change. And, since I couldn’t be with him while he worke
d, I decided to give what little bit of relief and help that was in my power.

  While he was gone, I broke into his apartment via the fire escape between our apartments.

  Once inside, I did the kind of deep cleaning for him that I had done for myself when Toni decided to send a camera crew into my apartment. Though Anders was a tidy guy, I’d noticed he’d been letting some things slip as far as organization went lately. Maybe it was because we were dating and his time outside of work was tied up in us, but I didn’t think that was it, because we each had down time from one another thanks to all the work I’d had to do for the book. Toni’s militant whip-cracking gave him plenty of time off from me. Yet, his apartment was becoming its own ecosystem. And, since his couch was more comfortable than mine, we spent enough time in his apartment to make it a benefit to both of us for me to clean it.

  On the wall to the right of his television he’d hung a bunch of pictures he’d taken. Some were of me. Some were of nature. Some were of us. The big one in the middle was a selfie he’d done of us with his nice big camera, which meant our faces took up the whole frame. I stood staring at those photos of us for a while and smiled.

  He’d never put up photos of any of his other girlfriends. Not once in all the time I’d been his neighbor had I ever seen a picture of a female in his apartment aside from a few that were his mom and his sister.

  What a privilege it was to take up such space on his wall and in his life.

  I invaded his laptop and paid for and downloaded a few new albums he’d been wanting but not getting because he was trying to save money. He loved the band Sleepless. They had a good vibe and seemed to make him happy in general. What he could be saving money for that would eclipse his music-purchasing habits eluded me.

  Sneaking into his laptop made me glad I kept mine locked. If he’d ever tried to do the same thing, he might see conversations with Toni telling me to hide him away like he was a terrible, shameful secret.

  Toni had turned my life into a never-ending game of hide-and-seek. Her emails demanding that I hide this from the world and seek after that so the world would think of me as a leader were becoming exhausting. Anders continuing to tag me in posts had actually led to the outcome Toni predicted. People wanted to know: who was this guy I spent so much time with? They wanted to know if he was my Asgard hero. They wanted to know why my status was declared as single when my face showed up in this random guy’s photos. The internet had a way of turning information into the undead. That information made life immortal. People saved screenshots and forwarded those things on and on and on.

  The internet was a very untrustworthy friend.

  Frowning at those thoughts, I tucked the series of desserts I’d made into his fridge and then made my way to his bathroom, where I turned on the shower and let it run hot enough to steam up his mirror. I wrote the words, “I love you” in the steamy mirror, turned off the shower, and went back to the living room area.

  I kissed my finger and placed it over the image of his mouth on the framed selfie of us and then sneaked back out through his window. I laughed to myself as I made my way up the fire escape. And he thought Steve was creepy? I bet Steve never broke into apartments via the fire escape.

  At least I hoped not.

  I locked my window just in case.

  My dad texted to ask if he could take Kat and me out before I left for the book tour. Since time with my father was rare, I agreed immediately, knowing that Anders wouldn’t be upset even though it was the night before I left town.

  The next morning, my phone had a text that said, “Fire escape?”

  I smiled in relief. “If I shouldn’t leave my door unlocked, you probably shouldn’t leave your window unlocked.”

  “Sorry I didn’t text sooner. I got home late and didn’t even bother turning on a light. I fell straight into bed and crashed hard. When I woke up though . . . nice!”

  I settled back onto my bed as we texted back and forth, curling into the coziness of my covers and his words. “I promised I’d do it sometime,” I texted.

  “Sure, but I thought you were kidding.”

  “Promises are like wishes. Don’t make them unless you mean them.”

  “Do you know what I loved best?”

  “The meringue cookies on your counter?” I guessed.

  “Those are awesome, but no. My apartment looks great, and the desserts are bestowed upon a grateful belly, but my favorite was finding a secret message on my mirror. Well-played.”

  “I don’t know anything about any message. Maybe you have a ghost in your bathroom.”

  “How do you know it was the bathroom mirror if you didn’t do it?”

  “Rats! Caught!”

  “Haha. I love you, Lettie. I wish you weren’t leaving.”

  “I love you, too. I wish you were coming with me.” I almost typed that I wished I didn’t have to go, but that would have been a bald-faced lie. I’d always wanted to go on a book tour. It was the thing people talked about but that most authors didn’t get to do because digital tours were more convenient and less expensive for everyone.

  Going on a physical book tour, actually having a speaking circuit, filled me with joy.

  And terror.

  I’d spent weeks preparing my notes and funny anecdotes to share. I’d wanted to try them out on Anders to see what he thought, but with everything going on, we’d had no time. So much of what I’d put into that book had been stolen from parts of him—parts of us. Would a muse recognize the creation he’d inspired? If he heard me talking about the book, would he see the pieces of him layered through each sentence, tucked between each word?

  I really hated that he hadn’t been with me the night of my launch. I’d wanted him there to hold my hand and celebrate with me. I didn’t care that Toni said I should never divulge his existence; I would have announced to everyone at that launch that Anders Nilsson belonged to me.

  I understood his reasons for not being there, but I still hated his absence. And I hated that he would be absent from my life for the next several weeks. I wasn’t even gone and missed him already. The idea of being without him felt like I’d reached one of those levels of hell Dante talked about. “Let the first of the nine circles of torment begin,” I whispered.

  With Anders out of sorts, I told him to go to bed early, and I drove to my mom’s house to help Kat with her homework.

  There’s no downside to the opportunity to be a good girlfriend and a good sister.

  Fortune smiled on me because my mom and Edward were out for the evening. Kat answered the door and yanked me into a hug. “Please say you’ve come to get me forever.”

  “Did FedEx deliver a set of new knives today?” I asked when she released me and gave me the most sorrowful gaze any teenager had ever managed.

  “Can words be considered knives?”

  She followed me into the living room, where I spied her closed laptop, which meant she likely hadn’t started writing her book report. “Can FedEx deliver them?”

  “Felicity sure can.”

  So it was Felicity today. “What did she say?”

  “Felicity hates my culture.” Kat flopped herself down on the couch and groaned.

  I sat next to her and pulled her to me. “What happened?”

  “I was making kleicha, my grandma’s recipe, and I’d messed up the kitchen because the almond flour bag failed. I had to use all the almond flour that was left because of all that got spilled, you know?” She sat up, too irritated in telling the story to calmly lean against me. “So Felicity comes in and freaks ’cause the kitchen’s a mess and then she freaks again when she sees I used all the almond flour because she was gonna use that for the dinner she was making tonight, and now I ruined all of dinner for the entire world, and blah blah blah why can’t I learn to make cupcakes from a box like other kids?”

  “Does she even keep boxed ca
ke mixes in the house?”

  “No. But she sure got mad when I pointed that out to her.”

  “Is that all that happened?” I asked.

  “They went to dinner because I ruined her meal plans.”

  “Did you actually make the kleicha?”

  “Yeah. I mean, why not, right? I already made the mess and was already in trouble.”

  “Mind sharing?”

  She gave me the first real smile of the evening. Without more words, we were up and on the way to the kitchen. While she plated my serving, I took inventory of the mess. It was tough to be torn between wanting to take Kat’s side and understanding why my mom blew up. Kat wasn’t kidding when she’d said she’d experienced flour-bag malfunctions. A fine powder coated pretty much everything in the kitchen.

  I took my date-filled pastry from the plate she handed me and ate with appreciation. I was a sucker for cardamom and cinnamon together.

  Then I helped myself to seconds.

  She sighed. “I did promise my dad I’d clean the kitchen before anything else.” She looked to me as if I’d approve her breaking that promise.

  I didn’t.

  Instead, I helped her clean the kitchen. Kat was great with fashion, and I prayed she’d find success enough to afford a maid, because she hated housecleaning. Together, we made short work of sanitation duty and moved the party back into the living room, where we could work on her book report.

  We were almost done when Edward and Mom returned home. Mom went to the kitchen, and I heard an audible sigh of approval. When a text came in on my phone from my mother, I was surprised. Mom didn’t send me messages.

  “Tell me honestly. Did you clean or did Kat?”

  “We both did,” I texted.

  “Good. As long as she helped.”

  I stared at my phone in wonder. This was normally a conversation she would insist on having in person so we could bring the contention out into the middle of the room where we would all have to feel it.