Glass Slippers, Ever After, and Me

by Julie Wright

  “Right. Anders told me.”

  “I know. It seems he’s got you in the middle of everything.”

  What did that mean?

  “Sorry,” she said, finally taking note of my discomfort and confusion. “I’m tired and not feeling well. I don’t mean to be hostile.”

  Wanting his sister to like me, and feeling emboldened by her apology, I asked, “Have you eaten dinner yet? Because I haven’t. If Anders has already gone to work, and if you have nowhere to be, you’re welcome to come upstairs and join me for dinner.”

  She hesitated, which meant she hadn’t eaten and was, in fact, hungry. The hesitation also meant she wasn’t all too sure about going upstairs to my apartment.

  “I’m a good cook,” I said.

  “So Anders tells me.” She considered a long time more before she said, “Thank you. I’d be happy to join you, if you’re sure you don’t mind. Anders told me to order takeout, but I’m not really an eat-out kind of person. I’d just gone outside to see if there was anything close by, but . . .”

  Right. Picky eater. Anders had told me about that. Maybe inviting her over for food wasn’t a good idea. But the offer was already out there. Plus, I’d already promised Anders I’d help him keep her fed.

  So I left his apartment, and waited a moment while she turned off the lights. In a last-moment decision, I went back into the apartment and locked his living room window. I don’t know why the idea of her sleeping by that window made me worry about leaving it unlocked, especially when I was the only one who ever used that particular entrance and his sister could clearly take care of herself, but locking it gave me some measure of relief.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Anders must have told you that it makes me nervous to be alone at night.”

  I shook my head and led her to the stairwell. “Actually, he never mentioned it. I just thought you might not like having that unlocked when you’re in a new neighborhood—not that the neighborhood isn’t safe; it’s totally safe.” My dad had actually checked on that when I was looking for a place to live. He’d given me a list of neighborhoods I was allowed to live in with his blessing, due to their low crime rates. He’d also given me a list of neighborhoods that I was never, under any circumstances, allowed to move to no matter how desperate I was to be out on my own.

  Dad didn’t communicate much, but when he did, that communication was full to the brim with love.

  Up in my apartment, I decided to get honest about food. If she was picky, then knowing what she liked and didn’t like would be half the battle in winning her over with flavor.

  When she let me know she was vegetarian, I did an inward eye roll at Anders. Vegetarian didn’t make her picky; it just meant she had dietary restrictions. Easy enough. I had good ingredients, thanks to a shopping trip I’d made earlier that day, and so I made the honeydew melon shrimp dish that I made for Anders on occasion, only for her I left out the shrimp. I also sautéed peppers, carrots, snow peas, and onions for a quick stir-fry to put over jasmine rice.

  With the warming of my stove top, Magdalena had warmed to me. The prickly beginning had become a distant memory. It amazed me how food brought people together, how a cozy table and steaming plates forced communication—at least when electronics didn’t get in the way.

  I learned a lot about my guest in the course of eating. She loved living in Canada because the weather was so similar to her growing-up years in Sweden. She liked her job as a veterinarian . . . at least most of the time. She loved the pets but didn’t always love the owners. She missed her parents and had no idea how they ever ended up in Texas, of all places, where it was hot and humid and nothing like home at all. She loved her grandfather as much as Anders did. And she loved Anders.

  After only an hour and a half with the woman, the most important thing I had discovered about her was that she would do anything for her brother.

  With the meal all eaten, Magdalena sighed. “I guess I should help you clean up and then get out of your hair. It was really generous of you to invite me over. I can see why my brother cares about you.”

  She had a slight accent—enough of one to tell that she wasn’t from the United States, but not enough of one to reveal her origins. Anders had no accent at all, at least not when he was speaking English.

  When he spoke Swedish—which I loved, but he didn’t do very often—the accent became evident.

  “How long are you in town for, again?” I asked as we worked on setting the kitchen back in order.

  “A week. My husband had to work out of town for a while, so I came here. I hate being left home alone, and my clinic is doing well enough to hire a new doctor, so it worked out. My husband will join me when I leave for Sweden to help Farfar. It’s a good time to visit, and I really miss him. It’s been too long. I don’t get back as often as Anders does. Things always seem to get in the way.”

  “Life is like that. We’re all like that.”

  “Not Anders.” She gave an indulgent smile, as if he were there to see it. Then she sighed and looked toward my door as if it had done something to personally offend her. “I should get going. It’s late, and I keep trespassing on your hospitality.”

  “You know,” I said, “Anders doesn’t usually get in until early in the morning, which means when he comes in, he’ll likely wake you up. And then when you want to be awake a few hours later, he’ll need to be sleeping still, so you’ll have to be totally silent or risk waking him up. Why don’t you just spend the night here? That way, you don’t have to worry about him, and he won’t have to worry about you.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “What?” I knew what she meant but pretended I didn’t.

  “You’re just trying to make me feel better about being afraid to be alone at night.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to be alone at night.”

  She pointed a dishcloth at me. “You say that, but you live alone. This is not something that bothers you.”

  “Just because it doesn’t bother me doesn’t mean it shouldn’t bother you. We all have our vulnerable places. Mine are just different from yours.”

  Magdalena let out a laugh. “It’s kind of ridiculous, though, isn’t it? That I should worry, I mean. I’m thirty-three and still afraid of the dark.”

  I laughed too, glad that she was warming up to me. If people can share their fears, then they can be friends. It mattered to me that Magdalena and I became friends. “Being afraid of the dark isn’t an age issue. It’s a dark issue.”

  She laughed again while wiping out the sink. “How so?”

  “Things can hide in the dark no matter how old you are. It’s not like we get better night vision as we age, right? If anything, our vision gets worse and more things can hide. We’re always afraid of what we don’t know.”

  “You make a good case for me.” She rinsed and folded the dishcloth, then left it on the sink’s edge and turned to face me directly. “Thank you. I would like to stay here. I will sleep much better.”

  “Good. I’ll send Anders a text letting him know, so he doesn’t panic when he gets home. Let’s go get your stuff.”

  She ended up sleeping on the couch, even though I offered her my room. She said if I got stubborn about it, she’d just go sleep downstairs. I let her win because I believed she meant it. We didn’t stay up late into the night talking like old pals or anything, but our rather chilly first meeting had warmed considerably.

  Anders had returned my text with gratitude and promises to make it up to me, although there was nothing to make up. I enjoyed my time with his sister.

  I enjoyed more the fact that Anders returned my text.

  I didn’t goad him about responding only after basically being told that I’d kidnapped his sister. He probably had good reasons for not texting earlier—like being out on a call—that he’d explain later. For me to get all paranoid and weir
d on him would be . . . well, paranoid and weird. Even Chloe the ex-not-really-fiancée hadn’t ever been paranoid—otherwise she would have put her foot down about his having me for a best friend. The fact that she didn’t mind our unique friendship had been a likable trait in her.

  Or maybe she did mind and just never said anything.

  Magdalena woke up later than I did and stayed at my apartment until Anders called her to find out if I really had kidnapped her. Hanging out likely entertained me more than her. Since she knew I enjoyed cooking, she gave me a few Swedish recipes to try. She also told me fun stories about Anders growing up: how quickly he trusted and how easy it was for her to trick him and how she felt only slightly guilty about that now.

  Anders finally had to come up to get his sister, since she didn’t go down immediately when he called. The way she acted when he did show up—like she was trying to prove to him that she and I were friends—made it seem that she’d made him come get her on purpose. She wanted to force us into the same space together at the same time.

  She even forced physical contact between us by chiding her brother, saying, “Seriously, Anders? You’re not even going to give your girlfriend a farewell hug or kiss or anything? I promise not to be scandalized if you do.”

  “Mags,” he said, with what seemed like an edge of warning.

  “Don’t be so boring, Anders. Kiss your girlfriend goodbye, or I’m not leaving.”

  He did kiss me then and hugged me, too. Though it started out stiff and almost grudging, he softened into the embrace almost immediately.

  “He’s like that,” Magdalena said with a laugh as she stood outside my door waiting for him. “He would get so irritated with me that he’d refuse to talk to me, but then Mom would make us hug. Turns out Anders is incapable of being irritated for very long. As long as you can make him pretend to play nice, he’s all in after that.”

  I tried to look him in the eye to see if he could clue me in as to what she was talking about, but he turned away too quickly. Irritated over what?

  They left. But not long after, an unknown number texted me telling me to save the number in my phone and claiming to be Magdalena. She then invited me to go sightseeing with them.

  Part of me wanted to decline. After all . . . Anders hadn’t been the one to extend the invitation. But I also didn’t want to decline, because I liked Magdalena and because I wanted to see Anders.

  I accepted. The things I wanted outweighed the things I feared. Wasn’t overcoming your fears, to get what you wanted most, what I tried to teach in my book?

  We wandered the city of Boston, through the Common and to several of the sites on the Freedom Trail. Anders and Mags—which I learned she preferred to be called—loved mentioning that Leif Erikson was actually the first European to walk on American soil.

  That evening, I fixed us a dinner that catered to all taste buds involved, and Mags declared me the best find in all of Boston. They left right after cleaning up, because they had family things to discuss.

  Pretty much every day for the next few days followed a similar pattern. If Anders worked at night, Mags spent the night on my couch. She didn’t even complain that the couch was the most uncomfortable thing ever created. When Anders woke up, we all went out to explore the city—which was fun because . . . my city. I loved my city. Taking Mags around to see the historical sites and the Freedom Trail reminded me of all the reasons I loved my city and my country.

  Anders teased me for getting choked up and actually shedding tears at a few of the places. He would whisper in my ear, “These may be your Founding Fathers, but Leif Erikson was the true discoverer.”

  I’d shove him away when he said such things, and Mags would laugh.

  Her time with us, or my time with them, depending on how I looked at it, had become something I looked forward to each day.

  Close to the end of her stay, Mags thanked me for feeding her so often, since she’d likely have starved under what she called Anders’s limited take-out abilities. I defended him, because his ordering takeout had saved my own life on so many occasions.

  “Can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but . . . why did you not like me when we first met?”

  Mags opened her mouth in what was sure to be a denial, but then she shrugged. “Anders had been showing me your posts online that morning. A lot of the comments on them had questions regarding him and the pictures you’re in with him. We read them. You evaded most of the questions, but in one of them, you flat-out denied dating anyone. You called him an acquaintance—said he was nothing all that important to you. It hurt him. What hurts him hurts me.”

  I swallowed the guilt and hated the acrid aftertaste it left in my mouth. I remembered that particular response. I’d written it late one night, when my brain could barely focus on my screen. I remembered wanting everyone and their questions to just go away so I could sleep, but I knew that Toni expected me to be engaged with my fans.

  Anders had seen it.

  It had never occurred to me that he might read through the comments—especially when there were dozens and sometimes hundreds of them.

  Magdalena didn’t seem to be censuring me. I’d asked an honest question, and she’d given the honest answer.

  “I don’t have an excuse,” I started to say.

  She put her hand out and shook her head. “And I don’t need to hear an excuse. This isn’t about me—as much as I like everything to be about me. This is about the two of you and should be discussed between the two of you.”

  “What changed your mind about me?”

  “You offered to make me dinner.” She laughed and shook her head. “Okay, no. That isn’t what changed my mind. You just seemed like you cared too much about him to mean what you’d said online. Anyway, I know you have things to talk about with him, but I need to steal Anders completely for the next day and a half. We still have schedule stuff we need to work out. Is that okay with you?”

  “Totally okay,” I said, and found that it really was. I needed some time to work through what to say to Anders, and the need to write gnawed at my insides like a dog with a bone. I hadn’t made the time, the priority, or the effort to put new words to the page. With the book launched and the tour complete, it was time to get writing.

  I sat on the couch, opened the laptop, stretched my fingers in preparation, and . . . went online to read reviews of my book instead.

  Seriously. I hated my lack of self-control.

  The praise for the book was overwhelming. I read the words that others used to describe my words. Life-changing. Game changer. Empowering. Charming. Hilarious. Healing. Honest.

  I felt guilty because of the honest part.

  Honest.

  Anders couldn’t think of me as honest, since I’d lied about my relationship with him. The guilt drove me away from the review sites and to my online writing groups, with the hope that someone there would be able to inspire me to stop dwelling on the book that was out and start focusing on something new—something my agent could sell.

  I opened Facebook and found one of my favorite sprint partners. I private-messaged her. “Hey Jade. Working on anything new lately?” I typed.

  “Lettie! Girl, where have you been?!?! Heidi and I were just talking about how you’re never online anymore! Well, you’re online but not available to chat like you used to be.”

  “Things have been busy lately, with everything. What’s new with you?”

  I’d avoided them because it had felt awkward after my career took such a huge leap forward. They’d made some comments that felt like veiled insults.

  “I finished a new manuscript and am getting it ready to submit. Hey! Would you mind if I used you as a reference with your agent?”

  “Not at all. Use me in whatever way you can. I was wondering . . . want to do a sprint? I really need to exercise my writing muscles.”<
br />
  “I’d love to! And what’s up? Why has it been so long since you took your writer brain out for a walk?”

  I lightly tapped on the keys but not hard enough to actually press any of them.

  How to explain why I’d gone MIA.

  “Long story short—just having trouble figuring out what to write next. Kind of in a weird place.”

  I’d opened a blank Word document, ready to get to the sprint, when Jade’s next message popped up.

  “Really? Aren’t you the poster child for motivation nowadays? How would it look to your public if they knew you were having trouble doing the one thing you profess to love so much?”

  My fingers froze on the keys. Admitting that I lacked in any way, on a digital platform that could be captured with a screenshot and sent out to the world, was not anywhere on any of Toni’s lists.

  But Jade’s words had been sarcastic, right? It was hard to tell. The little dots indicated she was typing. I always found it maddening to know someone was typing when I couldn’t see their words. I hoped there would be something friendlier in her next message. Finally, the response popped up. “Or maybe the weird place is trying to figure out what to do with your dragon’s horde of advance money, since you got lucky and are now too famous for the rest of us.”

  The smile that had found its way to my face at the beginning of our conversation sank. What she said was fine. But the bite to it was hard to ignore.

  “So sprint?” The chime announcing that a new message had popped up startled me.

  “Sure,” I wrote back.

  “Go . . . now!” she wrote.

  But I didn’t go.

  No words. Only worries filled the time between Jade saying go and, twenty minutes later, when she wrote, “Stop!”

  “How many for you?” she asked.

  I made up a number, one that would seem like I had tried but that would guarantee I lost the sprint race. Knowing how fast Jade typed and what her averages were helped me make a good guess.