Iwashappy. Stories weren’t finished without the happily ever after, everyone knew that. Mommy had always said it was the most important part of any fairytale.
I smiled.
“Real life isn’t like the stories, Brooklyn,” the boy said, the sad look back in his eyes. Sometimes when he was telling me a story, his eyes would lose that look – but it always came back eventually. “There aren’t any white knights or glass slippers or second chances,” he whispered into the night, not looking at me. “People don’t wake up after eating poisoned apples. They don’t live again after an evil a witch curses them. They just die.”
I looked at the boy with the sad blue eyes, and I saw it – he wasn’t a kid anymore. Whatever had happened to him, whatever brought him here to live in the foster home, had made him stop believing in happily ever afters.
I wanted to tell him that I understood. I recognized the sad look in his eyes – I’d seen it in my own every time I looked in the mirror. I knew why he thought this way; he was protecting himself.
Sometimes, it was easyto feel sad or angry about what had happened to Mommy, but then I’d think about all the fairytales she’d told me. In all of those stories, the princesses had moments when they’d thought they would never get their happy endings, or that the bad guys would win. But eventually the dragons got slayed, the princes came to the rescue, and the princessesdidget their happily ever afters.
I wanted to tell him thatCinderella hadn’t believed either, until her fairy godmother showed up the night of the ball. And of course Snow White would’ve stayed dead, if Prince Charming hadn’t believed in the power of true love’s kiss.
I wanted to make him believewe could have happy endings again, even in a world without mommies or daddies to take care of us.
Mommy used to tell me, “Bee,a very smart man named John Lennon once said, ‘Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.’ Remember that, sweetheart. Tuck it away and keep it with you when you’re having a bad day.” Then she’d kiss my forehead and hug me, her long fingers lightly tickling my sides and coaxing a laugh.
I slipped one hand back into his and squeezed.
“You can call me Bee,” I whispered, my voice trembling as I used it for the first time in months.
It wasn’t what I’d wanted to say, but it was a start.
His head whipped around at the sound of my voice andwhen he looked down at me there was surprise, not sadness, in his eyes.
“Bee,” he whispered back, smiling.
***
“Bee,” Finn whispered, shaking me awake. “Come on,love, wake up. You’re trembling. I think you’re having a nightmare.”
I peeled open my eyes and looked up at him. He was leaning over me, beautiful in the faint moonlight trickling through the window at the end of my bed. His hair was tousled,his voice was rough with sleep, and his tired eyes were slowly clearing and coming alert. Our limbs were still entwined; in sleep I’d turned over to rest my head on his chest, with one arm thrown across his abdomen and my right leg hooked up over his thigh. He had one hand looped around my back, holding me tightly against his side, and the other resting on my hip.
I was typically an active sleeper. My nightmareswere always vivid and I’d toss and turn while caught in their throes, waking up with my sheets a tangled mess around my legs. It seemed that tonight with Finn, though, I’d been happily immobile, pressed against his warmth until he’d woken me.
When my gaze met his, a soft look replaced the anxiety that filled his eyes and the lines of tensionstarted to ease from his face.
“Hey,” he whispered, bringing a hand up to touch mycheek. “You okay?”
I thought back to my dream – it hadn’t been frightening, just confusing. I wasn’t sure where these memories were coming from, or why they had started to reemerge now, so many years later.Maybe between my therapy sessions with Dr. Angelini and playing music again, I’d stirred things that I’d been repressing for over a decade. While I was happy to be regaining some memories from that fuzzy time of my life, it was still an unsettling experience; it felt like my mind was unraveling like a spool of yarn, revealing long-buried people and events I hadn’t even known existed. Finn had been right – Iwastrembling.
“Hi,” I whispered back.
Finn brushed a curl back from my face and tucked it behind my ear. “Was it a nightmare?” he asked.
I nodded, not wanting to explainor knowing how to begin to.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Thegentle look in his eyes told me that I could’ve shared anything with him at that moment, even the story of my mother’s death and the twisted path my life had followed ever since. But I knew, once I told him, the soft look would leave his eyes – replaced by sympathy or, worse, pity.
I shook my head no.I wasn’t ready to see that look in his eyes. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready for that.
“Okay,” he said, leaning down to kiss my forehead gently.I snuggled into his side and felt his arms tighten around me. When his hands started to wander down my body and his mouth found mine, I allowed my mind to go blank and forgot all about my strangely vivid dreams. And as Finn made slow, achingly sweet love to me, the boy with sad eyes, who’d given me the happy endings he was far past believing in, disappeared from my mind altogether.
***
When I woke, the first thing to enter my consciousness was the pungent, unmistakable scent of paint fumes. Cracking open an eye, I saw that it was already midmorning and bright rays of autumn light were streaking across my bedspread. The second thing my bleary mind registered was the fact that I was still naked, and Finn was no longer in bed next to me.
So he left. That’s good – great, even. It’s what I wanted all along.