My best friends can go ahead and have their stupid fairy tales. I will be a Fantastic Fish Female. My pet fish won’t let me down, they won’t cover me in hair, and there’s zero chance of someone finding my dead body with my face half eaten off.
It’s fine. I’M FINE.
Chapter 2: No One Uses Their Phone for That
“Are you almost home? The donuts are getting cold and Cindy’s freaking out because PJ wrote bedroom on a kitchen-utensil box and now she’s making us check every single box, smacking us with a spatula if we skip one. Hey, did you know the French call their version of donuts pets de nonne which translates to nun’s farts?” Belle asks, her giggle echoing through the speaker in my car.
I resist the urge to yell at her for calling me instead of texting because A—I’m driving, and even though I’ve mastered the art of putting on mascara and eating Taco Bell while operating a moving vehicle, texting is a no-no; and B—As much as my friends annoy me, I can’t help but love Belle and her penchant for spouting off random facts.
“Also, did you drop off our state business license at the courthouse? That has to be turned in by this week or—”
“Don’t get your grandma panties all in a bunch. I’m pulling onto Fairytale Lane as we speak,” I interrupt her.
I choose not to tell her that I got all the way to the courthouse and realized I forgot the paperwork I needed at home and had to turn back around. I take full responsibility for this mistake, and also for now having to turn in this stuff in person, after putting the wrong information on the forms when I initially filed them online. But I don’t need another lecture. When I pulled into the courthouse and realized what I’d done, I screamed so many curse words I ran out of new ones and started making a few up. In case you were wondering, yelling “Dick shit son of a nut cock hole” will indeed get you a few strange looks in a crowded parking lot. After that, I burst into tears, which is completely unacceptable. I am not a crier. Ever. Even more absurd, I apologized to the people around me who witnessed my meltdown. APOLOGIZED. I don’t know what’s happening to me lately. I think I’m having an identity crisis.
“I’m not wearing panties,” Belle whispers loudly. “Vincent hid all my underwear when he did the laundry the other day. It was quite breezy at first, but it’s growing on me. Especially since it gives him easy access, if you know what I mean.”
Silence fills my car as I try to clear my head of any and all images of Belle and Vincent having sex. Don’t get me wrong, he’s big and muscly and hot, and I’m quite proud of my shy, sheltered friend for owning her sexuality and turning into a wildcat, but I don’t need the details. I need to actually be able to sleep at night, thank you very much.
“You know what I mean, right?” Belle asks when the silence gets too much for her. “I mean he can push me up against the wall and easily—”
“Shhhhhhhhhhh . . . I can’t hear you . . . shhhhhhhhh—bad . . . connection . . . shhhhhhhhh . . . going through a tunnel . . . ,” I say before hitting the disconnect-call button on my dashboard screen.
I can’t help but smile, regardless of my shitty morning, as I slowly ease onto my street. Even though I’m not a fan of fairy tales, I love where I live and can let the name of my street slide. It’s a quiet cul-de-sac filled with families, and it doesn’t make me want to murder a small village of people at all that when I moved here, I still had ridiculous hopes and dreams that I myself might someday have a family of my own. It actually took me some time to love this street, and I’m still iffy about the majority of people who live here, considering they’re a bunch of judgmental assholes who mistook me for a harlot homewrecker instead of a brokenhearted divorcée. Cindy was, in fact, one of those judgmental assholes with me at first, but clearly I won her over with my sparkling personality.
My smile falters a bit as I drive down the tree-lined street and pass Cindy’s house with a moving truck in the driveway and a few cars parked out front by the curb. Becoming Cindy’s friend and having her live a few houses down from me was another check mark in the plus column of living on Fairytale Lane. I know PJ’s house is only a few minutes away on the other side of town, but it won’t be the same when I can’t just walk across the street and barge through her front door without knocking whenever I want. As I pull into my driveway and stare through the windshield of my two-story colonial, I push aside my melancholy thoughts and remember how much I love my house. It’s not fancy and it’s half the size of Cindy’s, but it’s still mine, and right now, it’s one of the only things that makes me happy.