Fairytale Lost

C
opyright
© 2015 by Lori Hendricks.

A
ll rights reserved
. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the web address below.

L
ori Hendricks
/Illipsium Media, LLC

www.loriahendricks.com

www.illipsium.com

F
airytale Lost
/ Lori Hendricks. -- 1st Ed.

“
I
can’t believe
you are letting this one go,” Isabel repeated for the hundredth time since Emmalyn had her girlfriends meet her at a Friday evening happy hour at her favorite downtown Charlotte bar. She and her latest victim, Grant, had called their relationship quits.

“Isabel, you are not helping at all. So shut up and go get us another round of drinks. Please.” That came from Em’s best-friend-since-second-grade Zavia. If anyone would understand Em’s plight, it would be Zavia. Isabel's frustrated sigh could be heard as she stumbled off her stool toward the bar.

Zavia sighed. “Isabel's right, Em. You really should give him another shot before you give up for good. Six months is too short a time to know if someone is forever material.” She picked up her water glass and took a big gulp, choking on a piece of ice, causing Emmalyn to laugh out loud.

“He was pushy, bossy, and kinda bad in bed. What’s to keep trying?” Em replied, gasping for air.

Isabel returned with three shots of tequila. It took her two tries to get the glasses on the table and three tries to get back on her stool. She grimaced, sticking out her tongue as if she’d tasted something bad. “You never said he was bad in bed. Good riddance.” Isabel swung her shoulder-length, chocolate brown bob out of her face as she picked up one of the shot glasses and held it up for a toast. “If he can’t curl your toes, then he’s of no use and should be shot in the street,” she announced.

“Here, here!” Emmalyn and Zavia picked up their shots, and the three girlfriends clinked glasses. They all downed their shots in one gulp.

“Well,” Zavia started with a smile, “he was the best of the last five at least,”

Em rolled her eyes and tried to get down off her stool. “All this pointless chatter has my bladder begging for mercy. I’ll be back.” She carefully found her footing, proud she was smart enough to remember to switch to flats before heading off to the bar after work. Em made her way to the restroom, fairly drunk, dodging happy-hour patrons with some difficulty, and keeping part of her mind at least off not wetting herself.

After using the restroom, Em washed and dried her hands. Then she took a long look at herself in the mirror. Her hair was still pulled back into her standard tight ballerina bun, but her makeup had more or less worn off. She grabbed a towel and wiped the last of her lipstick off. Taking another glance at her light-
ish
-brown face, she made the same promise to herself that she always did when she dumped a boyfriend. “No more men.” She gave herself a tight nod of encouragement.

The girl at the sink next to her made a face that meant “yeah, right.”

“Seriously. I mean it. From now on, it’s only sex for me, no more relationships.”

“Good luck with that, though you do realize that doesn’t necessarily mean no more men, just no more relationships.”

Emmalyn considered the stranger’s words and frowned. “You’re right. Oh, well. Good thing I like cats.” Em took one more look in the mirror, stuck her tongue out at herself, and followed the stranger out of the bathroom.

As Em wove her way through the crowd, she stopped cold as she saw him. His head turned slightly, and she was absolutely sure the laughing man was him. The sight was instantly sobering. She hid behind a pillar so she could watch him and see who he was with. It looked like he was out with co-workers. Em quickly, if inelegantly, ducked from behind the pillar and headed straight for the table where her friends were still debating whether or not she should have broken things off with Grant.

“Hey, we waited for you.”

Em walked up to the table and quickly drank all three tequila shots that were sitting there.

“Problem?” Zavia asked, her words beginning to slur.

“Of course not!” Em answered quickly with a small belch, causing Isabel and Zavia to exchange glances.

“Okay. So what’s with the bum rush of all three drinks?”

“Nothing. It’s getting late, we should head out. Robert will be here soon.” Em tried to pull her tote bag from under the chair, but her fingers wouldn’t cooperate.

“I thought you didn’t want to go home and be alone tonight.” Zavia narrowed her eyes at her best friend and refused to budge.

“I’m not. I’ll just stay with you tonight.” Em tried to smile, but Zavia wasn’t buying the story.

“Emmalyn Judith! You haven’t stepped foot in my house since we got Jared that snake. Now, what is going on?” Zavia demanded.

As Em tried to come up with a plausible explanation for her behavior that would cause her friends to leave the bar
,
he
walked by with his friends, heading toward the exit. Isabel and Zavia spotted Lukas at the same time and had the same shocked expression on their faces.

Isabel snapped out of the surprise first. “Holy Shit! No wonder you want to get out of here.”

“Shhh! Will you keep your voice down?” whispered Em furiously.

Unfortunately, one of the men from the group recognized Isabel and turned to head their way, intent on saying hello.

“Isabel. Hey, I can’t believe it’s you.” His abrupt change of direction alerted the rest of the group, and they all walked toward the table.

“Fuck me running,” Em mumbled, though not as quietly as she thought. She grabbed her bag off the floor and tried to get away before the guys could get to the table. As per her usual luck, a waiter carrying a tray full of food was passing behind her. She yanked her bag with her full strength, launching directly into the waiter in a tackle that would make any football player proud. She knocked the waiter, all of the food, another patron, and herself to the floor. She was completely covered in spaghetti sauce and pasta, head to toe.

In her fairly drunken stupor, she tried to get her bearings, but the slippery food and flailing body parts made that impossible. Lukas reached a hand out to help Em off the floor.

“Hiya, Emmy.” His booming voice and sexy smile still had the power to make her toes curl. Lukas still had the most luscious-looking lips and smooth, brown skin of any man she’d ever seen. He was perfection and danger rolled into one delicious looking man.

Mortified to her toes, she refused his help and didn’t allow herself to make eye contact. After a few undignified tries, she finally got off the floor. Avoiding Lukas and the very angry waiter, she tried in vain to get the noodles and sauce off her dress and out of her hair.

“Hi,” she mumbled angrily. “I suppose you can’t just pretend you don’t see me and keep moving in whatever direction you were going in before I took out half the bar in an ungraceful swan dive.”

He covered his mouth in a vain attempt to contain his laughter. “Nope.”

A couple of other waiters and waitresses came over to help clean up the mess. One handed her a bunch of napkins. Em tried to smile at her as she thanked her but couldn’t get past her embarrassment. She wiped off her face and picked up her bag.

“I have to go.” She looked at Isabel and Zavia and motioned toward the door. She turned on her heel and stalked off.

Stuck in their stupor, Isabel and Zavia slid off their stools, grabbed their bags, and followed her.

“It was great to see you, Brian. Um, you, too, Lukas.” Isabel reached out and shook Brian’s hand and ran out the door following Em and Zavia.

F
orgetting entirely
that she had a ride on the way, Emmalyn tried desperately to hail a cab. Every single stupid one was carrying a passenger.

“This is some bullshit,” she muttered mostly to herself, as she tried to find the cellphone at the bottom of her humongous tote bag. “If I wanted to walk home, there would be a thousand fucking cabs asking me if I need a lift.”

Her bag slipped off her shoulder and fell to the ground, spilling much of the contents across the sidewalk.

“That’s it. I’ve had enough,” Em yelled to the sky. Then she did something she hadn’t done in almost five years—not coincidentally, the last time she saw Lukas. She crumbled to the sidewalk, broke down, and cried.

Isabel and Zavia walked out of the bar and, seeing their friend crumbled in tears, rushed over to comfort her. Zavia put her arms around Em and began rocking her back and forth, as Isabel scrambled to pick up the dropped items from Em’s bag and stuff them back in.

“Please don’t cry. Everything is gonna be okay. Robert will be here to pick us up in a few minutes, and we’ll get away from this place.” Zavia rubbed Em’s back in an attempt to soothe her friend. She could only imagine how Em felt seeing Lukas again.

“Just leave her alone. She was already upset and sure as hell doesn’t need you making things worse.”

Em and Zavia turned when they heard Isabel's angry voice yelling a few feet away. Lukas and his friends had walked out of the bar. Lukas was trying to walk in the direction where Em and Zavia were sitting on the ground, but Isabel had placed herself between them. The view was almost laughable. Lukas was almost a foot taller than Isabel's five-foot-five frame.

“Look, Isabel, I just want to make sure she’s okay. I didn’t mean to upset her. I didn’t even know she’d be here.” Lukas peered around Isabel to Em but didn’t try to get any closer.

“Whatever you think you need to say doesn’t matter. Just stay away from her. She doesn’t need you!” Isabel began trying to push Lukas toward his friends. Brian took pity on her and the situation and grabbed Lukas’s arm.

“Come on man. Let’s just get out of here,” said Brian with a half smile of empathy.

Lukas took one last look at Emmalyn sitting on the ground, crying her eyes out

because of him, yet again. He started to take a step toward his Emmy but then thought better of it. Their relationship had ended in a very similar scene—the woman he had loved more than his next breath in a mass of tears and pain because of him and his thoughtlessness. He hated always being the source of Emmalyn’s pain. He turned slowly and walked away from the sound of her crying, unable to fix the mess he’d unwittingly created.

Isabel watched him turn away and shot Brian a sad smile in thanks. As she turned back toward Em and Zavia, she saw Zavia’s husband pulling Em off the ground. They piled her in the backseat of Robert’s big, black SUV. Isabel grabbed Em’s bag and jumped in after her.

“What the hell happened? Was that Lukas? And finally, and perhaps I should have started with this one, why is Em covered in what appears to be and smells like marinara sauce?” Robert pulled away from the curb and immediately launched into questioning his wife and her friends.

Zavia touched his arm and gave him a look that said “I’ll tell you later.”

“Okay, where are we going?” he asked cautiously.

“Home,” Zavia replied.

Em finally pulled her head up off the backseat, where Isabel had been rubbing her hair and back. “No, please, take me home,” she said with a hiccup.

“Absolutely not. I’m not leaving you alone tonight.”

“I can’t go to your house if Stanley is still there.” Em looks at Zavia in the rearview mirror with a crooked half smile.

Robert laughed. “Buying that snake was the best money I ever spent. No more girl’s night at my house.”

Zavia punched his arm, then softened the blow with a smile. “Hush up, you.”

“She can come home with me.” Isabel pulled Em into a hug, and Em leaned into her. Zavia looked on worriedly from the front passenger seat. Em hated hugs, hugging, and huggers.

“She must be a total mess,” Zavia thought.

“If I may, I think I have a solution. Why don’t you all go stay at Em’s? She doesn’t have a snake like we do, and she doesn’t live in a closet like you do, Isabel,” Robert suggested.

Isabel made a face at the back of Robert’s head. She turned to Em and asked, “Would that be better? I can grab some stuff and come by your house.”

Em really wanted to be alone. She had never been so embarrassed in her life. She just wanted to crawl under the bed and die. As she replayed the scene at the bar in her head, she began to tear up again.

“You sure you don’t mind if I stay with Emmalyn tonight?” Zavia gave another worried glance to the backseat, then looked back at her husband.

“Obviously, something is going on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Em cry in all the years I’ve known her. Clearly, she needs you.”

“No, Zee, go home. Isabel and I will be fine.” Em knew how much Zavia and Robert hated being apart for longer than eight hours. She’d always wished she could find what her best friend had in Robert, but it never seemed to happen. She once thought it would, but….

Putting that thought out of her head, she tried to pull herself together as they neared the front of Isabel's building.

“Isabel, go ahead and grab your stuff,” Robert instructed. “Then we’ll drop you two at Em’s.”

Em patted Robert’s shoulder as Isabel jumped out of the truck. “Thanks Robbie. I really appreciate you being so understanding.” Em watched Isabel run up the stairs of her building and disappear behind the building’s huge glass doors.

“I fully expect my understanding to be rewarded.” Robert looked a Zavia and wiggled his eyebrows, causing Zavia to roll her eyes and smile.

“Okay, see, now I think I’m going to be sick.” Em finally smiled.

Robert turned to Emmalyn, concern written all over the deep frown in his forehead. “Are you okay? You want me to kick his ass?”

Zavia, Robert, and Emmalyn grew up together, the threesome meeting in the second grade when Em’s mother moved the family to the Charlotte suburbs shortly after divorcing Em’s father. Robert had had a crush on Zavia for as long as any of them could remember. For Zavia, though, it wasn’t love at first sight because she didn’t want the boy next door, but as they all got older and entered high school, and then college, she realized he was always the one for her. Robert’s tenth-grade growth spurt that included facial hair and muscles didn’t hurt either. They married right after college and had their son, Jared, five years later.

“Robbie, not to be mean, but I’m pretty sure he’d pummel you.” Em smiled at him, a full smile, to soften the blow.

“He may be bigger than me and work out and all that, but I’m scrappy.” He flexed his skinny arm muscles, causing both women to burst out in laughter.

“Of course you are sweetie. I don’t think any fighting is necessary. What happened at the restaurant was just… an unfortunate series of events.”

“Yup, just call me Lemony Snickett,” said Em, sarcastically, from the backseat.

“Emmalyn, I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now. I know how much you loved him, but you did the right thing then.”

“Oh really? How can you be so sure?”

“Because I told you to do it. That’s how. And we can all agree I’m always right.” Zavia smiled at her friend and tried not to remember the frighteningly dark period Em went through when she and Lukas broke up five years ago.

Em had always struggled with bouts of depression—especially after her father’s death. After Lukas left, she wasn’t much more than a ghost—going to work and home, never stopping anywhere or going out, for almost a year. Em was always so afraid that she’d run into Lukas that she stopped going anywhere they’d ever been together, going so far as to have her groceries delivered. She slept if she wasn’t working, and it seemed as though she’d never break out of the gloom that surrounded her. During that time, Lukas was transferred to an office on the other side of the country, and Zavia and Isabel were finally able to coax Em out of her funk.

Zavia did not want to go through that again. She needed to talk to Isabel before they took Em home.

“I’m going to run upstairs and see what is taking Isabel so long.” Zavia jumped out of the truck before either Robert or Em could respond.

“That was random,” Robert remarked before going back to scrolling through emails on his phone.

Em smiled at Robert. He really had no clue. “Not really. Zavia is going upstairs to tell Isabel what I should and should not be allowed to do over the next forty-eight hours.”

Robert paused but didn’t look up from his phone. “You’re not going to go after them are you?” He finally looked over at Em, who had a bemused look on her face.

“Nope. I know better than to try and stop Zee when she is in mothering mode. Besides, I’m not really in any position to argue that I can take of myself, am I?”

Z
avia reached
Isabel’s door and knocked twice in rapid succession as she walked in. Isabel’s apartment was a fashion disaster area. She was the only one of the three friends that was what society and the fashion industry deemed “normal sized,” with Zavia being too tall and Em being too hippy. Isabel bought clothes constantly and judging from the disaster area that used to be a living room, she’d finally given up trying to get the clothes in any semblance of order.

“Jesus Zee, what took you so long? I’ve been waiting for you!”

“Sorry. After what happened, my brain isn’t functioning right.” Zavia moved a stack of tee-shirts aside to sit down on the sofa.

Isabel was pacing the tiny room. “When did he get back into town? I thought he promised to let one of us know if he came back.” She too remembered the mess of a woman left behind when Lukas left town before.

“I know. This is a disaster. We can’t let Emmalyn get wrapped up in him and his bullshit again. I don’t think any of us can take it.” Zavia held her head in her hands and grimaced.

“Agreed. I’ll stay with her for the weekend. Hopefully, by Monday she’ll be okay again.” Plan established, Isabel grabbed a bright pink designer tote bag and stuffed clothes and shoes inside.

“Good. I’ll be over tomorrow after Jared’s football game, and we’ll keep her busy. Somehow.” Zavia rose from the sofa to look out the window and started biting her nails. Isabel reached out and smacked her hand.

“Stop that,” Isabel admonished. “One basket case is all I can handle at a time. You’ll go home, fuck your husband, and be okay. Keep yourself together.”

Zavia glared at Isabel but accepted that what she said was true. And she had every intention of thanking Robert properly and reminding him how much she really loved him as soon as Jared went to bed.

“Fine. You’ve made your point. Let’s go before they come up here.” The two turned and headed for the door. As Isabel locked her door, Zavia spoke up.

“Under no circumstances is Lukas allowed near Em. He’ll kill her. She won’t be able to fight him off and she’ll get sucked under again. I don’t see how he’ll know where she lives now, but just in case, call the police if you have to. They do not need to talk or anything else.”

Isabel nodded. “All right. This should be fun,” she sighed as she and Zavia headed down her long hallway towards the elevator bank.

R
obert dropped
the friends off at Em’s townhouse just outside of the city. Her’s was a three-story end unit with a two-car garage on the lower level. Em had been so proud of herself when she’d bought the house.

They went inside and ordered food, giving Em time to wash the pasta sauce out of her hair and off her body before changing into clean clothes. Rejoining Isabel in the kitchen, Em went straight to the refrigerator, grabbing a bottle of wine and two glasses from the cabinet.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink?” Isabel walked around the big granite island with a concerned look on her face.

“Nope. Not even close.” Em poured one glass half full and drank the wine down in one swallow. She didn’t hesitate before pouring another.

“Well, then at least drink tequila. Mixing alcohols will just make you sick and hung over.” Isabel hustled into the living room and grabbed the bottle of tequila off the bar. She headed back to the kitchen quickly and deposited the tequila on the counter. She then grabbed the wine glass out of Em’s hand and the wine bottle off the counter.

“You’re the boss.” Em turned back to the cabinet and grabbed two shot glasses.

“Look, now, no more for me until after we eat.”

“Have it your way. I just want my brain to stop churning.” She poured a shot in each glass, took the first one, and threw the amber liquid back. She did the same with Isabel's.

“Em…,” Isabel put her hand over Em’s and searched her mind for the right thing to say.

“I’m not going to bother saying I’m fine because we both know that would be a lie.” Em walked into the living room and dropped, face first, onto the sofa. “Want to hear the saddest truth of my entire existence?”

Isabel laid back on the chaise across from Em. “Sure.”

“I now understand why no men I date can survive beyond six months,” Em said sadly.

“Really?” Isabel really didn’t like where this was going, but she sensed Em needed to get this off her chest.

“Yup. They aren’t him. They are all like him in some way, but they aren’t him. And after six months of trying to mold them into him and realizing it’s never going to happen, I dump them. How pathetic is that?”

“It’s not that pathetic.”

Em turned her head and looked at her friend, hopeful that the other woman held some answers. Isabel tried to smile, to find some way of reassuring Em but couldn’t quite muster it.

“Isabel, for as long as I’ve known you, you have said that it’s wrong to sugarcoat the truth. Why start now?” She turned her head around and tried to bury her face in the sofa cushions.

“Because you are hurting, and right now, the harsh truth isn’t what you need. Tomorrow I’ll tell you all about the kind of idiot you are.”