Don't Be In Love

by Liana Cincotti

I turned to watch. The live-action Cinderella was playing. Cinderella stood at the top of a grand staircase in her blue ball gown. Then it cut to Prince Charming looking up at her in awe, meeting her at the bottom of the stairs. ​“I want that. That’s my dream,” she whispered. You already have so much, I wanted to tell her. Parents, comfortability, security. How’s that not already a dream? “It’s a movie, Brina. Just a fairytale.” I brushed her bangs out of her face. “I know. But someone wrote that movie. And that writing couldn’t have all been fictional. Something real must’ve inspired it.” I closed my mouth and watched the scene with her. Prince Charming pulled Cinderella in and out of his chest, letting her sparkling skirts spin around her ankles. “One day, I’m going to have a husband that looks at me like that,” she thought aloud, words muffled by the cushion. “And we’re going to have kids and live in a beautiful house with blue shutters. We’ll make pies together, take the kids to flute recitals, create Christmas traditions, and compile new stockings when we have grandkids. We’ll grow old together, and even when I’m eighty, he’ll still look at me like that.” She exhaled, her eyes falling shut again. “It’d be perfect if Dorian turned out to be that person.”