Happily Ever Afters

by Elise Bryant

I’m right in the middle of writing an important scene. Tallulah and Thomas have found shelter from the rain, thanks to a conveniently located abandoned cabin, and they’re standing face-to-face, so close there’s an electric charge between the tips of their noses. And when he reaches up to pluck an eyelash off her cheek and tells her to make a wish, it’s clear from the urgency of her sigh and the longing in her dark brown eyes that the only thing she’s wishing for is him.

They just became about our relationships with my own made-up boys instead of someone else’s. Like, fan fiction of our own lives. It wasn’t like we could go to a bookstore and find many fluffy love stories with girls who looked like us in them.

Yeah, growing up with him is hard. But his function in life isn’t to teach us something. He’s a human being, and this is his life, happening right now.

My general aesthetic is this: I don’t want to stand out. Like, if someone does happen to notice me, I want them to nod and think, “That was a very subtle way of mixing patterns,” or “The embroidered details on that Peter Pan collar are understated and cute.”

Is the whole point of writing having other people read what you write? I’ve never really thought about it like that before, because I mostly write for my own enjoyment, but it makes sense, I guess. Why else would we have books? If that wasn’t the point, writers would just keep their drafts saved on their computers, for their eyes only.

“No offense, but you low-key had some Christopher Robin vibes going on there. Or like one of those old-timey, creepy ghost boys in movies about haunted houses? They look all sweet and normal until, like, their faces rip apart and maggots come out or something. . . . I’m really doing you a favor.”

LOL

“Oh, don’t let her looks fool you,” he mutters. “Her exterior may be manic pixie dream girl, but inside she’s all Regina George.”

Writing has always come easy to me. I mean, yeah, I’ve gotten writer’s block before, and there are nights when it takes me a whole hour to write a sentence the way it’s supposed to be. But I’ve always known that the words are there—have always been there—floating in the air above my head, waiting for me to snatch them down and arrange them just right.

I had almost forgotten about the first half of the day, even though it felt like the end of the world at the time. I feel like my life will forever be measured in PLW (Pre Loss of Words) and ALW (After Loss of Words) time.

Her words hit me like an arrow to a target—because they echo the fear that’s been whispering in my brain for the past few weeks: Writing is you. And if you don’t have writing, then who are you?

I don’t know how much faith I have in this plan. I still think it’s a long shot that Caroline could help me fall in love from four hundred miles away, let alone with Nico. And it’s even more unlikely that this will fix my probably permanent writer’s block. But I nod my head along with her anyway, throwing in a few suggestions and vetoing things that are a little too ridiculous (I will not get hit by a car).

When I first figured that out, realized my lack of words was my new normal, it was a gaping wound. This thing that I’ve loved for so long wasn’t mine anymore, and someone might as well have chopped off my arm or something.

It’s not as if I don’t think I’m pretty. When I look in the mirror, I generally like what I see. I don’t wish I had straight hair or lighter skin. It’s just that, to most guys, my kind of pretty isn’t the same as Poppy’s kind of pretty—even with the gray hair. I’m an acquired taste, and Poppy is, like, pizza. Pizza doesn’t have to worry if people are just ordering it to look cool or complete some type of image. No one goes through a pizza phase. Pizza is universal.

The feeling of not being in control sounds awful, because I love being in control. I wish I could be even more in control than I am normally—why isn’t there a drink for that?

I hate dancing. Everyone always expects me to be good at it, to perform their idea of what Blackness means, but I’m not. Like, not at all. I think it’s because I can’t let go in the way that you have to in order to dance. I try to always be measured and controlled, and dancing is none of that. I care too much about what I look like, how each movement looks to others, so moving my body like that would just be exhausting. So I don’t dance. Ever. Well, in public, at least.

“I’ve got all the lines for you, as many lines as you could possibly dream of, because you are deserving of lines from here to eternity.”

😍

That’s really the point of romance as a genre, I think: girls—women—asking for what they want, without apology.”