This is Not a Fairytale, page 1
This is Not a Fairytale
Rachel Dean
Copyright © 2023 Rachel Dean
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Dedicated,
To the most resourceful women in my life,
Those forces to be reckoned with,
Those badass babes.
I love you all.
Thank you.
Sondra Dean
Destiny Kaminski
Britny Kaminski
Faith Ensor
Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale –
Hans Christian Anderson
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About The Author
Books By This Author
Prologue
Happily (N)ever After
She made Cinderella at the Royal Ball look like an old hag with warts and all.
From the top of her professionally highlighted head to the very bottoms of her pumiced, pedicured feet, my sister was the epitome of what every little girl dreamed she'd look like for her fantasy wedding. As she twirled and whirled and even pirouetted with the future ex-husband, she glowed. Happiness put a shimmer to her complexion and a sparkle in her eye.
Or, call me jaded, but maybe the shimmer was simply bought from Covergirl. And I'd bet my left tit that the strappy Jimmy Choos she was rocking had a little something to do with the teary gleam in those baby blues.
Nevertheless I was suitably impressed.
Only Faith could turn a horror story into a fairytale.
Hundreds of awestruck guests oohed and ahhed. Yes, the scene was magical, even a dream. A purple light show tinged everyone in pulsating bruised shadows and I had to admit the effect was pretty damn spectacular. Strobe lights waited to flash at the perimeter of the room, paused until a more Dance, Dance Revolution vibe hit the crowd.
Sidelined with the other wallflowers, I snagged a flute of champagne from a passing penguin. He didn't spare me a second glance and the step-dick was too busy sucking ass with the new in-laws to keep me on visual lockdown to notice. Bubbles tickled my nose as I gulped and I barely suppressed a sneeze. I snatched up another as a new waiter made his rotation.
Like every other gaping idiot in the room, I couldn't take my eyes off the happy-for-now couple. Faith really did look like Cinderella in this moment, from the hair, to the dress, to the flipping tiara on her head. I'm sure she felt like Cinderella, too. Altogether, with the new husband's family jewels hanging around her neck and dangling from her lobes, she was wearing a fortune.
As the first dance was wrapping up, I slipped out of the main ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria, desperately seeking a bathroom. I didn't know if it was to piss or barf just yet.
I had my sights set on my temporary escape from all the happy-happy. Before I shoved through the door, a cold hand gripped my biceps and I jerked to a halt, whirling around on my dangerously high heel to face my mother.
"You need to get back in there, Harmony," she said. Her French tipped nails dug into my skin briefly before she let go. "As soon as the father/daughter dance is over they want you and the rest of the bridal party photographed mingling with the crowd."
"Yes, because there haven't already been enough of us walking, talking and standing," I scoffed with an eye roll. "Now they need us mingling with the commoners."
Besides, that was all my still quivering thighs needed. More discreetly stooping so I leveled out with the other bridesmaids. At five foot nine I towered over all the midgets anyway but put me in these four-inch stilettos and I was suddenly in the nosebleeds.
Her eyes narrowed. "Harmony," she murmured, stepping even closer, until we were nearly boob to chin. Her chin, my unfortunate boobs. "We need to be sure we make the best possible impression we can today."
"What are you talking about?"
"This is Faith's chance," was her only explanation. "No need to ruin it for her."
With a flip of her carefully L'Oréal'd hair, she turned on her heel and sashayed back into the main ballroom.
I watched her retreat until the doors fully closed behind her, abruptly cutting off the burst of canned laughter that had escaped. My chest suddenly felt tight, stomach queasy, throat burning. Barf it was.
Punching into the empty bathroom, I clomped inside, kicking off the ridiculous heels and watching as they skittered clear across the room. The cold tile soothed my aching, burning feet. At the sink, I cranked the water on, resisting the mirror. No need to upset my stomach even further here with all the frills. A few splashes of the cool water to my face, a couple of sips slipping past my lips, and I began to feel my stomach settle.
I braced my hands on the sink, all my weight leaning into my arms, and hung my head. Water dripped off the tip of my nose and the point of my chin.
Deep breath in, long breath out.
I hated charades with all my little heart and soul. And this whole damn thing was one.
A few deep breaths later and I was able to finally eyeball my reflection. A dress stared back at me. Pale lavender, it was supposedly a jersey style dress, one shouldered and draping to the floor. I smoothed the silky fabric down my thighs. It was probably the most elegant thing I'd ever worn and I'd never been more uncomfortable in my whole entire life.
I broke eye contact with myself.
A paper towel was fixing my dripping face and even reducing the raccoon eyes until there was only a thin black line left when a gaggle of giggling girls came stumbling in. They gave me a full ten seconds of silence and the same amount of stillness when they saw me before they broke out even louder than before. I recognized them from the reception. They were from the other side.
"Faith is sooo beautiful," one gushed.
"Derrick is sooo lucky," another simpered.
I was sooo going to be sick again.
They giggled and tittered over to the farthest sink and began glossing and smacking their lips. I finished sopping my face up.
"Can you believe that light show?" the blonde asked.
"Forget that," the blonder laughed. "I can't believe the photo booth."
The blonder-er one was about to offer her own rebuttal to that but I suddenly couldn't pretend to ignore them anymore.
I spun to face them. "Photo booth?"
Being spoken directly to meant they couldn't pretend to ignore me either.
"Um, yeah," one of them grudgingly offered. "It was just unveiled."
"We're taking our turn in it next," blonder-er added.
A ringing started in my ears. Snatching up my discarded heels, I shoved out of the bathroom, marching for the reception. Immediately I was immersed in Top Forty jams and nearly bowled over little old ladies trying to drop it like it was hot, broken hips be damned. Not surprisingly they were all from our side. Only Great-Granny Margaret wasn't trying to pop, lock and drop it. The old biddy sat off by herself like someone had starched her spine, clutching her pocketbook to her as if one of these rich and shameless were gonna steal her Social Security.
Behind the dancing geriatrics I saw it. Fashioned to look like an old timey photo booth, it had already developed quite a crowd, guests searching through bins for colorful boas and funky hats and glasses. Seemed pretty subpar for the in-laws but I couldn't deny it was a hit.
"Hey, Harm!" Dad beckoned.
Clustered together with his fiancé, Faith and the new addition, Dad was fabulous in a fluffy pink boa and a blonde Marilyn Monroe wig. I wish I could say I was embarrassed but I actually got a chuckle over it.
Obviously, the father/daughter dance was done and over with.
I pulled Faith aside. "I guess all those new pencils and paper were for nothing, huh?"
"What are you talking about, Harmony?" she asked, barely sparing me a glance.
"The caricatures," I gritted out. "You asked me to do them for the wedding guests. What's the deal with the photo booth?"
"Derrick's sister suggested it," she said, shrugging, smiling and waving to her new family. "Sorry I didn't get a chance to tell you."
My eyes narrowed. "You owe me for the new materials," I snapped.
"Send me a bill."
Faith lifted the heavy skirting of her dress and rejoined Dad and the others. I'd been dismissed. She never even looked at me.
Dad waved me over.
My chest was beginning to feel tight again. Forcing a smile, I shook my head, making some vague gesture that hopefully meant I'd get with him later in the lamoid photo booth. If I could control my gag
Leaving Faith to her happily never after, I meandered my way through the thrashing crowd, heels dangling from my fingers. The bar was calling my name.
"Heineken, please," I said, propping an elbow on the bar.
The bartender laughed. "Sorry, kid, maybe when you're out of diapers." She slid a Coke over to me instead.
So much for being an open bar. At least it wasn't a Shirley Temple.
Sipping through the straw, I glanced back once and saw Mom and Faith preening for the photographer, arms around each other and huge smiles plastered on their faces. Snorting in disgust, I sucked back the rest of the Coke, barely feeling the burn as it all rushed past my throat.
The strobe lights were working in perfect harmony with the purple lights, the music thumping, almost everyone up and out of their seats, dancing. I hopped up on the stool and accepted another Coke from the bartender.
Just then the main doors opened and a group of latecomers made their arrival. I could tell at once they were from their side. The signs of money were there. Hell, they may as well have been dipped in platinum. As they sauntered in, the guy leading the pack had a perma-smirk going, eyes alight with mischief.
He met my gaze and I knew.
My next mistake had just walked through that door.
Chapter One
Back to a Pumpkin
I rise and shined it with an hour and a half to spare.
"Five more minutes," I mumbled into my pillow, but apparently my alarm was deaf.
Snow White had all the damn luck. I struggled to open my eyes and groped blindly for my blaring cell, thinking a poisoned apple wouldn't be so bad if I could slip back into the land of no consciousness. I ended up finding my Galaxy S23 tangled in the sheets at my feet. Seven swipes of my thumb and the alarm finally dismissed.
The dark room pressed in around me, the silence almost absolute. Only almost because someone was snoring. And the someone definitely wasn't me.
"Shit," I muttered.
It was the very definition of a FML moment as I scrambled out of bed, stumbling over an immobile form. Here I thought I was actually going to be early to school for once. Now I had to get from Greenwich, Connecticut, to New York City. In morning rush hour traffic. Without a car.
Going only by the light of my phone, I snatched up everything that appeared to be clothes from the floor, tippy toeing into Blake's bathroom and shutting the door behind me. I cleared the sleep from my voice and dialed number one of my faves. "How dead set are you on making it to school before lunch?" I asked when Charlie answered.
The Peanuts' wah-wah-wah went off in my ear but at the tail end of it Charlie finally agreed. Sooner than he usually would've, I thought, but I muttered a quick thanks and disconnected.
What were friends for if they couldn't play Uber for you?
I dumped the wad of clothes in my arms onto the floor and sifted mine out of the not mine stuff. A sniff test on my outfit from yesterday barely made me gag. Just a little musty.
Ransacking through Blake's bathroom until I found his cologne, I gave myself a generous spray or three until I was at least smelling good enough to make it until my next shower. Speaking of, that glass enclosed shower of his with the river rock floor and the waterfall spray was tempting. It would have been even more tempting if Charlie wasn't the type of friend who would leave if my ass wasn't waiting on the curb like yesterday's garbage. That was okay, though. I'd do the same to him.
Wearing yesterday's acid wash, high waist skinny jeans and a worn Metallica tee, I hopped back into Blake's bedroom, pulling on my boots.
My coat was a little more difficult to find. As the esteemed Dr. Seuss would say, it wasn't here, it wasn't there, it wasn't anywhere. Actually, crawling on my hands and knees, I found the sleeve waving at me from behind the couch in Blake's lounge area.
The cold February predawn got real close and personal as I stepped out onto Blake's private deck, closing the French doors quietly behind me. Morning breath fogging, I rooted around in my messenger bag until I found my gloves, slipping them on over my numb digits, for all the good that really did. Winter on the East Coast was fucking brutal.
Down a few slippery wooden steps, through a foot of snow running along the sluggish, slushy waters of Long Island Sound, I made it around the Shaw estate, making clear tracks all the way to their front gate. Luckily it was already open, otherwise I would've had to risk life and limb to scale the wrought iron gate. My luck, I would have done a Vlad the Impaler on the top spikes.
I stomped back and forth across the calm and quiet road. My phone lit the dark morning repeatedly as I kept checking the time.
It wasn't really a shock to me that the display showed no missed calls or texts from Mom.
I ignored the tightening in my chest.
Charlie didn't leave me waiting for long. Only ten minutes had passed before his rust bucket of a Caddy came puttering down the road, exhaust coughing, engine wheezing. It bore the remnants of many a collision with things like light poles, parked cars, moving cars, even a United States Postal Service mailbox. I dove into the passenger seat, my whole body frozen, grateful his heat at least worked. Shivers giving me whole body shakes, I waited for all my little bits to defrost.
"How d-did you g-get here so f-f-fast?" I asked through chattering teeth.
Charlie glanced at me as he pulled a U-ey. "I was at Mom's," he said.
That explained it. New Rochelle was a hell of a lot closer than Manhattan.
He gave me the side eye.
"Don't look at m-me like that," I snapped.
"Like what?"
I glared at him. "Like I'm a completely irresponsible teen who spends the night in another state the night before she has school."
"Well," he began, eyebrow cocked.
"Don't start," I said.
“Do we need to stop for the morning after pill?”
“Fucker,” I muttered, digging through my messenger bag, finding my pack of Marlboros and my Bic. I flicked up a flame and inhaled deeply, cracking the window. The cold draft sucked the smoke out of the car.
Charlie was giving me the side eye again. "That's a filthy habit, Harm."
"Sorry to all the rise above the influencers." I rolled my eyes. "Hashtag I don't care."
"You realize that trying to hurt your mom and step-douche is only hurting you, right?" Charlie asked quietly.
I wasn't going down that dead end street right now. "Charles, let's finish this Hallmark moment a little later, okay?"
"I think it was more of a Dr. Phil moment actually," he corrected, but thankfully he left it at that.
Silence, indescribably perfect in every way, settled between us. It only lasted five minutes, long enough for Charlie to take I-95 going south. We were officially in New York. Immediately we were bumper to bumper with a sleek BMW in front of us, a soccer mom grinding up on our ass.
As I stubbed out my cigarette, I was suddenly wishing that hindsight wasn't the only one with perfect vision. If foresight had been working right, I would've nipped some of the mouthwash at Blake's.
Pulling down the visor, I checked my reflection in the cracked mirror. Yikes, damage control was needed here. A lot of it. "Charlie, let me see your manliner," I said, expectant hand out.
Charlie barked out a laugh. "What the fuck do you think I am?" he demanded.
"Gay, duh. God, can't you fit any of the stereotypes?"
"I don't actually think that's a stereotype, dumbass," he said, snorting back another laugh. "That just makes you, I don’t know, ignorant."
"Well, whatever." Smirking, I leaned across the front seat, giving Charlie a juicy smooch on the cheek. "You're my favorite homosexual, Charles."
"Don't let Matt hear you say that." He threw a grin at me. "But you're kinda my favorite hetero."
Rooting through my bag again, I shifted my sketch pad, pencils, a brush, every other miniscule thing out of the way, finally finding my wallet at the very bottom. I pulled out the last few crumpled bills I had to my name for the toll as Charlie got onto the George Washington Bridge, the murky waters of the Hudson frozen in places below us.
As we crept closer and closer to the toll, I returned to my mirror, mirror on the wall situation. The no filtered version of myself stared back at me, gray blue eyes currently too large for my face, the circles under them a light purple way more noticeable because of how ghostly I was. None of that was gonna get fixed until I could raid Ashleigh's locker; it was like Avon threw up all in the damn thing.
