NEVERMORE : A twist to the tale

“Don’t tell me you’re still there,” Emma’s ear-splitting voice echoed over the speakerphone.

I ate the last cookie of the freshly baked ones I’d bought this morning. “Fine, I won’t tell you.”

It wasn’t like I camped outside my sister’s high school like some psychopath for more than seven hours.

The moment I said goodbye to her this morning at eight o’clock, I had a lump in my stomach. Her glassy eyes were terrified, and she kept eating her nails in angst. I felt like a mother dropping her child off at school for the first time, and I just couldn’t leave.

“It’s her first day at a public school, and I haven’t seen her since the 10:00 a.m. break. I wonder if she’s okay.” I tapped my fingers against the bench, shut off my computer, and jumped up, ready to spring into action. “Do you think I should see if she’s okay?”

“Of course, because it wouldn’t be weird at all if a woman in her twenties infiltrated the teenagers. You would pass unnoticed and not at all humiliate her.” Emma was full of sarcasm and seemed to run from corner to corner. Maybe she had invested in an exercise bike.

I frowned. “What are you even doing?”

“You’re never going to believe me, but this morning, I was cleaning, and I saw…” She gasped, and I deduced that she had just thrown herself on her sofa. “A ring. A box with a ring.”

“Which ring?”

“Princess cut.”

Obviously.

“You think it’s what I think?” Her voice rose up.

“That you just ruined his marriage proposal? Of course.”

She started screaming and probably jumping on the spot. “I’m so happy! I compulsively cleaned everything.”

“Just like a serial killer after a murder. Not at all suspicious,” I mumbled.

“Finally!” She didn’t pay attention to me. “Finally, Aurore!”

“Let him propose first because if he sucks, it’s not even worth accepting.” I couldn’t help but share my unwanted thoughts.

“At this point, I might even propose to him first!” Her shrill cry pierced the loudspeaker. “I have to leave you—I have to channel my energy! Who knows, maybe it’ll be your day soon too, my fairy godmother!”

“Yeah, right,” I snorted. “Right. No way. No. Nope. Nein. I—” I breathed. This was ridiculous. “I’m not saying anything else.”

She chuckled. “Wenn du es sagst.”

Before I could formulate a “what the hell,” she hung up, and at the same time, the school bell that announced the end of the day rang. I packed my computer in my purse and posted myself in front of the gate next to the only bus driver in town. My heart hammered, hoping Luna had fit in, and I was ready to terrorize anyone who messed with her.

When I took sight of Luna, I almost crossed the gate myself or jumped over it like the students who skipped class. But Luna was not alone, and even more unusual, she was smiling. Two twin girls were alongside her, and they were all laughing together.

My lips curled, and I took a step back, positioning myself further away so I wouldn’t act like the creepy sister waiting for her at the exit. Everything was fine. The past was behind us. The girls exchanged numbers, and Luna waved goodbye, directly finding me—she had noticed me from the start. She ambled toward me, and I acted as if I didn’t even know she was already here with two raised brows and a big smile on.

“You didn’t wait all day for me, did you?” She didn’t buy it.

“Obviously not,” I lied. “So, how did it go?”

“Actually, it was…” She searched through her words, biting on her lower lip. “It was good. Scary but good. I met those two girls. They invited me to their house this week for homework. I think I made some friends.”

“Are you sure they can be trusted?” My mistrustful self couldn’t be tamed, watching the two girls in the distance heading toward a tractor. Their father had come to pick them up in a tractor?

“They were very nice to me, and we had fun. Plus—” She shrugged. “—if they don’t like me, that’s their loss. Someone told me I shouldn’t change who I was to please others and that I was great.”

I could blush. “Aw, you’re sweet.”

“I wasn’t talking about you.” She smirked. “Ajax said that—and yes, I met him twice, and no, I didn’t tell you about it because I thought you needed time.”

Ajax. My heart skipped a beat. It always skipped a beat when it came to him.

I blinked. “Time?”

“Yes. To see you’re meant to be together. Look.” Luna seized my hands. “You see? I’m doing fine. I’m even thinking about applying to some fighting classes. I learned a lot. Here, this place, it’s not for you. I think you came back for me and to help Mom, but you don’t have to anymore. You need to be with him. The one you love.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be with me anymore,” I said. “Time has passed. We haven’t talked in days. He literally lives on the other side of the world. It feels too dreamy to be true sometimes.”

“Maybe he does,” she insisted. “True love is meant to be; it doesn’t mean you don’t have to work hard for it. You’re both dreamers—of course it feels like a dream, Aurore. Have you seen yourself? Someone once said to me that our reality is forged by whatever we want it to be.”

“And let me guess, I’m not the one who said that to you?” Moral of the story, I sucked at pep talk.

“No, it was Ryan.” She had the prettiest smile on. “So, if you can’t fight to get your happy ending, no one can, because I’ve never seen someone as stubborn as you, and I don’t mean it as a compliment.”

“Thank you?” A doubtful frown was plastered on my forehead. “You’re actually right, but I—I don’t want to leave you and let you down again.”

“You never will,” she laughed. “You need to continue to inspire me because that dedication was great, but I want plenty more of them, and if you don’t chase after true love, you’ll suck as an author. You’re both muses to each other.”

“Fine. I—” I dug out my phone. “You really think I should make that grand gesture when I fly off to meet him?”

“Yep.” She nodded. “But you should probably text him first because we’re in the digital age, and that thing about coming to see him unannounced only works in movies.”

“Right.” I pointed a finger at her. “Here goes nothing.”

Me: I’m coming to see you. I need you in my life, Ajax Clemonte.

I did. I sent the text to Ajax.

“Did he reply?” Luna’s eyes widened.

“It’s been a minute.” A long, painful minute.

“Come on,” she groaned, her whole body in turmoil.

“It’s fine. We don’t have to—” I screamed the moment a notification popped up on my phone. “He replied, Luna! He did!”

She urged me through gestures, jumping in place. “Well, open the message!”

Ajax: Not if I’m coming first, my fairy.

“What!” I was certain all the school heard me.

“What did he say?” Luna screamed at her turn.

Ajax sent a picture along with his text.

He was in the middle of nowhere.

My nowhere.

On the road not paved.

On his way.

To see me.

“Oh my god. That man is crazy!” Luna brought her hand to her lips, letting out a laugh. “You have to see him! Oh, this is so good. This is like—”

“I need your help,” I cut her off, carried away by a new energy. “You have contacts; I don’t. And I need a ride.”

Because running in heels in the mud just wouldn’t do.

“Say no more.”

We ran. I didn’t know where we ran to, but we ran. It was only when we arrived by the twins that I understood what my resourceful sister had in mind. I arrived like a fury next to them and pointed my finger at their father’s tractor, who stared at me as if I was the reincarnation of his great-aunt whom he wished to forget.

“Hi, I’m sorry, but can I borrow your tractor? It’s a question of life and death.”

“And happy endings,” Luna added.

“Yes, that too, and you don’t know how much I crave this one.”

The old man’s eyes widened, and for a moment, I thought I had paralyzed him to the spot. His two daughters nonetheless encouraged him. “She’s the sister of our new friend. Help her, Dad.”

He pointed to his tractor at his turn. “You know how to drive this old thing?”

I had countryside blood; plus, if there was one thing my father had taught me, it was how to drive a fucking tractor. It could not be that different from the one I’d received as a gift when I was four years old.

“Evil queens have dragons, so I can manage. Thank you so much—I owe you one!” I climbed the beast with my inappropriate heels, and once seated, I tried to figure out how the thing indeed worked.

I took a shaky breath and slammed on the pedal. I’m one crazy fucking godmother. I engaged the brake with my right foot and turned on the engine, releasing the tractor’s parking brake. My hands tightened on the steering wheel. I had found my carriage.

“Go get him, Aurore!” From the sideline, Luna cheered.

I went in search of Ajax, leaning close to the steering wheel while doing jumps on the unpaved road. I tried to accelerate, but the engine was slow. I cut between the trees by the forest, managing to somehow not hit any, to arrive as quickly as possible. The sky rumbled, covering itself with blackness. I raced toward him as if my life depended on it.

In the distance, I saw a black car, his Aston Martin coming my way—the fluffy pink thing I had hung on its rearview mirror swaying from side to side. I smiled, strands of my static hair in front of my face. The sky rumbled again, the weather turning moist and humid.

“Fuck, how do I stop this shit!” I grumbled, switching the gears to neutral and finding the parking brake.

Ajax parked his car in the middle of the mud and got out with his ironed suit adjusted to perfection. His stare was upon me. He was frowning, a mix of worry and surprise as if he didn’t think I was capable of arriving by tractor yet.

I passed on the rocky road and managed somehow to stop that thing by pressing on the pedal as hard as I could. I ejected myself from the tractor, my shoes with it, and barefoot I paced in his direction.

Lightning hit the sky, and I collided with Ajax’s arms, the air wafting up my nostrils with the fresh, clean scent of him. He hugged me tight, and I swept him away so much when I landed like a rocket. Both of us displayed such a rare and true smile, and our lips met, wet and lustful. He invaded my mouth, and I gave in to him.

We kissed as if there were no tomorrow.

So that was the feeling of having everything you needed. The feeling of finally being on the right side of history because you were loved for who you were, simply and truly. Love—and to think that I had stopped believing in it once ago.

“You have my grumpy heart,” I breathed in between kisses.

“You’re sunshine to me.”

I wanted to drown myself in his eyes.

“That’s because you’re even more grumpy than I am,” I chuckled. “What are you doing here?”

“I want to see the world through your eyes. I don’t care where I am as long as I’m with you. I don’t want to live there without you.”

I opened my eyes. “You left the US?”

“This morning, and I’m not going back unless it’s with you,” he said, caressing my cheeks. “I need you. I need to feel for you. Live for you. I want you to be my muse, my girlfriend, my everything.”

“I love you,” I said, the sky grounding like a bad omen to come. “I may not want the typical ending people would expect us to have, but I want our own happy ending. The one we’ll make together.”

“I couldn’t agree more. I want to watch every dawn with you.” He paused. “I want to see you wear all your dresses, my fairy.”

“And when I run out?”

“I’ll buy you new ones.”

The rain poured.

The storm had hit us again.

A new page was turning.

“Did you read how the story ends?”

“You tell me,” he said, already busy kissing me.

“They lived plentifully, being inspired and loving each other forever and ever with tons of steamy moments.”