Saving Cinderella

Chapter Four

For all intents and purposes, Sophie’s room was her sanctuary. It was, for the most part, Taylor-free territory and within its four walls were all of the things that Sophie cherished. Bookcases spilled over with books she’d read, oftentimes more than once, and books that were simply waiting to be consumed.  

Indie label band posters served as wallpaper. Taylor would scoff and tell her she needed to turn on the radio and start listening to popular music if she ever wanted to ‘step into the real world.’ Sophie would be the first to admit that she was guilty of wanting to stick to what she knew, because she liked what she knew. The downside to that was if she wasn’t so stubborn and stuck in her ways, she may have heard of Keaton and his band and not made such a fool of herself earlier at the store.  

She couldn’t have possibly been that much of an idiot though, or he wouldn’t have asked her out for coffee, right? Despite trying to reason with herself, a voice nagged at her, insisting that it wasn’t date coffee, it was gratitude coffee, or far worse, pity coffee.  

She settled into the computer chair before typing “Keaton Stromberg’ into the Google bar and hitting enter. Almost one million results. There were photos, videos, Wikipedia pages, Twitter and much more. Good Lord. She would never be that interesting. Fascination didn’t come in measurable amounts, but if it did, the world’s apparent infatuation level with Keaton would be an astronomically high number—somewhere near one million.

Ugh. Why did she let herself get excited? Why did she allow that adrenaline surge of gooey happiness take over? It was all so discouraging when reality delivered an icy bitch slap to her face. He was famous. Famous. Famous people didn’t date girls like her. They dated girls like Taylor.

She chewed on her bottom lip while she navigated the cyberspace dedicated to Keaton. In every other image of him that she came across, he was smiling. His smile was perfectly imperfect; slightly crooked and was composed of equal parts mischief and charm. His hair was sometimes short and well behaved but other times it was long and reckless. In some pictures he wore glasses, like hers and in some his eyes seemed to almost change color from hazel, to green to almost blue. Despite all of these variables, one constant remained—he was impossibly good looking.

She continued to educate herself on Emblem3, reading the Wikipedia page about them and finally settling onto the videos uploaded to YouTube. She selected one of them, a ballad about being away from home. The thought that Taylor could be right about something worked its way into her mind. 

Maybe she should expand her musical tastes. This song was amazing. It showcased all three of them but it was Keaton who stole her full attention. For someone who was rather soft-spoken in person, he could sure belt out lyrics. She watched, absolutely captivated by his voice.

She was so engrossed in the video that she didn’t hear Taylor open her door or walk to stand beside her, so when she spoke, Sophie nearly fell out of the chair.  Her heart felt like it stopped for a fraction of a second before starting again at ten times it’s normal rate.

Taylor sat down on her computer desk and Sophie made a face, shooing her off. “Eww, now I have to disinfect that.”

“Relax, nerd.” Taylor rolled her eyes before fixing them on the computer monitor.  “I don’t even have words to express the things I’d do to him,” she said, pointing a manicured finger to the screen where Keaton’s face was. “I mean look at him.”

Sophie’s cheeks burned fiercely as she shut the laptop, feeling like Taylor had robbed her of some semi-sacred moment.

Taylor tilted her head to the side and stuck out her bottom lip in an exaggerated pout, “What’s the matter, Sophia? Did Mom and Dad never have the talk about the birds and the bees with you? It starts when a boy and a girl like each other—”