Once Upon an Ever After

Prologue

"So...I hear you picked up a souvenir boyfriend on that road trip of yours," Alan said, turning the conversation personal for the first time that evening.

Of course, we were at the end of our allotted hangout time—with me about to drop him off at his house. And of course, I was in a hurry to get back home. I'd known Alan most of my life, and he never did have a keen sense of timing. Still, I hadn't seen him since high school graduation, and a lot had happened in the last three months.

"That's one way of putting it," I shrugged, pulling my car to a stop under the circling light of the street lamp in front of his parent's modest, two-story home. It was a balmy early September night in Minnesota, and the crickets seemed to know they were running out of time before cold weather set in. Their desperate chorus of chirping drifted in through my open car windows. "I didn't really mean to, he just...refused to give up."

"The last time I refused to give up on a girl, I'm pretty sure it ended in a restraining order," Alan laughed, a tight raspy sound. I wasn't entirely sure he was joking. I'd known him since childhood, and his scrapes with the law bordered on legendary. "It's just kinda weird," he went on, voice carrying blatant intrigue. "You finally pick somebody, and he's on the opposite side of the country. That long distance thing has to be tough."

"Yeah," I said, grimacing. "But I figure if we can handle this, we can handle just about anything." I put my car in park and turned to look at him.

Ever the thrill-seeker, Alan hadn't bothered putting on his seatbelt. He held one arm draped along the passenger window while the rest of his compact form pivoted in my direction. Alan had tousled white-blond hair, eyes as blue as the sky on a subzero day, and the kind of Scandinavian-fair complexion that only came in two shades depending on sun exposure: pasty white, and lobster red. He liked to claim he was descended from some ancient Viking chieftain, but I was reasonably sure it was just an attempt to impress girls...and/or excuse his propensity for causing senseless property damage.

While I was off traipsing around half of North America by car over the summer, Alan was causing car-related problems for roughly half the population of our hometown. First he'd stolen a friend's Jeep and played pinball with it between a guard rail and a handful of other vehicles. Now on probation with his license revoked, he was under suspicion of using a high-powered BB-gun to take out the back windows of several hundred parked cars. He wasn't admitting anything one way or the other, and I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

"I never would have guessed you'd be the type," he went on, puzzling something out aloud.

"What type?" I asked, trying to hurry him to the point. He didn't seem to notice my impatience.

"To up and fall in love with some internet guy you just met." His sandpapery tone was taunting, intended to get a rise out of me.

It worked.

"First of all, Vince and I had been friends for a long time before I met him on the road trip," I corrected, flexing my hands around the steering wheel. "And I didn't 'fall in love'," I added, with a liberal use of air quotes. "I geared up, anchored a rope, and made a controlled descent into love."

Okay, so that didn't sound particularly romantic. 

But oh, how I despised that saying. Sinkholes...abandoned wells...vats of industrial acid—those were the kinds of things people "fall into." They also "fall short," "fall ill," and "fall in line." For me there was no falling involved at all. I’d counted the cost and made a choice, simple as that.

"So, it's serious?" Alan asked, scrutinizing me with an intensity that unsettled my stomach. Or maybe it was the stale scent of cigarette smoke clinging to him that made me queasy—reminding me of someone who didn't deserve a place in my memory.