Tied (All Torn Up 2)

I have three boxes and two bags of clothes on hangers. As I examine our piles of belongings, it feels very depressing that my entire life, everything I own, fits into just three cardboard boxes.

I’m excited and nervous about the move. Anna has raved endlessly about New York, sending me links and pictures to all the things we can do and see, like museums and aquariums and art shows. New York looks fascinating, busy, and noisy—easy to get lost in. I guess, in some ways, I want to be lost just as much as I don’t want to be. I want to blend, to not stick out. To not be noticed.

People don’t understand when they ask me what I want in life and I answer that I just want to feel safe, warm, and loved. And to see the sky every day. I don’t want money. I don’t want things. I don’t want fancy clothes or cars.

I want my prince, with his beautiful blue eyes and his crooked smile and his messy hair and his scarred-up, inked arms and his crazy grinning fox and my fuzzy white dog and long walks in the forest and Christmas trees and kisses that take my breath away.

Most of all, I want him to ask me to stay, to live in the woods with him in a storybook house surrounded by pretty flowers and wildlife. I want to watch him work and see his smile every day and drink bubble tea. I want to lay in the grass with him and hear his beautiful raspy voice tell me what all his tattoo’s mean. But no matter how hard I hoped, he didn’t ask me to stay.

A knock on the door startles me, and I figure it’s probably one of the other residents coming to say goodbye, or maybe Dr. Reynolds. I cross the room and open the door, but no one is there—but there’s a large rectangular box on the ground. I look toward the other apartments and across the parking lot, but I don’t see anyone. I pick up the box, close the door behind me, and carry it over to the kitchen counter. I don’t have a knife, so I have to rip it open with my fingers. Inside is another white satin box with dried flowers with smiling faces sprinkled on top of it. Cocking my head with curiosity, and with a fast-beating heart, I open the lid, push aside purple tissue paper, and find a brand new leather-bound fairy-tale book with a beautiful illustration on the cover of a two-story cottage, dotted with velvety moss and flowery vines, surrounded by a thick forest, flowers, and hovering hummingbirds. In the distance is a small white bridge over a river.

It’s titled The Story of Us in gold flourishing script and has gold metal embellishments on the corners.

It’s breathtaking.

I turn the page, and there are no words, just a colored illustration of a blond girl walking through the trees with a little white dog at her feet.

Tears spring to my eyes, and my hand covers my mouth as I look over to the next page, which has a man with long blond hair, also walking alone in the woods, with a red fox running in the distance.

Oh, my. It’s us.

I turn the page, and now the couple is walking together, holding hands, and on the next page, they are sitting on a blanket, having a picnic. I turn to the next page, and it’s a winter scene, with snow falling over a decorated Christmas tree in the woods and a white dog and red fox playing with a red bow. Swallowing over the lump forming in my throat, I turn to the next page. Here, the couple is lying in the grass, with puffy white clouds in the sky. On the adjacent page, the girl is sitting in a field of smiling flowers, and the man is watching her from the side. I turn to the last page, and the man is on one knee, proposing, and the girl is smiling down at him.

And on the very last page, they are on a motorcycle, and she’s wearing a white wedding gown, the veil trailing behind them in the wind as they head down a winding road toward the little cottage pictured on the front cover. The white dog and fox are waiting for them on the porch. Five words are typed above them in the clouds, in ornate script: believe in your fairy tale.

Tears fall down my cheeks as I hold the fairy-tale book made of us. My heart hurts as I turn the last page over and find a handwritten note:

Holly,

I’m not a prince. I don’t have a white horse.

But I have a bike. And a ring. And a new house in the woods,