Sometimes it hurt more than it actually did. She'd lay atop her neatly made bed while the aunts made the girls' triple fudge sundaes and showed them how to make the lilies outside her window sway to the tune of their favorite song. Just because he wouldn't die when she loved him didn't mean he'd never leave, it didn't mean that he couldn't kiss her forehead and tell her that he'd still come whenever she called.
But when she did find the strength to call it wasn't him she wanted. It was Gillian. It was always Gillian.
"Dream boys are overrated." Gillian smiled, tracing the lines of her sister's face, "Eventually you have to wake up."
"I know," she sighed, puffing out her cheeks and shaking her head momentarily from side to side to side so that it fell over Gillian's face, resting next to hers on the pillow. She liked it better when it was like this. When she woke up to Gillian's nose grazing her own, the blanket over their heads so that all she heard was their shallow breathing, all she saw was Gillian's soft lips always parted in preparation to say whatever Sally needed to hear.
"I know, I know, he was just so perfect. For me, for the girls-"
"The girls want you to be happy, sweetheart, before they found out he was your true blue love they were more than willing to banish him from this house."
She snorted, "Only with you leading the way."
Gillian pinched the bit of flesh on her sister's waist with a smirk, "Nonetheless. There are thousands of men left in the sea, with the curse gone…you might as well go fishing."
Sally laughed, shoving the other woman away and searching for more substantial than a pillow to hit her with. "You are the worst!" she laughed, "the absolute worst." When at last she felt a slipper beneath her fingertips, Gillian had apparently forgone weaponry to roll herself atop Sally
"Now I don't want to hear another word from you about Gary so and so until you take one of those fine young specimens in town out for a ride. Capiche?"
Sally flicked the slipper at her face with a giggle
"I am not going to dignify that with a response."
Before her sister could protest, Gillian was off of her, swaying her way out of the room with arms crossed in a huffiness too pretentious to be real.
Sally watched her go, grinning, rolling back onto her stomach and inhaling the scent of their mingled shampoos on the pillow. And it would hurt for a little while longer; she'd pause in the street whenever the new sheriff walked past or call for the aunts whenever a shy dark haired girl asked if she knew a spell to find true loves. But then she'd look down at her palm, trace the scar etched into her fate line and know that what is meant to be shall be and that as long as she is there to be her anchor Gillian will always be the sail that carries her onward with her life.