Second to last chapter, guys. I feel horrible for putting it off for so long, but I just didn't know how to start it and I'm still absolutely swamped with a million other stories, like new one-shots and other awaited chapters that have yet to updated.
Ugh, why does writing have to be so much work?
Speaking of writing, it would be awesome for you to check my friend and co-owner of the Forbidden Love trilogy's new story, Beware The Frozen Heart. It's a Narnia one, and you'll love it!
March 6th 2036
The big moment was finally here. After an entire week of writing and stalling, and stalling and writing, Cosette was finally able to finish her first letter to Prince way past midnight on Friday.
She stood in front of their arranged spot, looking from the paper to her hands to the one that stuck out subtly from beneath the planter, beckoning her forward with its own gravitational pull.
It she was being completely honest, she hadn't expected him to be the first one to write.
In fact, she hadn't expected him to write one at all. Cosette knew that deep, deep down, she was doubting the entire ordeal, that he was just some insanely hot guy that was secretly a ginormous jerk looking for a chance to mentally damage some girl to the point of emotional putty.
But, there it was. The proof she needed to prove herself wrong.
Stepping forward, Cosette shoved her own note into the pocket of her cutoffs and tugged the folded lined paper from beneath the concrete planter, unfolding it carefully, as if was made of ash.
Would I be completely rude if I said that I'm not expecting you to write back? Or even come to check to see if anything was there?
You were so gorgeous and charming that night, it seems impossible that you would be incredibly sweet as well.
Oh, god, this entire thing is just making me sound like a desperate, rambly idiot, isn't it?
...Now I'm basically just telling a piece of paper my girl problems. Nice.
Um, I think this where I say bye.
...so...
Bye.
Almost unknowingly, Cosette smiled, rereading the note twice before refolding it and slipping it into her free pocket before tucking her own underneath the planter.
God, she hoped he showed up soon.?
"Dude, how are you whipped by a girl you haven't seen the full face of?"
"Screw off, Ryan," Eric muttered. "At least I can pick out my own clothes without consulting my girlfriend on if my shoes match my belt."
"Hey! Megs just want me to always be Hollister model-ready! Is that such a crime?"
"...Oh, man, you just lost so much credibility in that one sentence." Eric pressed pause, freezing his army guy mid-brain splatter.
"Whatever, dude. Oh, man, I gotta go! Megs picking me up in twenty for dinner with her parents at the Country Club!"
Eric didn't have to snark something back before Ryan abruptly hung up, leaving with nothing for a goodbye except the dial tone.
Honestly, Eric had been over the moon for his buddy when he finally grew a pair and had asked Megan McKinley, the hottest, smartest girl to ever walk the halls of Mission Creek High, out at the end of last year and nearly died from lack of oxygen when she said yes.
Now, nearly two years later, they were happily together, with Megan stealthily playing dress-up with him whenever it came to an event she found necessary. Ryan, like the lovesick fool he was, played along like an oblivious puppy the entire time.
Eric stared blankly at the paused screen of his video game. He wasn't much better, writing love notes and getting excited chills about a girl who didn't even know his name; hadn't seen the rest of his face just like he hadn't seen hers.
But that was almost good in a way. Growing up with a dad steadily in the limelight taught him a few things about looks. Everyone wanted to know what your look was, why it was that way, and judged you for it, whether you tried your best or not. Eric had seen girls follow by those lines throughout all his school years, but Cosette had been fidgety that night, pulling at her pinned curls as if the skin of her scalp was yanked too tight, walking in her dress with a slightly uncertain air, as if she hadn't had much experience in one before.
It was awkward. But also adorable.
Insanely adorable.
Thinking of her awkwardness and adorable air made him think of a puppy. Now that he thought more about it, she had big dark eyes, huge in her face even behind the mask and without the help of the moonlight. Like built-in puppy dog eyes. Eric doubted that she never got her way; who could say no to such an angelic, puppy-like face?
It'd be like kicking an innocent stray puppy in an alley.
This comparison made him made. Eric cooled off by unfreezing his game and slaughtering a wave of zombies.
He felt better.
"This feels like a movie," Elizabeth exclaimed giddily after Cosette blushingly showed her the note Prince Charming left her.
"How would you know? Isn't this supposed to be my experience?" Cosette raised her eyebrows over the top of her History textbook. They were currently studying the Holocaust. So depressing.
Her friend shrugged, looking unashamed as she took all the credit. "Well, until my love life speeds up, I will continue to gain my experiences on love through you until you hit rock bottom or I get a love life of my own."
Cosette gave an eye roll. "Gee, thanks for that daily vote of confidence."
"I'm just saying, how long can this note thing carry on for until he wants the real deal?"
"Real deal," Cosette repeated flatly, setting her book aside for now. When Elizabeth agreed to come over after school, Cosette had made their initial goal to study for the two tests they had coming up - Biology and History. Obviously, she had been a fool to believe any work could get done once she brought out the note.
Cosette knew what the real deal was. The real deal was risking your heart for that one person; making your friends form alliances with football jocks for your happiness; locking yourself in a janitor closet for that one moment alone together.
The real deal was looking into each others' eyes and feeling the love like it was brand new.
Cosette saw the real deal everyday, heard it at every Christmas party, every family gathering. It's what her parents had, what her parents fought for.
And she wanted. Wanted so desperate, she would cut out her heart and hand it to them for it.
That was probably not the first step in the right direction, but she couldn't help the certain neediness she felt toward the topic. There was something that she felt most people didn't understand about love - it paved your entire life. Who you were with, who you married, who knew your habits, who helped you pay the bills; who looked after your family; who you would die for; who would die for you.
These were all very important things.
Elizabeth, being one to live in the moment more than in the past or future, only grasped that love wasn't something to be planned. The emotion took its own course, found its way to you however destiny saw fit. But she also never saw it fit to wonder, because her firm belief was that it would come it would, and not any sooner when obsessing about it.
"You know, a girl he knows, sees everyday," Elizabeth was saying now, sitting up from her position at the foot of the bed, lying on her stomach. "Someone that knows where his locker is, can count how many teeth he shows when he smiles, who knows what mandatory fruit he puts on his lunch tray each time everyday."
Elizabeth leaned close, gently putting her hand over Cosette's with a small, genuine smile. "Honey, and someday, you're gonna want that, too."
It felt like an eternity writing this.
Not because I dreaded it or anything - far from it, promise! But what do you say to the mysterious guy who swept you off your feet at your own party?
Exactly. The words don't exactly flow in that situation, if you get what I mean.
But I figure, what better way than for you to know than to tell you a few things about me that weren't spilled with the rest of guts that night?
Okay, here's my list.
1. I hate strawberries.
2. My entire room is based off the eighties and nineties.
3. Favorite genre of music = indie and rock 'n' roll.
4. My dad's cousin is married to Principal Perry's niece. (I know, it makes me barf just thinking about it.)
5. I love chocolate pancakes.
6. My favorite book of all time is The Great Gatsby.
7. I have a Perry The Platypus pillow pet that used to belong to my mom. (It's this really old Disney show that was on for nearly a decade. I watched all the episodes on YouTube in a week last summer.)
8. I helped my best friend get her belly button pierced the night of her fifteenth birthday. Snuck out in my dad's self-driving car and everything.
9. I like happy endings.
10. I really want you to be a happy ending.
It may sound weird to ask a question in a letter, but this one is a necessary oddity.
How exactly do you end a letter?
Eric carefully folding the note back up, hiding it away in his nightstand.
He'd only read The Great Gatsby once, and it was because his dad picked it up for him from a Good Will to entertain himself with when he still had to wait in his dressing room for him to finish on stage. It was still lying around somewhere, and shouldn't be that hard to find considering he and his father weren't what you would call bookworms.
Standing from leaning against his headboard, Eric made his way to the den, where there was a big oak bookcase full of random items on the wall that connected the den to the kitchen.
The things that covered the shelves were mostly little knick knacks and decorations, like frames with pictures too small to go anywhere else. One held a fake plant in a green vase.
But the books that were there were mostly cookbooks and map ones, with a few of his dad's rare murder mysteries finds mixed in. Eric also recognized a couple of cracked spines from required reading books his dad had back in the day, like Shakespeare, among other things.
He stooped down, sweeping his eyes across the very bottom shelf. There, shoved into the very end of a line of older cookbooks, was his waterlogged copy of The Great Gatsby, looking as if it hadn't been touched for decades.
Other than the yellowed pages, alarming amount of dust flying off it when he moved it, and the torn condition of a few dog-eared corners, the books itself seemed to be in pretty good condition.
Tucking it underneath his arm, Eric herded himself back to his room, where he remained huddled on his bed for the rest of the night.
He finished the last page just before two the next morning.
March 7th 2036
On Sunday morning the Davenport household was a typically quiet place. It was mostly because Johnathan was too busy stuffing his mouth with family tradition pancakes to fill the silence, and partly because it was the beginning of a new week, and there was nothing left to say to each other from the last one.
Cosette idly cut into her own stack of fluffy chocolate chip pancakes, a breakfast she knew was her uncle Leo's favorite from when he was a kid. While the rest of her family seemed to possess a sweet tooth, usually drowning the poor fluffy stacks until they were deflated, she preferred the method that would let her keep all her teeth from rotting.
"Tasha called earlier this morning," Christine announced after swallowing a bite of breakfast. "Talking about having a little family get-together for spring break."
"Is Grandma Rose gonna be there?" Johnathan asked, his face twisted in terror with a long string of syrup dripping off his chin. Cosette snorted and swept it up before his long string of goo could turn into a puddle on his pants.
Cosette took another bite of pancake as her dad let loose one of his own shudders of horror. "No, thank god," he muttered into his coffee. "She's on another looney cruise with her friends until the end of the month."
"I don't see why you're complaining," Christine chided her husband. "You're obviously her favorite."
"Because I didn't try to send her to different states or shoot her through the ceiling!"
Their parents continued on with their back-and-forth.
Johnathan leaned over to his sister, his first stack of pancakes nearly finished already. "So, what's with you and Mr. Mystery?"
Cosette resisted the urge to correct him and blurt out Prince, because she doubted he wouldn't find it any less stupid of a name.
"None of your beeswax," she sputtered instead, reaching her glass of chocolate milk.
The last thing she wanted to do was spend the remainder of her Sunday breakfast talking about her secret romance with her brother, of all people. Especially when her brother had been shooting massive heart eyes at her best friend lately.
"Oh, come one, there isn't any love advice on guys you want from your dear brother?"
Cosette could think of a mile long list of questions she had about guys - why were they so hard to read? Why were they so guarded? How come it seemed more likely she would learn how to live on the moon than land a guy of her own? Yet, as she pondered over the possibilities of answers to these questions, she didn't see her brother holding any.
"Not in this century."
Their sibling banter ceased as both returned their attention to their gradually shrinking pancakes. By now the fluffy batter had been weighed down by the sweet syrup, brown and mushy under the touch of Cosette's fork.
She ate every bite.
"We're leaving?!"
"Whoa there, bud, I would think most teenagers would be estatic about getting to spend spring break on Broadway." His dad laughed, continuing to talk as if his son's disapproval on the entire situation wasn't sketched so obviously on his face.
Don't get him wrong, Eric loved New York, but the excitemnt of going started to fade around the third trip. Most of them had been visits to Broadway, much as the trip his dad was propositioning was, to see his dad's famous performer friends on stage when Eric only knew their names from the pamphlet he grabbed at the door.
Plus, there was the letters.
If he went a week without being there, Cosette could lose interest, or worse - think he was losing interest and fall crestfallen and spend her entire vacation that way.
The very thought of something so heartbreaking squeezed Eric's heart to puddy.
Obviously, he could let any of his scenarios happen. But Eric knew his dad - there was no way Hunter would let his son stay in California why he was on the other side of the country, no matter how many times he left him alone on a quick milk gallon run.
As his dad continued blathering on, a plan began to formulate.
He would have to be quick, creative, and totally smooth for it to play out of course.
Now, how to develope all those skills in the mere week-long window of time he had...
Eric's head drooped into his hands.
This was going to be much harder than he had first anticipated when thinking of spring break.
March 8th 2036
Once again, Cosette was on her way to deliever her letter to their secret place, butterflies creating a ginormous storm in her empty stomach. she was pretty sure that even a granola bar would've set off her nerves and sent her running for the nearest trash can.
Writing her second letter had come easier to her. She figured the best way for a person to get to know was through her family. And it was pretty easy to write about her uncles and their crazy wives, her loaded grandparents and their incredibly irritating smart home system, and of course her parents, who were just as in love as they were when they were freshmen.
But of course, she left out how her childish grandfather used his money and the fact that she had a great uncle who was locked up in jail and her father was related to a once-dead andriod and that once upon her a time her dad and favorite uncle and aunt used to live off bionics.
Mentioning all that seemed like an overkill.
As she slipped into the gardens and started down the gravelly path, the sun nice and warm on the back of her exposed neck, Cosette allowed herself to daydream about what Prince and his family were like. She doubted he had to deal with inventions always stuck in the testing phase or the occasional lawsuit from a pissed of co-owning company, but it would still be nice to know what his relatives were like - if his family ever roped him into any crazy situations.
The concrete of the planter was warm and rough under her fingers as she pulled it up, ready to set her note under there and leave before a gardener or someone got her busted.
There was already another note there.
Smiling, Cosette carefully slipped her note into one of the pocket of her overall shorts and grabbed the slim piece of paper. It felt thinner than the last one; maybe just a page two.
Giving a quick look either way, Cosette perched on a concrete bench and unfolded the paper, filled the brim with giddiness.
Turn around.
Cosette pulled her face away from the note, confused.
Turn around...?
Giving a quick gasp, Cosette let her head shoot up, swiveling it from side to side as she jumped up.
"Oh my god!"
I hope you enjoyed that little cliffhanger. I didn't make it that hard, seeing as the last chapter is the next chapter, so I thought, what was the point in making it hard?
It's just past twelve thirty and I'm exhasted.
I hope you enjoyed the fourth installment of BA, and we would love if you stick around for the last one, coming out sometime next week. (See how I'm just barely fitting everything into when I said I would? Yeah, that's just how I roll, people!)
And leaving a review would be super cool, too.