Broken Fairytales (2 page)

Ignoring Rachel’s teasing,
I kept that dream alive for the next three years, making the decisions that would lead me to the life I’d planned out with Ben by my side. Everything was perfect. I could see, so clearly, what my future would hold when I made the decision to follow
him
to the University of North Carolina when he’d gotten a full ride to play football for the Tar Heels. I knew I was making the right decision when I’d stood in a circle of my sorority sisters and blew out the candle to signify that Ben had given me his fraternity letters to wear sophomore year.
And
I knew when we started to talk abou
t the future, and our plans
after graduation, that my life was right on track to have the fairytale ending I’d always dreamed of
when Ben told me he wanted to marry me
.

Then one day I woke up and everything I had always dreamed of suddenly seemed wrong somehow, and I wasn’t exactly sure what had happened to make me change my perception so drastically.
But I started to freak out.

If I had to pinpoint an exact moment in time, I’d have to say everything started to
feel a little off right around spring break
when
I’d gone to
visit Rachel in New York
. I don’t know if it was that my eyes were opened to a different world that was bigger than I ever dreamed
of
,
or if after spending a week away from Ben, I didn’t really miss him as much as I’d thought I would, but suddenly it was like I wanted more out of life – more than I knew deep down than Ben could ever give me
, and I’d been stewing about it ever since.

“
Ben will
understand. He starts summer practices in a few we
eks, so he won’t be here anyway,
”
I said
to Rachel, but also
in an attempt to pacify myself and stop the gnawing in my stomach that had involuntarily started as soon as the guilt washed over me.

I rationalized that
Ben was a captain this year and had responsibilities beyond his wide receiver position that would keep him busy. He was also a big boy and could survive a few weeks without his girlfriend.

“Yeah, but being two hours away, you could easily visit him. It’s a little harder to drive five hours for a weekend vi
sit,” Rachel reminded me, and I knew the added distance would have Ben pouting, which aggravated me.

“Maybe the distance is what we need,” I said
softly,
so
softly
that I wasn’t sure
if
Rachel
even
heard me.

She didn’t answer right away, but then she said with all seriousness, “Em, are you thinking about breaking up with Ben?”

“
No.
I don’t know
. Maybe
,” I said, biting my lip as the words escaped without my control, but as soon as they did, a deep feeling of relief flooded through me. I’d been holding on to that notion for months, and it
actually
felt good to admit it outright
.
“I just have a lot going on right now, and I’m not sure what I want.”

“Oh, Emily,” she said, and I cou
ld hear the concern in her voice
.
As much as she’d teased me about breaking up with Ben, I don’t think she ever thought I’d seriously consider it.

I wish
I would have told her sooner what was going on with me, but I just couldn’t. She didn’t know that
I’d
spent the entire plane ride back
from New York
, and the subsequent next four months,
trying
to figure o
ut exactly what was wrong with me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I knew I should be happy. The things I’d worked for and aspired to be all my life had come to fruition. I should have been elated, but I just wasn’t. Wors
e, I wasn’t exactly sure what
was missing in my life
or what I needed to change
. I knew if I could figure that out, I could go after it, because that was how I did things. It was what I’d always done.

So far, in my twenty-one years, everything I’d set out to achieve, I’d gotten. I was a stranger to disappointment, as it didn’t happen often to me. Some might say I lived a charmed life, but I always liked to think of it as being planful, careful, and making good decisions. I wasn’t ever reckless and didn’t take risks, and that helped me to stay on course.

But what was I supposed to do when the course I’d set myself on for so long didn’t seem like the right one anymore? I definitely hadn’t planned for that, so how did I even begin to navigate through it?
A
s the
spring
semester wore on, so did the nagging feelings that I was doing somethi
ng wrong in the grand scheme of
life. I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone about what I was experiencing because I wasn’t exactly sure what it was. I was definitely too young to be having a mid-life crisis, or even a quarter-life crisis, but I seriously felt like I was losing my mind.

But even though I hadn’t told anyone what I was going through, they could still tell something was wrong. No matter how hard I tried to maintain my composure and pretend everything was great, I couldn’t help the times when my personal angst bubbled to the surface and reared its ugly head. It was to the point that my friends and family
were
starting to get
suspicious.

I was irritated a lot which led to me snapping
at people and mutter
ing
sarcastic comments under my breath – two things I’d never done
before
. I was known for
being
sweet and kind and always collected
. I was the girl who took care of everyone else, not the one who needed to be cared for, but suddenly, I just couldn’t seem to keep it together.

Poor Ben had taken the brunt of my aggravation, and we’d started getting into arguments on a regular basis. I started to find his
constant
bouts of pouting annoying, especially when they were because he didn’t get his way. I
felt
smothered by his constant need to spend every waking moment with me, and I’d started to push him away.
I wasn’t
even
sure he was really the issue or if he was just one
of my
problem
s
that I’d found a possible solution to, even if the solution
terrified
me.

“It’s fine,” I said, pulling myself together and checking my emotions. “I’m not going to break up with him. I’m just having a crisis at the moment. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Rachel said emphatically. “Em, you have plans
to get engaged to
Ben, and move to Atlanta with him after graduation. That’s a big deal,
so if you’re second-guessing if
you want to be with him, you shouldn’t dismiss it.
Let’s talk about this.
”

“Aren’t you supposed to be telling me to break up with him? Isn’t that what you do, Rach?” I snapped, wondering why all of a sudden, my usually snarky, detache
d best friend, was being conscien
tious
. She was supposed to give me tough love. It’
s what she did. She wasn’t supposed to coax me into facing my emotions, and she certainly wasn’t supposed to want to talk about them.

“Don’t be a bitch,” she cautioned, and suddenly she was the Rachel I knew and loved.

“Just be honest with me,” I said, the exhaustion prevalent in my tone. “What should I do?”

Rachel sighed, long and loud, and I heard her light another cigarette. “Moving to Atlanta with Ben is safe and easy, and it’s a mistake,” she said.

“I have a job lined up there,” I insisted, thinking back to the summer before when I’d interned at Grabel PR. They’d essentially offered me the chance to come back after I graduated and take an entry-level position. Sure, they did PR for
financial companies, which was a little dry, but it was a job, and jobs were hard to come by. Working for Grabel might have been safe, but it was also smart.

“Em, I know you better than anyone, do I not?”

“Yes,” I said warily, not sure where she was going with her question.

“And because I know you better than anyone else, I also know that you are truly talented and will be wasting said talents in a job you’ll hate after three months. Which is why you should come to New York, live with me, and work in entertainment PR like I know you want to.”

I sigh
ed. “Rach, it’s so competitive,” I said softly.

“Yeah, an
d if you break up with Ben, you
might never find anyone else,” she said sarcastically, hitting on one of my
deep-rooted
fears.

“Screw you, Rachel!
” I said, anger boiling in my blood. “
I’m sorry I can’t be as flippant as you and spit in the face of monogamy, but
maybe that’s your problem. Maybe if you’d let someone get close to you for once, you’d realize what it’s like to really love someone and be sincerely afraid to lose them.”

“At least I know when to cut someone loose,” she snapped
back
.

“Yeah, as soon as you hook them, you throw them back. You don’t ever give yourself a chance to develop
any lasting
feelings.”

“Well, at least I’m not with a guy who’s wrong for me, who I should have dumped years ago because I’m holding onto some fucking fantasy of what I wanted my life to be like when I was five!”

I sucked in a deep breath, knowing she was aiming below the belt and had hit me square on. Unfortunately, she didn’t stop her tirade.

“You are so damn scared of making any decision without weighing out every single option that you never make any decisions at all!”

“That’s not true,” I spat back in my defense.

“Oh yeah, I forgot. You choose whatever is safe and easy. Y
ou do make decisions, but they’re
boring!”

Rage was boiling in my chest at that point. I was so mad I could hardly form words.
“Shut up, Rachel!
You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I seethed.

“I know more than you think,” she said. “And if you think marrying Ben, moving to the suburbs and having 2.3 kids is going to make you happy, then you’re going to wake up at thirty-five and realize you sold out
and you hate your life
. You’re better than that!”

I leaned my head back against my headboard and closed my eyes.

“Dammit, Emily!” Rachel shouted, so loud that I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “Take a g
oddam risk for once
, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll find out how happy you can actually be instead of faking your way through life.”

“Yeah, and maybe I’ll fail,” I shouted back.

“Yeah, well at least then you would have tried,” she said, and w
ith that she slammed the phone down.

Chapter
Two

I felt like I should cry.
I hated fighting with Rachel, and usually I didn’t fight back, but ever since I’d started to fall apart
at the seams, I’d
started challenging her when she’
d get on her high-horse and tell
me what to do.

I closed my eyes, waiting for the tears to come.
My best friend had just berated me
, I’d berated her,
and then
she’d
hung up on me, but tears
would
n’t
come. I knew
deep down
Rachel did what she’d done out of love, so I
couldn’t bring myself to be mad
, but she’d still pissed me off – mostly because
I knew she was right.
She knew me better than anyone else, and as she’d just proven, she knew me better than I knew myself at times.

I sat up, sighed, and flopped back down against my pillows.
M
y stomached churned at the idea of moving to New York without a safety net and trying to make it in entertainment PR. It was a ridiculous notion, but at the same time, the idea of doing PR
for bands or for Broadway
or even for night clubs had my adrenaline going. I knew deep down it was what I wanted to do
, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever be courageous enough to take that leap
.

Dammit, Rachel was right. And I was going to have to call her later and tell her she was right. Grr. She was always right, and I kind of hated it.

I’d
known Rachel since the first grade when she sat next to me in Ms. Cunningham’s class and passed me a note
on the first day
asking if I
wanted to be her best friend.
I’d never had a girl best friend, since
my brother
Chase and I had been inseparable as kids
, so when she asked,
I immediately told her yes.
I r
emember taking in her long
auburn
hair, big blue eyes and stylish clothes and thinking she was the coolest girl I’d ever seen. Of cou
rse I wanted to be her friend.
I just didn’t know how amaz
ing being her friend would be.