Forever After (Elizabeth) part 2

Elizabeth woke with a start. She had a very distinct impression that she had been dreaming, and then something had happened…and now she was awake. Feeling an odd sense of déjà vu, she gently extricated herself from Alaric’s arms and padded quietly to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet lid reflectively; chin resting in her palm, and thought about the last couple of days. Her head was filled with a clarity that one only achieves in the middle of the night, or after a very realistic dream, and she realized that she had no idea how she actually felt about Alaric, only how she wanted to feel. Similarly, she had no idea who Alaric actually was. He really hadn’t told her very much, now that she thought about it, and what he had told her was really very vague. Somehow, she had managed to convince herself that she was in love with a virtual stranger.
Which was appropriate, she decided. If one was stuck in a fairy tale, one should do as they do in fairy tales and fall in Love at First Sight. The only problem with that was that one was then stuck with the consequences-be they good or bad. Or just indifferent, which could potentially be the worst of all, because at least with love and hate there was passion, there was excitement, there was anticipation. She knew they had lust. But with indifference there is true rejection, because how could you reject someone more than by telling them that you didn’t care if they lived or died?
Elizabeth stood and padded very quietly back into the bedroom, light and silent on her bare feet. Feeling very daring, she glanced at the shadowy figure breathing gently on the king size bed (it was strange, she noted now with the clarity that hindsight provides, that his room was so much nicer than hers. The convention booked them all, so there really was no reason for this) and moved toward his suitcase, clothes from the night before slung haphazardly in it’s direction, showing her the way. She opened up the top, it was the type that laid on its back to be opened, and when stood up rolled behind it’s master like an obedient dog, but tended to flop over like a bug when filled beyond capacity and left unattended, and peeked gingerly inside, feeling a little like an intruder. But on seeing the contents she sighed to herself. What had she expected to find? A dead body? Naturally, the suitcase was filled with clothes, normal, everyday clothes that normal, everyday people would wear. She quietly flipped the lid all of the way open and poked around a little bit, unsurprisingly finding nothing but clothes.
A buzzing sound suddenly filled the room, and from the desk above the suitcase a light went on and began to flash. Jumping at the noise, and then fearing that it would wake Alaric, she quickly closed the suitcase, grabbed the phone, ran into the bathroom and then, not thinking, pushed the “answer” button.
“Hello?” she said, not being able to think of anything else under the circumstances.
“Hello there.” The person on the other end replied, “I suppose you are Alaric’s secretary for the time that he is in L.A…you know that it’s very bad form to answer with simply ‘hello,’ don’t you? You should really answer the phone, ‘hello, this is the office of Clandestine Enterprises, please hold.’ It’s much more professional.”
“I-” Elizabeth began, but was cut off by the very commanding male voice on the other end, which somehow reminded her of Alaric.
“No, don’t begin to make excuses about how this is your first day, and you just really need the money and yadda, yadda, yadda, I honestly don’t care. If I know my son, and I really think that I do, the only reason Alaric hired you is because you’re a pretty face and he’s trying to get you into bed, or he already did and you fed him the same sob story you were about to feed me to get him to give you a job. Anyway, this is his father. Just inform him that I am impatient for him to get home. The Kilgore affair needs to be completed, he has kept everyone waiting for far too long.”
“Uh-huh,” was all Elizabeth could manage, while thoughts along the lines of what? Father? Clandestine Enterprises? Kilgore affair? Raced through her head.
“Are you writing this down?” Alaric’s…father asked impatiently from the other end of the line, “because this is really very important. Be sure that you tell him immediately.”
“Um. Yes. Yes, sir.” Elizabeth replied, not knowing what else to say. How does one tell the father of the man that one just slept with that one just slept with his son? Oh, and that one is not really a secretary at all, and oh, by the way, your son is not in LA, in fact he’s not even on the West Coast at all, he’s in a small Marriott hotel in Greater Cincinnati?
Elizabeth realized that the man (she was having trouble thinking of him as Alaric’s father) had hung up on her, and that she still had the phone pressed to her ear as though it was the only thing keeping her head from falling against her shoulder and all of her thoughts and hopes and dreams from spilling out her ear. Which maybe it was.
Very gingerly, as though her bones were made of glass and her skin of papyrus, she lowered herself onto the toilet seat and stared at the phone in her hands. She sat there for a beat, two.
Then she began to shake, and pressed the button on the screen (it was a very nice phone-one of the ones which businessmen carry around that have an internet connection) and connected to the Internet. She wasn’t surprised when the window opened, of course he would have a WiFi connection in this very nice room of his. It took a bit to get used to the keyboard on the tiny phone, but she eventually managed to connect to a search engine and type in “Clandestine Enterprises.” She skipped the sponsored links and went to the Wikipedia page, wanting information about the owners and CEOs, not what the company did.
The first thing she saw was a picture of an incredibly handsome man. Alaric. He was standing next to an older version of himself, and a very beautiful woman. She had her arm through his and they stood very close. Not like siblings. She read some of the information on the page, and didn’t really absorb any of it except, “it has been known since their birth that Alaric Weller and Marissa Kilgore will be married when she turns twenty-one. This marriage would provide a valuable bond for their fathers’ companies, Clandestine Enterprises and Karma Incorporated, respectively.”
Everything inside of Elizabeth went numb. She didn’t think, she wouldn’t let herself think about what this meant.
She mechanically closed the window on the phone, went back into the bedroom and placed it where she found it. She located her dress, looking garish and mocking her foolishness from the corner, and pulled it back on, not relishing the way the stale fabric felt against her skin. Where last night she had felt beautiful and sophisticated, she suddenly felt like a silly little girl playing dress-up. Before she left the hotel room, she wrote Alaric a note and left it where she knew he would find it, on top of his phone.
It read simply,


Your father called.
He would like to know when you will be home.
-Elizabeth

She went back to her own hotel room, packed her things, and left on the first flight home. It wasn’t until she got there, three hours later, staring at the picture she had taken as a naïve high school girl of a boy who was truly in love, that she let herself cry.








I swore so hard I tasted blood
And then I punched a wall
These words will never tell you
Anything at all
That stupid, condescending letter
You said you wrote for me?
It’s crap and we both know it
I dare you to disagree
People say rage is red
Now I know that it is blue
Burning hotter than the hottest flame
Just like your passion used to
Just like I used to burn for you

It’s blue just like your eyes
It’s blue just like your dress
The ones you wore when you gave me that letter
That stupid, fucking letter
And then walked away from me
Blue is what I thought I felt
When you didn’t say anything at all
But I had no idea
No real idea
Until I punched that wall