The Frog Prince Read online

  Olivia hired me because I had the good sense to talk sports during the interview (thank God for a sports-loving brother) and because I pretended my limited PR skills from Fresno translated into something bigger than they did. Olivia, showing rare sensitivity during the second interview, didn’t call me on the fact that a Fresno golf tournament isn’t exactly on the same swish scale as San-Francisco’s annual Leather & Lace Fund-Raiser Ball, and hired me despite my profound lack of interesting experience.

  For three months she’s let me work at my own pace, but clearly she’s ready for change. She wants something more from me. And she’s not the only one. I’d love more, too.

  But what?

  And how?

  I eye my cold burrito in the creased foil wrapper. I should throw out the rest of it. Get started on my new life plan now. But I don’t have a new life plan yet. I don’t know what to do...

  Correction. I don’t know what to feel.

  This is the part I can’t talk about, because it’s been so long since I felt anything, much less anything good, that I just don’t know what’s normal anymore. But I am trying.

  I left Fresno, a huge step for me since I knew next to no one in San Francisco, but I did it. I found an apartment on my own. Searched the want ads and applied for jobs. I interviewed, even though most of the time I had no idea where I was going, and once I was hired by City Events, I put on my happy face and went to work. Every day. On time.

  Despite the fact there’s this ridiculously gaping hole in my heart.

  And people who say there’s no such thing as a broken heart, or pontificate on the physiological impossibility of a heart actually breaking, these people don’t know hurt. Because the day Jean-Marc finally said, “I don’t love you, and I will never love you that way,” my heart just stopped.

  It stopped. It stopped because everything inside me was squeezing so hard and tight and kept squeezing until there was nothing left of me, at least not in the middle of my chest where my heart used to be.

  So here I am in San Francisco, trying to start over as well as figure out what to do with the rest of my life.

  And that’s where it gets murky because, honestly, what am I supposed to do with the rest of my life? I’m a disappointment to my mother (I hate that she’ll be paying for my wedding forever). I’ve lost my new in-laws, although they do live in France and only met me once. And even my oldest friends have gone strangely silent.

  So what do I do now?

  I eat what’s left of my cold burrito.

  Five thirty arrives, and Olivia appears at my desk with her coat and purse slung over her shoulder. I save the document I’m typing up and look at her.

  “Ready?” she says, and I’m momentarily perplexed.

  Ready? Ready for what?

  “The others are waiting at reception.” Olivia taps her watch. “Drinks. Remember?”

  No. I’ve obviously forgotten, and I open my mouth to beg off, but Olivia shakes her head. “I’m not letting you out of this. The city will never feel like home if you don’t give it a chance.”

  She does have a point, and I could use a new home. I can’t remember the last time I really felt as if I belonged somewhere. “Give me just a second,” I say,, pushing away from my desk and heading for the ladies’ room, where I do a painful inspection.

  Pale. Lumpy. Frumpy. My God, I look tired.

  I rummage in my purse, search for something to help revive the face, and find an old lipstick—a brownish shade that does nothing for me—and apply some. Hmmm. Brown lipstick, a black turtleneck, lavender circles beneath the eyes. Not exactly a come-hither look.

  Maybe some hair would help, so I lift my limp brown ponytail, pull on the elastic, freeing hair that becomes limp brown hair with a slight kink in it from the hair elastic. I fluff the hair. Comb the fingers through it. The ends stick out. Doris Day crossed with Chewbacca.

  Irritably I pull the hair back into a ponytail again before wiping off the brown lipstick. Just get the hell out of here, I think, particularly since I don’t even know why I’m doing this. I’m not in the same league with Olivia. Olivia’s friends are all city girls. Sophisticated, urban, glam. I’m one step removed from country, and it shows. I wasn’t raised on a farm, but I know my farm smells. They call Highway 99 the scratch-and-sniff drive because it’s all sulfur, dairy, and manure. But the 99 leads home. Or to what used to be home.

  Olivia’s waiting at the front door with Sara and a couple of other girls who work in various City Events departments. “You look great,” Sara says with a big smile.

  We both know she’s lying, but that’s how we women are. Practical and impractical. Helpful and cruel.

  We leave our loft office, take the elevator down, and exit from the building, and Olivia’s cell phone rings before we’ve even crossed the street.

  “The Barrio,” she says into the phone, “and if we’re not there, then try Lucille’s.”

  The phone rings three more times during our five-minute walk. She gives the same info each time. Try the Barrio, and if not the Barrio, then Lucille’s. Olivia always makes the decisions, but then, she is the queen, and everyone wants to know the queen and they want to keep the queen happy.

  We reach the Barrio. “How many people are coming?” I ask, as the club’s salsa vibe pulses out the windows and the Laffy Taffy purple front door.

  “Five, ten, fifteen.” Olivia shrugs. “Who knows?”

  And twenty minutes later I wish again I’d just gone home. I feel huge. Plain. Horrendously fuddy-duddy. The salsa music is hot, sultry, sexy, and Olivia and her circle feel it, slim shoulders shaking, amazing toned bodies, in the groove.

  I stand at the tall red-and-stainless counter holding my drink, feeling like a Popsicle stick. I don’t really know what to do with salsa music. Or reggae. Or rap. Where I come from,, it’s country or hard rock. Jocks and goat ropers. In Visalia I was exotic, but here I’m just white and self-conscious and uncoordinated.

  Olivia laughs and I glance her way. She’s sparkling, and her laugh still hangs in the. air. Despite the loud music, the raised voices, the speakers thumping, Olivia commands attention, and her dramatic coloring just plays off the crimson-and-ocher-painted walls. Here at the Barrio she looks tall and thin, and as she leans back against the bar stool, even more of her stomach shows.

  I hate her.

  No. I hate me.

  Olivia was right. I am fat. Whenever I stop tucking my shirt in, that means I’m fat. And I’ve given up belts. Another sign of fat. The long, loose skirts—fat.

  Fat, fat, fat.

  Rejected, dejected. I’m beginning to scare even me.

  This has got to stop.

  I need my old jeans back. I need the old me. The one who was fun. The one who laughed and didn’t take herself so damn seriously. The one who didn’t spend an entire Saturday in bed reading Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club novels in which every child either drowns or gets abducted, which I read crying and sniffling into my pillow because, while I haven’t drowned or been abducted, I do feel lost. Really lost, and I’m not sure how to find where it is I’m supposed to go.

  How pathetic does that sound? Snap out of it, Holly, I say, taking another sip from my icy salt-rimmed margarita. You’re not Hansel or Gretel. Not Snow White, or Belle from Beauty and the Beast. You can’t be lost. You’re an adult. Twenty-five. College educated. There’s a way out of this, and you’re going to find it.

  The thing to do is keep it simple. Take it a step at a time. Maybe Olivia is right. Start a diet. Then join a gym. Then get the legs waxed and, you know, reclaim the self.

  I take a bigger sip from my hand-blown margarita glass, thinking it wasn’t so long ago that I had a decent body. Eighteen months ago I was that wide-eyed bride, and I’d worked hard to look magnificent for the wedding. Slim, toned, fit. Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

  The wedding photos never made it into an album. I still have the photos, though, in a big brown mailing envelope, a stack of glossy photos that will
never get looked at, a stack of photos of a bride and groom laughing, smiling, photos that should have been cherished but won’t be.

  I wish I’d known then that it wasn’t going to last. I wish I’d known what he was thinking. Feeling.

  Funny, when I look at the photos now, especially the one where we’re dancing—-our first dance—Jean-Marc’s unhappiness is so obvious. If you look at his face, you can see it there in his eyes. If you know Jean-Marc, you can see the emptiness behind the smile, the distance there. He’s not actually smiling. He’s already detached himself.

  He’s already divorcing me.

  “Another drink?” Aimee, Olivia’s friend, director of fund-raising for the Met Museum, is gesturing to me and my now nearly empty glass.

  I look up at her, but I don’t see Aimee; I see Jean-Marc, and we’re on our honeymoon in the South of France.

  We’re doing everything big, everything splashy, and I’m standing in the doorway of our suite’s living room, wearing a Victoria’s Secret pink lace teddy and not much else (but the hair’s done, lots of sexy tousled curls, and flawless makeup). I’m smiling at him even as I try not to cry.

  You don’t like this?

  It’s fine.

  You don’t want this?

  You look great.

  But you don’t want me.

  I’m just not in the mood.

  It’s our honeymoon, Jean-Marc.

  Holly, I can’t.

  Why not?

  He says nothing. Why not? I shout.

  Because I don’t love you that way.

  I drain the rest of my hand-shaken fresh-fruit-juice margarita. Tequila’s good. It works. “One more,” I say to Aimee, blinking hard, refusing to cry, refusing to think about the disaster honeymoon, refusing to think about the pile of sexy lingerie that never got worn, refusing to accept that I own more Rosenthal than common sense.

  That way? What the hell does that way mean?

  Touching my tongue to the edge of the salt-rimmed glass, I’m suddenly hugely grateful for tequila and lime juice and mariachi bands. California would be nothing without Mexico.

  Chapter Two

  Two strong margaritas and three hours later, I don’t think I can drive home, even if it’s only fifteen minutes across town. I have this thing about driving in San Francisco as it is (scary steep hills, runaway cable cars, foreign tourists snapping photos, unaware that I’m behind the wheel), and I take a cab home instead of my own car.

  The cab drops me off in front of my building, the sun having disappeared sometime when I was in the bar, leaving my street of Victorians dark. I check the mail. Nothing good.

  I head on up the front steps to the house, needing to enter the front door to reach my door. The owner of the house, Cindy Lee, rented me the apartment after the most exhausting background check ever. But then, as she explained to me later, she lives above me, so she has to be careful. She needs a good, quiet tenant because she often works at home, and fortunately my background check said I was good and quiet, so I got the apartment. Even if I’m not exactly financially solvent.

  But who is solvent these days? Economics are brutal. Everyone’s trying to keep ahead of the tax man and MasterCard.

  At least I have a job. And an apartment (for now). Which makes me better off than 99.99 percent of the people in the world, and right now strong fresh-fruit-juice margaritas are creating a nice little buzz in my head.

  Unlocking my apartment door, I hear footsteps descend the staircase above my head, and I try to shove myself into my apartment before I’m seen.

  “Holly.”

  I stop shoving myself. I turn, watch hiking boots appear. Jeans. A man’s muscled thighs. Hips. Chest. Indecently broad shoulders. It’s Drew, Cindy’s significant other, and he’s carrying a bike on his shoulder. The guy’s a sports freak. And so good-looking it makes my eyes hurt.

  “Hi, Drew.” I wish I’d escaped. Cindy’s not tall, but she’s lean, mean, looks killer even in padded biking shorts, and I look nothing like Cindy. Besides, Cindy’s a savvy decision maker. She’s aggressive. She plays to win. I don’t know that game.

  “How are you settling in?”

  “Fine.” Drew and I have bumped into each other only a couple of times, but he’s always really nice, very friendly—not that Cindy appreciates the friendliness. She’s never rude to me, but she doesn’t invite conversation. She doesn’t want conversation. She’s made it clear on several occasions (like when two weeks after I first moved in, when I asked if I could borrow an egg since I’d dropped one) that I’m her tenant. I’m just business. Nothing more.

  I look at the bike on his shoulder. “Going for a ride?”

  “I did earlier. Heading home now.” He smiles, great smile, great teeth, little creases at his eyes from all the sun exposure. “The offer still stands. If you ever want to join me—”

  “Right.” Right. Like I need to get evicted. “Thanks.” I tense, hearing footsteps on the stairs again. Cindy’s on her way down. I’m not in the mood to deal with her tonight. “Good night.”

  “Night.”

  I disappear into my apartment, shut the door, lock it. Cindy’s shadow passes by outside the frosted glass. “Who were you talking to?” Cindy asks, and I hesitate inside my door before turning on my hall light.

  “Holly.”

  “Why?”

  I move away from the door. I don’t need to hear more. My apartment’s got a great big bay window with lovely crown molding, but it’s also got Cindy, and I don’t like living beneath her apartment. It’s okay if I can hear her music, but she doesn’t want to hear mine. She can have guests, a wild party, but I have to get permission before I have anyone stay overnight (like who would be overnighting?). She gets three parking spots, and I get the street. I know it’s her building, but maybe that’s the problem—it’s her building. It’s her everything. I’m paying a fortune, and yet I don’t even feel as if I belong here.

  In my kitchen with the cute little table in front of the window, I stand there and look around. The kitchen’s fine, everything’s fine, and yet I don’t know what I’m doing in San Francisco. I’m not a city person. I’m a small-town, angle-parking, everybody-knows-me kind of person.

  I grew up riding my Schwinn bike with the plastic floral basket on the handlebar down Main Street, waving to everybody I knew, and I knew a lot of people. We bought our cakes at Bothof’s Bakery, medicine at Main Drug, shoes at Dick Parker’s, stationery at Togni Branch. It was a one-horse town, and I loved it. People knew me.

  And then, when my dramatic whirlwind marriage to the handsome foreign husband fell apart, people knew. Too many people knew. Which is what drove me out of the valley and into the city. Too many people knew me, and every one of them had an opinion.

  No one thought I’d get married and divorced in less than ten months. No one thought I’d be the one unable to honor a commitment.

  Least of all me.

  I strip off my clothes in my bedroom, and just when I’m naked, the doorbell rings.

  With a robe wrapped around me, I answer the door. Cindy.

  I open the door, smile my tired, tight smile that I only know how to smile anymore. “Hi.”

  “Holly.”

  Is she mad at me? I open the door wider, when I want to shut it in her face. “Want to come in?”

  “No.”

  We look at each other for a long minute. Cindy’s five years older than me. She went to Stanford. She’s a successful money manager. In fact, she makes a lot of money. She’s attractive in a serious, hard-ass kind of way, and she’s got Drew, Mr. Fit, and I don’t know why she doesn’t like me better. Maybe it’s because I didn’t go to as prestigious a college as she did; maybe it’s because I studied English, not finance and international economics; maybe it’s because she’s very thin and doesn’t overeat and it’s obvious from my pants size that discipline isn’t my forte.

  “I’m going away this weekend,” she says, and her gaze stays fixed on a point behind my shoulder. She
’s checking out the fireplace. “Make sure you keep the front door locked at all times.”

  We share a common entrance and front door. “I will.”

  “And please don’t let your guests park in the driveway.”

  What guests? “I won’t.”

  Her forehead creases. She stares harder at the fireplace. For a moment she says nothing, and then, “Is there a crack in the surround?”

  I turn around, look at the fireplace and the pink marble surround that’s original to the place. The apartment looked so much fresher and prettier in the sunshine that very first day I saw it, three months ago, than it does now. But three months ago I was desperate for a place of my own, and right now all I want to do is close the door and be alone. “There’s always been a crack.”

  “There was never a crack.”

  The good margarita fizz is wearing away, leaving the bad margarita fuzz. “The marble’s been cracked since I moved in.”

  “No.”

  I don’t want to do this anymore. Any of this. I’ve had it with people I don’t like, people I don’t know. I want the Marshes back, who ran Main Drug and let us charge everything to our account—Band-Aids, toothbrushes, grape sodas, Jean Nate perfume sold in sets. I want Mr. Parker, who always gave us balloons when we bought our shoes. I want the short, stocky lady at Togni Branch, who could get any filler for any academic planner, you just watch. I want my brother and sister and the sprinkler in the front yard, and most of all I want my dad back with my mom and to have him happy that we’re his family again.

  “I’ll pay for it,” I say, hating Cindy, hating Jean-Marc, hating growing up and what it did to me and my heart. I used to like me. I used to believe in me. I used to believe in happy endings. What the hell happened?

  Where did Holly go?

  What happened to my future?

  Why isn’t life more like fairy tales?

  I was never going to live in San Francisco. I was never going to wear turtlenecks seven months a year. I was never going to be ruthless and severe.