Thursday, December 21, 2017

Fashionably Ever After, A Trixie short story!

Happy Holidays, everyone! Here's a little Winter Solstice 2017 present for all of you, set in the Ever After universe, but this time with Phoebe's big sister, Trixie :)

I filled it with ice skating and cocoa and even some Phoebe bookishness as Trixie has a little winter break adventure of her own. Hop on over to here to read the full story, and enjoy the little excerpt below!


“I bumped into Luke at the Promenade yesterday,” I said in the general direction of my phone while trying to pin the roll of white faux fur in place. I’d kicked Phoebe out of our room to work on her Christmas present, and between my shaking hands and the fiddly silk velvet I’d picked up from a bargain bin in a basement shop in the Garment district, I was starting to think I was never going to finish. My hand slipped and I pricked myself with a pin. “Crud.”

              “That… sucks.” I could practically hear Amani cringing over the phone. “Did he say anything?”

              I stuck my finger in my mouth and inspected the fur to make sure I hadn’t gotten any blood on it. “He introduced me to his new girlfriend.”

              “Of course, because he’s a jerk. You know, the offer I made on Thanksgiving to make you a dartboard is still open. My new printer can even do a high res print of his face.”

              “He’s not worth wasting your ink,” I said, breaking into my first genuine laugh that day.

              “It would be for a good cause. Does your sister want a blow-up of his face for her archery target thing?”

“Don’t encourage her.” Feebs would probably jump at a Luke-target, then complain about how it dulled her arrows or something. “Honestly, it wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t been so smug about introducing her, as if I’d been the one who broke up with him.” I took my frustration out by slamming a pin particularly hard into my pincushion. “’Oh, Beatrix, I want you to meet my girlfriend, Zane. She’s a fine arts major, like me.’” I disconnected the presser foot of my sewing machine with so much force the machine actually shook. “As if fashion design isn’t ‘real’ art.”

              “You’re going to break your sewing machine,” Amani pointed out, then said, “Luke was always a jerk, but you were too into bad boy artist types to listen to the rest of us.”

              “Rub it in.” I tossed the old presser foot into my sewing machine table drawer with a thunk.

              “You know he’s wrong about the fashion design thing, right? Just like he’s been wrong about practically everything ever.”

              “I know, but…” I took a minute to think as a I stared at my presser foot options. “It’s not really that, he just said it to hurt me. It’s—” I hesitated, then dived right in, “—it’s just that I thought I was over all this and it wouldn’t bother me so much.”

              She made a tsking sound on the other end of the line. “It was only a month ago, Trix. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Look, I’m going with a few of my classmates from Rowan to the RiverRink tonight, you really should come.”

              “I’m not going to crash your group.” I clicked on a more velvet-friendly presser foot and dropped into my chair. “Could you imagine how needy I’ll look? Hi, I’m just Amani’s dork friend from high school who needs cheering up because of her jerk ex.”

              “You are not a dork. You are my super-cool elite fashion designer-to-be friend who is home for the holidays from New York City. And I really want you to come, I haven’t seen you in ages.”

              “Umm, I saw you during Thanksgiving break?” I lined up the edge of the cape and faux-fur under the needle and dropped the presser foot, cringing at how high it sat on the thick fabric and praying it would still feed. Phoebe was going to get an exact replica of the cape Belle wore with her pink dress in Beauty and the Beast even if it killed my machine.

              “Thanksgiving doesn’t count because you spent half of it in Boston and the other half crying into leftovers. C’mon, Trix. My friends are cool and you need this.”

              I poised my foot over the machine pedal and pouted at my phone. She was right, as always. “Fine, what time?”

              “We’re meeting at Lindenwold at six.”