The night they first kissed, it seemed like all of the elements converged as if to bring them together. The stars shone on a moonless night, reflecting off the ocean that hummed in their ears, the crashing waves matching the thudding of their hearts. The heat between them mirrored the blaze of the bonfire where mere feet away their friends were conversing and laughing and carrying on as if the world had not suddenly lurched to a halt when their bodies melted into one another. Never before had Brigid experienced a kiss so cosmic, so sensually organic. She felt she belonged in his arms, as if no harm could touch her heart as long as he held it within his own. It was a beginning worthy of romance novels she hid under her bed in junior high, a fairytale of the likes of her Disney ideals of childhood. Gazing into Sam’s eyes that night, she felt certain that this was true stuff soulmates were made of.

The memory of that night sustained Brigid through the weeks and months that followed. The first time Sam belittled in her front of their friends, she remembered how he slipped her hand into his as they retreated the bonfire, pulling her closer as though it was them against the world. When he stayed out all night with only flimsy excuses about demands at work, her mind flashed to feeling like he saw no one else in the world but her that night. Soon, she began to feel like she was having a long distance relationship with the man Sam used to be, willing tolerating an obnoxious roommate in his place while she awaited his return.

Brigid did not stay frozen in the perfection of that moment, to be sure. She spoke down to Sam, both in private and in public. When she felt taken for granted, she challenged his manhood in ways both overt and obscure. Once when he ignored her at a party and flirted with a freshman in front of her, she locked him out of their bedroom and put in earplugs. He wound up sleeping in the backyard so their roommates wouldn’t know. Because as far as anyone else knew, they were still that couple locked in an embrace in the light of the bonfire, standing under the stars as the waves crashed around their feet.

Children dream of their fairy tale ending - the glass slipper fitting, true love’s kiss, sailing off into the sunset. What we don’t seem to realize is that those endings are actually beginnings, the place where the real story starts. Brigid and Sam had found their fairy tale, and they clung to that beginning long after they no longer recognized it within themselves. The story continued, but it trailed past off into the sunset into the land of unpaid bills, uncooperative children and unmet needs. They stayed together, but they slept with their backs to each other. Once upon a time, they kissed under the stars. They lived an after. They did not live a happily ever after, not by a mile.