The Secret Life of Prince Charming by Deb Caletti Read Free Book Online Page A

that maybe I could think about Daniel in a new way. Something about him had changed and I didn’t know why. I put my nose on his sleeve, remembered his separateness from me, his internal life I knew nothing about. It seemed thrilling to me, the fact that I might not know or couldn’t know. It made me feel like I wanted him, maybe for the first time, although maybe it wasn’t really him I wanted, but just the chance to overcome some obstacle within him, to get him to hand over something he wasn’t willing to hand over. Maybe desire needed mystery. Maybe desire needed something out of reach, some impossibility. Desire meant wanting, not having.
    Daniel’s shirt smelled flowery, sweet. It didn’t smell like cotton and laundry soap. It was strong enough that I wrinkled my nose. “Did you get squirted by some perfume lady at Nordstrom’s?” I said.
    “What?” Daniel said. He brought his sleeve to his own nose. “I don’t smell anything,” he said.
    We watched a slow jogger, a woman who did not lift her feet while she ran, but instead shuffled them close to the ground. Then, her opposite, a man made thin with tight, shiny nylon, speeding past on a bike with wheels circling in a blur. We watched a man and a wife and a baby, lifted from a stroller and placed on a quilt.
    Daniel leaned in and kissed me then. It was a different kind of kiss, less distant and polite, more present. It felt like a part of Daniel was there in a way he’d never been before. I tried to be there too. I so much wanted to be there, to feel something you might call love. I tried to summon up that feeling, what Iguessed it might be like, something big. It was a little like the time my dad took Sprout and me to a circus. Long ago, before he left, one of the memories that had stayed with me from when he lived with us. I must have been no more than nine. He was excited to go, and I can still remember trying to get there, too, to that excitement. I smiled and went along and clapped and tried hard not to feel what I really did, which was sad, because the elephant’s eyes looked sad and the girls in sequins looked sad, and the trapeze artist rubbing chalk on his hands looked sad, yet still I was clapping and smiling.
    I kissed Daniel, but part of me, the truthful part, was holding back. His lips slowly pulled away from mine, and his eyes were closed, but he looked happy. He looked almost surprised when he opened his eyes.
    “Quinn,” he said. I’m not sure who he was expecting.
    “It’s me, I’m here,” I lied.
    A NNIE H OFFMAN :
    Hank Peters, freshman year of college—sort of proved that if a man likes himself more than he likes me, I’m in. Yeah, boy, I’m right there, laid out across the emotional freeway, ready for the Truck o’ Love to run me right over. Ha. Um, he was the professor . Can you say “Daddy Issues”? No one in my family knows about this because they would kill me. Something about him made me sure that even his silence held some great weight of importance. He’d keep on with his class lecture when we were in his car making out. I thought this was weirdly sexy. “Alluuusions,” he’d say, with his lips on mine. He’d transition into some talk of fine wines or musicI’d be sure to know nothing about. Then he’d check his looks in the rearview mirror before starting up the car again. He was constantly bragging about the writers he knew and the few things he’d published in literary magazines, the kind no one reads except the people in them. Heated love triangle. He, himself, and me.
    We both were in love with him. And, of course, in the competition with him for his love, he always won. The big prize goes to…guess who. I always came up short. Are you going to be wearing that to dinner? he’d say. Or, How can we help you make a better decision than that? He couldn’t like me better than he liked himself, he was just incapable . He wasn’t built with the ability to see other people. I was just the warm breath on his