The Fates (Book I) - 2014 Watty Award Winner!

1.10 - Trophies and Pastries

Dear Readers: Any Lacey fans? Hope you'll enjoy this next scene between her and Dan :)

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Scene 10: Trophies and Pastries

A.D. 2015

She smiled. Evidently oblivious that Dan had been lying through his teeth, in denying Paige's harsh words about Barbie post-breakup.

Other guests approached frequently, vying for Lacey’s attentions. She courteously turned each of them away. She was with Dan, and only with Dan, in this moment. The only person in whose presence she wasn’t plastic.

Dan glimpsed Katherine Weaver along the far wall. She was a slightly wrinkled replica of Lacey, minus all the modest charm that Dan adored. The proudest mother in the room, but also the most impossible mother to please. He noticed that the wrinkles seemed to lessen every year. No doubt due to increasingly expensive injections.

Dan loathed her from the bottom of his heart, for all the hell through which she had put Lacey all her life. Sugarcoated hell. Sweetened with endless supplies of designer purses and more money than the stupid bags could hold.

“Is your mom still set on the Sterling Law thing?” he asked.

Lacey cringed, visibly embarrassed. For reasons that she couldn’t begin to fathom, her mother was determined to get Barbie into the nation’s best law school. “Yes…”

“Lace,” Dan uttered in earnest, daring to lay a hand upon her shoulder—the sight of her shame was too much for him. “Please don’t ever feel small, because of what she wants for you. Expects of you.”

She nodded. But he knew that she wouldn’t comply.

“No one could ever live up to her standards,” he emphasized. “She wants you to fetch her the sun and moon on silver platters every day. With some stars sprinkled on the side.”

A soft laugh escaped Lacey’s lips, and the oncoming dampness dissolved from her eyes. The sight was lovelier to Dan than sun and moon and stars combined.

“Thank you, Dan,” she murmured. “This is why I love—”

His heart held its breath, against reason.

“—talking to you,” she finished. She had just paused to curb a choked back sob. “You always bring me right back down to earth, where I belong.”

Dan smiled a little sorrowfully. He begged to differ, as to whether angels belonged down here on earth.

“It’s far too easy to get lost up in the clouds, chez Weaver,” she sighed. “I always wonder how Madeline has managed to stay sane. And so successful, on her own terms.”

“Hey, now—you’ve got some terms of your own, haven’t you?” he recalled. “Whatever happened to that dream of fashion school?”

Lacey frowned delicately. She knew Dan meant well, as he always did, but she wished he hadn’t asked. “It died. Obviously.”

“Only if you let it.”

“I didn’t!” she protested, suddenly defensive, then suddenly hushed with her next timid words. “I’ve… I’ve been applying every year, for a while now.”

Dan’s eyes widened, surprised and impressed. “Lace…!”

“And getting rejected. Every time.”

He bit his lip.

“But no one knows. Dan—please don’t tell.”

“Of course,” he reassured her. “I only wish you’d told me earlier.”