Delivered straight to her apartment is a massive purple box with red ribbon tying it close; it’s not too festive but it’s neat, obvious it has been laced by cautious hands and only a few wrinkled folds managed to escape. Inside, there lays a smaller, but tall box of macarons, a tiny bottle of Bouquet du Trianon, a bright red shirt with the drawing-style picture of Marie Antoinette adorning it and a line of text that says, Courage! I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end? as well as gloves and a CD. Then a note is placed ontop of it.
Good morning, Andie.
I hope your sleep was filled with magnificent dreams and you’re having an amazing birthday. Here are some presents that I bought a few weeks ago and have managed to keep hidden from you for awhile ;) First, there are a bunch of macarons that you can enjoy with your brother or by yourself, they’re from this French bakery situated near my campus. I don’t go there a lot but I’ve heard many splendid things about their macarons and I hope they really live up to their reputation.
Next, it’s a home fragrance that I ordered a little while ago. Bouquet du Trianon; a brand that was apparently very loved by Antoinette. I tried taking a small whiff of it while I was boxing it up, and thought it smelled quite wonderful. You can spray it around your apartment and see if it fits your liking, I truly hope it does!
And then, there’s that T-shirt. Consider this a gift from Heather and I, as Heather was the one who made the drawing and I suggested the quote. It’s a simple but it’s also made by very tender material, not precisely the best to wear outside since it’s pretty thin and it’s cold right now (which, speaking of, I’ve also added gloves that match mine - remember when we first met we had to share our gloves? ❤ ) but it’s perfect to use when you want to cozy up in bed.
Last but not least, is a mixtape. It contains various songs from various generous; it starts with Romance, Op. 37 and ends with Smile by Uncle Kraker, really, it’s a huge and kind of messy variation but I hope it can boost your mood and make you think of us when you listen to it. We can listen to it together tonight, when you’re free.
I hope you enjoy the gifts and if you want to hang out soon, I’m free for the weekend, don’t hesitate to give me a text. Have a good day, my lovely Venus ❤ ❤ ❤
- Samantha.
Andie had, of course, gotten up in time for her birthday sunrise, but when she opened her bedroom door, planning to head outside and watch the neighborhood light up, the apartment was already alive-- to a degree. Chris was in the kitchen, trying not to fall asleep as he stood at the waffle iron on the counter, having planned a breakfast that they could share as the sun came up. She’d nearly knocked him over with a hug, but he didn’t care-- he never cared. She could do no wrong in his eyes, whether it was a startling embrace at 6 in the morning or quite literally anything else. As they were sitting near the large window, blinds drawn up to enhance the view, Andie mentioned the sunrises in Canada, the ones with Sam, accompanied by classical music, and he’d grinned silently because she’d already told him about each one-- multiple times. Once the sun was officially up and everything was bathed in light, he’d suggested they watch The Nutcracker-- as it turned out, the version she used to see on TV every year ( with that kid from Home Alone and New York City Ballet ) was on Netflix. They made it to the end of the snow scene-- her favorite-- and then Chris was asleep. So she skipped back every few minutes to watch the human-snowflakes on repeat for almost an hour, thinking of what they’d always meant before-- she didn’t have to envy them now. Eventually, she dozed off, too, but woke up again around eleven a.m.-- and that was when she opened the door and found the box.
The macarons made her grin-- of course. What said France and sophistication like tiny cookies in pastel colors that were nearly impossible to make right? She already knew she’d save almost all of them for her and Sam to eat together. Of course it was from Sam, though she hadn’t read the note yet. She wasn’t the note-first type. She was tempted to crack the box open and have one now, but she figured it’d be good to at least get a cute picture of everything before cookies started to go missing from their places.
Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the perfume-- she recognized Trianon immediately, Petit Trianon, one of Marie’s havens at Versailles-- she’d envisioned herself there more than once, surrounded by flowers, floral-upholstered-couches, large windows, the perfect opposite of a small house in Fort Davis, Texas, dry dirt invisible behind closed blinds, cemented windows, ugly furniture that saw everything, said nothing. She quickly found the note, eyes starting to blur when she reached the reference to the fragrance, to the queen herself. She knew it mattered, but did she know how much? How could she know?
Her hands were already trembling when she reached for the shirt, and as soon as she’d read the quote, a sob erupted, heavy but not with grief-- god, she wasn’t sad, what the hell was this? Chris was stumbling over the arm of the couch within seconds, and stopped to kneel beside her, where she’d sunk to her knees, shirt held close to her chest. It was all in those fucking words, wasn’t it? Her sweetest friend for all that time, misunderstood, accepting her fate knowing she’d forever be misinterpreted by anyone who refused to look beyond the surface, and then two hundred and fifty years later, a girl in a kitchen with a cutting board, courage coursing despite sheer terror, fight or flight, now or never, do or die-- and she held her own destiny, and hadn’t every woman in her books, in her head, been teaching her to reach out and grab it? When she had finally unfurled enough for Chris to see the shirt, he swallowed hard, looked about like he had when he’d emerged from his room having finished A Thousand Splendid Suns. She just sat there for a moment on her knees, trying to find her composition. Gave the room a couple spritzes from the bottle, dissolved into tears again.
When she finally stood up to find the last gifts in the box, Chris nudged her lightly and joked that his gift was going to seem pretty lame at this point.
She’d rolled her eyes, smiled as she rubbed at the remaining stickiness on her face, red and a little patchy. The gloves made her laugh, a couple more tears sprang forth, and she slid one on her hand to admire it, to remember their first adventure, first snow-- her first winter living as free as the snowflake-women in The Nutcracker. She was certainly ready for the two of them to make use of their now-complete sets of gloves, to form new sequences of good times that would replay in the dark, mini-movies of the best moments that she could return to, even better than a repeating Nutcracker snow scene.
Finally, she stared at the CD, not entirely sure if it was a CD-- maybe a DVD?-- and decided to look back at the note for some context. ( She had to work to keep her throat from tensing up as she read the part she’d missed, with the shirt and gloves. ‘It’s simple’ was such an incredible contradiction-- it was the truth, yet felt far from it. She just knew-- she took what jumbled sentences Andie could form regarding those twelve years and listened and from that-- she somehow knew. She wanted to go through the whole CD right then, once she had a-- quite vague-- idea of what was on it, but decided it’d be best with Sam and the macarons. She was careful to put almost everything back in the box, just to ensure it was there later when she needed it, but took the shirt to her room, found the black high-waisted pants she’d set aside for her museum shift and a black turtleneck, layered the shirt so it’d be warmer, tucked it into the pants with a few careful tugs to achieve the casual tucked look ( she was learning about fashion and trends-- slowly ) and grabbed her phone to take a picture for Sam.
( text. ) My coworkers are going to be jealous ( sunglasses emoji. ) ( text. ) I don’t even know what to say ( text. ) Did you invade my brain and steal my unconscious conception of the perfect shirt? That’s probably illegal.
She snapped another picture so the lingering redness in and around her eyes was visible, and sent it with a series of wailing emojis.
( text. ) Don’t worry, it was a good kind of crying ( text. ) I don’t know how you just know the right thing to say and do all the time but you’re perfect and I’m glad my courage didn’t run out when I needed it most. I wouldn’t have found you ( text. ) Thank you ( text. ) We gotta have a macaron CD listening party later ( text. ) The apartment smells so damn good ( text. ) Why have we never gone to this French bakery? That sounds like a d-a-t-e to me ( text. ) Oh and I love you.