Reading Time:
She used to love watching Tangled.
The magic golden flower, the quippy humour, Pascal, and of course, the dreamy enemies-to-lovers romance between Rapunzel and Flynn. It was the reason she started painting whenever she was happy or sad or feeling something other than nothing. All of it was great, all of it was funny, and all of it was something she’d watch over a dozen times without tiring.
Turns out, her limit was two hundred and sixty-two times.
Yes, she really counted.
Amelia was ten when Tangled premiered in theatres. Her mom took her to go see it on a cloudy Friday night, and they munched on popcorn while Rapunzel struggled with the desire to simultaneously follow her heart and please her not-so-adopted mother. Every so often after that night, they’d sit on the couch and watch it together, singing along because ten years was enough to memorize every line and lyric. It would’ve been annoying for anyone else, but Mom never minded.
Still, once in a while would never amount to anything close to two hundred and sixty-two times.
She blamed Charlotte.
Charlotte was this puffy cheeked, doe-eyed four-year-old girl who lived next door. She was a gorgeous baby, with honey-blonde hair that hung around her head in ringlets and a laugh that would make the Grinch smile.
Amelia was around when Charlotte’s parents brought her home, towing along their sullen teenager behind them. Apparently, Charlotte wasn’t really planned for, so the Suzuki-Wrights spent the first few weeks rediscovering the joys of having an infant in the house. The whole neighbourhood could hear her cries in the middle of the night – Charlotte was simply that loud.
But when the baby grew into a toddler, everyone fell in love. She had a knack for that.
About a year ago, Mrs. Suzuki-Wright came over to ask Amelia if she could watch Charlotte for a little while and that she would obviously pay her and she really needed to get something at the store so could she please please please do it?
Amelia wasn’t a monster. Sure, she had formulas to learn and a degree to earn, but she wasn’t going to turn down her favourite neighbour. Her mom, though hurt by what the world had to offer, always told her to be kind to those around her, so she gladly followed the woman to her house and assured Mrs. Suzuki-Wright that nothing would be missing by the time she got back.
Charlotte was a bright soul and unafraid to declare her undying love for Rapunzel, so Amelia found it online and played it on TV without another thought.
When Mrs. Suzuki-Wright came home to a cleaner house and a sleeping toddler, she declared Amelia her emergency babysitter and gave her thirty dollars for the effort. After a few months of feigned excuses, Amelia volunteered to watch Charlotte – and therefore, Tangled – three times a week so that the Suzuki-Wrights could have some time to themselves.
Her mom worked the night shift at the hospital anyway, so it wasn’t like she was leaving anyone alone.
Watching Tangled with a happy little girl hundreds of times wasn’t even really the problem.
The problem was the little girl’s older brother.
Kai Suzuki-Wright used to be her best friend. Used to. They had been neighbours their whole lives, literally, because they were born mere weeks apart. Neither of their parents had been keen to move out of the area, so they went to the same schools, rode the same bus, and yes, entered the same university. She was just grateful that they were in different departments, otherwise she might never be free of him.
Amelia still felt guilty about their broken friendship. She should have tried harder.
When she started babysitting Charlotte, Kai had been staying in the dorms at school. He came home only every other weekend, so they never really crossed paths.
If only life were that easy.
About two months ago, when summer break started, Kai had returned to his house only to find Amelia playing with Charlotte on their living room floor. Their parents were out to dinner with some friends, so Amelia had happily walked next door to watch Charlotte for a few hours.
“What are you doing in my house?” he had asked, dropping the duffel bag he’d been carrying.
Charlotte had shrieked, “Kai!”
Amelia forgotten, the four-year-old had dashed across the room to crash into her brother’s legs, hugging him tightly.
He had picked her up with one arm, the other grabbing the duffel. “Hey, princess, did you miss me?”
Charlotte had babbled some kind of nonsense involving chameleons and fairies while her brother prodded for answers that he never really got.
Guilt writhing in her chest, Amelia had simply put the toys back into their labelled containers, swept the floor, and wiped up the mess from their dinner. She could hear Kai and Charlotte upstairs, drawers opening and shutting.
She hadn’t wanted to just leave – how would she explain that to Mrs. Suzuki-Wright? C’mon, Amelia. You can do this. It’s just Kai. He won’t make a scene in front of Charlotte.
Heart in her throat, she’d climbed the endless stairs and breathed deeply to ward off the urge to get down on her knees and apologize for what she did to him. Maybe it was time they got over it, but it didn’t mean she had forgiven herself.
When she got up there, both of them had been in Charlotte’s room with princess dresses littering the ground. Amelia would have laughed at the tiara on Kai’s head if she hadn’t been inexplicably nervous to disrupt whatever was going on up there.
Sure, she was once an avid softball player and currently getting a degree in Chemical Engineering, but Kai had been there for all the best and worst moments of her life. This was someone she had hurt, someone she never thought she would hurt. It had been years since their friendship crumbled into fractured laughter and scattered memories, but it was those years that had taught her just how hard it was to find a friend like him.
In all honesty, Amelia missed Kai. But did she have the right to want his friendship when she had so ruthlessly withheld it from him?
Amelia was not brave, and she was not a coward. She was the type to surf a large wave and stare at a creepy crawly. No actions taken, but no running, either.
Steeling herself, she’d cautiously stepped into Charlotte’s room and said, “I’m gonna go. Charlotte, I’ll see you on Thursday, all right?”
“Okay.” The little girl had given her a toothy grin. “Bye, Meelie!”
That Thursday, Kai was conveniently out for the night, as he was every night that Amelia was scheduled to babysit Charlotte. However he managed to do that, she didn’t really know. Surely his parents would want to save a few hundred dollars every month and have the free babysitter take care of his little sister?
She wasn’t complaining though.
Amelia was in the house again tonight. Mom was doing her shift in the ICU, and the Suzuki-Wrights were catching a movie for their weekly date.
God, she hoped she’d be that in love with her partner someday, to want to still spend time alone together after thirty years and waltz through the front door laughing at an inside joke.
She was used to having Charlotte to herself for a few hours, no interruptions save the awkward thirty seconds while she re-winded Tangled so it would play from the beginning. Charlotte was sleepier than usual, and Amelia bet she would be watching the girl fall asleep as soon as the golden hair started glowing.
Amelia had just put Charlotte in her bed when she heard the front door opening. So as not to wake the sleeping child, she shuffled downstairs to warn the parents.
It was Kai.
Shit.
She hadn’t seen him since the day he came home for the summer, and the only other times she’d seen him had been through the blinds as he worked out in the backyard.
Yeah. It really was like that.
Amelia might be taking three summer courses, but that didn’t mean she was immune to Kai’s presence.
When they were about six or seven, a few kids at school had made fun of her glasses. They’d called her names and otherwise made her so insecure that she vowed she would become the most beautiful woman when she grew up.
“That’s ridiculous,” Kai had told her. He was always so steadfastly loyal, but he was also so, so blunt. “You can’t become the most beautiful woman.”
To a child, those were mean words. She carried them with her until they were fifteen and about to start their sophomore year. Amelia had ditched her glasses that summer, paying more attention to her appearance than she ever had before, but her goal was still a degree in chemical engineering.
Kai was always going to do something in business or economics or finance or whatever other subject that Amelia couldn’t care less about. They supported each other, yes, but their dreams never intersected. Where he spent his free time strumming a tune on his guitar, Amelia was outside playing softball with her so-called friends.
Different people, she supposed, but best friends for a reason. She just forgot that for a little while.
That summer before sophomore year, both of them had seen each other less and less. They had part-time jobs and traveling plans and it was the year before Charlotte was born.
Still, one August day, they had been sitting together on the hammock in the Suzuki-Wrights’ backyard. It was, perhaps, the last truly happy day Amelia had with Kai.
He’d turned to her and said, “I think you misunderstood what I meant that day, you know.”
“What day?”
“The day I told you that you couldn’t become the most beautiful woman.”
“Oh. So?”
“I meant that I didn’t want you to be the most beautiful woman in the world. It wasn’t that I thought you weren’t capable of becoming it, just that you didn’t need to be. I just wanted you to be you.”
Three days after that, she wrecked their friendship.
Now, Kai just stood there staring at her as if he didn’t know whether or not he wanted to leave.
She settled for an awkward smile and nod in his direction. Turning into the living room, she started packing up all of Charlotte’s toys with practiced ease, panicking at her stupid reaction to seeing Kai with no four-year-old buffer in between them.
“You don’t have to do it, you know.”
Amelia dropped the Rapunzel doll she was holding. Lump in her throat, she replied, “I always clean up if she sleeps early.”
“You don’t have to babysit my sister,” he said, voice much closer than before.
He was a more polished version of the Kai she had known years ago. More confident, sure in his steps, and probably was no longer the quiet kid who got good grades but rather the bold, clever student who knew the answers to every question. That was the impression he gave, anyway.
But that still didn’t explain why she was so nervous. Was it because of the hurt she dealt him? Was it because she was, God forbid, attracted to him? Was it both?
“Your mom asked me to,” was all she said.
A sigh from behind her, and then his footsteps climbed the stairs.
Amelia waited on the couch for another twenty minutes before the parents came home, obviously happy and more than a little tipsy. They gave her a crisp fifty for the night, and that was it.
A few days later, when she was babysitting and watching Tangled again, Kai came home as she was feeding Charlotte her dinner. Slammed the front door, took off his shoes, and plopped down at the dining table.
“Kai!” Charlotte greeted, mouth full of pasta.
“Hey, princess,” he said back, but the smile never quite reached his eyes.
Though he didn’t ask, Amelia fixed him a plate of her homemade spaghetti and put it on the table in front of him. He didn’t seem to care that she was there, but he gave her a once-over that she disregarded just as he grabbed the fork and started eating.
Kai devoured that plate, so she got him a bit more as she let Charlotte watch some TV in the living room. Amelia got her own bowl, but should she sit with him or watch his sister?
Loathing the uncertainty, she resolutely sat down and ate across the table from him. Neither of them spoke, neither of them tried to bridge five years of discontentment, but when you had nothing else to look at, what were you supposed to do?
When they were both finished, Amelia was the one who got up first. She rinsed the dishes, put them in the dishwasher, and transferred the remaining spaghetti to a Tupperware container so it wouldn’t spoil. Kai wiped down the table, brows furrowing as he made sure every inch of it was spotless.
“Meelie?” Charlotte called out.
“Yeah, Charlotte?” Amelia shut the fridge door. “What is it?”
“Can we watch Rapunzel again?”
Kai huffed out a laugh, a small smile on his face that she caught from the corner of her eye. He followed her out the kitchen and into the living room where Charlotte was scrutinizing the remote with as much intelligence as an astrophysicist.
“Can you turn it on?” she asked sweetly.
“Sure,” Amelia acquiesced. This is the story of how I died.
She masked her surprise when Kai drew Charlotte closer to him on the couch, his eyes never straying from the screen. Making space for her next to them. Amelia sank down on Charlotte’s other side, watching but not really paying attention to what was happening. Besides, it wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen hundreds of times before.
Two hundred and sixty-two had been surpassed weeks ago.
When the Suzuki-Wrights came home, their jaws dropped as soon as they spotted Amelia, Charlotte, and Kai sprawled over the couch, sound asleep.
The next few times she babysat, Kai was always home. His mom never told her she could stop coming now that he was available to care for Charlotte, and she wasn’t inclined to do so anyway.
They didn’t talk much – what would they have said?
Amelia would just come in, play with Charlotte, make dinner or feed her leftovers or whatever, and Kai would steadfastly be there. She grew accustomed to his presence, noting the tension in his forehead when he was upset, the tilt of his eyebrows when he was happy, and the way his eyes lit up (just a smidge) whenever she cooked something he found pleasing.
About two weeks after he essentially babysat with her, Kai spoke.
“Tell Dr. Chu I said hello.”
The tenuous truce wasn’t everything Amelia was willing to push for, but it was enough for now.
Words flowed more smoothly after that.
She’d say, “Hey.”
He’d say, “How are you?”
Small words, maybe, but with every day that passed without him telling her that her presence was unnecessary and certainly unwelcome, Amelia began to hope.
A month before classes was due to resume, Charlotte got a really bad cold. Like, really bad. Cranky, exhausted, and paler than normal.
Amelia couldn’t babysit her for about a week. She was, naturally, disappointed, but she couldn’t tell if it was only Charlotte she missed.
Babysitting duties continued once Charlotte recovered. Kai had taken to studying in the living room while Charlotte played with her toys or, yes, watched Tangled. Amelia was getting good at smiling at him when he came in, and she was even better at asking what he’d been up to the past few days.
They were civil. Almost…friends.
Yet though she wished her guilt would eventually disappear altogether, she knew she would never be truly at ease around him until she addressed the ugly elephant in the room.
She planned it for days. They were supposed to start classes in a couple of weeks, and she was aware that he had found a place to live with a few friends during the school year. Amelia wouldn’t have to see him, not really, so if their conversation escalated, then she could cop out and avoid him for a very, very long time.
Amelia was not brave, but she was not a coward.
She waited until one night, Charlotte fell asleep hours before her parents were going to come home.
Rain was pouring outside, lightning flashing every few seconds, but the terrible weather didn’t dissuade her from what she knew she had to do.
Kai was sitting on the floor with a textbook cracked open in front of him, eyebrows furrowed as he scribbled in an impeccably neat notebook.
Amelia took a single deep breath before she said, “I’m sorry.”
He glanced up at her. “I told you to eat the last of the garlic bread. You don’t need to be sorry.”
“Not about that.”
Kai put his pen down, releasing a breath that indicated he’d known what she meant, after all. “We don’t need to do this, Ames.”
Ames. He hadn’t called her that in years. Five, to be exact.
“Yes, we do,” she disagreed. “Well, I need to.”
When he didn’t tell her to stop, she took that as a sign to continue.
“I’m sorry for saying that we weren’t friends and for ignoring you afterward. I’m sorry I let our friendship fall apart, and I’m sorry I ignored all your calls and texts. I’m just…I’m sorry,” she said quickly, the sentences falling out of her mouth like rain during a storm.
He said nothing. Just watched her with those knowing eyes.
It would’ve been too easy for him to forgive you.
Amelia swallowed. “I’m gonna go. Tell your parents I said goodnight.”
She didn’t have an umbrella, but damn her if she’d ask to borrow one, so she left the house without another thought. The tears didn’t fall until she was halfway across her own front yard.
“That’s it?” she heard him say. He’d trailed after her without a sound. “You’re just going to apologize and walk away?”
Turning around, she asked, voice breaking, “What else do you want me to say?”
Kai paused at the edge of her lawn, barefoot and jacketless and soaking wet. “I was never mad at you for claiming we weren’t friends. I was never mad at all, really.”
“But I was horrible to you!” she cried out, clutching her arms to her chest. “I – I broke us, Kai.”
“All you did was tell a pretentious bitch what she wanted to hear –”
“I told her lies.”
The memory bombarded her mind even as she said the words.
“You’re still friends with that dork?” Sandra had asked her, curling her lip at Kai’s big glasses.
Amelia had spent years thinking that she didn’t need the approval of girls like Sandra, but it still meant a lot when it was given to her. Someone like her, who had been teased for her studious traits and nerdy appearance, who was friends with the smartest but quietest boy in school. All she had needed to do was take care of her appearance and Sandra came to her on her own that day in sophomore year.
So instead of defending Kai, she had said, “Of course not.”
When he’d greeted her at her locker that afternoon, she’d ignored him and walked away.
But she wasn’t going to walk away now.
“I’m sorry for everything,” she said again. Drenched from the head down, squinting through the rain, but Amelia was determined not to let this fester into a cancer.
What she had done would seem trivial to someone leagues older than her. It wasn’t really that big a deal, but a small pea under the mattress kept the princess from sleeping soundly.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” Kai asked instead. “Why didn’t you just tell me about any of it?”
“Any of what?”
He took a step closer. “That you cared about what they thought. You always said you didn’t.”
“Because I didn’t know I did until it was too late,” she told him. “I never sought their approval, but I was jealous of their popularity. I guess I just forgot that their words meant nothing.”
Kai took his time walking toward her, until they were toe-to-toe and mere inches apart. He was so close she could feel his breaths on her face, their eyes meeting squarely.
Though she never told him, she’d always thought he was handsome enough to be a bust in a museum. Maybe it was because they knew each other so well, or because he made her feel like she could be smart and beautiful (which was a silly notion in this day and age, but sometimes the brain couldn’t influence matters of the heart). Still, Kai was…everything.
They had been young, so young, but did that matter?
“I hated you,” he said simply.
“I know,” she whispered.
His hands were warm as they found hers, intertwining their fingers.
“But I always loved you more.”
Amelia froze.
“I was never mad at you,” he said, voice low. “I was…hurt. Disappointed. A little envious, maybe. But I was never mad at you. How could I be? I saw how easily you settled into that new role, how you embraced the sudden popularity. I could never be mad at you for finding happiness, Ames. I was just disappointed that you’d found it without me.”
She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry I took so long to apologize.”
He shook his head. “I needed the time, too. Now that I’ve had a few years to…re-evaluate myself, I think I can forgive you.”
There was a wetness behind her eyes as she admitted, “I don’t think you should.”
They had always been friends first. Best friends. There had never been a hint of anything more between them save for that day he told her he just wanted her to be who she already was. Both had dated and gotten their heart broken in the five years since then, but fate was a fickle thing.
Sometimes, the path you thought was straight turned out to be a circle.
“I still will,” he promised. “It might take a while longer, but I know I’ll forgive you, Ames.”
“How?” she dared. “You can still walk away.”
“If I did, I’d never be able to –”
His voice broke.
“To what?”
Instead of answering, Kai just did the thing he’d been dreaming of doing ever since they were twelve years old, ever since that day he realized that Amelia was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. Maybe not the most beautiful to the whole world, but certainly to him.
Hurt and disappointment had chafed at his insides for five years, and he knew he could be doing a really stupid thing, but he was tired of being upset. He wanted to move on. He wanted to wake up with Amelia in his life as something more than just his sister’s babysitter or his neighbour or just that girl he used to be friends with.
So, he kissed her.
Suffice to say, their lives were never the same after that.
If anyone asked her what it was like to be with Kai, Amelia would have said one word:
Easy.
Being with him was easy. There was no awkward phase where they tried to toe around each other’s feelings or figure out what would tick the other person off. That was information they’d known for twenty years. She knew everything he liked, everything he had done, and everything he wanted to do in the future, so they didn’t waste any time.
They studied together on campus, met up during their breaks, and parted ways to go home. Kai visited his family a lot more now that he also had Amelia to see next door, but most of the time they spent with each other was during the week.
At some point, she knew he had completely, wholeheartedly forgiven her, even if he never said the words.
It was so easy that Amelia was sure something bad would happen.
At first, she thought that maybe just because they got along tremendously well didn’t mean they would have the sexual chemistry expected in a romantic relationship, but that flew out the window when he kissed her that night in the rain.
God, where had he learned to do that?
She wasn’t shy about coming back for seconds, and he was more than happy to oblige her request.
Amelia still babysat Charlotte three times a week, but she was less hesitant about studying while the girl slept. She brought her textbooks and laptop with her most nights that she stayed at the Suzuki-Wrights, nearby just in case Charlotte woke up from a nightmare.
Charlotte got another cold around Christmastime. Shivering, cold sweats, the whole circus.
On Christmas Day, Kai walked her home – yes, next door – and he gave her a heart-melting kiss that left her a little delirious. She said, without thinking, “Goodnight. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” he replied, a grin on his face as he crossed the yard to his own house.
That was the first time either of them ever said those words.
The following summer, they went on a road trip to Yellowstone. A whole week together with no Charlotte, no parents, and best/worst of all, no wi-fi. They had no one but each other for company, and honestly, it was the best week of their lives.
Hiking, seeing gorgeous mountaintop views, wildlife, and uninterrupted time to make sure that Kai knew she loved him more than anything else in the world.
Still young, maybe, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be sure she would fight to spend her life with this man.
“Where do you want to go for our grad trip?”
“I don’t know, babe, where do you want to go?”
“I literally just asked you that, Ames.”
“Yeah, but you can pick. I chose Yellowstone.”
“South America…?”
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing we both have savings.”
That second Christmas with Kai, Amelia prayed for snow.
And when it did, she taught Charlotte – grinning but sick again – how to throw a snowball so that it would hit him where it hurt.
They thought their time was as endless as the sand on a beach, but truly, it was the sand in an hourglass.
“When do you want to get married?”
“Is that really how you’re going to propose?”
“Are you going to say yes?”
“You’re lucky I love you, you big dumb nerd.”
Amelia graduated nine days before Charlotte was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia.
Her plans to start working flew out the window as soon as she answered Kai’s distraught phone call, and she was walking, running, racing to the hospital.
Charlotte was asleep by the time she made it there. The Suzuki-Wrights had scarlet rings around their eyes, hands clasped, standing in various positions around the room.
She tucked a loose strand of hair behind Charlotte’s ear, and then she stood next to Kai. Holding his hand, knowing there was no measure of comfort she could give that would even begin to address the pain he was feeling.
Amelia learned how to study in a hospital room. So did Kai. They would take turns chatting with Charlotte, bringing her all of her toys, and when they finished reading, they would watch Tangled on Amelia’s laptop.
Whenever Charlotte giggled, Kai would cry.
Amelia was just better at hiding her tears.
Eight months, twelve days, and fourteen hours after she was diagnosed, Charlotte passed away. Months of struggling, of pale cheeks and endless treatments, but at least she had been laughing that final night.
Amelia didn’t cry at the funeral. She stood at Kai’s side, providing as much comfort as she could to his family, and though she thought of Charlotte as her own sister, she had no claim to such a thing.
She took care of the house during the wake, mingling with the grieving guests, making sure the caterers knew what they were doing. When she wasn’t occupying herself with those simple tasks, she brought Kai food or water. Once, she even offered him a shot of vodka, and he cracked a smile at her attempt to cheer him up.
Neither of them wanted to go to South America anymore, so they gave their tickets to Kai’s parents. The time away allowed them to grieve alone, but none of them could breathe without feeling like they would suffocate on air.
It would take time, she knew, for the wound to heal into a scar, and for that scar to fade.
Kai and Amelia eloped two years later. They drove down to Vegas, found a chapel, and that was it.
Easy.
Neither have ever regretted that decision.
Years have passed now. Amelia followed in her mother’s footsteps and took that Chemical Engineering degree to med school. She still loves to cook whenever she finds the time, preparing a meal that will get Kai to grin as soon as he comes home from work.
He brings her flowers every Sunday without fail, and once a year, they travel somewhere with plenty of hiking destinations. Kai slowly learns how to stage a prank just to make Amelia laugh, but he still doesn’t know why she shakes her head at him in exasperation when he tells her that she gets sexier with age.
They lead a relatively simple life together, unburdened by petty squabbles or secrets from the past because they have none. Their scars have faded, and only joy lingers in their memories of a puffy-cheeked, doe-eyed little girl who never learned to pronounce Amelia’s name.
Whenever they miss her, they would sit on the couch together and turn on the TV. Clicking the same buttons, the same practiced movements, to love it for Charlotte.
And they watch Tangled, again and again and again.
Clara Abigail 