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In fairytales, the prince kisses the princess, waking her from deathlike sleep. Then, like magic (because it is magic) soul-rings bloom around their fingers, and they live happily ever after.
Everyone knows that's not how it really happens, but that never stopped anyone from hoping it would happen to them or from being disappointed when it doesn't.
***
If anyone asked, George was checking her phone for a text from Jack telling her he was in the building or at least on his way.
The truth was, she knew damn well Jack would be there for the presser. Jack wasn't who she was waiting to hear from. She glared at her screen, but it remained frustratingly clear of alerts. There was only the photo of her and Mark, both smiling like a promise of forever.
Mark took that photo a year ago. Today, she wondered if she would hear anything from him beyond the perfunctory congrats he'd texted last night.
She rubbed a thumb over her wedding ring, but before she could think too much about how there was still no sign of a soul-ring underneath, she heard the commotion as Jack finally arrived. She pulled herself together.
She had no choice. She had a press conference to manage and Jack had history to make.
***
Hard truths come with growing up. The original fairytales weren't in Technicolor with Oscar-winning soundtracks. Sleeping Beauty wasn't woken with a kiss, the hunter didn't save Red Riding Hood, and wedding rings were first worn to hide the fact that princes and princesses were married to bring nations together because who gives a shit about love and soulbonds when empires are at stake?
Besides, soulbonds don't happen with a kiss like they do in fairytales. They take hard work and good luck, and sometimes princes and princesses find happiness despite everything.
And sometimes they don't.
***
Getting ready for her run that morning, George finally understood why Jack set so much store by routine.
Every little action, whether it was applying anti-chafe balm or adjusting her laces, was a moment of focus that kept her from dwelling on a doubly bare ring finger and the ache of failure and loss. It helped her stay calm.
Or numb. Numb was close enough to calm, wasn't it?
When she got to the park, Jack was stretching. A run would do her good, she told herself, but when Jack saw her, his eyes narrowed.
"Non," he said. "We're going back to my place."
George didn't care enough to argue. Jack must have called Eric on the way, because when George walked in, the smell of coffee and chocolate was almost enough to shatter her control.
She did lose it when Eric pulled her into a hug. He just let her take what time she needed before getting her settled on the couch with a box of tissues. It wasn't as embarrassing as it could have been, even when Jack sat awkwardly next to her and Bitty disappeared into the kitchen to 'give them a moment.'
Jack clearly didn't know how to start, so George spared him the trouble.
"Mark called last night. We're done. I'll be served papers later this week."
"Shit. I'm sorry."
She shook her head and rubbed her thumb over the blank skin where her wedding ring sat just yesterday. "I kept telling myself it was just a break and we'd be stronger for it. That maybe our soul-rings would finally appear, but..."
Some couples didn't get their soul-rings until after ten years of marriage or more. Or ever. Seven years and still blank wasn't a failure - except when it was.
She clenched her fists in her lap. "He's seeing someone. Another coach at Brown."
Jack's mouth tightened in anger. "Do you think they started before - "
She held up a hand (a bare hand) to cut him off. "I don't know. I don't want to know. It won't change anything."
That March, right after the Falcs clinched a playoffs spot, Mark said they needed a break. George hadn't agreed, but what could she do? Besides, it wasn't like she hadn't noticed the growing strain in their marriage. So, Mark moved out and George threw herself into work.
Only Tom, Thirdy, and Jack knew what had happened and they also knew not to ask about it.
At first, she and Mark talked most days, and he even stayed over a few nights because habit was habit and comfort was comfort. But as time went on, he pulled further and further away. In the end, she got congrats and, the day after the draft, a call telling her it was over.
Eric returned with coffee doctored with cream and chocolate syrup, and what looked like pain au chocolat. "Here you go, darlin'. You look like you could use some TLC."
George gave him a wobbly smile and took a bite of the pastry.
For a few blessed seconds, everything was right with the universe.
"Holy hell! What is this?"
"Homemade pan o' chocolate," Eric said, and George wasn't sure if he was butchering the pronunciation on purpose or not, but the pained look on Jack's face was a treasure. "Except instead of plain chocolate, I used a Snickers bar."
George hummed with pleasure and took another bite. "That should be illegal."
"I'm certain Nate thinks so," Eric sniffed. He and Jack exchanged looks, and Eric nodded in response to whatever cue he picked up. "Just holler if y'all need more coffee or anything. I'll be in the kitchen."
"Thanks," George said once she and Jack were alone. "It's not that I don't adore Eric, but there's only so much of other people's domestic bliss I can take right now."
Jack ducked his head and gave his usual monotone chuckle. "Sorry."
"I kept telling myself it was okay we didn't have soul-rings," she said after a stretch of quiet. "Plenty of couples don't have them. And the ones who do, most aren't like you and Eric and have them show up right away."
Jack gave her a strange look.
"What?" she asked.
"Euh, we didn't get ours until right before I told you about us."
Now it was George's turn to display what was probably a very strange look.
"I'm not surprised you didn't notice when it came in." Jack's soul-ring was a delicate filigree of rose-gold that almost vanished against his skin, unlike Marty's crimson bands or Thirdy's electric blue swirls. In public, Jack wore a silicone ring the way most unmarried celebrities did to ward off speculation.
"I just... I can't imagine the two of you not together."
Jack laughed again, and this time it was rich and not at all monotone. "Oh, no. God, no. We hated each other at first. Hey, Bits!" he called out, "Tell George what I was like when we first met!"
"He was a Grade A, pie-despising jerk!" Eric shouted from the kitchen, but it sounded more affectionate than not.
"So what happened?"
Jack shrugged. "Time. Me getting my head out of my ass. Honesty. Lots of work."
"I feel like you just told me Santa Claus wasn't real," George joked, but she also wanted to cry.
If three years of dating and seven years of marriage didn't count as lots of work, then what the hell did?
***
In her teens, George discovered other women who had crafted fairytales for themselves and each other. Stories. Poems. Songs. She devoured Angela Carter and Anne Sexton and Alice Walker while listening to Tori Amos and Tracy Chapman on constant repeat.
She read how Beauty could find joy in becoming a Beast. She studied the different, secret, ways women craft soul-rings for every one of their fingers or instead carve them away and cauterize the wounds with pitch. She saw how some women change pain into pearls while others shout it as a war cry or wind it around themselves like a shroud.
She learned there are worse things out there than the gory tales of Grimm, and while you could survive these things, not everyone does, so you have to be stronger, work harder, skate faster, shoot for the goal...
She also learned that sometimes what a princess really wants is another princess.
***
On a stagnant night in late July, George lay in bed, thinking about Nichole. She knew Nichole was coaching women's hockey at Cornell - but knowing where wasn't the same as knowing how.
She wondered if Nichole ever remembered cuddling in a narrow bed in the Olympic Village, or if she ever looked at her gold medal and had a sudden, knee buckling recollection of joyful, filthy, celebratory sex.
They hooked up again a year later at Worlds, and the year after that, and the year after that, with a few chance weekends in-between. They were hardly exclusive, and the second time they were both on Team USA for the Olympics, Nichole kindly rebuffed George's advances because she was seeing someone and it was serious. How serious? She blushed as she showed George the faint green curl of a young soul-ring.
George hugged Nichole, and was genuinely happy for her. Disappointed for herself, yes, but happy. (It helped that Canada's goalie had been shooting her meaningful looks that George was happy to follow up on.)
At the 2006 Olympics, George met Mark and Nichole stopped talking to her.
George used to wonder if they would have done better than bronze if her liney hadn't frozen her out.
Tonight, her wondering took a new path.
What would have happened if Nichole hadn't found her soulmate and she hadn't met Mark? Could they have been happy?
Why did it only now bother her that she had spent hours consoling Mark over the men's eighth place finish while he barely acknowledged her third Olympic medal?
Maybe that's what happened when you were falling out of love.
Her thoughts spiraled inevitably onwards.
At the 2009 Worlds, the last they attended together, the press had buzzed about the newlyweds who played for Team USA, and everyone was primed to crown Curran-and-Martin as hockey's fairytale couple when they inevitably both came home with medals.
The women got gold.
The men got fifth.
George's team got a spread in Sports Illustrated. Mark's got a sidebar.
In 2011, the Islanders placed Mark on waivers and the new Providence franchise offered George a job. Things were rough between them for a while, but the Falcs' GM helped Mark get a coaching gig at Brown, and the ice was smoothed over again.
Or not. She now saw how the cracks had been patched but were still there. And how as her dreams came true and Mark's withered away, cracks became chasms above deep water, and why oh why couldn't he just be happy for her?
She was sad. She was angry. She was tired of crying.
George pressed the home button on her phone and looked at the two of them, happy. They had been so happy, once. She wished she could just forget it or pretend it wasn't true, but she couldn't.
She deleted the photo and turned off her phone.
"Fuck him," she whispered into the dark.
***
Once, while babysitting for the Robinsons, she let Angel talk her into a Disney marathon. As she watched, she wished movies like Brave and Frozen had been there when she was a little girl. But the third movie was Cinderella, which Angel declared was her most favorite of all her favorites.
Angel said it was because the mice were funny, duh, but her squeal of delight when the animated soul-rings sparkled into life in the last scene (one she had watched dozens of times) told a different story.
A simple, familiar story that inexplicably retains its power no matter how many times it is shown to be pure bullshit.
***
Their court date was August 31st. After that, their story would be over.
The weekend before 'D-Day,' as Carrie had dubbed it on a recent 'Wine and Whine' night, George let herself be talked into going to a party at Jack's even though she wasn't feeling up it, just as she hadn't felt up to the two dates she'd gone on that summer.
As with those dates, she'd probably end up wishing she'd stayed home.
At least the party was, with a few exceptions, all new people. The Robinsons were there, because Carrie had been the one to convince George to go, and Tater was there because god forbid you try to keep him away from Eric's cooking. Everyone else was from Samwell and wouldn't know to pity her or ask how she was doing.
The only rough moment was when Ben Murray came over to say hi - as coaches in the ECAC, he and Mark knew each other professionally. If he'd heard what had happened, the only sign was that he didn't ask about Mark.
It was okay, though. Okay enough that instead of leaving early, she retreated to the kitchen.
She didn't expect the kitchen to be empty, and it wasn't. Eric was cutting brownies into perfect squares and chattering away at a woman George had never seen before. She wasn't George's usual type, but George found her attractive in a cozy, comfortable way she thought she could learn to appreciate.
"Oh, there you are!" Eric said as if he had been waiting for her. "I need to deliver these to the ravening hordes, but George, this is Alice Atley. Professor Atley, this is Georgia Martin. I'll be back in two shakes!"
George raised an eyebrow at the other woman. Alice. "Did he really just leave us with no brownies?"
Alice smiled slyly and tilted the brownie pan so George could see. "No, he left us with all the edge pieces."
"Sweet," George gloated. She pulled out a five-inch slab of crispy, chewy, chocolatey goodness.
Alice chuckled and took a piece for herself. "That young man knows what side his bread is buttered on." Her Southern accent was a different flavor than Eric's, with traces of New England around the edges.
"Bread he's baked himself, no doubt," George said. She bit into the brownie. Her eyes fluttered closed at the hit of chocolate, butter, sugar, and other things she refused to feel guilty about just then. "How Jack doesn't weigh five hundred pounds, I have no idea."
"I dread what's going to happen to me with all the stress baking that's gonna go along with that boy's thesis. They'll have to roll me into class on a dolly." Alice shook her head and rubbed her hand across her plush belly with a sigh.
Delicious, George thought before she could stop herself. Yeah, it had been far too long since she had gotten laid, but this was not the time. She forced her eyes back up and hoped her blush wasn't as visible as it felt. "Eric called you 'Professor.' Are you..." She circled her hand, unsure how to finish that sentence without sounding like an idiot.
"I'm Eric's thesis advisor, sweet Jesus have mercy on my soul." She tsked, but George saw the affection twinkling in her warm, dark eyes. "I'm just hoping we can come up with some way to have him write a cookbook and disguise it as a thesis. It's the only way either of us will survive the experience. So, how do you know the boys?"
George grinned at the way Alice referred to Jack and Bitty, and something in her stomach flipped over as Alice's expression shifted from amused to considering.
"It's a long story."
Alice laughed knowingly. "With those two? Of course it is."
The next three hours went by far too quickly. George felt it down in her toes when Alice touched her arm mid-story to emphasize a point. They both laughed themselves sick when Eric came in at just the right point in Alice's tale of senior seminars and bribery pies, but he gave them a pleased smile along with the pointed side-eye.
It was easy and it was comfortable, just the two of them sitting at Jack's kitchen counter, and George was glad she hadn't stayed home.
By the time they left the party - the last two out the door - they had exchanged numbers and made plans to meet for dinner next weekend. George tried not to think about how she'd be officially single by then.
It was easy, so easy, to share a quick kiss at Alice's car. It was harder not to do more than that, but George reminded herself she was still on the rebound. So, she pulled Alice into a hug, enjoying her strength and softness and the feeling that this was right, and left before she could do anything stupid.
As she walked to her car, she realized she hadn't felt this happy in a long time. A very long time. So, if she broke into a little dance step along the way, that was no one's business but her own.
Once in her car, she put her hands on the wheel and took a deep breath.
"Calm the fuck down, George. You just met and you - "
She looked down.
Her eyes went wide.
Her phone rang.
A scroll of sunset orange circled the fourth finger of her left hand and her phone was ringing and ringing.
She grabbed the phone before it went to voice mail.
"Alice? Oh, my god!" she laughed. "Oh my god!"
She was laughing and crying and she couldn't stop looking at the soul-ring that had bloomed on her finger like magic.
***
In fairytales, two lovers kiss for the first time and their soulbond forms like magic (because it is magic).
As people get older and consider themselves wiser, they scoff at childish stories and wonder why anyone believes them anymore.
If they were truly wise, they would know it is because sometimes, just sometimes, the stories are true.