For my second and last submission for this year's Valentine's Day contest I am pleased to present a romantic fairy tale. Happy Valentine's Day! And may you receive all the Love you so richly deserve. Enjoy...
Once upon a time not so long ago, in a land not so far away, there lived a B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L Princess yearning to find her Prince Charming. Only she didn't know she was a princess and not so convinced she was beautiful.
But fear not. Cupid was on his way. Preparing for a Very Special Day!
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Saturday, February 9th
( Musical Introduction: "birds chirping, violins playing, lots and lots of happy music to lift the spirit...this girl needs it!)
Jenna trudged up the the long stairway to her upstairs apartment with her hands full trying not to lose her grip on her briefcase, Chinese carry out, newspaper-sized junk flyers and mail she hadn't collected for days.
Letting herself in she barely made it to the kitchen counter where she dropped everything still forced to reach down to the kitchen floor for a couple bills that didn't make it.
Catching her breath she exclaimed, "What a perfectly shitty day!"
It had been a pretty rough trip back to Reagan National. The turbulent flight, lost luggage, a rude airline employee, and an Uber driver who barely spoke English and couldn't find her street.
"There should be laws against being treated like that," she thought.
Of course, Jenna was being irrational, but she did know something about the law. She was a paralegal for a highly respected law firm in Washington, DC. However, she wasn't privileged to be one of the 'respected' employees. Her job included everything nobody else wanted to do and if it didn't get done yesterday there was hell to pay. The pay wasn't that great, either, for the workload and hours she was required to work. Jenna didn't understand what all the fuss was about the 'deep state.' It was well buried under paperwork or waiting for her to transfer it to computer.
She had moved from Chicago after graduating college only months ago and was already second guessing her initial passion to leave home, her mother, and friends just to start an exciting career in the nation's capitol. Her job kept her so busy she had next to no time for a social life.
"But there is only so much a pretty girl can do," Jenna said after completely disrobing and standing in front of the full length mirror she had hung on the back of her bedroom door.
(a magical mirror, that is...she didn't yet know it, but she was the fairest of them all).
It was time to check in with her imaginary roommate. Checking her reflection in the mirror, Jenna and her mirror image were still looking hot. A little tired perhaps but still the cat's meow. "What lucky guy wouldn't like to ravage that body," she thought. If only she could find one.
Jenna struck a sexy pose pushing her sandy blonde hair up behind her head. "You naughty girl. I know all your dirty thoughts. If you don't behave I'm going to make you do disgusting things to yourself while I watch."
After several moments of eyeing her roommate from head to toe and lightly massaging her body Jenna was unable to initiate enough arousal in spite of not pleasuring herself for several days. Her brief vacation home to visit her mother had been too exhaustingly short. She needed a long hot shower, another one of her favorite places for sex, but there, too, nothing could bring her carnal passion to a climax.
Standing under the refurbishing hot spray Jenna contemplated her rough day. She was having too many of those lately. However, she couldn't blame this one on her job. Or could she?
Jenna had just returned from Chicago. Her ungracious employers had blessed her with only a few days leave to celebrate her mother's birthday. It was the first free time away from work she had experienced since the holidays over a month ago.
In her attempts to emulate her mother, who was a federal judge in Chicago, Jenna didn't have a keen legal mind. She made up for it, though, with her youthful energy and a tenacious commitment to her work. She had a talent for research still unrecognized in her current assignment at the firm. For the present she was working her way up from the bottom up transferring old hard copy case studies and files to computer.
Finishing the shower and slipping into a robe, Jenna poured some Chardonnay and decided to put her glasses on to sift through her mail. Her downstairs neighbor and coworker, Matt, had collected it for her while she was away. He was really nice that way.
After opening a couple bills from the cluttered pile on the counter, she spotted a small rectangular box poking out under the pile.
"Oh, thank god!" She exclaimed. Her replacement iPhone had come. She was tired of fidgeting with the one she had borrowed from work. She had accidentally ruined the new phone her mother had given her for Christmas in the laundry. Fortunately her mother had thought to insure the phone but Jenna was still miffed she had to fork out a couple hundred bucks for the replacement.
The small box had oddly been taped over as if opened and closed during shipping. "Great. It's bad enough they told me I'd get a refurbished phone right after Mom had just bought it new."
Struggling to open the box with a steak knife and taking time out to mend a cut finger, Jenna managed to finally open the box to discover her new phone. "That's not the color I ordered!" Jenna hadn't gotten a break all day.
"Whatever!" Jenna had been too embarrassed to tell her mother about giving her expensive Christmas gift a run through the rinse cycle repeating her lifelong propensity for being slightly clumsy and somewhat forgetful. For this trip home Jenna had convincingly explained to her mother she had just forgotten her new phone.
Jenna was stubbornly independent and had insisted on moving to D.C. and supporting herself without her mother's financial assistance. While she had managed to get her own apartment she was still barely making ends meet. Expenses in D.C. were realistically beyond her meager salary but Jenna was getting by for the present. She didn't want to admit it, but she was ecstatic when her mother had given her a new phone to replace the old one well overdue.
Even though it wasn't prefect Jenna decided she'd give this one a try.
She pressed the button to turn it on. It lit up and surprised Jenna with a screen of numbers waiting for a passcode.
"That doesn't make sense." The polite customer service girl had given Jenna specific, step-by-step instructions on how to set up and download her backup from the cloud. She had even repeated the instructions a couple times with the service rep. But this phone was already past the initial setup.
Then Jenna had an idea. She entered her passcode for her old phone. Maybe the replacement had somehow already been set up. As unlikely as that idea seemed, she couldn't dismiss the possibility. It was the first time she had ever replaced a phone.
The passcode didn't work.
Now, at that point, most people would have given up and called their service provider to complain. Not Jenna. As stated earlier, she was tenacious and was never accused of lacking curiosity.
She turned on her laptop googling 'most used password for iPhone'. She tried 111111...then 121212...555555 - THAT WORKED!
Jenna's eyes opened wide startled to see numbers give way to a spattering of proprietary apps. "What next?"
She went to 'Settings' and discovered 'Whitney's Phone'. "Aha!" Jenna could finally deduce that the phone belonged to someone else and probably had made its way to her by mistake.
Her interest peaked, Jenna clicked on the 'Phone' icon. If she was going to track down the actual owner, that would be a good place to start.
Only two contacts were displayed - David and Susan. No last names and only one mobile number each. Jenna pondered calling Susan but still felt she was navigating uncharted territory. She decided to check for texts.