Page 30 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museum

‘I don’t know. Some of us just prefer mug stains on the tables.’

‘No one prefers mug stains on their tables.’ He leans over and takes the sketchbook from my hands and sits back again to add another few sparkles, and I instinctively push myself up on the desk and reach over to stop him.

‘This is perfect. I know I baulked when you suggested a logo all those weeks ago, but I imagined something corporate and meaningless, not something that captures the essence of the museum like this, and makes it look so inviting. If I saw this, I’d want to come here. You make it look like such a… home.’

‘It is. You make it into a warm and inviting home.’ He holds my gaze again for a long moment and then looks away and quickly adds, ‘For all the sentient exhibits, obviously.’

‘Obviously.’ I chew on my lip and echo his words, but I’m certain there’s a deeper meaning there.

‘Bookmarks.’ He redirects the subject back to the gift shop.

‘If we come up with some clever slogans or something, we could put them on bookmarks with the logo and a link to the website on the back… Magnets. Mugs. Pens. The possibilities are endless, but at least with this, you can build a real brand for the museum and tie everything together with one logo. Ooh, tote bags! Everyone loves a tote bag. And badges! You and I could wear badges so people can identify us as staff.’

I laugh at how enthusiastic he is about the gift shop.

It was something I never thought would be worthwhile, but now it’s something I wish I’d done years ago.

The dressing-up aspect has always had its problems, and he cut through all my waffling about it and saw exactly what needed to be changed, and I hadn’t realised how much I needed that.

Now I’ve stopped him tweaking the already perfect design, he leans back in the reclining chair and looks up at me. ‘What were you up to?’

‘Fixing Moana. Someone had tried on her flower crown.’

‘Ah, yeah, I’ve got a bone to pick with you about that. Is there any Disney movie that won’t make me cry? Because I watched that last night and when her grandma died in the beginning, I am hideously ashamed to admit that I bawled like a baby. These movies are turning me into an emotional wreck.’

I’m not sure which I like more – the fact he cries at Disney movies or the fact he openly admits it. ‘What that tells me is that we should watch more Disney films together because I feel like I need to witness that.’

‘I would be remarkably okay with that, even though I’m a grown man who should not be getting emotional at animated children’s films.’

‘The most attractive thing about any man is his feelings and a lack of fear when it comes to showing them.’

‘Then I must be George Clooney.’ He waggles both eyebrows.

He thinks he’s joking, and while George is certainly okay, I don’t think he’s a patch on Warren Berrington. ‘George wishes he had your hair.’

He laughs in a disbelieving way, but his face has gone redder than red, and we grin at each other across the desk, and then he considers something for a moment and beckons me to come round to his side.

‘There’s something else I wanted to show you, but it’s just an idea, something you mentioned a while back and I played around with… ’

He pulls another piece of paper out from his sketchbook and holds it up to show me, and I stand next to him and look over his shoulder.

On the paper is a pencil-sketched drawing of… a floorplan? It takes me a minute to understand what I’m seeing, and I can’t help the intake of breath when I do.

The mini-map I mentioned weeks ago that I’d wanted to get made but was too expensive to even consider commissioning… he’s drawn it. And not just drawn it, but drawn an absolutely beautiful, eye-catching map of the building that could not be any more perfect.

He’s got the black and white checkerboard floor look of the lobby, with a ‘you are here’ arrow at the front desk, and then small depictions of the Prince and Princess Suites on one side, the Fairytale Homes hall on the other, and the soon-to-be gift shop, customer bathrooms, the stairs with a barrier crossing it off because I spend half my days answering questions about whether there’s anything up there, and he’s paid attention to that without me saying a word.

The whole thing is inside a cloud, and to fill the empty space around the edges, he’s doodled the shapes of glass shoes, the genie’s lamp, Rapunzel’s sun symbol, Ariel’s seashells, and enchanted rose petals.

It’s the sweetest, most thoughtful gesture, something I hadn’t even thought of again, and a real display of understanding this place, but also of how much research he’s been doing for someone who’d never even heard of most fairytales a month ago, and it’s the first time that I have zero doubt that his intentions are honourable and he really, truly cares about Colours of the Wind.

No one could put so much effort into something they weren’t fully committed to.

‘It’s just doodling.’ He sounds endearingly nervous, like he honestly expected me not to like it. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t hav—’

Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve thrown my arms around his chair from behind and dragged it back against me, causing him to slide backwards and his feet to fall off the desk and hit the floor with a thunk.

He makes a choked-off noise that sounds like he’s swallowed his own tongue as my arms tighten around his chest and hug him, despite the chair’s high back between us.

His breathing has sped up because he clearly wasn’t expecting it any more than I was expecting to do it, and it takes a few moments for him to relax and sink into it.

He turns so his head is leaning against mine, his breath coming in sharp pants, making me shiver as it skims across my neck, and I lose track of the minutes ticking by as we stay in that position.

‘What’s this in aid of?’ he whispers against my hair, sounding relaxed and dreamily distant.

I consider it before I answer, because I want to be honest, and at the same time, I don’t want to make it any weirder or more awkward than it already is. I swallow and force my tongue to wet my suddenly dry lips before answering. ‘Being you.’

He makes that choked-off noise of surprise again and I hear the gulp as he swallows hard. He turns further into me, so his mouth is against the skin of my neck. ‘If you said what I think you just said, it’s really unfair to try to make me cry in the middle of a working day.’

I laugh and hold him tighter, and he shifts closer, his stubble catching in the lengths of my hair with every movement.

‘No one’s ever said anything like that to me. I’m not someone who makes people feel like that.’

It sounds like something he didn’t intend to say, and he seems curiously starved for affection, because he holds onto my arms tightly, his fingers curling deeply into my skin like he’s clinging on and silently asking me not to let go yet, and he holds them around his chest long after my back is protesting the bent-over awkward angle and the chair is digging into my collarbone.

It makes me long for a proper hug without the physical barrier between us, but nothing is more important than this connection that I’m not ready to break yet.

He doesn’t say a word even though his hands gradually slide down my arms as his grip starts to loosen, until eventually his fingers wrap around my fingers and tangle our hands together, and then his chest arches as he stretches with a groan and starts to lift my arms from around him. I’d happily stay here for longer, but—

‘Excuse me, dears?’

We’re interrupted by an elderly lady with a granddaughter in tow. I let out a squeak at their sudden appearance, and I feel Warren physically jolt in surprise at the unexpected ending to… whatever that was.

We dive apart so quickly that he barely misses running over my toes with the wheels of his computer chair. I’d forgotten we were at the front desk and could be interrupted at any moment. For a minute there, I’d totally forgotten about everything.

Warren’s leapt up and is leaning on the desk, breathless from the shock of the interruption, or possibly wondering what spell I cast to get him to allow physical contact like that, and I’m trying not to think about when it was that I started feeling this much affection for him.

I smooth my hair down and try to compose myself, feeling as embarrassed as I might do if a visitor had found us in an intimately compromising position, and not just two friends hugging because one did something nice for the other one.

That’s all it was, right? I glance at him. A thank you hug, nothing more.

‘I just wanted to say that you’ve got such a lovely place here.

’ The woman is leaning on a walking stick with one hand and clutching the little girl’s hand in the other.

‘I’d never heard of it before but I saw something about the escaped exhibits online and my husband and I decided to bring our granddaughter, and it’s been one of the best days out any of us can remember, hasn’t it? ’

She jiggles her granddaughter’s hand until the little girl confidently declares, ‘It has!’

‘It’s made me feel like a child again.’ Her watery eyes flit between me and Warren.

‘Walking around here has been like watching the years slip away. My own mum has been gone for decades now, but there’s something about being here that makes me feel like I’m a little girl again, standing at her side and holding her hand, and looking at something magical.

I can’t describe how special it is to feel like that at my age. ’