Chapter Eight
MACEY
A text exchange between Macey and Amelia, Sunday, September 15, 5:35 p.m.
Macey: So, somehow your brOTHER surprised me and is going with me to play Darcy
Amelia: What? YES! Are you serious?
Macey: He got himself a ticket for my flight, and we’re on our way to Manchester
Amelia: THIS IS SO PERFECT!
Macey: Not really. I blame you for putting this in his head. I would have rather gone alone!
Macey: Yeah, I guess
“YOUR RESERVATION IS FOR JUST the one room,” the portly front desk clerk says, his vowels clipped and softened. A slightly different accent than the ones I’ve heard since arriving in the UK.
“Yes, I know. I actually need a second room,” I say, exhausted and practically soaked to the bone. Both my hoodie and my T-shirt are wet. My hair is matted to my head, and I’m pretty sure I look like a soggy poodle. What a waste of a blowout.
My first impression of England is that it’s very green, very cloudy, and very rainy. After taking the train from Manchester —with two transfers, no less—we had a short, twelve-minute walk that started with a light spritz and quickly turned into a full-blown downpour. By the time we arrived, we were cold and soaking wet, and all I can think about right now is crawling into bed and sleeping for the next twenty hours. Even with the lie-flat seat in first class on the second leg of the flight, my sleep was patchy at best.
You are cold. You are wet. You can’t even think positively right now.
“Sorry, duck, but we’re all booked up tonight. So is every place around here. It’s the start of the autumn fair, ya see. No rooms left, I’m afraid,” the desk clerk says, giving me a kind grin.
He’s called me “duck” twice now, and I’m really hoping it’s not a commentary on my bedraggled, looking-like-I-was-just-pulled-from-a-pond appearance.
“No rooms?” I repeat, even though I know I heard him correctly.
“That’s right,” he says. “Just the one you’ve reserved.”
“Oh,” I say, giving him a smile with no teeth, but inside I’m feeling mostly panicked. My heart is doing a fluttering thing, and not in a good way.
When I booked the hotel originally, I only reserved the one room because I thought it would be fun and easy to share one with Derek. But now I’ve got Zane with me, and I absolutely don’t want to share a room with him. Because ... well, there are so many reasons.
“You could share the room?” the desk clerk suggests, as if he read my thoughts and knows my worst nightmare.
Okay, it’s not my worst nightmare. While ten years ago it would have been my biggest fantasy, it’s not anymore.
I give the clerk a nod and slosh over to Zane, who’s standing by our bags, my wet shoes making squeaking noises on the black-and-white tiled flooring. If I weren’t freaking out about my current situation, I’d be gushing over this hotel. It’s stunning, with dark wood detailing and artwork in gorgeous gilded frames. It feels steeped in history, the kind of place where secrets and stories live, and I’m feeling like a fish out of water with my soggy American appearance. And yes, the pun was intended.
“What’s going on?” Zane asks as I approach, frowning in response to the look of frustration that’s probably all over my face.
“The only room they have is the one I booked, and all the other hotels around here are booked up as well. There’s some autumn fair going on,” I tell him.
“One room,” he repeats. “Did you ask him if there are any other options?”
“No,” I say. My brain is a little waterlogged, but I’m pretty sure when the man says he has no rooms, he has no rooms.
“So you’re just going to accept that?”
He said the same thing when, feeling more comfortable, I opened up to him on the flight and told him about the program I wrote and how Verity got her paws on it, and then he said it again when I stayed silent after some guy cut in front of me in line at the Atlanta airport while I was trying to grab a drink.
Obviously, I know this. I know I should say something in these situations. But it’s hard, and there are perfectly good reasons not to—like keeping my job, for one. Or avoiding a potential punch in the face from the line cutter. I don’t want to be punched. I have a very nice nose. It’s my favorite part of my face. It’s the only nice thing my father gave me.
“Well, yes,” I say. Even if sharing a room with Zane is the last thing I want to do right now.
He scratches the side of his head before turning on his heels and heading toward the front desk. He walks up to the clerk, and I can’t really hear what they’re saying, but Zane is using a lot of hand gestures, and a couple of times he points over his shoulder toward me.
He walks back over to me, a confident smile on his face. Did he fix it? Hope blossoms inside me like it did the moment before I found out Christine gave my program to Verity. Bright, yet fragile.
“So, as it turns out, there’s only one room,” he says when he reaches me.
I glare, my stomach doing a sinking thing, the tenuous hope dying a very quick death. Not unlike when I talked to my boss.
“I already told you that,” I say.
“But you shouldn’t always accept the first answer you get,” he tells me. He’s got his lecturing face on ... again. One eyebrow raised and his gaze intense. It’s familiar—a look he used to give me a long time ago.
“Because that’s working so well for you now,” I say.
“Come on,” he says, bending down to pick up his backpack and hoisting it over his shoulder before taking my suitcase by the telescoping handle. He insisted on carrying it, even when we were running in the rain.
Okay, so I guess I’m sharing a room with Zane for the night. I’d love to protest, to offer to sleep in the lobby, but I’m too wet and tired to do it.
So I follow him through the lobby and down a hallway, my insides twisting at the thought of having to sleep in the same room as him. It’s not like it’s the first time; when we were young, he, Amelia, and I would build a fort in the living room of his house and sleep in it often, and we also camped out on the trampoline every once in a while. But we’re adults now, and what if I do something embarrassing in my sleep? Like talk, or pass gas. Elizabeth Bennet would never. She’d also never share a room with an unmarried man of great fortune.
At least things are better with Zane. Like, I’ve been able to actually speak around him. Leave it to my people-pleasing, wanting-everyone-to-feel-comfortable ways to make that issue better.
I think I fully started to relax more around him when we worked on lines. Zane picked them up quickly, which he blamed on Amelia and me for making him watch the movie so many times. His accent improved too. He told me I was a great teacher, which made my cheeks redden and had me listing off all the reasons why I’m really not, until he told me to just take the compliment.
Things are definitely better between us, but I still think this is a terrible idea. Getting dressed up and reenacting Pride and Prejudice with him feels mortifying, and I can’t shake the fear that having him here will ruin the one bright spot I’ve been clinging to in my otherwise train wreck of a life. Even so, there have been moments—small ones—that felt like old times. Back before silly crushes and stupid letters messed everything up.
Like, for example, on our second flight, from Atlanta to Manchester, the partition between our first-class seats made conversation difficult, so he texted me Pride and Prejudice memes until we both fell asleep—something old Zane and Macey used to do. Well, not those particular memes, but something silly and pointless, like the ones from The Office that we used to send each other, with little or no context. It felt like a glimpse back to the way we used to be—easy and light.
“Here we are,” he says, stopping in front of a door with a small gold plaque engraved with the number 106.
I unlock the door with the key, and Zane holds it open, ushering me in first with a lift of his chin. I walk in and flick on the light to find a larger room than I was expecting, with quaint yellow walls and floral curtains. Most importantly, there are two beds. Two glorious beds covered with cream-colored duvets. I reserved a room with two double beds for Derek and me, but it would have been fitting to walk in here to find only one. That would be my luck.
Zane insists on giving me the bathroom first, and even though I push back, I’m relieved to finally get out of my wet clothes. I take a quick shower and change into another T-shirt—this one says Can’t. I’m In Character.— and a pair of cotton shorts.
When I exit the bathroom with my things, my wet hair combed and no makeup on my face, I feel my cheeks heat as I see Zane sitting in an upholstered armchair that matches the curtains, holding some clothes and a toiletry bag.
“Sorry,” I say, thinking maybe I spent too much time in the bathroom.
His brow lowers as he stands up and walks toward me. “For what?”
“For . . . taking too long?”
“You were in there for ten minutes,” he says, matter-of-factly.
“Oh,” I say, fumbling for words. “The bath ... I ...” I pause, take a breath, and try again. “It’s all yours.” I gesture toward the open bathroom door, steam from my hot shower curling out and drifting toward the ceiling. We do an awkward little dance—me stepping one way, him the other—before he finally manages to squeeze past me.
I said things were better between us, not perfect. Besides, I think the intimacy of sharing this room is making me revert back to my old, forgot-how-to-act-like-a-human ways.
Deciding that my best course of action is to not talk to him, I quickly repack my suitcase and then hop into bed, pulling the covers up to my neck and willing myself to fall asleep before he comes out of the bathroom, and I have more time to say dumb things. A good night’s rest will hopefully cure me of my shortcomings.
Probably not, though, because I’m wide awake. I’m sure because of the jet lag and time change, but also because Zane has just walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel. Just a freaking towel.
“I forgot underwear,” he says, his skin dewy, his dark hair dripping, his not-so-defined but still very nice abs on full display.
Whyyyyyy.
“Sorry,” I say, not because he forgot his underwear but because I saw him like this, and now Zane Porter in a towel will be burned into my brain forever. At least, adult Zane Porter in a towel is. I saw teenage Zane in a towel plenty of times, especially when I was living with his family. You’d think I’d have seen him in this state of undress already given our living situation, but I’ve been doing my best to avoid him since moving into his family’s condo.
“Why are you sorry?” he asks, and I pull the duvet up over my head to block my traitorous eyes, which can’t seem to stop staring.
“No reason,” I say, my voice muffled.
I wait until I hear the bathroom door click shut, then fling the blanket off my face and throw the sheets and covers down in a frustrated huff.
This isn’t how this trip is supposed to be going. I’m supposed to be excited for Pride and Prejudice Park. Sure, if Zane hadn’t shown up, I’d probably be feeling lonely right now and possibly in danger of being kidnapped, but I also wouldn’t be grappling with all this gnawing vulnerability.
We need to talk about the letter. I need to bring it up and get it out in the open so we can move past it. Or maybe I just need to move past it, because I don’t know how Zane feels. It’s just making all of this harder. It’s true that even if all that hadn’t happened and Zane and I had gone on like we used to, with joking and teasing and an easy camaraderie, I still might have felt weird bringing him along. But I think the cloud of my former (and a few lingering) feelings hanging over me—and the letter about those feelings—is making this one hundred times worse than it needs to be. Zane is here, he’s going to Pride and Prejudice Park to play Mr. Darcy, and I want to have a good time, so we need to hash this out. Right now.
But when the door to the bathroom cracks open, my little mental bout of confidence disappears, and instead I close my eyes and purposefully slow my breathing. I don’t have it in me to bring it up. What if it doesn’t go well? What if he really doesn’t remember the letter, making the entire conversation moot? What if we really did just grow apart and there wasn’t some big catalyst that I’ve only been making significant in my own head? It might be a waste of my breath and could potentially make things worse.
I hear Zane tiptoeing around, trying not to wake me up. He slowly closes the zipper on his bag and then quietly gets in his bed, making as little noise as possible. Which is very sweet ... but why can’t he just be a jerk? It would make everything better if Zane were a butthead. But he’s not—he’s Zane. And a butthead wouldn’t change his entire plans for someone. Heaven knows Cheating Caleb wouldn’t, and he’s the king of the buttheads.
“Macey?” he says, his voice somewhere between soft and a whisper.
I don’t move. I stay stock still, making my breathing sound even deeper. I’m an actor at heart. This is simply acting.
“Macey,” he says again. “I know you’re not sleeping.”
“Yes, I am,” I say. Apparently I’m terrible at acting.
He chuckles.
I turn my head toward him and can barely make out his figure in the dark.
“How did you know?”
“Because you used to fake sleep when we were kids. When you’re really asleep, your mouth is open, and you make little sighing noises.”
“I do not,” I protest. But actually, I do. Amelia has said the same thing. So did cheating Caleb. Dang it. I need to up my fake-sleeping game.
“You also drool.”
“Please shut up,” I say, feeling my cheeks warm.
“Are you ready for the park tomorrow? To immerse yourself in the life of Elizabeth Bennet?”
“I’ve pretty much been living my whole life for this moment,” I say, overdramatically. Though, I want to add, That was, until you decided to join me, but that wouldn’t be nice. Besides, shared hotel room aside, so far, it hasn’t been so bad.
“I think the bigger question here is: Are you ready to play Darcy?” I ask.
“She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me,” he says, in the polished accent I helped him with. Hmm. Maybe I am a good teacher.
“Well done,” I say.
“That’s a dumb line,” he says. “It’s amazing Darcy was ever able to come back from it. I’m surprised that Bennet woman ever fell for him.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t meant for Elizabeth to hear. Darcy was being an arrogant jerk, but he wasn’t trying to impress her. He thought she was just some random girl he’d never see again. But that’s what makes his arc so good. The moment shows where he starts—proud, judgmental, and closed off. The rest of the story is about him realizing how wrong he was. And it’s not just about Lizzy, but about everything.”
It’s quiet for a moment, and I wonder if he dozed off during my diatribe. There I go oversharing again.
“Wow,” he finally says. “You’ve spent way too much time thinking about this.”
“I hate you,” I say, the words just popping out of my mouth, just like they used to when he’d tease me. I never meant them before, and I don’t mean them now, even if it would be so much easier if I did hate Zane Porter.
“You know what I just realized? You and Elizabeth have the same last name.”
“It took you that long to figure it out?”
“I mean, I knew your name, and I think I knew hers, but I never put that together.”
“It’s like I was born to play the part.”
“Indeed,” he says. “Well, good night, Miss Bennet.”
“Good night, Mr. Darcy.”