22. Brooke
22
brOOKE
The only place I could hide out and have a mini-breakdown in private is Brenda’s place, a small, neat ranch house with a white picket fence, stuffed to the gills with fabric and sewing supplies and a serger and sewing machines.
Fortunately, Brenda was able to get someone to come in and cover for the rest of her shift, which she was nice enough to do when I walked into the diner crying.
I only went there because I was desperate. I’d wandered around town for hours, not knowing where to go, and not wanting to go back to my—I mean Susie’s—house because Lucas might be there and I’m not ready to have a conversation with him.
Now I’m sitting on Brenda’s couch, which she refinished herself with a bright, cheery tropical print, and I’m on my second glass of wine, or maybe my third. Brenda’s sitting on an overstuffed armchair, facing me.
“So it’s actually true?” Brenda’s eyes are like saucers. “I mean, every single person who came into the diner was telling me about it, of course, but I still couldn’t believe it.”
I nod miserably. “He has a freaking fiancée. She’s got a rock on her finger big enough to sink the Titanic.” I shake my head in disbelief. “And she’s been visiting him here. The two of them, together, behind my back.”
Brenda gasps dramatically. “The two of them together . . . you mean . . . doing it?”
“Banging,” I say bitterly. “Screwing. Humping. Making the beast with two backs.” This is the man who held me in his arms every night and whispered to me that I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, when he thought I was asleep.
“I can’t believe it. You think you know a man.” Brenda frowns in thought. “Well, he was a few years ahead of me in school, and then I didn’t see him for more than ten years, so I guess I wouldn’t know him that well. I truly thought he was into you, though. I saw the way he looked at you, from the first time he stepped foot in that diner.”
I give her a puzzled look. “The first time you saw him back in town? He was just giving me grief that day.”
“He still looked at you a certain way I can’t explain. And I see him do it a lot. When he doesn’t think you’re looking, he lets himself stare at you with this... look.”
“What kind of look?”
“Like you’re the sun and he’s the planet who spins around you.”
I manage a watery smile. “Wow. That was extremely poetic. And by the way, that is definitely how Officer Hernandez looks at you.” I sniffle.
Just because my love life is failing doesn’t mean that everyone has to be miserable.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Brenda demurs. “He’s had plenty of time to make a move if he was interested.”
“I think he’s kind of shy.”
“Shy?” Brenda laughs. “I’ve seen him tackle a three-hundred-pound drunk guy.”
“Well, that requires physical skills. It doesn’t require emotional risk and opening yourself up to rejection, which is way scarier to most men than getting punched in the face.”
Brenda’s face takes on a thoughtful look. “Hmm. You could be right.” Then she shrugs. “But we’re talking about your situation, not mine. You actually think that he and she were...” She makes a circle with her thumb and pointer finger, and pokes her other pointer finger through it.
“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to think. She said she’d been to town to visit him in the afternoon. Dorian agreed with her, and Lucas—I mean Jasper—didn't argue; he just had this panicked look on his face, like he was choking on something. Like he was trying to talk but he didn’t say a word. Probably because he knew I’d see right through him.”
I tip my wineglass back and drain it, then refill it. Brenda’s still working on her first glass. She takes a small sip.
“Your curtains are nice,” I say sadly. “I like the tassels on them.”
“Thank you. I sewed them myself.”
“You should definitely stay here in town and open up some kind of shop. And do the costumes for the playhouse on the side.”
“Well, there won’t be a playhouse soon, because Cheater McCheaterpants is going to bulldoze over it. What a bastard. Pardon my language,” she adds quickly.
“Nope, it’s well earned.” My eyes well up with tears. “I feel so stupid, Brenda. This is all my fault for being such an idiot. I mean... I shouldn’t even be so upset, I guess. It’s not that I thought that we had a real relationship.”
“From what the construction guys were saying they saw this morning, it sounded pretty real to me,” Brenda says.
I grimace.
“So I guess it is definitely all over town and every single person knows what the guys saw this morning?”
She nods sympathetically. “I’m afraid so. You know how it is here. Not a lot of excitement going on around here, so we find it where we can.”
“Great. So everyone knows that those guys interrupted Lucas—I mean Jasper—and me in bed, and less than an hour later, Jasper’s gorgeous side piece shows up. Except apparently I’m the side piece, which is even worse.” I take another gulp of wine. “He and I were always talking about how nothing is real here anyway, but I somehow... it felt real to me.”
“Nothing is real here?” Brenda’s face wrinkles in confusion. “I’m not sure I follow you. Also, you keep calling Jasper Lucas. You do that a lot. Is Lucas an ex-boyfriend or something?”
I look down into my wineglass. It’s empty. When did that happen? Maybe the wine glass sprang a leak. “No, he’s...” I swallow hard. “If I tell you, it’s going to sound crazy.”
“If you tell me what? I’m confused right now.”
“Does your wineglass have a hole in it?” I hold up the glass to examine it. The glass looks a little blurry. There might actually be two glasses there.
“Nope.” She takes one more delicate little sip of her own wine glass. “So who’s Lucas, and why are we not real?”
I shouldn’t tell her what’s really happening with us, but my heart is breaking and I was just made a fool of in front of the entire town, everyone I grew up with—
No, that’s not right . . .
The room is starting to spin. I blink hard and force myself to focus on her. “You’re real. I know you are. Everyone here is real.”
“Oh, good. Because I thought you were really—”
“But you’re also all characters in a book written by Serena Lovelace.”
“—starting to crack up,” Brenda finishes. “I’m sorry, we’re what? Serena, the writer lady who visits town sometimes? The one who wants to take over the hotel that’s going to be torn down by Jasper? ”
I shouldn’t say anything else, but I’m feeling woozy, because I’m not normally much of a drinker, and I’m so stressed out, and Lucas was the only person I could trust to talk to here, but now it turns out I can’t trust him after all. I wave my arm, gesturing at the small living room, at the chairs and table that are draped with various sewing projects. “This is an alternate universe.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“Lucas and I are characters in a romance novel, and we have to act our parts for the entire novel in order to get back to the real world.”
“Um, okay. Of course. I’m sure it feels that way,” Brenda says sympathetically, patting me on the arm. I lean forward and pour more wine into my empty glass, then I pick it up and almost drop it. Some of it sloshes on the coffee table.
“Oh, sorry. I’ll get that.”
“No, don’t worry about it. I’ve got it.”
She plucks the glass from my hand and stands up. “I’ll get a dishrag. And I think you might want to slow down on the vino.”
She hurries to the kitchen, carrying my glass and the wine bottle. I pick up her half-finished glass and drain it.
When she returns with a wet rag, she mops up the table.
“That’s why Lucas keeps calling me Brooke by accident, and I keep calling him Lucas. In our world, those are our names.”
“Of course they are,” she says brightly. “It all makes sense now.”
I’m so glad she understands.
“We just have to work through the plot points of the novel. Did you ever read Romancing the Beat ? It explains it better than I could. Having sex with Lucas was a plot point. Well, it was supposed to just be a plot point, but I was just fooling myself. It really meant something to me.” I keep talking as she walks me to a spare bedroom and settles me into bed. “We live in Manhattan. I’m his assistant there. ”
“Sure, sure. So is he a bossy jerk there, too?”
“Yes, of course. Whoo, why does the ceiling spin so much in this world?” I ask her.
“Just get some rest. You can spend the night here,” she tells me. “And then we’ll find Jasper and kick his cheating butt. Right out of town.”
“He’d like that,” I mutter. He would. He’d love to leave town.
With Pri-Annelise.
Not me.
I close my eyes for just a minute, and everything fades away.