Chapter 28 #4
I frown. Tilt my head from side to side.
Try to make sense of what’s going on in my mind because I’m looking at my lifelong enemy, polished and perfect and clearly looking to have the fight I’ve wanted for years, but I don’t feel anything.
Not anger. Not guilt. I used to go dream about going to war with Jenny again, but now it’s here, all I can think is:
I don’t give a fuck.
Whatever part of me used to ignite at any mention of Jenny has just… burned out.
“Weird,” I muse. “Bye, Jenny.”
I step around her, pounding the liquid soap button above the sinks.
She follows me, her heels clicking on the tiles. “Not feeling chatty?”
“Nope,” I say, coating my hands with pinkish suds.
“I don’t blame you. Everyone’s asking what we’ve been up to since school, and I heard your music career’s dead in the water.”
“It’s certainly got nothing on your attempt to become the world’s greatest living cunt,” I say, rinsing my hands. “Anyhoo, can you please, like, leave me alone?”
“Not yet,” Jenny says sweetly. “I don’t think you’ll be able to live in Cece’s bar anymore. I heard there are mice.”
“Building a nest in your head?” I flick the water from my fingers. “Yeah, I heard that too.”
I place my palms in the little dryer tunnel. As the whooshing starts, Jenny leans so close I can smell perfume and Urban Decay setting spray.
“Jake’s never going to love you,” she whispers.
I laugh as I pull my hands from the dryer. A real laugh. “Do me a favour and Google the word ‘projection’ sometime. And stop wearing so much Flowerbomb. It’s a heavy scent. You’re gonna kill people.”
Jenny’s face twists, her beauty curdling like a wicked queen’s. This isn’t going the way she wanted, and I almost feel sorry for her. A week ago, maybe even a day ago, I’d have given her everything I had. But tonight, I don’t have anything.
I head for the door, and she grabs my wrist. “You’re such a—”
“Selfish, lazy, ugly, talentless, alcoholic, weirdo bitch,” I recite, shaking her off. “Only I’m not.”
Jenny bares her teeth, and their bleached perfection sends me back to the day I made her cry. Tore her down in front of her friends on my first day at Pukekohe High because she made fun of me and Rhys. Then I think of Colin’s letter, and the impossible falls out of my mouth.
“Sorry,” I tell her. “About being a dick about your teeth. That was mean.”
She stares at me, looking as stunned as I felt when I realised I didn’t want to fight her.
“Fuck off, Ada,” she hisses.
“Fair,” I say, reaching for the door. “But you’re not getting a scene out of me, Jenny. Not tonight. Not ever. Bye.”
There’s a hard prod on my shoulder, and my hand stalls on the handle. I turn to see Jenny’s eyes blazing. I think of Michael Corleone, drawing his fingers into his chest. ‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.’
I don’t have to wait long for the sword to fall.
“Do you still love milkshakes, Ada?” Jenny says, her voice shaking with rage. “Do you drink them all the time?”
I wait for the anger to come. To send me surging at her, but still… nothing. I look at her, really look at her, and I finally see it.
“You hate yourself for doing that to me.” My voice is gentle, the kind you use with a crying child. “Don’t you?”
She looks away. “I don’t fucking care—”
“You do,” I whisper. “You made me eat shit once, but you’ve been eating it every day since, huh?”
Her mouth opens, closes. Opens. Closes. A certainty comes over me.
I could tear her apart right now. Say any of the insults I’ve been sharpening since the day I first laid eyes on Jenny Wallis.
Slice her open like a butchered pig. But I don’t want to.
Instead, I feel the way I do when I give coins to drugged-out panhandlers.
Depressed and inadequate. Hoping they somehow find a way out of the hell they’re trapped in.
“Jenny, I feel legitimately, genuinely, sorry for you.”
Her face falls, and I turn away, finally opening the door. The sounds of the reunion surge over me, and I step into the ballroom without looking back.
“Ada!” Cece clutches my arm, as I make my way through the crowd. “Jake’s about to go on. Where have you been?”
“Vaping,” I say honestly enough as she drags me toward Davis. “How are you?”
“Great,” she says, beaming from ear-to-ear.
I try my best to memorise the look on her face, the glorious illumination. I have a feeling I’ll be describing it in a maid of honour speech one day.
“Shit wine?” Davis says, handing me a fake champagne.
“Cheers.” I watch Jake climb the stairs to the podium, my heart surging into my mouth.
He takes the microphone from Principal Aster, grinning and waving like a game show host. The entire ballroom goes nuts, clapping and hooting and chanting ‘JGH’ as glasses slosh beer and bubbles onto the floor.
“Think he’ll brag about his own stats, or play it humble?” Cece asks.
“Both, somehow,” Davis says, putting an arm around her waist. “That’s your boyfriend, Demon. That douchebag, right there.”
I don’t answer. My blood’s turned to nitroglycerine. Jake starts talking, and I don’t absorb a single word. Not because I’m mentally composing, on the contrary, it’s like someone’s started a chainsaw in my head, my brain buzzing so loud I can’t think.
A kid so huge it’s hard to believe he’s still in high school lumbers onto the stage to accept his scholarship. He and Jake shake hands, and as Jake lowers the microphone, relief flickers through me. He’s not going to do it after all.
Then he turns to face Principal Aster, who’s waiting stiffly at the edge of the stage, hands practically twitching to snatch back the microphone.
“Principal Aster,” he says. “Would it be okay if I take a second to do something important?”
She purses her lips, clearly wanting to refuse and clearly too smart to do so. The crowd cheers louder than they did for the award, and someone shouts, “Go for it, JGH!”
Principal Aster nods, and Jake rewards her with that million-dollar smile before turning to face what feels like the whole fucking town.
“Now, where is she?” he mutters into the microphone as he scans the crowd. I know he’s looking for me, and despite my fears and all my doubts, I raise a hand to make it easier for Jake Graves-Holland to spot me.
“There she is,” Jake says, with that warmth that already feels like home. “Ada, baby, can you come on up here?”
The chainsaw in my head sputters, falls silent.
The ballroom seems to freeze around me. People stop drinking, bartenders stop pouring, wait staff pause, holding trays of mini hot dogs.
My feet move without conscious will, the crowd parting in front of me, so many blurry, half-familiar faces, it’s like a nightmare.
But I have years of performing to thank for the fact that my spine is straight and my smile is calm and composed as I climb the steps to the podium and reach the stage.
Jake is looking right at me, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Then his eyes burn, turning black as outer space, and unless he’s about to mount me beside the DJ booth, I know it’s time.
“Adalasia Renaldo,” he rasps into the microphone. “I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you. And if I was smart, I’d have asked you out then and there. But you know me, baby, I’m not the brightest bulb.”
Half the crowd laughs, the other seems to be holding its breath, aware of exactly where this is going.
“It took me a long time to track Renaldo down,” Jake says, turning to face the ballroom. “But seeing she went and became the most beautiful, talented musician in the world, that’s not exactly a surprise.”
Amidst the chorus of awws, there’s an audible scoff. A woman’s voice. Jenny, or some other hanger-on who wanted to end her night in Jake’s bed. The sound sends that ancient high school terror racing through me. The fear I’ll be dragged out of the light and back into the mud where I belong.
Jake’s smile falters. He scans the crowd with cool authority, looking every inch the King they crowned all those years ago.
“Ada belongs to this town,” he says, his voice hard as stone. “She always will. And I want her to belong to me. So, without further ado…”
He drops to one knee, and the room erupts. I hear gasps of horror, screams of delight, applause loud enough to split the sky, but none of it matters. What matters is Jake setting the mic on the floor, reaching into his pocket, and pulling out a black velvet box.
This was the plan, I remind myself. It’s just for show. But then why does he have a ring?
In bed, Jake explained why he should propose at the reunion. He wanted to prove to Pukekohe and everyone involved with Thompson Farms that Ada Renaldo wasn’t just some stray they could shove around. As his fiancée, I wouldn’t just be valuable, but practically untouchable.
Hearing that was so insultingly sexist it stung, but after I was done yelling about misogyny, I had to admit he had a point. At a time when criminal indictments were about to fall like bombs on the most powerful men in town, because of me, Jake’s offer was the best and only protection on the table.
“We can have a long engagement,” he promised. “We don’t even have to be really engaged at all. The point is me laying down the law, and you being safe.”
But right now it doesn’t feel like Jake is proving a point, and it certainly doesn’t feel safe.
His eyes are soft in a way that makes my chest ache.
Like, he’s been waiting for this moment his whole life, and he’s both terrified and hopeful.
And I didn’t know there was a ring. Why is there a fucking ring?
“Ada…” Jake says, opening the velvet box. “Will you marry me?”
The stone flashing at me is a deep, bloody red. Glowing under the stage lights like a sword pulled straight from a forge, held in place by silver claws as sharp as my tongue and Jake’s will.
It’s a ruby, I think deliriously.
I look at the man holding it, and in Jake Graves-Holland’s face, I see everything I ever wanted to see in a man asking me that question.
My hand rises to my heart of its own accord. Somehow, I don’t think Jake and I are going to have a long engagement. Somehow, I think we’ll be married by next year.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes.”
I doubt even Jake can hear me, but everyone gets the gist. His eyes go bright as everyone cheers and stomps so loud it could lift the ballroom ceiling.
“Good,” Jake says, getting to his feet. “Left hand, Renaldo.”
I extend it, and he slides the ruby onto my finger.
“It’s a perfect fit,” I say, staring at the ring. “Where—”
“Who fuckin’ cares?” His mouth claims mine, and he kisses me long and deep. The crowd screams itself hoarse, and I lose myself in Jake’s touch…
… at least until Principal Aster succeeds in elbowing the two of us, flushed and grinning, apart.