39. Jenna #3
My mouth is already in some version of a smile, so the picture will look how pictures always do. One part chemistry, one part prop, one part whatever the person behind the camera is hungry for.
I keep walking. I feel Willa’s hand at my elbow, a quick, proud squeeze, then hear the judge on my left say, “Well played, Pemberton.” I offer her a nod, moving faster now, half-blind and navigating mostly by the noise—two men near the kitchen trading “ice queen” as high compliment, one of them laughing, “Well, Cruz got her in the end,” like I’m a contract that finally signed.
“Jenna,” Dominic says, threading through the periphery, voice low but urgent. “Where are you going?”
I don’t stop, don’t even pivot.
I keep walking, out through the echo of applause that now feels like static, and into the side corridor marked SERVICE.
I know the hotel’s layout better than I know my own neurology.
I slip through the fire doors, up the short staircase, and into the hotel lobby. My heels hit the marble like clockwork.
“Wait—Jen, please—”
His voice echoes behind me. Not angry. Not even loud. Just . . . desperate.
The lobby is mosaic and chandelier, gold on cold, and for a split second I see our reflection in the wall of mirrors: him, tailored, beautiful, relentless. Me, haze-skinned, bare-shouldered, running on memory and spite.
Outside, the city is humming, wet with the kind of summer rain that has no direction. I walk straight into it. The doorman blinks, uncertain whether to offer me shelter or a car, until Dominic appears at my shoulder.
He reaches for my arm—gentle, not a grab, just a hover. “Sweetheart, talk to me. Did I fuck up? Tell me what I did.”
I shake him off, not because I want to hurt him, but because right now the last thing I can do is let him see my eyes.
“I can’t—I just need a minute,” I manage, and it is less a voice than a gasp.
He tries again, softer. “Hey. Jenna. Look at me.”
I turn on him, every word sharp enough to bleed.
“Do you know how many times in my life I’ve been called a ‘challenge’?
Do you know what it’s like being measured in every single room, every fucking time, and then having you stand up there and use the exact words every man who ever made a joke out of me used?
” The words choke off, replaced by a shudder.
“You turned me into a challenge for the whole room to laugh at, called yourself victorious, then finished by replacing my fucking name with yours. For what?” My hand curls into the fabric at my waist, because that is all that’s holding me upright.
“Was that supposed to make me feel proud of myself—or remind everyone that you were the one who finally cracked the code and won?”
His face falls.
“Jenna—no. No, sweetheart. I was proud. I wanted them to see you the way I do. I wasn’t—fuck, I wasn’t thinking—”
“That’s right,” I spit, shocked at the force in my own voice.
“You weren’t. For once you didn’t do it on purpose.
You just—said it. Like them. Like him.” I taste the copper at the back of my throat, that old familiar taste of remembering exactly how far you haven’t come. “It’s fucking prom all over again.”
His head pulls back. “What do you mean?”
“Do you know why I didn’t go to prom, Dominic?
It’s not because I wasn’t asked. I was. The captain of the football team.
The beautiful boy everyone loved. He worked for weeks to make me believe him, and when I finally did, he drove past me in a limo with his friends and shot me with paintballs while they filmed it to show everyone inside. ”
My voice breaks. I hate that it breaks.
“So when you stood up there and called me a challenge, when everyone laughed, when you lifted your glass and called yourself victorious—” I swallow hard. “I was seventeen again. And you were the boy in the car. And everyone—everyone—was fucking laughing at me.”
The memory is so raw that it doesn’t even sting; it just rips, clean as a tendon.
“For years, I told myself I wasn’t going to be that girl again. I was never going to be the joke. If I couldn’t win at being wanted, I would win at being needed. Or at least at being unbreakable. And then tonight—” I clamp my mouth shut so hard I taste blood.
“Jenna, I’m sorry—”
I wipe at my face, furious with myself. “Don’t. Just don’t. I don’t want this. I don’t want to feel this.”
The doorman catches my eye, and I wave him over, desperate for a lifeline.
He reads the room and flags a cab, the yellow light winking at the curb, ironic as hell.
I step into the rain, painting streaks down my arms, and open the car door before Dominic can finish the two strides between us.
He doesn’t try to block me, just stands there in the thickening storm, hands helpless at his sides.
“Where to, ma’am?” The cabbie’s accent is pure old Chicago. He watches me in the rearview with the half-worry, half-curiosity that says he’s driven a hundred women away from a hundred black-tie train wrecks.
“Home,” I say, swiping angrily at my tears. “I just want to go home.”