CHAPTER 38
“I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy,
asking him not to murder her.”
—Not Notting Hill
I’m standing in the middle of the dance floor like Josie Geller on the pitcher’s mound in Never Been Kissed.
Well, not exactly in the middle. I can’t stand directly under the disco ball because that’s where the intestines are, but I’m close enough that I’m visible from every angle of the mezzanine.
It means I have a good vantage point while I wait barefoot, bloody, holding John’s flowers to my chest.
I picked up the bouquet from Campbell before I went down to the dance floor, calling out John’s name as I descended from the mezzanine with roses in hand and Campbell’s blood on my hands, because I need this to look the way John wants it to.
I need him to see me waiting with these large red blooms like they mean something to me.
I need him to realize that I came back for him and I’m ready to play the role he cast me in.
If this is going to play out like he wants it to, then everything has to be perfect.
It’s almost silent on this level. There’s only the faint sound of blood dripping onto the floor from where Billie is slumped over the bar behind me.
It’s slow, soft, so much like water droplets falling into a puddle that I start when the speakers crackle to life.
The plucking of a banjo sings out across the room.
I flinch at the first note, but then I recognize the song, and—
Ahhh, shit.
“We were both…”
I never should’ve told him I like Taylor Swift.
I close my eyes just like the lyrics suggest, but instead of a flashback to a balcony I’m granted the muted darkness of my eyelids.
It’s a bit bold of him to assume I’m a Fearless girl, when some questions about the topic would have revealed that I’m a 1989 stan, but a classic is a classic.
On a sigh, I open my eyes again, pressing my lips together to fight the urge to sing along.
I may never be able to listen to it in the same way again after tonight, but “Love Story” is still a great choice when you’re trying to woo someone.
Fragments of silver light catch my eye, and I glance up as the disco ball starts to spin.
It catches the reflections of the blue and white lights that suddenly shoot out from the corners of the ceiling and rains them down onto the room.
Down onto the guts in the middle of it. Down onto the body behind me.
A patch of darkness shifts on the mezzanine level right above me, and I see John walk forward, grip the railing, and look down at me with a soft smile.
Our roles are reversed—he’s Juliet on the balcony and I’m Romeo.
I see what he was doing with the song now, but it’s hard not to think about the ending of the original story.
“You came back,” John calls out over the music. “I thought I’d scared you off.”
My eyes drop to where his ankles are crossed.
His shoes were black at the beginning of the night and now they’re completely burgundy.
The coveralls didn’t do much covering with that part of his outfit, and I want to kick myself for not noticing the little details like I should have.
Like I always do when it’s a movie. If I had just looked down, then—
“I shouldn’t have run away,” I say as he uncrosses his ankles and trails the railing, heading for the stairs on my right side.
I lift my gaze back up to him, to the soft, imploring stare I thought was cute earlier in the evening.
I’d thought so many things about him were “cute,” but all of it was just a mask.
More so than the one that’s been mussing up his hair all night.
He doesn’t say anything while he’s moving into his next position and it’s a short reprieve.
One that lets me try to get my breathing under control as my hands sweat around the bouquet of roses.
At least I think it’s sweat; I’m holding it so tight it could be blood.
I count each second it takes for him to get down from the mezzanine. Fashion my face into something neutral. Something that doesn’t look desperate, because it’s crazy how much I want him to walk faster. To be closer. I need him to be closer. It’s almost like a pull of attraction… almost.
He doesn’t hurry, though. When he comes back into view he pauses and leans against the edge of a booth.
He’s foregone the coveralls and jacket for this date.
His hands are in his pockets, and while I can spy his pink mask sticking out of one of them, the absence of any visible weapons tells me he’s come here as John rather than Heart Eyes.
That doesn’t put my mind at ease, though.
“You don’t have to run away from me, Jamie.”
He means it, too. I can tell from the forlorn way he shakes his head before he pushes off the booth and gestures between us. “You don’t have to run away from this.”
Funny, because that’s exactly what my amygdala is screaming at me to do.
“I know.” I nod jerkily as he starts to edge around the dance floor.
“Love Story” is still playing in the background, jagged diamonds of light still showering across the space.
It has all the elements of a rom-com ending, but I need him to be closer if we’re going to do this right.
If this is going to end the way it’s supposed to.
“I know that now.”
I don’t break our stare. I don’t look away in case he reads into it and interprets it as disinterest, and when he pauses in front of another booth and gets this faraway look on his face, I can predict what comes next.
There’s always some reciprocity within a rom-com grand gesture.
He told me how he felt but I haven’t given my reply.
That could’ve worked against me, if it weren’t for the fact that the first attempt to confess your feelings usually doesn’t work in a rom-com.
You overhear a conversation out of context and mistakenly think they don’t feel the same away.
They fall asleep before they hear you and you lose your nerve.
Their flight has already taken off, even after the mad cab chase…
If it were real life, you’d have to deal with it.
But in rom-coms you always get a second chance, and this is his.
“Jamie…” He takes a step toward the dance floor, his head tilted, hand to his heart.
“I love you. I loved you the moment I saw you. I’ve been looking for you for so long and I thought I must’ve been dreaming when you walked in here tonight, but…
it’s you. I knew it was you. And everything that’s happened, it’s all because we’re meant to be together.
Call it fate, or destiny, or serendipity… ”
He chuckles, like he hasn’t orchestrated this entire night. Like he didn’t choose this club as his setting, Billie as his sidekick, me as his love interest, all so he could direct his warped idea of romance. So he could manufacture something as elusive and essential and enduring as love.
“You were meant to be mine. Nothing was going to stop that because you’re the one. You are perfect for me…” He pauses for effect, or maybe it’s so when he reaches the edge of the dance floor he can time it with the music when he says, “This is our love story. All you have to do is say yes.”
Doesn’t listen to much of her music, my ass.
But I’ll give it to him. The delivery is good, though he gets zero points for originality.
I’ve heard all the things he’s said before, from other nonassuming, floppy-haired, misty-eyed men.
I’ve soaked them up and dreamed of being on the receiving end of these kinds of declarations, but it just doesn’t have the intended effect when you’ve witnessed the person saying it split someone’s head open with an ax.
“Jamie?” he says, and when I meet his gaze, he nods. That little crooked smile twists the corner of his mouth. He’s done his speech and now he wants my response. He’s the Leading Man, after all, and I’m supposed to respond accordingly.
“I…”
When I open my mouth, the words refuse to come out.
I can’t make myself shape out the consonants and vowels without wanting to throw up.
It’s one thing to look the part, another to act it, and the thing with these admissions of love is that they are requited.
The audience knows the two leads feel the same way about each other.
John said himself that the other women—his victims—had said they loved him, and he could tell it wasn’t true.
What if they all got to this part? What if this is the final test that everyone fails?
The silence extends, and I see his smile falter. My window to keep the scene running smoothly is closing. There’s a split-second difference between a pause for effect and one that kills the mood. The stakes are even higher when the mood isn’t the only thing that could get killed.
I can’t say the words he wants to hear and make him believe them, but I’m still determined for this to end the way I know it has to. I can play my role, but it has to be one of my choosing, not his. Because I’m not something that falls neatly into a category on Netflix… I’m one of a kind.
I still need him to come closer for the scene to play out the way I want it to, and if I can’t compel him to come toward me I have only one other option.
I have to provoke him instead.
“I kissed Wes.”
His face drops. He looks genuinely hurt, but before the social conditioning can kick in and I feel too bad, he shakes it off. One foot finds its way onto the dance floor.
“You made a mistake.”
Even with the understanding look back on his face, he’s not asking. He’s telling me. His eyebrows are furrowed in confusion, but he’s ready to forgive me. I’m his dream girl, after all.
“Twice—No. Three times… Maybe more.”
I wait until it seems like he’s fully processed that, and when he looks like he’s ready to reason it away, when both of his feet are on vinyl instead of carpet, I say, “Oh, and I fucked him in the janitor’s closet.”