Chapter Eight #4
It’s so silent—no thumping, no sounds of James breathing—that I think maybe the line has dropped.
“Hello?” I ask.
“I’m here,” he says. “I know the answer, but I don’t know if…I don’t…” He blows a lot of air out of his mouth and starts again. “William would just answer, wouldn’t he? That’s why you like him so much: He says the right thing every time.”
“William is fictional,” I say, trying to hold my phone and wriggle my pajama pants over my butt one-handed. “He would have infinite time to come up with the perfect answer.”
“Which I don’t have,” James says.
“Precisely.”
There’s a hesitation.
“I have so very rarely said the right thing to you, haven’t I?”
“No,” I say thoughtfully. “I think the problem is that you said the exact right thing once or twice, and it gave me unrealistic expectations.”
James doesn’t say anything to that, but it’s a contemplative silence and not at all uncomfortable, so I let it go for what feels like hours.
“Luke knows me well,” James says, voice careful. “He was like a brother growing up. Our moms were close, and his mom was even closer to me after…well, after my own mother passed away.”
There’s a lump in my throat. A big one.
But James isn’t expecting a response, I guess, because he continues, “He’s been there for me through everything, but we’re so different, he and I.
I never know if I should take his advice or do the exact opposite of what he suggests.
” He sighs. Starts again. “My mom…” Another pause.
“She was a painter. Which isn’t relevant, exactly, but…
She was an artist who could see things, you know?
Solutions. Beauty where there shouldn’t be any. She would know what to do. She would—”
This time the gap in conversation is long enough that I step in.
“It’s okay,” I say. I’m still standing beside the closet. “You don’t have to tell me—”
“I want to,” he interrupts. “Sorry I just…” He laughs.
“This might be shocking, but I don’t talk about this stuff with people in my life often.
But I talk to Luke. Probably too much. He thinks this—the social media thing with you —would be good for me as a way to move on from… previous circumstances.”
My cheeks redden, the many paparazzi images of James and Lily Newman-Smith flashing through my head.
According to my Internet searching, he hasn’t been so much as seen with another girl since then.
Even Deuxmoi, the celebrity gossip account, hasn’t been able to find anything out beyond the official statement at the time: After much careful consideration for both their love and their careers, James and Lily have confirmed via reps that they are no longer moving forward with their romantic relationship.
“Told you it was questionable,” James says when I can’t come up with a response.
“Very,” I say. “But then again, who are we to argue with culinary genius?”
James snorts. “If you ever meet him, please do me a favor and do not utter the word genius in his presence, even in jest. He is already unbearably insufferable.”
My filter must be completely broken around him now, because “Must be a family trait” is out of my mouth before I’ve had even a moment to consider if it’s wise to say aloud.
But James isn’t mad. Not at all.
“You have no idea,” he says, voice wry. “Worse if I tell you that Luke and I are some of the least insufferable of the lot.”
He sounds like he’s getting serious, like we’ve been picking at a scab throughout this conversation and there’s about to be blood if the topic doesn’t change.
My head races with possibilities of what insufferable could mean in the context of family, but it’s not my place to ask, fake girlfriend or not.
So I change the subject.
“You’re all secretly morally upright vampires, aren’t you?” I ask. “Always hangry and always intolerable because of your propensity for overthinking and having literally all the time to do it?”
“Well, now that you’ve said it out loud…” James says, and it’s the most teasing I have ever heard his voice. “My secret is out. There’s nothing to do but seduce you and keep you with me forever to protect it.”
It’s like a sudden soaking rain, the realization of how easy it would be to let my head slide into the space of liking this man.
Not the James of my memory, but the present one, the one who sends terrible food photos at odd hours, who stores extra shirts and Tide pens just for me, and whose arms I notice-notice in Henley shirts.
He’s still grumpy and superior and insufferable, sure, but there’s something else there, too: a vulnerability that the reader in me wants to comb through line by line until I find its contextual source. Until I understand.
I think back to the priority list, the one completely devoid of James Neely, and I wrench my heart and my head back onto the track.
“So, can we meet tomorrow?” I ask. “For your sure-to-be-terrible social media plan?”
James is oblivious to my thoughts, his tone still smiling, still charming.
“I’ll pick you up,” he says. “Come hungry.”
“Are you going to feed me?”
There’s a devil’s grin in his voice when he answers, “Yes…but you’ll need to save room for all the words you’re going to eat when my plan works.”
“Oh my god, ” I groan, and the filter slips one more time. “Be glad your face is pretty, because your writing is abominable.”
James’s laugh coincides with the long-lost thumping’s return.
“Is eight o’clock too early?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “But I’ll be ready.”
Thump. Thump.
“Good night, Juniper.”
“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” I answer.
“I shall take my exit pursued by a bear.”