Chapter Twelve
Serena is making a lot of noises.
None of them good.
“The nerve, ” she says after I’ve filled her in on the latest updates.
“I’m coming down there. Someone ought to knock some sense into him.
Where does he get off being all, Juniper, I have this fantastic idea.
Let’s fake-date for views for you, Juniper.
It’s all for you, and then coming back from like one meeting and going, Never mind.
Bad news bears for me. Change of plans. ”
I rub my closed eyes.
“I don’t think it’s his fault,” I say. “His dad is wrapped up in this somehow and I don’t know much, but I know the relationship is sour.
James very clearly doesn’t want to do the superhero stuff but his management—including his dad—are apparently making it his only option.
They’ve probably gone all Hollywood mafia on him and are making sure he’ll ‘never work here again’ or whatever if he doesn’t make things go their way. ”
“What does that have to do with you ?” Serena all but growls. “Why can’t you two go on pretending like you’re pretending to date?”
“We are pretending to date,” I say, “and I told you: He’s gotta date somebody else for movie promotion.” My phone beeps in my ear and I pull it away to check the screen. “Shit. He’s calling,” I say. “What do I do?”
“You don’t answer, obviously. If he’s breaking off your fake-fake-dating, you make him feel it.”
“But what if he wants to talk about work stuff?” I ask. “We’ve still got the rest of—”
“ Phone calls are for people you want to speak with,” Serena cuts in. “ Texts are for work-related correspondence. Or email if you really want to drive your point home.”
“And what is my point, exactly?”
Serena sighs, like I’m the impossible one here and not her: a fully grown married-with-a-kid-and-a-mortgage woman who is diabolically plotting James’s death like this is high school and he cheated on me at homecoming or dumped me in front of the entire biology class.
“This is a remarkable amount of bullshit for a guy who only owns two shirts,” Serena mutters.
“Agreed,” I say. “But maybe it’s all for the best, you know?
We were never going to be anything for very long even if it wasn’t pretend.
I’m going to the city. He’s going to the other city on the other coast.” I make myself say the last part, and though there’s a tiny part of me hoping the magic will intervene before I can speak it, nothing stops me.
“We were never meant to work. It was always going to stay pretend.”
It feels right on my tongue but wrong in my bones, and of course Serena can tell.
“You don’t believe that,” she says. “If you did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation and I wouldn’t be considering buying craft shit to make a James voodoo doll.”
“I wasn’t aware Target carried voodoo doll supplies.”
“Misha is really into The Princess and the Frog right now. I’m pretty sure I could make you a frog, a voodoo doll, or a decrepit-looking firefly from anything you handed me because the entire movie is burned onto the back of my eyelids at this point.”
“Not necessary,” I tell her. “Really. It’s best this way. Truly.”
“Lot of adverbs there, Juniper.”
“Lot of judgment there, Sunset,” I say. “Go watch your new favorite movie with your kid. Don’t worry about me.”
“I always worry about you,” Serena scoffs. “Started in college and no end in sight, frankly.”
—
I wonder what would have happened to Arabella if she never met William.
It’s a hazy train of thought fluttering around my exhausted brain when my alarm rings bright and early Saturday morning and I begin to gather the four reusable totes containing the props and outfit changes I’ll need to execute the social media in a day plan.
She probably would have lived an ordinary life, I reason. Maybe the popular guy always hitting on her would have finally worn her down and she would have ended up living in the same town forever. Maybe she would have gone to college somewhere far away and never looked back.
And what’s so wrong with an ordinary life? I ask myself this as I parallel-park next to the coffee shop where James and I agreed to meet. Some things are better left to fiction. Maybe the extraordinary is one of them.
But then he ruins it, of course, my tissue-thin illusion that I can make myself not want.
It’s six in the morning and he’s getting ready to spend a day doing his least favorite activity, but James Freakin’ Neely is smiling down at a little boy with a backpack on his shoulders and a teddy bear wearing a cape clutched in his hands like this is what he set out to do this morning.
“And then, and then you jumped !” the little boy yells as I approach. “And then you almost fell down between the big buildings, remember? Because you didn’t have your powers anymore and you forgot, right? That’s what Dad says. You forgot.”
“I did, ” James says. “You’re right. You have a great memory. Are you sure you’re not a superhero?”
“My mom says superheroes have to eat vegetables,” the boy says. “I don’t want to eat vegetables.”
“That’s right,” the boy’s mom intervenes. “And now you need to let Mr. Neely—”
“Max,” the boy interrupts. “His name is Max.”
James smiles indulgently at the mom’s eye roll.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “He hasn’t seen the entire movie, of course. Not until he’s older. But he has watched an impressive number of YouTube compilations of the flashback scenes when you—er, your character—still had superpowers.”
“Yeah, like the part where you lifted up a tree and showed…you showed all the spiky things on the bottom.”
“Roots,” his mother says, laughing. “Come on. We need to let Max get his coffee and get on with his day. Tell him bye-bye. And say thank you.”
If his grin looks familiar, it’s probably because this boy was a Gerber baby as an infant. He’s the picture of unbridled joy, stunned to be meeting a real superhero while waiting in line.
“Bye-bye, Mr. Max,” he says, voice reverent and awed. “Thank you.”
James sets his coffee on the counter and kneels down in front of the boy to offer his hand.
“Pleasure meeting you. Eat those vegetables and I’ll see you soon.”
When they walk away and James straightens, his eyes meet mine like he knew I was standing here all along, and maybe he did.
Not knowing what else to do, I shrug, like maybe I can physically remove his looking from my person.
“How was the rest of your week?” James asks, coming near.
I shrug again, apparently capable of nothing else at this hour next to him.
“No orphaned fawns, so I suppose that’s something,” I say.
James’s smile for me is far less beaming than it was for the little boy. I can see it from the corner of my eye. It’s tentative, like he’s afraid that if he really smiles at me, I’ll bite.
“She’s doing okay,” he says. “The fawn. I got an update this morning from the wildlife rehabber. Apparently she’s eating like a horse and they have a couple of other fawns around the same age as her in the pen so she shouldn’t be too lonely.”
I nod, suddenly envious of an orphaned fawn who upon losing her mother has gained an instant family of similar souls who she’ll grow up alongside.
I really am being exceptionally ridiculous this morning.
“I’m glad she’s doing okay,” I say, moving toward the counter to order.
“Me, too.” James pauses. “I tried to call you.”
Serena would be proud of how I make him wait for my response. I order a lavender latte first, chatting with the barista for a full minute before turning back to James.
“I’m sorry I missed your call,” I say. “But in my defense, I was trying to talk Serena out of coming down here and murdering you.”
He stops short at that.
“Um, may I ask why?”
I snort. “Do you really need to?”
James drops his eyes.
“I suppose not.”
We’re quiet after that, but not the comfortable, cozy kind of quiet. This is spiky and impossible to hold without pricking your fingers and making them bleed.
They call my name and we both jump a little, like we’ve been startled back from somewhere else.
“If it’s any consolation,” James says as he leads us to a table for two, “Luke isn’t happy with me, either. He thinks I’m making a huge mistake.”
“How is that supposed to make me feel better?” I ask, sliding into the chair closest the window.
James shrugs. “You’re not alone in thinking I’m a jackass.”
“I never called you a jackass, for the record,” I say. “Not once.”
“You thought it, though,” James insists. “That’s why you didn’t answer the phone.”
I take a sip of my coffee. It burns my tongue.
“Awfully self-centered of you to assume so,” I say. “Might want to chat with a therapist about that. How do you know I didn’t answer because I was at yoga?”
James nearly chokes on his coffee, and the sight of him bug-eyed and coughing makes me choke on my latte and…
God, now we’re laughing.
Together.
This is going so much worse than planned.
“ Yoga, ” James says through a cough when he catches his breath enough to form words. “Of all the options in the world, why would you—Little Miss Can’t Walk and Carry a Liquid to Save Her Life—choose yoga ?”
“I’ve taken classes,” I argue, my eyes watering from giggling and choking simultaneously.
My vision isn’t too impaired to make out James’s disbelieving face, though.
“Okay, I took a class in college,” I amend. “Singular. And it was because Serena made me. She said it would be good for my poor posture.”
“Was it?” James asks, and I think he’s genuinely curious until I take note of how slouched I am in my chair.
“Shut up,” I say, laughing.
I let my brain run away this time. Maybe it’s because of the early hour or the way James’s smile now more closely resembles the one he wore when talking to the young superhero fan, but I don’t leash my thoughts when they run in increasingly absurd directions.
I let James be a paper doll of possibility across the table from me once more, but instead of a fae lord or an Austenian gentleman, I go with the most unlikely scenario of all: a real-life, not-at-all-pretend boyfriend.
Because this is how I thought it would be to fall in love. A bit goofy, a bit wretched, but not desperate. Like you want to spend all your waking time with this person because you want to know what they’ll say or think about everything you see throughout the day.
And maybe because they look unfortunately attractive in their stupid choice of casual buttoned shirts.
Like the snap of an elastic band, I pull my thoughts back in line and open my mouth to tell James that we should get through this as quickly as possible, that we should be professional and courteous but not too courteous and then we’ll go our separate ways as promised.
“I know this is awkward,” James says before I can voice my thoughts. “And I am a jackass for asking you to do this, but I can’t help it. I’m going to ask anyway.”
His cheeks are dusted red and his eyes are boring into mine and maybe I am a bit desperate, because I think I might give up my interview in the city rather than go another second without knowing his question.
“Ask me,” I say.
He swallows.
“One day,” he says. “Let’s have just the one day where we pretend that it’s not pretend. Just…” He breaks off, frustrated. He taps the bottom of his coffee cup against the table like a judge’s gavel. “Never mind. That’s not fair to you.”
“Or you,” I say, my heart beating too fast and I’m not stupid enough to try to blame the coffee. “It’s not fair to you, either. None of this is.”
I look down at my latte.
“It wasn’t fair for me to drag you into the social media component,” I say. “You…you didn’t owe me anything. Not from college and not since then. It was stupid of me and I was desperate and I know that’s no excuse, but—”
“It’s a reason, not an excuse,” James says.
“And I did owe you because you were right: I used you that night. And I manipulated your emotions to achieve an outcome that benefited me and then ensured you reaped none of the rewards.” He smiles thinly.
“Basically I was a jackass and you can’t talk me out of it. ”
“We were kids,” I say. “Babies, practically.”
“We were old enough to drink and vote and take out thousands of dollars of student loans,” James argues. “So plenty old enough to take responsibility, don’t you think?”
I roll my eyes.
“It’s a shitty argument,” I say. “Your brain didn’t even finish developing until five minutes ago, basically. Cut yourself some slack.”
“No,” James says. “I won’t.” His eyes are looking at me again when he adds, “Not with you. Not again.”
The way he says it…I fight every urge to dress him in a top hat and breeches in my head…or a wet-from-the-lake white shirt.
But no. Just no. We’ve done this before. Dozens of times in the last few weeks alone, to say nothing of the nearly ten-year-long dissection I’ve conducted since I left everything but my intrigue with James Freakin’ Neely on the stage.
Fool me once, fine. Fool me one hundred? Well, I’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
But then again…
Maybe James is right. Maybe we need one day where we don’t let it be pretend, where we don’t stop our laughs or our glances and let it —our intrigue with each other—out of our systems. Flush the line. Bug-bomb the house to rid ourselves of the pesky gnats of possibility once and for all.
One day to make up for the ones between the then and now of us, between the now and the it-would-never-work future of us.
Just. One.
“We should just do it,” I say, before I can think better of it. “We have to spend the whole day together, anyway. Might as well make it interesting.”
James blinks like he hasn’t heard me.
“You want to?”
I blush.
“Do you ?”
And I expect him to laugh, to say sure or to echo my might as well or to dismiss it as a terrible idea entirely, but I should know better than to try to predict James Freakin’ Neely’s actions.
“I do,” he says. “I really, really do.”
I nod.
“We’ve got a deal, then,” I say, offering my hand across the table to shake his. “Another one, I should say.”
James takes my hand in his, but instead of shaking it, he turns it over gently by my wrist and leans down to kiss my palm. His lips are warm against my hand, and the shivers I once thought were fictional speed across all my nerve endings at once.
“A bargain,” he says. And his voice is the kind of deep that you would need spelunking gear to explore, but I don’t think I’ll have the time to scratch the surface in one day.