Chapter Seventeen #3
“Paradise,” James as William says in my ear.
“You have to go,” I say as Arabella, but Juniper tears are rising in my throat again as James looks at me, as we play, and as the earnestness between us threatens to boil over and threatens to make maudlin puddles of us both. “You can’t stay here. It’s not safe. It’s—”
And then, to nobody’s surprise—least of all mine—I start to cry. It’s too much, imagining Arabella reuniting with her love after so much time. I can’t imagine her heartbreak if I feel this angry and elated and confused after only a few days away from…
From my love.
He’s in my booth, now, arms pulling me against him as my headphones jumble between us before his piano-playing, wolf-petting hands take them off and set them on the stand.
“Juniper,” he says, “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” I say through tears and snot. “I just…Well, I just like you a lot is all, and—”
James’s hands flex on my shoulders and he draws me back to stare down at me in a way that isn’t James Freakin’ Neely or Just James, but wholly my James.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I don’t want you to go,” I say. “I don’t want it to be fake or pretend or fiction. I want—I want you. Whatever that means. However that means.”
He nods once, twice. He looks to be in a strange daze as he nods a third time and says, “Please hold for a moment,” and drops his hands from my shoulders to exit the booth.
I watch as he approaches my phone from the side, trying desperately not to be seen by the camera as he attempts to end the live. I watch him struggle for about twenty seconds before wiping my eyes well enough to see my way over to him and turn the live off myself.
The most recent comment I see before it ends is: brB Going to go break up with my husband until he can look at me like James looks at Juniper .
James takes my phone and sets it back atop the mini fridge and then, when my hand is empty, he places his in it and takes me back to the center of the room where he drags me down to lie beside him on the carpet, shoulder to shoulder, like we’re back in the meadow or on a stage or…
Just us.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in LA?” I ask.
“I would be if I was recording a movie there soon.”
I resist the urge to turn and face him.
“If?”
Outside the heavy door, I can hear the distant rumbling of voices, sound engineers coming in to start the process of flipping the studio. But at my if, they quiet a little, as though they can hear us and are intrigued by this development and awaiting James’s answer, too.
All the world is a stage, indeed.
“I’m tired of pretend,” James says. “Exhausted by it, actually.”
“But we’re so good at it,” I say, and my god, this is one of those moments.
The big ones you reflect back on if you’re lucky enough to get old and gray, but all I can think about is how amazing it smells to be this near him again.
Like sunshine and old books and marshmallows roasting on an open fire.
“Getting worse at it by the minute,” James says. “Were we ever good at it to begin with? Is it good acting if you’re actually in love, or is it just living in denial with eyes and cameras on you?”
I rub my forehead, and I’m not sure if it’s my jet lag or the fact that he just said in love that is making my head pound in double time.
“I’m too tired for philosophy,” I tell him.
“ And I missed my interview, by the way, and now I’m not even sure if I’m sad about it, which is so bad because it puts me right back at square one.
Worse, I think it wipes me totally off the grid.
” I sigh. “Dad’s elated, of course. He wants me to stay in Tatum forever. ”
“I like your dad,” James whispers.
“He’s not happy with you,” I say, and I feel a bit guilty—a lot guilty—when his face falls.
His laugh this time is a little less cheery.
“I’m used to unhappy fathers,” he says. “I’ll give him my dad’s number and they can chat about how awful I am.”
“He’s not mad at you,” I clarify, shifting my shoulder closer to James’s. “He’s upset that you…how did he put it? Something horsey. Backed yourself into the wrong corral, maybe? Don’t really know. I was too busy eating steak to keep track of his metaphors, but you get the drift.”
“Well, then he’ll be happy to know that I’ve blown up the corral and all the cowhands with it.
Scorched earth. No agent, no manager, no lawyers apart from Genie who said, and I quote, You can’t put Genie back in the bottle.
So wherever I end up, I’ll at least have someone to run contracts by, I suppose. ”
“And no Disassembled ?” I ask.
James shakes his head.
“All gone. All of it.”
“What about your dad?” I ask.
“Unhappy,” he says. “He told me I’m letting him down, letting my mom down. That she’d be so disappointed and he feels the only way to get through to me is to put her house on the market if I don’t sign the contract.”
I reach for him on impulse, rising up on my side to put my hand on his arm.
“James…I’m sorry.”
“It’s just a house,” he says, eyeing me. “And what about you? The interview?”
“Missed it to check on Serena,” I say. “She had a bike injury. She’s fine, but nothing to be done about the publishing thing now.”
“Surely you can email your interviewer and let them know you had a family emergency and they’ll reschedule you,” he says.
“That’s the thing, though: I’m not sure if I want to. It was this weird mix of grief and relief to know I wasn’t going to make the interview. I messaged to let them know the situation, and they sent their best, but they didn’t offer a reschedule and I…I didn’t ask.”
I watch as James nods like this is profound information, which I guess it is. He gets to his feet to retrieve his sling bag and then returns to sit beside me.
“I wanted you to see this,” he says, pulling out an envelope that has gone slightly gray with age and dust. “I found it in the studio. I’d never dug around much in there after Mom passed. No one has. So it was under a pile of art theory books and…”
He trails off when I gasp in recognition at the envelope he sets in my hands.
“That’s my mom’s handwriting,” I say. “That’s her old address.”
James is watching me so, so carefully.
Dear Rebecca,
It is an honor to have your piece hanging in my home. I know you said this was a coveted work of yours, and it is extraordinarily generous of you to have sent me its twin. I promise it will hang in my home for as long as I’m alive.
And I must thank you again for a fantastic painting intensive. I’m still not very good at minimizing my brushstrokes, but they’re much improved thanks to you!
I’m so glad we were able to discuss all things Meadow and raising gifted, headstrong teenagers over dinner that night.
I came into the weekend expecting to come out with some tips and tricks to make for less clumpy canvases and instead left feeling as if I’d met up with a long-lost friend.
Your James sounds remarkably similar to my Juniper, and I just know they will both find their way.
It is by no means a celebrated work of art, but I thought I’d make you one of my family-famous Meadow T-shirts. They’re my specialty, I suppose you could say, in that like your painting of the woman reading beneath the tree, I’ve only made two: one for me and now one for you.
Perhaps someday our paintings and shirts will reunite. Until then, I wish you all the best.
With utmost sincerity,
Leanne
I’m crying again, which is not so much a rarity these days, but this is a different kind of crying.
There are shivers of magic—not coincidence, but straight-up magic—running down my arms, and the envelope in my hands feels like the best of hauntings.
Like Mom has come back to pat me on the shoulder and point at James and say, I approve, Junie B.
James carefully folds the letter back into the envelope to stash away in the bag, “to avoid any accident,” he says with a smile, and then he leans forward to tenderly wipe my tears with his thumbs.
“I’ve never seen that letter,” he says. “It felt…Well, I read it and it suddenly became clear that my mom would have had me cleaning her brushes for months if she knew what an idiot I’ve been.
That’s when I pulled the plug on everything and then came here hoping I could see you, and then Catarina happened to call and said some tape got ruined and I…
” He sighs, scanning my face. “It was never pretend,” he says. “Never. Not with you. Not once.”
My tears are pooling in the V his thumb and index finger make against my cheekbones.
“But what about the plan?” I ask. “We can’t just…just…be together.”
James’s lips quirk.
“Why not?”
“ Because, ” I say.
“That’s not an answer.” He laughs.
“It is,” I say. “Your work—”
“—already severed, I told you. I’ll find new work. Other work. Work that puts me behind or far away from the camera that I’ll like so much better. Next?”
“Your house. Your mom’s house.”
“Not the only place in Tatum available to rent out,” James says. “Not to mention Tatum isn’t the only place in the world. We could go anywhere you’d like. To the city, to the country, to another country…Name it and I’ll go.”
“I can’t name it because I don’t even know what I’m going to do,” I say. “I have no job leads after missing that interview. This is the worst possible time to start…whatever this is,” I say, gesturing between us.
“Or the best possible time,” James says. “What better time to stick together and work things out than when everything and nothing is on the table? Especially considering the circumstances.”
“Which are?”
James laughs, dropping his hands from my cheeks to my waist and pulling me closer to him across the studio floor’s carpeting.
“You know how I feel about you,” he says. “I told you it’s not pretend.”
“I’m going to need you to say it out loud,” I tell him, and my heart and my head are communing with my full stomach to build toward something like elation.
James leans forward to whisper in my ear, and my whole body lights up with happiness when he says on an exhale, “I’m in love with you, Juniper Green. I think I have been for some time.”
“Hm,” I say. “I believe you, but I’d still like to see it in writing. Just to be safe, you know. Cover my bases.”
“We’ll have Genie look it over.” He nods solemnly. “Best to have lawyers check these things out.”
I wish I could say that James kisses me and the world melts away and the birds sing as the sun falls behind the horizon, but that’s not what happens because this is real life and it’s so much better because it’s true.
A sound guy finally enters the room and his open mug is not spill-proof, so naturally it spills down the front of my shirt as he trips over where we’re sitting on the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” he apologizes. “I’ve got some spare crew shirts in the truck I could dig up for you—”
“Ah,” James says, reaching into his backpack. “No need. I’ve got a shirt for her right here. I’m quite used to it.”
And so goes my first day of feeling like I’m in the right place at the right time: clad in a coffee shop T-shirt with my best friend on speakerphone who—after expressing sentiments along the lines of finally —seems more concerned about maintaining her absurd pudding quota at home than about her biking accident, my chosen-family nephew shouting zoom noises in my ear, and James Freakin’ Neely sitting beside me acting for all the world like this is exactly where he wants to be.