Chapter 37 #3
Blair continued, “Jacob and I were sitting there, pretending we didn’t like the guy, even though we secretly wanted to be his friend. So he’s on TV and telling this hilarious story about the time he walked in on a girl he liked while she was on a date with a magician in a bathtub—”
I puffed out my cheeks, trying not to laugh. I could hear Zoe and Kara start snorting.
“We all eventually realized that THE STORY WAS ABOUT YOU, CAINEY!” Blair shouted. “Worst. Case. Scenario.” Everyone was laughing. “So I’m sorry, but you singing tonight is the only way I will ever be able to forgive you for that moment from hell you put us through,” Blair challenged me with a grin.
“Blair! That’s evil.”
“You should have seen Rory’s face, Ellie. I wish I had taken a picture.” Jacob laughed.
“Alright, it’s happening.” Cameron slapped his legs and stood. He made his way over to the band, talked to them briefly, then turned back and called to me from across the room. “Radiohead. ‘Fake Plastic Trees.’ You know it?”
Blair could tell from the way my chest was hollowing out that, yes, I knew the song. He dragged me over to the band, and Cameron placed the microphone in my hand.
The music started playing, and Blair and Cameron made their way back to their spots on the hearth.
I kept my eyes on the ground, took a deep breath, and told myself not to think.
Not about the small room. Not about what others were thinking.
Not about the fact that I was about to show Blair and Cameron a different version of myself while singing a song about desperately needing to be something you’re not.
A song about striving for a life that could never be real, and just how exhausting and emptying it is to pretend.
The lyrics hit me in the marrow of my bones.
Everyone sees the shine, but no one knows about the toxins it takes to make it all look so pretty. My fake plastic life.
Don’t think about that, Ellie.
I started singing, eyes stuck on the ground in front of me.
Being vulnerable in front of people didn’t used to scare me.
But now? Now it did. I could be goofy and sing in front of strangers, but singing sincerely in front of people I cared about felt paralyzing.
I used to be good at this. I used to be a lot of things.
Breathe. Calm down. Don’t look.
As the song built, my self-preservation mode clicked on and took me somewhere else.
I wasn’t in the room anymore. I went to the place I used to go in my darkest moments, driving around the streets of LA, pretending I wasn’t alone.
I went to where I used to go onstage. I went to where I go when I write.
I began belting. I closed my eyes, protecting myself from judgment, trapping myself safely inside my head, where I liked myself better.
Where I was real and somehow not real at the same time.
By the time it was over, you could hear a pin drop.
People had been watching me from every direction in the house.
Blair and Cameron whistled first, and the loud applause followed.
But when I lifted my eyes to the room, I didn’t see any of them.
I saw Rory. He was sitting by himself on the stairs, watching me become someone else.
He had leaned against the railing, with his elbow pressed into his knee.
He was holding his mouth and jaw in his hand and had tears in his eyes.
We made eye contact, and his eyebrows ticked, and I saw his lips tug into a soft smile between his fingers.
It took him a moment to move his hand away from his mouth and slowly join in the applause.
Rory eventually stood up from the staircase, but instead of joining us at the fireplace, he pressed his fingers into my stomach.
“Let’s talk, Cainey,” he murmured as he moved me backward and away from our friends and family, out the back door to Blair’s covered patio.
“How have I not seen you do that before? How is that the first time I’ve seen you perform in any way?
There’s a whole part of you that I don’t even know, Ellie.
I keep missing out, and I’m not doing it anymore.
” His eyes roamed my face. “I’m moving to LA, even if we don’t know if that’s where we’ll end up, even if we move somewhere else the next day. I’m moving,” he said definitively.
“You don’t want to live in LA, Rory. Your family is here. Your friends are here. You love Vancouver.” I was certain my lip was trembling, because my words were shaking.
“I love you more.” Rory’s hand wrapped gently around my waist to find the exposed skin on my back. “I’ve already been talking to my lawyers. It’ll take a minute, but I can get there. It’s New Year’s Eve, Ellie. This time next year, everything is going to be different.”
My heart leapt into my throat. “Okay,” I whispered.
“Okay.” He smiled, then carefully tucked my hair behind my ear with his fingers. “You’re gonna marry me, you know.”
I softly pressed my lips into his as he wrapped his arms around me. “I know.”