Page 19 of Wish You Were Her

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to: [email protected]

RE: Wish You Were Here!

Dear Friend,

Today’s book is Middlemarch , as promised.

Here’s a picture of it outside Pete’s Cafe.

I can’t wait to see you. Sorry if I’ve been distant of late.

Some strange things have been going on and I need to get over something.

Nothing major, something small. Totally manageable.

I’m trying not to dress-rehearse horrible scenarios in my head where you take one look at me and run away from Lake Pristine forever.

Wish you were here as I need my brain to stop catastrophizing.

Your friend

Allegra had one mirror in the small spare bedroom of her father’s bookshop apartment and it was on the inside of the wardrobe door.

She had spent longer than normal trying to find the right thing to wear.

She loved fashion and dressing up, but this was the first time in years without a stylist on the other end of a text chain to approve and co-sign the ensemble.

She had complete freedom of choice for once.

The silver lamé dress was a little revealing and perhaps too dressy for the launch of a small-town book festival, but Allegra was hoping that the date beforehand with Simon would ignite in person what was so natural and becoming over email.

She hoped that he would apologize for his priggishness and attribute it to nerves or posturing.

Allegra wanted to be in love. She had read once that falling in love only happened when a person was ready for change in their life.

She had fallen a handful of times and had realized, after bracing for impact and feeling the ground, that she had fallen alone.

She had pulled herself up alone. She had waited out the fever of it all alone.

As an actor, she had watched others while they lived their lives.

Halloween parties, school trips and wild weekends with their friends.

She had known call sheets, early commutes to set with strange men driving black sedans and no one around her but adults who were telling her which plastic surgeries she should undergo in order to “get ahead of the inevitable.”

She knew she was fortunate. She knew luck had touched her in a way that most people would never know.

But sometimes she just hungered. She watched her peers and she thirsted for a warm group chat and inside jokes.

For joint eighteenth birthday parties and “did you get home safe?” texts.

She was watched from the moment she left her apartment for set until the second her bedroom light went off.

The security detail were always quiet and quick; they didn’t need to exchange words with her.

Getting rid of them for quiet time in Lake Pristine had taken a great deal of persuasion but it had been worth it.

She appreciated their work but they inevitably always made her feel like a commodity that they moved swiftly and silently from mark to mark. It had been miraculous, escaping to Lake Pristine and shedding all of the control.

When the camera began to roll, she was allowed to come alive.

She was allowed to live in the lives of people whose skin she could climb inside.

Those moments of electricity were what kept her heart beating through the whole ordeal of it.

The in-between moments, the constant shuffling and promoting and waiting, they were bearable because making the art was so wonderfully cosmic.

But she wanted some spontaneity. She wanted to taste the food on the table of life that the industry had promised was bad for her. She wanted to take a bite and hear their gasps of disbelief and horror.

Flavors became so mild when you were always tasting someone else’s food for them.

She wanted a feast of her own.

She slid on the Manolos she had purchased with her first TV pay check and descended the stairs from the apartment to the bookshop beneath.

The lights in the shop were switched off for the evening, everyone in town for the festival launch party.

Only the computer was awake. Allegra opened up the inbox and checked the sent folder, smiling when she eventually found the latest from Simon.

Wish you were here.

She wondered if the spark from their emails would come to life when he finally realized that she always had been.

“God, Jonah, you look nice.”

Jonah swallowed and thanked Alice, as she showed him to his empty table in the cafe she ran with her husband, Pete.

It was abuzz with people, only a few other tables were empty.

The whole room was adorned with flowers from the summer solstice and the chandelier brought occasion and pomp to the otherwise cozy cafe.

Jonah was wearing a black suit with the white opera scarf he had begged his mother for five Hanukkahs ago. He placed Middlemarch on the table and slid a rose between the pages.

His nerves were overpowering but the hope was even worse.

School had been tough. Jonah always asked why things were the way they were, and it had never gone down well with the teachers.

If it hadn’t been for Simon, he would have been a social pariah because he was always saying the wrong thing.

His intentions were never bad, but his delivery could never assure people of that.

The bookshop had allowed him room to breathe but also to become even more tetchy, even more isolated.

Then came her emails.

In some careless, frivolous way, someone was actually amused by him. Intrigued enough to keep talking, despite the social niceties having been adhered to and the obligation no longer necessary.

Perhaps he hadn’t told anyone about it because it would seem pathetic. He was so lonely that a stranger sending emails had become a lifeline for him.

“Who are you so dressed up for, son?” Pete asked the question as he brought a water jug to the table, as well as some menus.

“Kind of like a date,” Jonah admitted.

Pete’s eyes widened and then his entire face broke into a beaming smile. Jonah instantly tensed.

“Alice!” called Pete, his voice frantic with excitement. His wife walked over to Jonah’s table, expectantly. “You were right. He’s meeting someone!”

Jonah cringed. This was what George Brooks liked to call the Lake Pristine Tax. Your business was never your own, everybody took an interest in your life as though it was a long-running television show.

“I’ve always said you’re the most handsome young man in town. You should be out every Friday night!” Alice said. And while the words were complimentary, they were accompanied by a pat on the cheek that spoke to her almost familial bias.

“Thanks,” Jonah said, coughing on the water he was trying to sip from.

“So, what’s their name?” The question came from Pete.

Jonah thought very hard about whether he should just lie. “I don’t know.” But he had always been terrible at anything other than the pure truth.

“You don’t know?” Alice blinked down at him. “Is it… some kind of internet thing?”

Pete and Alice still refused to have Wi-Fi in the cafe so the suspicion in her voice as she asked him the question was unsurprising, and it made Jonah smile.

“Kind of. Got talking via email. Tonight’s our first meeting. She’s from out of town.”

“Oh, that’s actually quite romantic!” Alice said, her whole attitude transforming in an instant. “Like lonely hearts!”

“Well,” Jonah bristled slightly at that description. “I’m not sure—”

“I’m going to get you a candle for the table,” Pete interjected. “And, Alice, dim the lights a little more. Set the mood!”

Jonah grimaced as they fussed, suddenly feeling a stabbing pressure for the whole thing to go well. He wondered if he would have to apologize to his email girl for the antics of the Lake Pristine elders.

“Good luck, darling,” Alice whispered as she finally returned to the counter. “You look wonderful, it will be great. I bet she’ll be beautiful!”

A flash of someone else coursed through Jonah’s mind at Alice’s words but he quickly slammed that lid shut. He couldn’t think about her. She was from a different story, one that had no room on the call sheet for someone like him.

She was too special. Too much of everything.

He just needed someone nice and normal.

“I just hope she likes me,” Jonah said quietly, more to himself than to anyone else.

Under all of the blunders, the faux pas, the unintended offenses, there was one single, steadfast flame that never went out.

He wanted someone to like him. Someone special.

He could live with being an irritant to so many other people if he could just be a balm for one.

Lake Pristine looked like a dream as Allegra walked along Main Street.

The summer sun was cooler and night was starting to gently cut in.

There were flowers everywhere, roses, hydrangeas and marigolds wherever it was possible to hang them.

The air was warm and the people all around her were untouched by worry.

The festival site stood up ahead, fully mounted marquees ready to hold audiences of readers and authors from all over the world.

People were already exploring the exterior of the site, looking with interest and asking volunteers about the program.

Allegra spotted Grace leaving the ballet studio and the other girl’s eyebrows shot into her dark hairline as she laid eyes on the actress.

“Allegra!”

Allegra smiled, feeling delighted and shy all at once. “I have a date. This isn’t all for the book festival.”

“With Simon?” Grace asked, filling in the story for herself and taking in Allegra’s ensemble with unguarded wonder. “He’s going to pass out when he sees you.”

“I just hope…” Allegra glanced ahead at Pete’s Cafe. “I hope… we connect properly now. When he finds out it’s been me, you know, writing to him.”

“Okay,” Grace said, “maybe he’s just making an ass of himself every now and again because he’s so nervous around you. He obviously likes you. I mean, every guy for a hundred miles does.”

“Well, all but one,” Allegra said, but Grace didn’t hear her.

“My brother used to make such a fool of himself around Jasper. Now they’re the most in-love people you’ll ever meet.”

“You’re being nice,” Allegra said gently. “I know you don’t think that highly of Simon.”

“I think neutrally of Simon,” Grace corrected. “But I think highly of you. And if you think you’re getting something else from his emails, then he deserves a chance to prove that to you.”

“I think…” Allegra looked up at the sky which was like a mess of paint colors all spilled across a dark table.

“I was someone who struggled for so long with expressing how I really felt. With showing people who I really was. It’s why acting felt so freeing.

But I don’t want to struggle anymore. I want people to have good faith and patience and see the best in me, even if I say the wrong thing. So, I need to extend that to him.”

Grace regarded Allegra. Allegra could feel the chasm that fame created between two people. Grace could only offer advice from her own lived experience. One that was so different from Allegra’s.

“I hope it works out for you both,” was all Grace said, but it was enough to make Allegra smile.

“Thank you.”

“Want me to check that he’s in there before you go in?”

“God, yes.”

Allegra hovered as Grace moved to the cafe window.

“We were supposed to meet at seven. I’m a little late,” she said, when Grace did not immediately confirm Simon’s attendance.

When Grace’s shoulders stiffened, Allegra knew something was wrong. She stared at her new friend’s back, her eyes scanning and searching for any sign of an answer. But when Grace turned, her face was ashen.

“What is it?” Allegra breathed.

“Um.” Grace looked so sorry, it made Allegra want to panic. To flee.

“What?”

“It’s…” Grace cast a glance back at the cafe and then stepped toward Allegra. “It’s definitely a bookseller in there. But it’s not Simon.”

Allegra stared at the other girl before pushing ahead to the window and looking for herself.

The cafe looked almost Parisian with its beautiful lighting and its calm, composed atmosphere.

She spotted the book first, perched on the end of a small table for two in the middle of the main floor.

A waitress was blocking her view of the book’s owner.

She spotted the rose, crushed gently between the pages of Middlemarch , exactly as promised.

She stared at the spine of the large book and tried to control her breathing.

When the waitress moved away, the owner of the book, the person dressed in a black suit with combed hair, was not the person she had anticipated. It was the person who had always been in her periphery, an unwelcome thought, a “what if” every time she had told herself that it had to be Simon.

Her eyes took in the scene with a tight breath and a deep feeling of shock.

Jonah Thorne.