Page 20 of Wish You Were Her

“Are you just going to leave him there?” Grace asked softly, as Allegra backed away from Pete’s Cafe and set off toward the book festival site, now built up and put together in the middle of town. Multiple great white tents, just waiting for everything to begin.

“Yeah,” Allegra said sullenly. “I am.”

But she stopped. She hesitated. If she left for the festival site, she would be standing him up. He wouldn’t know it was her, but it was still unkind. A little cowardly.

Jonah Thorne, she thought bitterly. It had to have been Jonah Thorne.

“Confirmation bias,” she said, her words barely audible; a sad admission from a girl in a town that did not have room for movie stars. “I just assumed it was Simon…”

A million little coincidences. The shared language, the jovial tone, the same books from the pictures. Allegra had had the narrative so ready to go in her own head, she hadn’t looked properly at other factors.

Other booksellers.

“Go in and see if you can both find the funny side,” Grace suggested.

Allegra stimmed and stumbled, caught between two places and unable to find even a drop of humor in anything.

“I’m so stupid,” was all she could conjure up. “So, so stupid.”

The stupid girl, who had watched as national newspapers printed a countdown clock to her eighteenth birthday, who had wanted to come to a small town and fall in love.

“Stupid,” she repeated.

She began to walk away once more, her heels clacking against the cobblestones. She heard Grace make a noise of disbelief.

“You can’t leave him alone in there, Allegra.”

“I can, Grace,” Allegra said without looking back. “He can sit there all night for all I care.”

“Allegra!”

She stopped at that, shocked by Grace’s sharp and forceful tone. “What?”

Grace was staring her down with steely disapproval. “Jonah Thorne is like his name. Prickly and spiky. But he’s a good guy. He’s my friend, even. You are, too. But you’re not going to leave him there, wondering and worrying about you. Go inside. Explain.”

Allegra’s eyes drifted back to the cafe and she felt a flood of fear and humiliation. “I can’t, Grace. I can’t go in there and face him.”

She had auditioned for some of the most terrifying directors in the business but this was something else completely.

“Yes, you can,” Grace said firmly. “What are you even upset about? Really? You love those emails but you were lackluster about Simon. No, you were! Come on, be honest. The only thing he had going for him in your eyes was the possibility of being this mystery pen-pal.”

“Well, it’s not him,” Allegra said. “It’s not Simon. It’s the guy who said I looked like a snob and who has barely said a nice word to me since.”

Even as she said it she knew it wasn’t the whole truth, but she was feeling tripped up and scared.

“Because you’re not at all intimidating?”

“Grace, stop.”

“No, you stop. You’re not in your big, fancy city now. This is Lake Pristine. And we don’t ghost people here. It’s too small. So be a big girl and get inside.”

A smile flickered on Allegra’s lips as she regarded her friend. “You know, no one speaks to me like this.”

“Well,” Grace shrugged unapologetically. “Maybe they should. Friends tell their friends when they’re being dicks.”

Allegra’s small smile wobbled. “Grace.”

“I know, babe,” Grace said, her voice almost sisterly in its softness. “It’s okay, you’re okay.”

“Why does it have to be him?” she asked the universe as much as she did her new friend. “Him! The guy who yelled at me over movie tie-in covers!”

“Just give him a chance,” Grace said.

Allegra shook her head, too shaken by the prospect.

They had argued too often, snarled at each other one too many times.

He thought she was a joke. One or two nice moments did not erase the many that had made her humbly aware of what he really thought of her.

She didn’t care if her mind had occasionally replayed those nice moments before going to sleep.

She didn’t want to think about the pang of relief she felt that her pen-pal was not Simon.

She couldn’t focus on any of that. She needed to escape.

But she turned and dashed to the cafe entrance.

“Good girl,” Grace called.

As Allegra stepped inside, the smell of burning candles welcomed her. The lights were dim and the chatter was muted. It was a perfect meeting point for two autistics. She just wished they had each known about the other.

She approached Jonah as if in a trance, and when he looked up, her own panic was suddenly evident on his face. He stared at her, his eyes raking up and down her body, as though seeing her for the very first time.

“Allegra?”

And Allegra Brooks, having learned to hide so well, was unable to give up this little piece of herself. It was just too hard. Vulnerability is the chip one has to play into the game if one wants the cards to come out right, but Allegra held her chips close and refused to bet.

She had disguised herself so well within the emails: some girl from out of town with a job in social media. She had been careful to cover her tracks.

She acted quickly.

“Are you here to meet some girl?” The words sounded ugly. She wished them undone as soon as they were said.

Jonah stared up at her. “Yes.”

“Well,” Allegra was good at improvising.

Actors had to be. “We just got a call at the bookshop. Sounded like a young woman. Said she was meeting one of the booksellers at Pete’s Cafe.

Or she was supposed to. She got stuck, out of town.

Something to do with her job and a client.

Asked me to apologize on her behalf, but she has to reschedule. ”

She expected to see relief in Jonah’s face, she knew she was the last person he would want as his mystery girl, but he gave nothing away.

“Are you who she meant?” Allegra asked, her voice shaking but her gaze unblinking. “Or is that message for Simon?”

A part of her wondered if she had still somehow got it wrong. She hoped against hope that he was here by some strange accident.

“No, it’s for me.” He said it in his deep, hard-to-read voice and they stared at one another. Allegra couldn’t even begin to identify her emotions.

She just knew it stung.

“So, you have an out-of-town girlfriend?”

He scowled. “No. More like… a pen-pal.”

“You’ve never met each other?” She made her face look casual as they stared each other down.

“No.” Jonah looked on edge as he answered her rapid-fire questions. “Tonight was… going to be the first time.”

“Why have you never mentioned her?”

It came out far more accusingly than she meant it to.

“Because we’re just two people who have been emailing. Why would I mention it? It’s not like you and I are friends, Allegra.”

Allegra knew this was the perfect moment to bow out, to wish him well and then head to the launch party without even an afterthought.

Instead, she sat down in the seat across from him.

Allegra looked like a goddess. A surprisingly angry one.

Jonah had been wondering what his mystery girl would sound like when the actress had walked through the cafe door.

He had been too stunned by her appearance to be embarrassed by the fact that she had stumbled across his would-be date with a stranger.

He was taking in her dress as she told him that his friend was unable to make it.

Her long hair, the breeze of her perfume and the way the dress was cut.

He had barely a moment to process what she was saying.

When she sat across from him, disorientation turned into familiar prickliness.

“You don’t need to keep me company,” he snapped.

“Oh, I know,” she snapped back. “I’m curious, though. How long have you been conversing with this… person?”

“A while,” he answered stonily. “Not that it’s your business.”

“So, that’s why you and Simon are so possessive of that ancient computer. Exchanging romantic correspondence with anonymous strangers.”

“Simon can’t draft our press releases, let alone love letters.”

“And yet he was the one I expected to find here.”

The words startled both of them.

“After receiving her message,” Allegra added quickly. “She wasn’t able to say which one of you the message was for. But I thought it would be Simon.”

He glared. “You assumed it would be Simon?”

“Yes,” Allegra snapped defensively. “He’s… always by the computer.”

It was a weak justification and they both knew it.

“I don’t know who she is,” Jonah admitted, his tone contemplative. He peered up at her. “What was she like?”

Allegra blanched. “Sorry?”

“What did she sound like? How did she seem?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, avoiding his gaze. “Normal, I guess. I wasn’t really taking notes.”

He watched her sigh with a heaviness that surprised him. Frustrated with himself for being defensive and cantankerous, he extended an olive branch.

“I’m sorry for being short,” he said.

“You’ve been short all summer,” she fired back, symbolically snapping the branch.

“You’ve been rude and standoffish and judgmental since the moment I came into Dad’s shop.

You sneer at what I read. You chase away my customers.

You treat me like a stack of orders you can’t be bothered to process and you roll your eyes when I speak. ”

Jonah swallowed. He couldn’t deny any of it. And the real reason for his frosty, flinty feelings stared at him with indignation, wondering why he wouldn’t address them.

He wanted to apologize. However, the fear of vulnerability, the terror of being perceived… it was a terrible chaser to a cocktail of pride.

“Some of us aren’t slumming it here for a summer, some of us care about the store all year round.”

The words were the perfect disguise.

He could keep his secrets. It just meant being an ass.

He regarded the disappointment on Allegra’s face. There was nothing guarded about it; her dismay was etched into the atoms of her perfect features. She sat back in her chair and exhaled, taking him in.