Page 21 of Wish You Were Her

“I suppose,” she finally spoke with resignation, “I just thought that coldness was your nature. But whomever you’ve been emailing… they’ve been getting a kind person. Right? A funny person. Or they wouldn’t want to come tonight.”

Jonah didn’t say anything.

“So, you can be nice, I guess,” Allegra continued. “Just not to me. You know, Simon once said you think of people as books. So, here. To me, you’re like the pretentious novels you love so much. Just a story that nobody wants to hear.”

The words landed like a spark on a line of powder and it ignited something in Jonah.

“Why did you come to this stupid little town?” he fired back. His voice was loud enough to cause a few bystanders to glance over at the two of them. “In all the years George has lived here alone, you’ve never visited.”

“Don’t talk about my dad to me.”

“Why now? Why a summer in Lake Pristine? You have everything. You’re loved all over the world.

People write essays about how in love with you they are.

They sleep in the street to catch a glimpse of you at a premiere.

You have more money than my whole family combined.

What more could you possibly want? Why come here?

Why do you have to conquer this small town when you have the whole world, Allegra? ”

He blurted out the last word just as he realized his private thoughts had broken free and hit her like a defiant spit in the face. They stared at each other and he was horrified by the shimmer of moisture in her eyes.

“That’s my cue to leave,” she finally said, her words a whisper. She rose to her feet with the posture of a dancer and the serenity of an empress. Jonah felt his insides clench.

“Allegra—”

“I don’t see my father, or any of my family much, because I’m on back-to-back ninety-day shoots,” she told him calmly.

“Often in countries I don’t live in. I don’t have friends, just co-workers.

My Christmas card list is my agent, my publicist, my estate agent, all of their assistants, my accountant and my managerial advisory board.

” She took a shaky breath and smiled sadly.

“A journalist wrote a horrible, snarky article about me and I felt tired. I needed to escape. To have a normal summer, like other eighteen-year-olds.”

She made to leave and then stopped.

“And you know something? One of those I-Love-Allegra-Brooks essay writers, as you call it? He broke into my apartment and held a knife to my throat.”

She said it so matter-of-factly that it made Jonah feel ill.

“I was sixteen. It didn’t really feel like love, you know, a blade on your skin. I’ll have to take your word for it. I don’t really know what love is. Just what it feels like on the cinema screen. And in the romances you hate so much.”

She was already gone from the cafe before Jonah was able to process what had happened. He felt so ashamed. For someone who struggled with naming emotions, this one was so astutely easy to identify. Shame—and regret.

He wanted to chase after her, but she was already on the other side of Main Street, heading toward the large festival tent.

The launch party was about to begin and, as the last of the light died, electricity and anticipation came alive in town as people flocked toward the first event of the Lake Pristine Book Festival.

Jonah felt as though he had been shoved from a moving train.

He had been fantasizing and fixating on this meeting, hoping that the charming, loveable person on the other end of those emails would come and ease the ache in his chest—the one that had been growing and groaning since Allegra Brooks blew into town.

He should be thinking about her, his friend, but he was consumed by the girl who had just stormed out.

Her words had wounded him. Maybe she was right and he was a book nobody wanted to read. He floated through Lake Pristine, more tolerated than he was wanted.

It was painful for him to admit that witnessing a person with such explosive charisma made him only capable of small, ugly words. Such sweetness brought out bitterness; in a light so bright, you had to cower away and find respite in darkness.

He had to put a stop to it.

“What was that about, pal?”

The question came from Nick, one of their part-time booksellers. He was with his partner at the table by the window and they were looking at Jonah with concern.

“Nothing,” Jonah said, sounding less broken than he felt. “Professional disagreement.”

“About the festival?”

“Sure.” He despised the Lake Pristine Tax. “Something like that.”

“Don’t let anything spoil your last year with the festival.”

“I won’t—what?”

Jonah turned in his chair to look properly at Nick. The man looked surprised by the follow-up question, or perhaps by Jonah’s slightly indignant tone.

“I just meant,” Nick scrambled for words, “you’ll be going to uni or to the city after the summer, won’t you? Like Simon? Getting out of here.”

Jonah felt like someone had tied a piece of wire around his neck.

People kept making comments like this to him.

To his mother in the bakery as she worked.

To him at the market. George, a few months after Christmas, had also mentioned it a lot.

Jonah had finally grown tired of it and told the older man that he had no plans to leave town.

“I…” Jonah spoke around the invisible wire. “I don’t know what I would do. Or where I would go.”

“That’s the fun of it, isn’t it?” Nick said gently. “Finding out?”

“Maybe,” Jonah said, staggering to his feet. “Sorry, Nick, I have to go.”

He fled, leaving Middlemarch and the rose in his wake.