Page 24 of Wish You Were Her

He moved inside and she finally allowed herself to concede that he was extremely handsome, tall as he was with his dark curls and long lashes.

She felt the tension in the room settle into something serious.

It was the same way, sometimes, with a scene partner.

Sometimes, just sometimes, the arduous setup, the rewrites, the blocking and the rehearsal were all finalized and then they dissipated to leave her and another actor with nothing but the beauty of making art together.

When Jonah walked toward her with an intensely focused expression, she knew that this was not their usual play.

He eyed her appearance with a hint of hunger and Allegra didn’t trust herself to speak.

They were terrible and full of bluster when they spoke to each other.

Two eighteen-year-olds who were ahead of their peers in so many ways, and so guarded and afraid of adulthood in so many other ways.

She slid off the desk and he came to stand in front of her, the two of them surrounded by tables of books in a dimly lit shop with no one else around. He was still in his suit and she in her dress, which suddenly felt like liquid that could be pulled away very easily.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, before she could think of a thing to say.

“What are you sorry for, Jonah?” she asked, barely a whisper.

“Everything. The way I spoke to you when you first came into the shop. And every day since.”

Allegra had kicked off her heels on reaching the front desk and so he had a few inches of height on her. She looked up into his face, marking the tiny dark circles under his eyes and the beauty of his mouth.

“It’s okay,” she said. “People get… weird around me.”

He was very close now. If anyone walked by the shop window they wouldn’t be able to see her. She was eclipsed by him.

“I know they do,” he said. “But I don’t want to be one of those people to you. The strange weirdos who want the interaction to be over so they can go and call someone about it. I want…”

His fingers were lightly brushing her forearms and he was almost pressed up against her. He smelled incredible.

“What do you want, Jonah?” she asked, mimicking the formal way he always spoke, that formality she had strangely started to crave. “What everyone else wants, right?” It wasn’t bitterness, really, it was regret.

“No,” he murmured, looking briefly into her eyes and then back down to where his hands were touching her skin. “You. I want you. And I want you more than anyone else.”

The words were said so matter-of-factly, Allegra almost laughed.

He shook his head as he looked at her, as if trying to break free of a trance. “There’s something different about you.”

Allegra swallowed. “Jonah—”

“You’re not like everyone else. And not because of movie contracts or glamor or any of the crazy things you left behind to come here. There’s something else.”

Allegra heard this often, usually with an accusatory tone. But Jonah sounded fascinated. Full of wonder. And it made her nervous.

“Someone said something true to me tonight,” he went on. “They said, ‘everyone is in love with you.’ And it’s true.”

“It’s not, Jonah,” she said weakly. “I could show you—”

“And so I gave myself permission,” he said, ignoring her frail protestations.

His voice had changed, it sounded deeper and more full of heat.

“To stop being an asshole, to stop covering up what I want with unconscious meanness. And if you hate it, okay. If you don’t feel the same in any way, I’ll live.

Not happily, and without much color, but I’ll survive.

Rejection doesn’t seem as horrible as regret.

I’ll lose you either way, might as well do it with the knowledge that I tried. ”

“What about your email girl?” she asked, surprised by how breathless she was beginning to sound.

“I thought she and I might be kind of soulmates because of how we write, but she didn’t come tonight. Allegra. Stop hiding. Look at me.”

She did.

“Reject me,” he said. “So I can start getting over you.”

She glanced down at his hands which had now climbed up to her elbows.

He was so close she could breathe in the smell of the night air on his body.

He lifted one hand to gently move her long hair away from her face.

He pressed his lips against the newly exposed skin of her throat and she closed her eyes.

“Tell me to go away and I will,” he said against her neck. Her hands had drifted up to pull him closer and his arms had encircled her. They were tightly locked together. Every part of her was humming.

Allegra’s first kiss had been on camera.

She had performed love scenes with other young actors, sometimes with an intimacy coordinator, sometimes the director would flatly refuse.

Usually, the love scenes she shot were impossible to mistake for anything real.

The other actor would be angling their face so that they were completely visible on camera.

Nothing felt true. And it saddened Allegra, who had chosen the life of an actor because she loved the delicious cocktail of a fairy tale on the screen mixed with the truth of the human condition.

Jonah wasn’t like any of those actors. Sometimes he was too truthful. It was why they caused one another to flare up so often.

He reminded her of who she had been before focus groups, industry luncheons and award seasons.

She slid her hands into his hair, and his came to rest on her hips.

When he spoke, he sounded starved. “Kiss me.”

She heard herself make a small noise of encouragement, and then everything caught fire.

His mouth came down on hers and she pressed her body against his until it elicited a groan from him. He hoisted her up so he was holding her flush against him, her legs moving automatically to drape around his hips.

Allegra kissed him back as he maneuvered her to one of the shop tables. “Not the paperbacks, the jackets will bend.”

She felt him smile against her mouth. “Hardbacks it is.”

He shoved some expensive books from the table and laid her down on it. She bit his bottom lip, he licked her collarbone. She slid her tongue into his mouth. He dragged her hips against his once more.

“Fuck,” he groaned, as his hands found her breasts and hers found his belt.

She was about to respond when they both heard a noise, a scuffling at the front door of the shop.

They froze in the near-dark, and then Allegra rolled gracelessly off the table.

She crawled underneath it to hide, pinching the heels of Jonah’s shoes until he did the same.

As soon as they were safely hidden, the door opened.

They watched George’s feet cross the shopfloor and listened to him as he whistled jauntily.

He moved straight through the door that led up to his and Allegra’s apartment, too distracted by his own thoughts to see their feet or the books on the floor.

Before she could even process his arrival, Allegra felt her phone ringing.

There was no tone, just vibration, and it was enough to push her into sensory overload, given everything else that she was feeling.

She rolled onto her back beneath the table of books and answered it.

“Hey. I’m almost home. I’ll be up in a minute.”

She spoke very softly and Jonah leaned over to press his mouth between her breasts. She almost gasped and almost grimaced in a mixture of pleasure and anxiety.

“All right,” George said, his voice happily tired and oblivious. “Be safe.”

“Yes,” she said, trying not to sound breathy as she pulled Jonah on top of her. “Bye.”

She dropped the phone with a thud and pulled Jonah’s mouth back to hers.

Jonah was finding it hard to breathe. He was living out the daydreams he had not even allowed himself to look directly at. The dreams that were logged away and unacknowledged, because coming out of them would be too painful.

Allegra was beneath him and she could no doubt feel how much he wanted her.

He wanted to apologize again, for letting his attraction morph into defensiveness.

He wanted to tell her that he liked the pieces of her that she revealed when she didn’t know anyone was watching.

He liked the Allegra he saw with George over lunch.

The way she would take the baby tomatoes out of his salad because she knew her father didn’t like them.

The way she read picture books when she was organizing the children’s section.

He liked so many things about her, things that the rest of the world knew nothing about.

He didn’t want them to know.

“Go on then,” she said breathily, letting her knees fall to either side of her. “Get your immunity.”

Jonah paused. He blinked at her beautiful face in the darkness. “What?”

“Isn’t that what this is? You’re getting me out of your system?”

He was confused. And then he panicked, wondering if he had misread her. “If you don’t want this, Allegra, we’ll stop immediately—”

“No, I do,” she sighed, pulling him back onto her. “But let’s not pretend it’s something it’s not. I’m like the common cold, remember. Just something to get over.”

Horror slowly took the place of desire and arousal. “You… you know about that?”

“Grace and I couldn’t help overhearing.”

“How?”

“Does it matter?”

“I told Kerrie not to—”

“She didn’t, we overheard, like I said.”

“How much did you overhear?” He reached down to touch her face, his eyes searching her face for answers.

She looked into his eyes for a brief moment and then glanced away. “Not much.”

Jonah tried to read her face. “I don’t understand.”

“If we’re going to do this, let’s do it.”

“Allegra, I want you but not on the floor of the shop. You can come back to my place.”

A flash of something vulnerable crossed her face and she looked up at him briefly. “That’ll just complicate things, Jonah.”

He felt his expression harden. “I want to complicate things.”

“No, you want me out of your system. So, let’s go.”

Jonah shook his head. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean that.”

“Actually, you know what,” she wriggled out from beneath him and leaped to her feet. “Better not. Your email friend might get jealous.”

Jonah was ashamed to admit to himself that he had barely thought of his pen-pal.

Partly because he was still feeling resentful about sitting alone in Pete’s Cafe without a real explanation.

Mostly because as soon as he had allowed himself to think about Allegra in the way he had denied himself for weeks, everything else had gone away.

“Allegra…”

A light was suddenly switched on and they both blinked in astonishment, turning instinctively to the apartment entrance. George stood at the bottom of the stairs, glancing between the two of them.

“Jonah,” he finally said. “Is everything all right? It’s late.”

There was no retribution or even admonishment in the man’s tone. Just bewilderment.

“I was just letting Allegra know that she’ll be working with me on the main stage tomorrow,” he said, turning to eye Allegra with a silent promise. She glared back at him but did not say anything.

“Oh,” George said. “Good. But—”

“See you tomorrow, Allegra.” Jonah’s tone spoke of a refusal to return to their previous dynamic. “We have a lot to discuss in the morning.”

And reluctantly, but with a newly found spring of determination, he left.

[email protected]

to: [email protected]

Subject: I’m Sorry

Dear Jonah,

A longer email, now. I’m sorry. My clients kept me away from Lake Pristine. I know it’s not an excuse. I’m sorry you were made to feel like you were alone. I’m ashamed you were stood up. I wish I could explain properly.

Who answered the phone at the shop? Who was she to you? You’ve hardly mentioned her in any of your responses. I know we’ve unofficially agreed to never share too much personal information via these exchanges but I’m curious.

Your friend

[email protected]

to: [email protected]

RE: Allegra

Dear Friend,

Allegra. She was the one who answered the phone. She’s eighteen, like me. She’s an actress and George’s daughter. She’s an enigma. And she gave me some hard truths while I was waiting for you.

I wish you had been there. It might have spared me from a lot of humiliation and some other feelings I don’t fully understand yet.

Jonah