Page 31 of Wish You Were Her

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RE: Just Wondering

Dear Friend,

I was thinking. How old are you? You have a big career in social media, which feels like a young person’s game but it’s far more impressive than anything on my resumé. I was just wondering. I know we don’t talk too much about the personal stuff, but anyway…

Jonah

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Subject: Just Telling

Let me guess. Someone close to you says that I’m ancient.

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RE: (no subject)

Sorry!! No, that’s not it exactly. I was just wondering.

Allegra smiled to herself as she switched off her phone.

The emails were giving her a touch of lightness that she desperately needed after a tumultuous evening.

Jasper had let her cry and had now gone to wet a flannel so Allegra could wash her face.

On returning, Jasper spoke to her softly, so softly, about how Allegra deserved all of the good things she had earned.

That sacrifices were a part of success and it was all right to feel a sense of loss when she looked at her achievements, as well as pride.

She explained that imposter syndrome seemed to plague women who didn’t deserve it more than it did the men who made money from their art.

It was the speech Allegra had needed someone to make to her for years.

While she knew twenty-three was not a big gap in terms of age and maturity, she looked at Jasper as though she were the wisest of women.

And Allegra knew. She just knew. This woman in her mid-twenties, who smiled at everyone and noticed who felt left out or too scared to talk, was like her.

“I’m autistic,” Allegra heard herself say. “The studios don’t know. The fans, my co-workers, no one. Only my team and my parents. And Grace.”

Jasper’s smile did not falter, there was not a fleck of surprise in her face. “Oh, really?”

“I’m not ashamed of it. But I can’t always cope. I have these… I don’t know, these hangovers after press junkets. When I have to speak to hundreds of people. Or do a talk show.”

“Your body is taking on more stimulation than its designed for,” Jasper said quietly. “It’s not a flaw in you. It’s the infrastructure that’s the problem.”

“If I tell the networks, it’ll get out to the press. Then I’ll be vilified and held up as some kind of spokesperson all at once.”

Something flashed through Jasper’s eyes but she said nothing for a moment. And then: “Your medical diagnosis is not anyone else’s business. No matter their relation to you. It’s yours to disclose. And I think you deserve some privacy.”

It felt like someone had finally given Allegra permission. She exhaled. She sat back and the claw that had been wrapped around her heart let go. “I feel like I owe everyone my whole life. All of the time. To reassure them that their investment or their admiration hasn’t been misplaced.”

Jasper squeezed Allegra’s hand and smiled kindly. “Well. Fuck that.”

“But there’s also a small part of me that wants to stop hiding it. Maybe it would help some of the more well-adjusted people understand me a little better. Maybe journalists wouldn’t jump to weird conclusions when they write about me. Maybe… maybe I could find, like, my own world.”

Jasper frowned. “Your own…?”

“World. I…” Allegra hesitated, wondering if what she wanted to say sounded too childlike, too sensitive.

“I want to have my own little world, like a shelter from everything else. My life, my whole life… I feel like I’ve been watching other people live.

Like they’re the ones on the screen. I’m always this expert on things that don’t happen for me.

I’m like an academic on the topic of, I don’t know—some ancient civilization I can never truly be a part of.

Maybe that’s what has helped me to act well.

I can tell you everything about so much of life.

But I don’t know what it feels like. I’m almost like someone who knows every bone of a bird, every mechanism of flight—except what it actually feels like to fly. ”

She knew she was monologuing, in a way that was unnatural to other young adults. She knew her difference was seeping from the edges of the mask, but she didn’t care.

“So, that’s what I want,” she concluded. “My own little world, my own corner of something beautiful. I came here looking to find it and I just watched from the sidelines, like I always do. And I am just so sick of always meeting my old, comfortable self everywhere I go.”

The words stayed in the air. Jasper stared at the girl, clearly feeling the weight of everything that had been overshared.

Yet Allegra could tell she was not uncomfortable.

There was respect in her eyes. As she stood to fetch some water for the room, Allegra wondered why she had felt so open in front of this perfect stranger.

Why the difficulties that other people often inspired were no longer there.

As Jasper went back downstairs, Arthur crossed the upstairs landing. He caught Allegra’s eye through the open door and smiled dryly.

“You just got Jaspered.”

Allegra nodded, wiping her last tear away. “Yes.”

He nodded, sympathetically. “She can’t help it.”

Allegra didn’t know what to say so she said nothing.

“What’s going on with you and Jonah Thorne?”

She was surprised by that. “Nothing. Nothing, why?”

He scoffed, not unkindly. “The way he looks at you? It’s not nothing.”

Jasper appeared at the top of the stairs with a large glass of water. “Arthur Lancaster, are you getting into other people’s business? Keep it moving, Grumble. It’s their private life.”

The pair of them disappeared into another room, closing the door firmly behind them.

Grace popped her head in, toothbrush in hand, to say goodnight.

Once Grace had gone, Allegra stripped down to her bra and underwear and slid under the duvet.

She let the cool sheets caress her skin for a moment and then got up to open the window.

She used one of the many new toothbrushes in the guest bathroom drawer and the unopened toothpaste. She splashed water on her face.

She looked back into the empty, quiet bedroom. One small bedside lamp lit the room, but it was dim and inviting. The summer rain was still pouring outside, a gentle whisper against the window. It provided a touch of coolness through the slightly open window.

She turned her phone off. It was full of people trying to reach her. None of them friends, none of them people who really knew her.

It made her all the lonelier.

So, she silently slipped on a robe and went downstairs.

Jonah had folded his clothes neatly and laid them on the floor by the large sofa he was going to sleep on.

The lights in the den were still lit but the lake outside the nearly transparent room was in total darkness.

Wearing only his boxers, he placed a spare sheet that Jasper had handed him across the leather couch and was about to turn off the lights when Allegra appeared in the entryway.

He took in her appearance and quietly said, “Oh, God.”

She blinked. “I’m not tired.”

“Me neither.”

“Have you asked your dream girl if she’s seventy-four years old yet?”

His lips twitched. “Maybe.”

“What did she say?”

“She wasn’t happy about it.”

“Maybe you’re onto something then.”

“Are you jealous of my pen-pal, Allegra?”

Her eyes danced for a moment and then grew serious. “I just want you to be sure, Jonah. About what you want. About who you want.”

Her long hair was loose and wild. Her expression was determined.

So Jonah, who had never claimed to read people well or know what they really wanted, finally felt as though he could communicate with someone in a perfect code.

Her eyes raked over his bare torso and he reached out to wrap one hand around her wrist. He pulled gently.

She moved until they were almost pressed together.

Her hand ran down his stomach to the thin line of hair beneath his navel.

He groaned and the sound made her back up a little, moving toward the long windows looking out over the lake.

Jonah hated that so many other people’s opinions lived inside her head, making her question everything that she felt.

He moved behind her as she shrugged out of her robe.

He circled his arms around her middle, pulling her back to his front.

Gentle but firm. The noise she made brought his mouth down to her neck.

“You have the most beautiful body.”

She brought her hands up to cover his. “People write stuff every day, saying that’s not true.”

“Those people are losers.”

He kissed her neck again and she moaned. She started to pull his hands further down her stomach.

Then she suddenly stopped.

“You okay?” he asked instantly.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “Thought something moved out there…”

“Maybe a deer?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

She turned and kissed him, making him forget whatever it was he had been about say. He groaned and pushed her up against the window. She draped her arms around his neck and he lifted her up so she could wrap her legs around his waist.

“Take me upstairs,” she said against his mouth.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

She led him upstairs, to the warm, darkened room with the rain lightly falling outside.

He sat on the bed and she sat on him. He kissed her and tried to tell her through doing so that he wanted all of her.

Bodies could only express and inspire so much.

The soul she let him glimpse was far more beautiful.

The part of her that had ignited that fear in him on their first meeting.

The part that had created the spark between them, a spark they had turned into quarreling; a stupid disguise for an obvious attraction.

The confident parts, the anxious parts. The parts that were assured, the parts that doubted. The parts that he had yet to meet.

It was the simplest thing—something he had always thought would be messy and complicated. And it was so easy.

Allegra had always felt the world a little more than some.

Lights were always brighter, sounds went through her ear and into the backs of her eyes.

Smells and tastes and touch were electricity in the nose and mouth and fingertips.

So when sitting in Jonah Thorne’s lap and kissing him brought pleasure, it came in a way that was intense and overwhelming.

After about half an hour of kissing without drawing breath, it was only a cough from Grace in the other room that made them both pause. Allegra smiled against his neck and whispered, “I want this… but maybe not in a house with three other people.”

Jonah, who was a little out of oxygen, nodded. “Yes. But please tell me the millisecond you change your mind.”

As they lay side by side, she threw one leg over him and rested her head against his chest.

“This is such a nice house,” she finally whispered.

“It is. The Montgomerys are a big deal in these parts.”

“Small-town royalty?”

“Exactly.”

“So, how did Arthur…?”

“How did he land Jasper?”

“Yeah.”

Jonah shrugged. “Not sure. They’ve been together for years now. I thought they hated each other when they were at school.”

“Guess you never can tell.”

He grinned at her. “Seems so.”

Allegra glanced across at the bedside table. She slid open its tiny drawer and withdrew a pink device, with two silver balls.

“What is that?” demanded Jonah, with a laugh in his voice.

“Possibly something very dirty. Oh, no, I know! I was sent three of these last year. It’s a skincare thing.”

He eyed her dubiously and, as she pressed a small indentation on the pink body of the device, it began to vibrate which caused both of them to shake with laughter.

“That is not skincare, Allegra Brooks.”

“Yes, it is! Look, I’ll try it on your face.”

“You will do no such thing!”

She slowly dragged the vibrating device up and down his jawline, causing him to grimace.

“It stings.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“It does! It’s tingling.”

“Men are such babies.”

“What exactly is it doing for me?”

She smiled as she took in his beautiful face. The long, dark lashes fanned out on his flawless skin. Dark curls and just the smallest hint of stubble beneath the silly skincare aid.

“Not much,” she said honestly. “You look pretty great already.”

They slept for a few hours. Allegra woke to find him spooning her, with his hand splayed out across her stomach.

She normally hated people touching her middle but she didn’t mind when it was him.

She had done kissing scenes for work, and she had dated a few people, but nobody made her feel the way Jonah did.

It was not just arousal, it was something deeper.

She felt him stir, waking as she had done.

He kissed her neck and gently turned her chin so he could kiss her face.

She rolled over to take his face in her hands and kissed him again. When she ran her hands through his black hair, he groaned again.

“You’re going to kill me.”

She smiled and then both of them started as the shrill sound of a telephone from downstairs pierced the air. It rang and rang, an insistent new guest in the house. Jonah and Allegra listened as Jasper slipped downstairs, with light ballerina feet.

“Hello, Montgomery residence,” they heard her say.

There was a long, still silence after this greeting. A call late into the night, on a landline, signaled so many awful things.

But nothing could have prepared Allegra for what came next.

Jasper appeared on the landing, the phone in her hand. She registered Jonah’s presence in Allegra’s bed but said nothing about it. “Allegra, your dad would like you to come home.”

Allegra shook her head, confused. “I—how does he know I’m here?”

Jasper’s face was a picture of confusion as she handed the phone over.

“Dad?”

“Come home, Ally. Now, please. Get someone to drive you.”