Page 45 of Wish You Were Her

Maybe he would find it all trivial, and her by extension. She was still so unsure of where they stood. She liked him, far too much, but they hadn’t discussed their status. Nothing was pinned down or written. It was all unspoken, which she was never great at analyzing.

“Something smells amazing,” Grace said.

There was an ice bucket of something delicious and vegetarian pizza. Natalie gave Allegra a quick sideways hug, one that silently told Allegra that the publicist was proud of how she had handled the fallout. Music played while a social media manager filmed just about everything.

Allegra tried on the gown and it fit splendidly.

The glamor team were clearly pleased, and that allowed Allegra to feel calm.

She stepped out of it and watched February handle it with such dexterity, treating it like precious liquid gold.

Once it was hung up, Allegra slipped into a hotel robe and tried to relax.

Then a knock on the suite door.

February, Natalie and Clark, the social media manager, were gathered around a laptop, as if the hotel suite had become a war room for fashion. Jasper was taking pictures of Grace in her suit, both of them also oblivious.

So Allegra went to open the door.

She and Jonah stared at each other for a moment. She could sense something different in him and it both thrilled and frightened her. He was standing taller. He looked a little older. There was something settled inside of him, something that had been undecided before.

“Hey,” he said, staring at her as though she were the one thing he wanted more than anything. It was so potent, Allegra felt frozen in the doorframe. He took in the sprinkling of gold around her eyes and the dusting of shimmery lotion across her decolletage.

“Hey.”

He leaned toward her, prompting her to lift her chin as their faces moved together.

The same pull that they had felt in the bookshop on the day they first met, the stardust that randomly chose to materialize between two people, it was almost physical now.

A magnetized force that made her constantly aware of him when he was in the room, and painfully in tune to his absence when he was gone.

Not just friends. It had never been like this with a friend. But she was too scared to say it.

“Is this the young man of the party?” February’s voice called from within the hotel suite.

It caused both Allegra and Jonah to pause, but they did not leap apart as if they were doing something wrong. Instead Jonah ran the pad of his thumb along Allegra’s bottom lip, a silent promise that they would talk about it all. Later.

When the “looks” were locked in, and the pizza was gone, February and Clark said their farewells and left the suite. Natalie gave the three teenagers a somewhat matronly look and said, “There are two bedrooms… Have we decided who is sharing with who?”

Jasper, who was free from Natalie’s gaze, smiled at Allegra and arched an eyebrow in a silent question.

Allegra pushed her ego and its fear of rejection out of the way and answered frankly.

“I’m sharing with Jonah.”

Her tone was casual on the surface, but it had steel underneath. She was not debating the matter. Jonah’s hand gripped hers in solidarity.

“She is. You two good with the other one?” he asked, sporting the same tone as Allegra.

“Oh, yep,” Jasper said, fighting a smile as Grace did the same. “No arguments here.”

Jonah had been offered the job at Matuschek just before arriving at the Garland Hotel.

He had accepted over the phone, without a moment’s hesitation, before asking if they intended to follow up on any references.

He was slightly nervous that one grumpy phone call from George Brooks could make it all go away.

“No, we’ve had a glowing review from your former employer already. You can start a week from Monday.”

Jonah had stopped walking at this news. After ending the conversation with Charlie, he had dialed the shop. A part of him was ready for Simon to answer, though he had no idea what he intended to say to his once friend.

But George had picked up the phone.

“Hello, Brooks Books!”

Jonah had paused and considered hanging up before finally saying, “Hey, George, it’s me.”

There was just the faint buzz of the phone connection for a second. Then, “Jonah.”

“I just wanted to say thank you for giving Matuschek Press a good reference. They’ve just offered me the job.”

“They’d be stupid not to.”

There had been an awkward silence. A beat of regret from both of them.

“I’m so sorry, Jonah. I made a mess of everything. I acted foolishly. I have… complex feelings about how I’ve not been there for Allegra and I projected a lot of it onto you. And pushed away my best employee.”

The neurotypical critic who liked to live in Jonah’s neurodivergent head and tell him how he should act whispered to let it go, but Jonah wanted an answer.

“It wasn’t only about me liking Allegra. It started before she came to Lake Pristine. What did I do? You were my mentor and you started treating me like a traveling salesman you couldn’t wait to get out of the shop.”

“Yes. I know. It’s… it’s complicated, Jonah.”

“Okay, but you were the only person privy to those complications, George. I was in the dark. It’s pretty uncomplicated when you’re the one being treated badly. It’s incredibly simple when you’re on the receiving end.”

“I pushed you away because… because your life is going to be so much bigger than Lake Pristine and I didn’t want to be responsible for holding you back.”

And George hung up.

Jonah stood in the street, unmoving, for five whole minutes as he processed George’s words.

And perhaps the words had not hurt him because, ultimately, he knew they were true.