Wish You Were Her(75)

But she gave Jasper the okay. The heart wanted things, things that the head had been told were not possible.



* * *



Miles away in Lake Pristine, Jonah tried to slip into his bedroom without crossing paths with his mother. He had just fired off a risky email to a tiny press he admired in the city. They would often bring the bookshop their latest releases by hand, they had no money, but he loved what they printed. He hoped that, when they read his email in the morning, they would overlook the late hour of its arrival.

He quietly washed his face, brushed his teeth and he was about to slide into his bedroom when all of the apartment was suddenly bathed in light.

His mother stood in her bathrobe by the living room door.

“Hey,” Jonah said, trying to sound as sober as possible. “Thought you were asleep.”

“Nope. Wide awake, worrying about you.”

“I’m fine, Ma.”

“No, you’re not fine. Those pictures are everywhere. I heard all about what happened between you and Simon. His father told me in the checkout line. Said he’s nursing a real shiner on his face.”

“Serves him right for what he did.”

“Jonah—”

“I applied for a job tonight,” he said, and at that, something changed between them, in their home, forever.

His mother stared at him. “You what?”

“Matuschek Press. In the city. One of their editors got stolen by a corporate publisher so there’s an opening for an assistant. I applied.”

“You’re eighteen! They’ll hire someone with a degree, Jonah. Someone with more experience.”

He knew it was her worry speaking.

“Maybe not. They don’t have a lot of money to play with.”

“Jonah,” she stepped toward him, looking afraid. “What’s happening? Everything suddenly has to change for you, it seems. These decisions seem to come out of nowhere, because you don’t talk me through your thinking.”

“I can’t talk through my thinking myself, Ma,” he said honestly. “I—you know I can’t. You know I don’t think like you do. Or like most people do.”

“I know,” she said despondently. “But this is all just…”

“It’s time, Ma,” he said gently. “I keep thinking about graduation. Sitting there, everyone heading off to bigger things. Teachers who told me I would never even pass finals asking where I’m going next. I’m staying at Brooks and working for George, I would say. And I believed it.”

“It’s a wonderful job and it suits you so well,” his mother said and Jonah could tell by her tone that the news of his firing had not reached her. “You love working there.”

“I do. I did,” he acknowledged. “It was an amazing job. But I’m not supposed to be there anymore. George never let me buy in certain titles, exciting titles. He never will. He can’t stand books about relationships breaking down because his did. He’s snobbish about new authors. So, if I can’t fill the shop with the stories I want, I have to go out and write them myself.”

Vivienne Thorne exhaled and rubbed her temples. She looked around the small apartment they shared, the one they had lived in their whole lives.

“I thought you might want to take over the shop,” she said, her tone a little desperate. It wasn’t a conversation they had even danced around before.

“You can’t keep me here, Ma,” he said, seeing right through her. “I’m running on empty. I know I’m never on everyone else’s schedule, but it’s now. I need to go.”

He moved into his bedroom, switching on the small lamp by his pillow and taking his shoes off. His mother moved to lean in the doorway, knowing that he was fixed on it and there was little she could say to dissuade him from his course.

“Is this about her?”

Jonah paused for the smallest second as he put his shoes away, his back to his mother. When he turned to face her, he wore a grim expression. “Yes.”

“She’s very special, Jonah. I know it, I see it. The whole world does. But that’s the whole problem. She’s—”

“Too good for me.”

“No! Not at all. She’s just…”

Jonah couldn’t blame his mother for having trouble with words. Allegra was not “just” anything. He had felt so as he was emailing his elusive pen-pal, the one who seemed further and further away every single day. It was impossible to describe Allegra. He knew the human. The girl with the mole on her neck. The girl who would only say “bless you” twice—if you sneezed a third time, she was silent. The girl who picked at her lips when she was nervous. The girl who carried her own hot sauce around. The girl who stared off into space, sometimes for minutes on end. The girl who only made eye contact when she was listening to you, rarely when she was speaking to you. The girl who loathed smelly cheese. The girl who unconsciously mimicked people’s accents. The girl whose entire face transformed when she laughed.

His Allegra. The one millions would never know. The one he had earned through one summer of working with her, and one night in a glass house.

“She has people all over the world chasing her down, Jonah,” his mother said, and she sounded sadder than he had ever heard her. “How can anyone compete with that?”