Page 74 of Nothing Like the Movies

“He’s notmyboy,” I said defensively, irritated that he’d say that.

“The way you’re focusing on that and not what I said about Lilith speaks volumes.” Clark stepped away from me and grabbed his backpack from under his cubicle. “Text me what you think.”

“I’ll probably show it to Lilith andthentext you,” I said, dreading the fact that I was going to have to show her what an absolute unprofessional I was. She was going to have video proof that I’d lied when I said I could be professional with Wes.

“Cool, cool,” he said, and then he was gone.

I took a deep breath, for some reason ridiculously nervous to watch the interview. I’d purposely avoided filling in the blanks via internet research once I knew I’d be interviewing Wes, so I still didn’t know the logistics of how he came back. I was dying to find out, but for some reason, the thought of watching him tell the story filled me with dread.

I sighed and loaded the drive, knowing with absolute certainty that I was going to hate what I saw.

But it wasn’t just bad—it wasawful.

The worst thing I’d ever seen.

Because it couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes of content, with only a few questions I hadn’t seen on Lilith’s list, but so many of his answers seemed wrong.Weren’t they?They couldn’t be right, because I’d been there at the time and had known nothing about the things he was saying.

In my recollection, he found out his dad died, and after the funeral he decided to take the semester off because he missed his dad too much to play baseball. It’d gutted him, realizing that he literally couldn’t touch a ball without feeling physically ill, but I told him it was fine.

Because it was.

I didn’t care if he ever played baseball again.

He took a job at Hy-Vee so he’d be able to afford school second semester (in Omaha), and I used to talk to him every night when he got off work.

So where, in that, did these things he said to Clark fit in?

Hadhis mother had a breakdown and Wes had to take care of his family? And if the answer to that was yes, why hadn’t he told me? And my heart was in my throat when he answered the question about his friends back at UCLA, because I couldn’t help but wonder.

Was he talking about me?

It felt like he was.

Had it really been like that for him?

I’d loved texting and FaceTiming every day, and I thought he had too. We used to joke that there was something kind of fun about it, even while it sucked, and we laughed that when he got back to school the next fall, we’d probably miss little things about it.

Like the way he always took a screenshot of our FaceTime calls before we hung up.

I’d felt bad for him that he wasn’t in school and had to work, but in my wildest dreams, I hadn’t imagined that he was the one taking care of his family.

Escrow statements and rewiring the thermostat?

He hadn’t been able to trust me—was that it? He’d felt like he couldn’t tell me that his world had collapsed? I remembered him celebrating my tiny school victories via FaceTime, seeming excited when I shared little anecdotes from my music classes; was that a factor? Had I made him embarrassed? Had I been too obtuse?

Should I have known?

When the video stopped, I took it out and went up to Lilith’s office. Clark was right—she was going to love Wes’s interview. His story about begging for a tryout, then driving cross-country all night with his sister? EvenIloved that part because wow—what a gamble.

What a perfect ending.

It also made me miss Sarah, who I hadn’t thought of in ages.

Lilith’s door was closed when I got to her office, and I was nervous to knock. There was no doubt she’d love the interview, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to lose total respect for me, given the fact that I’d choked.

I took a deep breath and knocked, feeling like a naughty child when she said, “Come in,” and I nervously opened the door. “Do you have a sec?”

“Of course—come in. What’s up?”

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