Page 41 of Never Ever Getting Back Together

Isaac is in silent fits at this. My eyes trail past him and fall on Maya, who’s sitting on the grass and watching us. Her face is a storm cloud. I tear my gaze away.

Gwendolyn’s smile is strained. “Oh, that’s… cute! I’m just worried about… we want this to sparkpositivediscussion. It might be less… controversial, if we were to change up the details a little. Like, what if… oh! What if you both wore masks? Masks are very romantic.”

“Like… our costumes had masks?” I ask.

“Yes! Or maybe it was a masquerade party, instead of a Halloween one. Have a play with it, see what you can come up with.”

I flounder. What does she mean? How am I supposed to make up a story that didn’t happen? I can’t think on my feet like this. If we’d had notice, possibly, but now?

Jordy nudges his knee against mine. “I can take this one, if you want,” he whispers, and I give him a relieved nod.

He turns to the camera and switches on his charmoffensive. “I met Skye two years ago, at a Halloween party. It was one of those masked parties, where no one really knows who anyone else is. We had a mutual friend, and I was new in town, so he introduced me to Skye, but I had no idea how beautiful she was. So, you can believe me when I say that it was her personality that made me fall for her. And I fell fast.” He laughs. “Super-fast. Then, we went out into the yard for some air, and she took her mask off and I got a look at her face, and I was just… stunned. Like, awestruck. And I remember thinking to myself, oh my god, I cannot leave this party without kissing this girl. And I didn’t.”

He says it without even pausing, or stumbling, as though it’s what actually happened. In reality, we didn’t even kiss that night. He got my number through our friend and texted me a few days later to ask me out. But hearing Jordy talk like this, I almost believe in the masked party. That we kissed in the moonlight, masks hanging by our sides.

Something uneasy pulls at the pit of my stomach. Only for a flash, though.

“Wow, Jordy,” I say with a dry laugh. “That lie came almost concerningly easy to you.”

Jordy looks as though he considers this a compliment. “I’m used to cameras. When journalists and paparazzi ask me about Sam, or the palace or whatever, I have to make shit up sometimes. To keep everyone safe. I swear, I use my powers for good.”

“Hmm.” I raise my eyebrows teasingly. “You’d better.”

After a few more questions, it’s time for me to swap places with Maya.

“How romantic,” she says, with a smile as sweet as an arsenic-laced gumdrop. “I especially loved the part where you compromised your morals by making out with a guy you thought was problematic.”

I choose not to dignify this with a response, and glide past her to settle on the still-warm patch of grass she left behind.

“Jordy and I met two years and three months ago,” Maya says to the camera. “And Iamcounting.” Her eyes flicker to me before she goes on. It occurs to me that she seems more consumed with her dislike of me than any apparent fondness for Jordy. “When my softball team played against his sister’s. Princess Samantha. He was in the crowd watching her. I rolled my ankle and spent the rest of the game on the bench, and he sat next to me to keep me company. Then every Saturday after that he was always, like…there.Watching my games instead of his sister’s, and making a point to congratulate me after every one, until I realized seeing him was the thing I most looked forward to each weekend. A month after we met, he got up the nerve to ask me out, I guess, and we dated fornine months.”

She looks at me again, and I stare right back at her pointedly.

“And Jordy, what did you think of Maya?” Isaac asks.

Jordy glances at me, then Maya. I suppose this is fairly awkward for him, gushing about us in front of each other. But itiswhat he signed up for, just as the rest of us signed up to date him alongside five other girls.

“She was special. She had this packed schedule, but she balanced it all, and she seemed to be good at everything she ever tried. I remember thinking, ‘No way would a chick like this ever give me a second look.’ Then she did, and it was like… wow, this girl who has her eyes on the prize, and has no free time, is willing to put me on that list of stuff to do. That must mean I’m worthwhile.”

I don’t know how to feel about that comment. I wish I weren’t listening to this, suddenly. It was one thing to know, on some level, that part of this experience would necessarilyinvolve Jordy discussing his other romances, and, potentially, rekindling some of those romances right in front of me. But knowing it and living it are two very different things.

That, and, I suppose, a part of me had been certain Jordy felt differently about me, in particular, from the way he spoke to me on the phone.

Could that have been an act? Or am I paranoid for assuming he was lying to me, just because he has the audacity to recount a romance that happened before he even met me?

Now that I think about it like that, it’s fairly clear I need to get ahold of myself if I don’t want to become an irrational, jealous, reality-show stereotype.

Maya listens to Jordy’s story with an unimpressed expression, giving him a thin smile. So, even he’s not spared from her attitude.

I’m not entirely sure why she’s here at all, if I’m honest.

After their interview, Maya heads directly over to me. She has a way of walking that’s closer to floating. It’s something in the way she carries herself. I stand to meet her, and she cocks her head to one side. “Do you think the people watching at home can do basic math?” she asks.

It takes me a moment to realize what she means. The nine months she referred to must include the period of time when Jordy was in Canada, with me, and Maya was under the delusion he was still her boyfriend. Day two, and she’s already lying to the camera in the hopes that people will call me a homewrecker? So much for not bothering me if I don’t bother her. “Grow up, Maya,” I say, and she pushes past me to go back to Perrie.

“How’d you go?” Francesca asks as I rejoin her, taking the place of Lauren and Kim.

“They made me change my story so it became a masquerade party, for some reason.”

---