Page 23 of Wish You Were Her
“And me,” Kerrie said, almost clambering over Jonah to get out of the booth. She turned back to throw him another expectant smile. “You staying here?”
Allegra watched Jonah nod in reply. He was clearly oblivious to the way Kerrie’s voice softened when she spoke to him.
She wanted to tell Kerrie that he wasn’t worth it, that he was far too cantankerous, but she refrained. It was none of her business, after all.
Chapter Seven
Jonah watched Simon look displeased as Allegra and the other two girls left the arcade. While Simon was foolish around Allegra, he obviously had enough dignity to suppress the urge to chase her out of the building. Instead he sank back into their booth in a sulk.
“She’s harder work than I thought.”
Jonah was used to Simon chasing girls. He had chased a lot of the people Jonah had had crushes on during school. When they would start going out, Simon would profess complete horror at the thought of stealing anyone away from Jonah. And the latter would always forgive him.
Still. It was refreshing to watch Simon work hard for once. Clearly Allegra wasn’t quite as taken in by Simon’s charisma as others had been.
Jonah regarded his friend. “You thought a global superstar was going to be easy to win over?”
“I kinda did, yeah. I mean, there’s got to be a real reason she came to spend the summer in this small town. I reckon she’s on the rebound.”
“That checks out, actually,” Skye said. “Apparently she was going out with that musician from Paisley Shine.”
“Terrible band,” muttered Jonah.
“Where’d you hear that, Skye?” asked Simon.
“Online.”
“I havegotto do more research if Skye is ahead of me.”
“That wasn’t very nice of you. Treating Grace like that,” Jonah found the courage to say to Skye, albeit quietly. “And being rude to Allegra, too.”
“You’re one to talk,” Skye said, her guard finally coming down a little, now that she was the only girl at the table. “You’re not very nice to her. What’s going on there?”
Jonah scowled. “Nothing.”
“This is too serious,” Simon said, laughing. “Right! Come on, Skye, I need your expertise. What else do you know about her?”
“She has four-and-a-half million Instagram followers, but she—”
Jonah spat out the water he had just sipped and started to gasp for air. When he regained his composure, he stared at the two of them in horror. “That’s, like, almost all of Scotland!”
“Can I finish?” snapped Skye. “God! Anyway, yes, four-and-a-half million, but she hardly posts and when she does it’s always weird, arty stuff.”
“Such as?”
“Lots of bookish content, to be honest.”
“Don’t say that like it’s a bad thing,” Simon said, affronted.
Jonah blinked. “Who does she read?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Skye said, fishing out her phone and opening the app in question. She didn’t need to type Allegra’s full username, as it came up as her most recent search. “Like… that.”
Jonah snatched the phone before Simon could. It was a black and white picture of Allegra sitting on what looked like a hotel room bed in an oversized baseball shirt. It had been posted over a month before, and she was sitting with a stackof books and a plate of fries. The caption said, “Feminists and French fries.”
The pile contained Toni Morrison, Curtis Sittenfeld, Nora Ephron and Tamora Pierce.
Jonah’s gaze was locked onto the picture and his thumb gently brushed her face on the screen.
