Page 50 of Wish You Were Her
“I just hope…” Allegra glanced ahead at Pete’s Cafe. “I hope… we connect properly now. When he finds out it’s been me, you know, writing to him.”
“Okay,” Grace said, “maybe he’s just making an ass of himself every now and again because he’s so nervous around you. He obviously likes you. I mean, every guy for a hundred miles does.”
“Well, all but one,” Allegra said, but Grace didn’t hear her.
“My brother used to make such a fool of himself around Jasper. Now they’re the most in-love people you’ll ever meet.”
“You’re being nice,” Allegra said gently. “I know you don’t think that highly of Simon.”
“I think neutrally of Simon,” Grace corrected. “But I think highly of you. And if you think you’re getting something else from his emails, then he deserves a chance to prove that to you.”
“I think…” Allegra looked up at the sky which was like a mess of paint colors all spilled across a dark table. “I was someone who struggled for so long with expressing how I really felt. With showing people who I really was. It’s why acting felt so freeing. But I don’t want to struggle anymore. I want people to have good faith and patience and see the best in me, even if I say the wrong thing. So, I need to extend that to him.”
Grace regarded Allegra. Allegra could feel the chasm that fame created between two people. Grace could only offer advice from her own lived experience. One that was so different from Allegra’s.
“I hope it works out for you both,” was all Grace said, but it was enough to make Allegra smile.
“Thank you.”
“Want me to check that he’s in there before you go in?”
“God, yes.”
Allegra hovered as Grace moved to the cafe window.
“We were supposed to meet at seven. I’m a little late,” she said, when Grace did not immediately confirm Simon’s attendance.
When Grace’s shoulders stiffened, Allegra knew something was wrong. She stared at her new friend’s back, her eyes scanning and searching for any sign of an answer. But when Grace turned, her face was ashen.
“What is it?” Allegra breathed.
“Um.” Grace looked so sorry, it made Allegra want to panic. To flee.
“What?”
“It’s…” Grace cast a glance back at the cafe and then stepped toward Allegra. “It’s definitely a bookseller in there. But it’s not Simon.”
Allegra stared at the other girl before pushing ahead to the window and looking for herself. The cafe looked almost Parisian with its beautiful lighting and its calm, composed atmosphere. She spotted the book first, perched on the end of a small table for two in the middle of the main floor. A waitress was blocking her view of the book’s owner. She spotted the rose, crushed gently between the pages ofMiddlemarch, exactly as promised. She stared at the spine of the large book and tried to control her breathing.
When the waitress moved away, the owner of the book, the person dressed in a black suit with combed hair, was not the person she had anticipated. It was the person who had alwaysbeen in her periphery, an unwelcome thought, a “what if” every time she had told herself that ithadto be Simon.
Her eyes took in the scene with a tight breath and a deep feeling of shock.
Jonah Thorne.
Chapter Fifteen
“Are you just going to leave him there?” Grace asked softly, as Allegra backed away from Pete’s Cafe and set off toward the book festival site, now built up and put together in the middle of town. Multiple great white tents, just waiting for everything to begin.
“Yeah,” Allegra said sullenly. “I am.”
But she stopped. She hesitated. If she left for the festival site, she would be standing him up. He wouldn’t know it was her, but it was still unkind. A little cowardly.
Jonah Thorne, she thought bitterly. It had to have been Jonah Thorne.
“Confirmation bias,” she said, her words barely audible; a sad admission from a girl in a town that did not have room for movie stars. “I just assumed it was Simon…”
A million little coincidences. The shared language, the jovial tone, the same books from the pictures. Allegra had had the narrative so ready to go in her own head, she hadn’t looked properly at other factors.
