Page 155 of Merry Me
The woman I loved was standing in a crowd of strangers, holding up everything she usually rolled her eyes at, choosing me in the loudest, most gloriously Natalie way possible.
I’d never seen anything more perfect.
NATALIE
Here’s what I knew about grand romantic gestures.
One: They look a lot easier in movies.
Two: They involve a deeply concerning amount of public humiliation.
Three: TSA is not amused when you try to smuggle glitter into an airport.
But I wasn’t thinking about those things as I clutched a glitter-covered sign with shaking hands, and I burst through the airport doors with heart palpitations and a cardigan that I instantly regretted wearing in seventy-degree weather.
The sign readMarry Me, Easton!
And it was bedazzled within an inch of its life.
People were staring.
A little boy had already pointed and said, “Mom, is that lady okay?”
I wasn’t. Not even a little.
But when you break up with your movie-star boyfriend at eighteen because you’re scared and then spend almost two years pretending you’re over him only to have him walk back into your life at your sister’s Christmas wedding looking like a wet dream and saying things likeI’ve never stopped loving you—you make the sign. You board the flight. You risk arrest by carrying a glitter bomb.
I hopped in a cab and nervously told him to head to the film studio where Easton was finishing up today.
“You one of those movie-star ‘stans’?” he drawled as he eyed me and my pink dress like I was about to lunge over the console and…well, do something.
“Something like that,” I mused.
We drove to the lot where a small crowd was gathered, something that Easton told me he was annoyed to deal with after long days on set.
It was warmer than I’d anticipated. I mean California cold wasn’t real cold, but the combination of nerves and sweating wasn’t doing me any favors.
A security barricade cut a crooked line through the sea of screaming girls and grinning paparazzi, all pressed against it like salvation lived on the other side. I stood near the back—my hands gripped around the sign.
I could feel people staring.
I could hear them whispering.
“That girl with the sign…She looks unhinged.”
“Who does she think she is?”
“Like he’d notice her.”
Maybe I was unhinged.
Or maybe I was in love with a boy I’d let go too soon—a boy who became a movie star, then walked back into my life and kissed me like I still belonged to him.
The sound of production crews shifting filled the air—equipment rolling, assistants barking orders, someone yelling about a drone shot.
The crowd pushed closer.
People cheered, and the doors opened.
