“Hey, there’s my girl. This is the best surprise.” Jack’s face lights up in the background of Veronica’s shot. Ecstatic. Decimated.Hers. He wraps his arms around her like she’s the most precious thing in the world. “I missed you.” He kisses the top of her raven-black head and stays there while Veronica blows a kiss to the camera and shuts it down.
If there were a way for my stomach to sink through the ground and into the middle of the earth, it would.
“Now, I know it looks bad,” Emy says, “—but there must be a logical explanation. That man doesn’t do what he did the past few weeks and then this. It doesn’t match who we know he is.”
“He would if it’d help him get his game back. He needs to be an asshole to play well. You and I have seen that the past few weeks.” I shake my head. I don’t want to think about this today when I’m already dealing with a million and one other things to let my heart be demolished. I can cry and break down later because I’m tough, just like Dr. Smith said. “Whatever, it’s fine. It’s not like we defined our relationship or anything before he left.” Bury the pain. Move on. It’s the one thing I’m good at in this life. “I should get working on this checklist.”
“Oh bullshit, you’re such a Jane.” Bridget scoffs, halting my rise.
“I don’t see how me being like the oldest Bennet sister has anything to do with this.” I press my lips into a thin line. The warmth that had been building inside me for the past two months is wilting away.
“No. OUR Jane…you know, the reason we live and breathe? Jane Austen? Hello. You sound just like her letters. Take the ones after the love of her life died, for example. There’s hardly any evidence in the letters that his death ruined her, but she wrote—hardly anything during that time despite her being prolific. It had to get to her somehow, even if it was all internal. But that was her calling card; she joked sorrow off way more than she should have, and when her illness was wreaking havoc on her life in her late thirties and early forties—the illness that would eventually kill her, she even freaking wrote that she didn’t think she had the right to complain.
And I’m sorry, but fuck that. What she had, was different, but her illness, our disease, it’s all shit. You have every right to complain as much as you want about it, and you have every right to feel however you want about Jack, too. Because feeling something is what colors the world in poetry and art, otherwise all that’s left is science and observation—important, yes? But does it sing and leave us fulfilled? Not typically.”
Emy and I blink at our usually robotic friend. “I’m sorry…but who broke you?” Emy whispers.
“I uhm—it takes me a while to warm up to people. I can go back to being—”
“No, we like you—like this or anyway, you want to be. We like Bridget Funk, just as she is.” I smile. “It was just unexpected.”
Bridget rakes her hands through her auburn curls. “We’re a team now.”
And she’s right, we’re bonded now, her and I, forever. Emy is my platonic soulmate, but she’ll never understand the quirks of this illness. Of what it’s like to feel good and that turning on a dime of the intensity of the pains or the cramps that black us out. She’ll never understand writhing on the bathroom floor begging for mercy, and I’m so glad for her for that.
But it’s also lovely, however much it sucks that Bridget has it too, to have someone who knows how this thing messes with me mentally.
Bridget endured all these things, yet she’s still a badass literature professor. She’s hope that this disease won’t dominate every facet of my life someday.
A blonde head sticks her through the tent flaps, wearing a smug expression. Whatever news Sabrina has, I don’t want to hear it. “Hey, Aulie, Veronica Burke is here…to see you.”
In a panic, I glance at Bridget and then back to Emy. “What the hell could she want all the way up here?”
“Oh, she’s totally going to De Bourgh your ass,” Bridget says with a look that empowers me to think,Bring it on.
* * *
A manwith a backward cap and sunglasses angles a phone on Veronica as I trudge up the hill toward Wentworth Mansion, with Bridget and Emy flanking both of my sides. In the late-fall sun, her hair appears lighter than the raven-black hair on her video.
Is it usually like this, and she uses a filter?
I have limited knowledge of how all that social media influencer stuff works.
She doesn’t move as I approach her. Instead, she adjusts her champagne sequined mini skirt, lace camisole, and feathery mess of a jacket on her top half.
I swallow. Jack told me they really weren’t originally dating, but after seeing how he looked at her yesterday, I…I don’t know what to believe.
“Wow,” Emy whispers, gathering closer. “With her hair that color, she looks like the Evil Barbie version of you.”
“I can see that.” Bridget nods. “Enough that a certain someone might have mistaken you two from behind.”
“Oh please, she’s gorgeous, there’s no way—besides, did you see how he was looking at her? That was a man gone.”
“Yeah, pumpkin, that’s the face he’s been flashing you forever when you aren’t looking,” Emy says before we’re too close to Veronica to have this conversation any longer.
Veronica’s harsh gaze rakes over my body, a look of disgust contorting her face. “Are you Owlie?” She asks, butchering my name and running her fingers through her curls.
“Yes, can I help you with something?”
