‘Oh, sure.’
He grunted. I opened my eyes again. ‘You can believe what you want,’ he said. ‘If you need to believe I’m a monster, go ahead. No skin off my nose. Now can we get on with it?’
‘Wait.’
‘What?!’
‘One more question.’
‘Will you give me whatever I want in this ITM if I answer it?’
‘Whatever you want,’ I said. ‘Just tell me what she said.’
‘Amanda, I’ve had maybe two hours of sleep a night for the past five weeks. Do you think I have that kind of information in my head?’
‘Jac’s memorable,’ I said. ‘What did she say?’
He exhaled noisily. ‘Something along the lines of no, she would not be participating in a show that hates women, that she was ashamed to know someone who was, and how did I get her contact information anyway. Does that make you feel better?’
‘Yes.’
He raised his eyebrows again.
‘Shall we get on with it?’ I said. ‘I promised you whatever you wanted. So tell me what you want.’
I’ve never been the kind of person who could tell you when and why I made my decisions. How did I become a mechanic?I don’t know, I always liked cars, I found an apprenticeship, I just kind of fell into it. How exactly did I end up with Mark, or any of the other people I’d been with? I don’t know, it just happened. How did I decide to go onMarry Me, Juliet? I don’t know, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
It had been that way with Jac too. She’d come up to me at that wedding, and then it was done. There was no real moment when I consciously decided to be with her instead of Mark. I just was.
There was even an element of that with Dylan. One minute, my towel had come loose while she was spilling her guts to me in the bathroom, and the next, I was her secret girlfriend, waiting around for her while she went through the motions of her contractual relationship with Romeo-Dylan.
It was ironic that I made the first clear decision of my entire life while I was waiting around for Romeo-Dylan – waiting around, just like I always did.
I was standing on the deck of the boat, next to the ice bucket, surrounded by flowers and the full trappings ofMarry Me, Juliet. He was finishing up his ITM with Carrie. I looked out across the lake, and I decided.
It wasn’t one of those magical moments where the sun comes down from the clouds and illuminates the perfect way forward. It wasn’t like the epiphanies I’d had at various points in the last few weeks, where things had suddenly become clear to me.
Well, no. That’s a lie. There were a few things I already knew that crystallised for me, like:
1) A lot of the things Jac said about me were wrong.
2) Some of the things Jac said about me were right, even if she phrased them in the meanest possible way.
3) I was in love with Dylan.
Knowing those things didn’t help, though. If anything, they made it harder.
I was in a maze, but it wasn’t the kind where I could just put my hand against the wall and follow it down a bunch of dead ends before it finally led me out. I didn’t know what was down the different avenues in front of me.
But I still had to choose which way to go.
I had to make a real choice, not a fantasy choice. Choose what was right for me, even if it was hard. Would I remain Mandie 1.0, who fell into things, who let her impulses take her everywhere, who let processes take over instead of thinking for herself? Or would I become Mandie 2.0, who could restrain her impulses, who did her best to make good choices?
The sun was just beginning to set as we filmed the final portion of the date, turning the lake from gold into pink into red. Romeo-Dylan and I both had a glass of champagne and some perfectly nice, perfectly nothing-level small talk before he took my hand and asked me to dance.
There was no music. They weren’t allowed to have music, because it would interfere with the sound quality, so they’d edit it in during post-production. For now, there was just me and Romeo-Dylan, swaying gently, surrounded by cameramen and soundies, to the sound of absolutely nothing.
His fingers were wound tight around mine, our clasped hands nestled against his chest. I let my head lean against his shoulder for a moment. I wanted to hate him, but I didn’t. I wasn’t very good at being a petty bitch.
