Page 95 of A Storybook Wedding

Because I am a glutton for punishment, I spend the next six hours on the sofa, attempting and reattempting to pull together a reasonable-sounding letter. It takes several tries before I land on this:

Dear ,

Art imitates life imitates art. No one knows this better than me.

I’m sure I’m not the only girl who has ever had to watch her first love marry her sister, but I’m definitely the only one who’s ever written a full-length manuscript about it. My novel, Hard Pass, is ironically about what can happen to someone after they come face-to-face with deeply personal rejection.

Read this carefully, , since you are a rejection- master, aren’t you?

Natalie Green is the perfect high schooler. She’s polite, has good grades, respects her family, serves her community, and is exactly the opposite of the kind of girl you’d want to read about in a coming-of-age story. You’re looking for redemption: the troubled girl who finds her way, the orphaned girl who finds a family, the ugly duckling who becomes the swan. Well, my story turns those tropes upside down, because Natalie Green is none of those things. She’s likable and easygoing, in love with her first real boyfriend, heading off to college, about to spread her wings and fly.

But Natalie is about to become a human game of Jenga. Knocked down, built back up, knocked down again. Just like me.

I’m Cecily Jane Allerton. I just got kicked out of Matthias University’s MFA program for defrauding its director, my former mentor. I married a professor after kissing him on national television just to try and save his job. I wrote this manuscript in my first semester at Matthias and won the Rising Star Award for Best New Fiction. Of course, I can’t put that on a résumé anymore. It’s too dramatic.

That’s attempt number five, and I don’t need to be a Matthias University graduate to know that it’s a trash safari.

It’s late now, and my computer battery is dying.

I can’t believe Nate hasn’t called me. I realize he did call me last and that technically, it’s my turn to call him back, but I’m a stubborn asshat.

So forgive me for being a little bit surprised when my phone lights up with his name on the screen.

I brace myself. I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but my stomach contracts quickly, tying itself up like a garlic knot.

“Hello?” I say.

“Hey. I’m glad you answered.”

I relax a little, even though he sounds kind of weird. Maybe he’s been drinking. I could understand that. A little social lubricant might be a nice assist to help me work through my current state of mental constipation. “How are you?” I ask.

“Good, fine. I need you to do me a favor.”

Excuse me? You’re good? You’re fine? I’m over her, miserable, and you’re just totally copacetic, living your best life in your city apartment with—

“You still there?” he asks.

“Yeah, I’m here. What’s the favor?”

“Can you turn on the TV, please? Put it on NBC.”

“Um, okay.” Why the cryptic request? What’s going on here? Still, I grab the remote and hit the button for channel four. “What am I—” My voice drops off. I’m looking at the flat screen of my modest thirty-two-inch LG HDTV, and I can’t process the picture looking back at me.

“Just watch, please,” Nate says.

It’s Questlove.

“So I had a very strange and special request today,” he begins. He’s sitting on the couch next to Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show desk. “Y’all know my Kazoo Karaoke Bomb bit that I do, right?” The Roots Crew rattles off the jingle that marks the bit. Quest smiles. “Thanks, guys,” he laughs.

Even his laugh is smooth like butter. How can someone always be so chill? I wonder.

“So anyway, a few months ago, we did an epic Kazoo Karaoke Bomb at Sing Sing in Alphabet City. Let’s run a quick clip.”

He cuts to the viral worst moment of my life. I’m belting it all out while Questlove kills it on his red and yellow kazoo, and then I swirl around and plant a huge kiss right on Nate’s lips.

The beginning of the end.

The video clip pauses there, and a digital marker draws a circle around me kissing Nate. Right there on the screen, like a meteorologist marking up a map with weather pattern predictions or a child playing with a painting app on an iPad.

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