Page 7 of Better Than the Movies
“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”
“Happy? Excited? Hopeful?” I wanted to skip down the hall yell-singing “Paper Rings.”
“Delusional.” Jocelyn looked at her phone for a minute, then back at me. “Hey, my mom said she can take us dress shopping tomorrow night if you want.”
My mind went blank. I had to say something. “I think I have to work.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Every time I bring it up, you have to work. Don’t youwantto get a dress?”
“Sure. Yeah.” I forced up the corners of my mouth. “Of course.”
But the truth was that Isodid not.
The thrill of the dress was its ability to inspire romance, to make one’s date speechless. If that factor wasn’t in play, the prom dress was just an overpriced waste of fabric.
Adding to that, there was the screaming fact that shopping with Jocelyn’s mom for dresses was just a huge reminder thatmymom wasn’t there to join us, which made it a wildly unappealing outing. My mother wouldn’t be there to take pictures and get teary as her baby attended the final dance of her childhood, and nothing made that hit home quite like seeing Joss’s mom do those things for her.
To be honest, I hadn’t been emotionally prepared for the emptiness that seemed to accompany my senior year, the many reminders of my mom’s absence. Senior pictures, homecoming, college applications, prom, graduation; as everyone I knew got excited about those high school benchmarks, I got stress headaches because nothing felt the way I’d planned for it to feel.
Everything felt… lonely.
Because even though the senior activities were fun, without my mom they were void of sentimentality. My dad tried to be involved,he really did, but he wasn’t an emotional guy, so it always just felt like he was the official photographer as I traversed the highlights alone.
Meanwhile, Joss didn’t understand why I didn’t want to make a big deal out of every single senior milestone like she did. She’d been pissed at me for three days when I’d blown off the spring break trip to the beach, but it had felt more like an exam I was dreading than an actual good time, and I just couldn’t.
However. Finding a rom-com happy ending that my mother would have loved—that could change all the bad feels to good, couldn’t it?
I smiled at Jocelyn. “I’ll text you after I check my schedule.”
CHAPTER TWO
“A woman friend. This is amazing. You may be the first attractive woman I have not wanted to sleep with in my entire life.”
—When Harry Met Sally
Michael was back.
I propped my feet up on the kitchen table and dug my spoon into the container of Americone Dream, still beside myself with giddiness. In my wildest dreams, I wouldn’t have imagined the return of Michael Young.
I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.
After he moved, I daydreamed for years about him coming back. I used to imagine I was out taking a walk on one of those gloriously cold autumn days that whispered of winter, the air smelling like snow. I’d be wearing my favorite outfit—which changed with each imagining, of course, because this fantasy started back in grade school—and when I’d turn the corner at the end of the block, there he’d be, walking toward me. I think there was even romantic running involved. I mean, why wouldn’t there be?
There were also no less than a hundred brokenhearted entries in my childhood diaries about his exit from my life. I’d foundthem a few years ago when we were cleaning out the garage, and the entries were surprisingly dark for a little kid.
Probably because his absence in my life was timed so closely with my mother’s death.
Eventually I’d accepted that neither of them were coming back.
But now he’d returned.
And it felt like getting a little piece of happiness back.
I didn’t have any classes with him, so fate couldn’t intervene by throwing us together, which suckedsobadly. I mean, what were the odds that we’d have zero occasions for forced interaction? Joss had a class with him, and clearly Wes did as well. Why not me? How was I supposed to show him we were meant to go to prom and fall in love and live happily ever after when I didn’t ever see him? I hummed along to Anna of the North in my headphones—the sexy hot tub song fromTo All the Boys I’ve Loved Before—and stared out the window at the rain.
The one thing in my favor was that I was kind of a love expert.
I didn’t have a degree and I hadn’t taken any classes, but I’d watched thousands of hours of romantic comedies in my life. And I hadn’t just watched. I’d analyzed them with the observational acuity of a clinical psychologist.
