Page 111 of Smoke and Fire
Dahlia:Yes please!
Katrina:Sent a link to your email.
The last six weeks had been a frenzy for many reasons. Running the Frolicking Moose so residents had a safe place to congregate, sleep, and eat while the evacuations were underway. Dealing with my perpetual worry for Bastian while out on different fires, and diving deeper into my work with Bastian’s career.
Not to mention helping Katrina finalize The Surprise.
She'd grabbed a ridiculous amount of footage from all the amassed women the day of the evacuation, but there was more work to be done.
As the project began, her vision for it expanded. She worked tirelessly on interviews of readers, fans, and footage of the social media groups. She'd stayed in Pineville to grab shots of the shop, where she'd stayed as she plotted the storyline. I'd held the camera while she narrated segments of her own heartbreak story.
In the end, Katrina still had no idea who Jess was.
But she didn't need to anymore.
"What is it?" Bastian asked. He leaned close, his breath warm on my neck like a gentle whiff of mist. I realized I'd been lost in my thoughts while the internet caught up with the video. Moments later, the video expanded to fill my screen. I scooted my chair closer and angled the phone toward him.
"A little surprise," I murmured.
The opening segment showed a barrage of screaming women chanting, "We want Jess! We want Jess! We want Jess!"
Bastian reared back slightly, blinking. I sucked in a sharp breath and studied his expression while the footage continued. The moment he recognized Pineville in the background of all these wild women sent a perplexed expression to his face. He glanced at me in a silent question.
"Keep watching," I said.
Bright, peppy music faded as Katrina began to narrate and the video cut to her in the shop. She'd edited in a chunky way. The video frames ended abruptly as she spoke, but started again into her next sentence. It was funky and adorable.
She looked positively bright on the screen, not at all heartbroken. Books by Jess filled the bookshelf behind her—Lizbeth's idea—in a colorful menagerie. Her resemblance to Lolo was startling and uncanny and I wondered if he noticed it as quickly as I had.
While her story unfolded, Bastian remained riveted to the phone. Minutes of the documentary rolled by. Katrina strolling through the airport, filming in the loft of the Frolicking Moose, getting lunch at The Diner.
Overlaid in all of it was a pile of notes, shots of her computer while she spoke with women on social media, and images of her and her friends during the launch.
A timeline of the books unfolded in the documentary, as well as random facts taken from moments of time in Jess fandom. Blog posts. Fan hysteria. Articles. She even reviewed attempts to find Jess from other people that didn't work out.
Interspersed within all of this were small stories from readers whose lives had been changed by Jess's books. The story built and built in an expert way, funneling all to the same question: who is Jess?
When Katrina began her heartbreak story, Bastian took the phone from my hand, then sank deeper into the chair. I rested my cheek on his shoulder and wished I could peer into his mind.
Thirty minutes passed by the time that the footage of the Frolicking Moose on the evac day started. In the documentary, Katrina reviewed the fire, panned over the hazy northern skyline, showed footage of the Sheriff’s deputies driving around with bull horns saying, "Mandatory evacuations in place for northern Pineville area!" The energy of the day replayed through the screen.
Meanwhile, Bastian didn't say a word. He opened his mouth, but shut it again several times.
His white knuckle grip began a seed of concern inside me. I hadn't considered that he'd be angry over all this. His privacy had remained intact the entire time, but he hadn't been here to see it unfold like me. I imagined there must be a sense of helplessness to this now. The documentary was Katrina's story, not Jess's, but they were intertwined. Just like Jess's life with so many other women.
Hopefully, he'd see that.
The documentary video wound down after forty-five minutes. Bright, chipper music continued as it had throughout, lending a peppy feel to the whole thing.
At the last of it, Katrina sat cross legged at the edge of the reservoir, not far from the Frolicking Moose. A crystal blue sky opened behind her, devoid of fire, and the whole thing felt like a new beginning.
"In the end," Katrina said, tortoise shell glasses perched on top of her head which held her dreadlocks away from her face. "I didn't meet Jess. Maybe I never really thought I would. When I realized how entangled Jess had been with Brooke for me, I also learned I didn't reallywantto meet Jess. I had built them both up as a certain person in my head. Meeting them could never be the same as the people I believed them to be." She smiled. "The mystery is the best part of the surprise."
The video rolled into text that told the final parts of Katrina's story as she moved on without Brooke. Once it ended, Bastian lowered the phone and stared at the ground. He appeared utterly lost in his thoughts. I took the phone from his hand, clicked it off, and set it aside.
For nearly fifteen minutes, we sat in the gentle silence. I sank down, tilted my head back, and closed my eyes to the frosting-like clouds. Rain began to slowly fall. Big, fat drops that stirred up pockets of dust with everythudon the ground. They dropped into my hair and rolled down my scalp. It beaded on my shoulders.
A gentle touch on my face brought my eyes open. Bastian leaned close, studying me. He’d closed his computer and shoved it against his chest to protect it from rain. My stomach tightened, ready for one of his panty-melting kisses, but he stayed a tantalizing breath away. His lashes fluttered as he studied me.
