CHAPTER 42
I sat on the couch next to Mike; to say it was awkward would be an understatement.Is there another word, other thanawkward, that one can use?I scanned my brain, going straight to the place where my inbuilt thesaurus lay. But no other words seemed to describe adequately the strange feeling of sitting next to this man. My head was still stinging and I could feel a tender bruise developing around the wound, but that wasn’t what was worrying me the most . . .
His proximity. The warmth I could feel radiating off his body. The smell of him, too—familiar and exhilarating, but unnerving. I felt both comfortable and uncomfortable, all at the same time. Excited and terrified. Warm and cold. A contradictory mix of every feeling and emotion thrown in and stirred about. I was grateful when Ash finally came back to the room.
“Move up—popcorn coming through.” She sat on the couch and pushed me further into Mike, until our shoulders were pressed into each other.
I tried to lean away, so as to relieve the pressure, but there was no space. His shoulders tensed against mine and I tried not to move too much.
“This is fun,” Ash said. “When did we last do movie night?” She leaned forward and looked at Mike.
“Not in a while.” He sounded rather flat.
“Okay, what should we watch?” Ash picked the remote up and flicked on the TV.
“Uh . . . whatever,” I answered.
“Not ‘whatever.’ You are the guest of honor—you choose.” She passed the remote over to me and I started flicking through the channels, and then Ash jumped up excitedly. “Let’s watch that!” She pointed at the screen.
“No—please, no,” Mike mumbled, next to me.
“I luurveThe Bachelor!” she gushed.
I turned and smiled at her. “I loveThe Bachelor, too!” Because I effing did. Give me any cheesy, over-the-top reality TV show—whether it was a bunch of hot estate agents in tight dresses and super-high heels, or pregnant housewives in tight dresses and super-high heels—and I was game. To me, reality TV was like watching a slow-motion train crash; you just knew something bad was about to happen, but you couldn’t look away.
“Done,” Ash said, taking the remote away from me and turning the program on.
“Tonight onThe Bachelor—” that familiar voice filled the room—“will Jay finally see Eliza for the back-stabber she really is? And will Jessica find the courage to tell him the secret she has been keeping? Stay tuned for unbelievable scenes like you’ve never seen before inBachelorhistory!”
“I don’t know how you can watch this stuff.” Mike shuffled next to me. “It’s not real!”
“Of course it’s real.” Ash sat forward and looked at him. “You can see it in their eyes, when they like each other. I mean, it’s obvious that Jay is totally into Jess.”
“Oh, please. The whole thing is so manufactured. There’s no way you can fall in love,real love, under such ridiculously strange and staged circumstances. And so quickly—no one falls in love that quickly!”
“What?!” Ash sat forward even more, and so did Mike. These two looked like they did this often—sibling arguments. I sat back and watched them; it was almost more amusing than the TV show. “Love blossoms instantly,” Ash shot back, “and in the least likely places, when you meet the right person. Trust me!”
“Really?” He sounded unmoved. “Okay, name one person we know who found love like that.” He turned on the couch and faced her, his knee bumping into mine, and a strange feeling zipped up my leg.
“What about Brendan and Sue? She hated him at school, and then they met by accident, five years later, in a restaurant, because they’d both been stood up by their blind dates, and then they got engaged a month later, and now they’re married with children.” She folded her arms and looked pleased with herself, as if she knew she’d won the argument. I had to give it to her, it was a good argument.
“Okay, that is the exception, though,” Mike said.
She shook her head. “Nope! I’m telling you, bro, love comes when you least expect itandin the strangest of ways, and it can be totally instant, too. Sometimes, you can fall in love with someone without even knowing you love them.”
“Impossible,” Mike said.
“Possible,” Ash fired back. “People who are soulmates always seem to meet in strange, fateful ways. Like being stood up by blind dates, or being stuck in an elevator together, or finding the other person’s dog when it ran away, or accidentally sending an email to the wrong address but realizing that that person is your soulmate when you start communicating.”
Mike laughed. “That stuff only happens in romcoms. For the most part, people meet normally—or abnormally, like on Tinder and all that crap.”
“Nope. People meet in strange, mysterious, fortuitous ways all the time. What about you and that girl on the fence?”
“Huh?” I choked on the popcorn I was busy shoving into my mouth.Did she mean me?
“ASH! Stop!” Mike sounded very firm.
“No, no, it’s a good example of what I mean.” She tried to continue talking, but Mike became very agitated and cut her off.
