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“I was doing a thing they call acting.”
“So… the thing where you”—the question stung my mouth with humiliation, even as I asked it—“chose me over Kennedy Monroe…?”
But Jack just nodded big, like I’d made a great point. “I know, right? I got both of you with that one. A twofer.”
I felt myself sinking. “You were acting,” I said, trying to absorb it.
“Just another day at the office.”
“But…” I still didn’t get it. “But why?”
Jack gave a short sigh, like Try to catch up. “Do you remember when my mom said I really wasn’t that great of an actor?” Jack asked then. “That felt like a personal challenge.”
“You pretended to like me,” I paused for a second, putting it together, “to show up your mom’s assessment of your acting skills?”
He shrugged. “It was something to do. Right? How else do you keep busy in the middle of nowhere?”
My head just kept shaking itself. “So… yesterday? All that… kissing?”
“Choreographed,” Jack confirmed with a nod.
I felt lightheaded. I put my hand against the doorjamb to steady myself. Somewhere, in another universe, my bleeding foot was throbbing.
“I’ll take the wine, though,” he said, in a tone like Moving on.
Weirdly, I handed it to him.
He checked the label. “Cheap.”
The air around us suddenly looked strange, like it was made of fumes. I wondered if I might faint.
“Speaking of bored,” Jack said. “I really do have friends waiting.”
We hadn’t been “speaking of bored,” but okay. “Sure,” I said.
His eyes looked dull and flat. “They’re going to laugh so hard at this story. It’s so hilarious when you think about it.”
“Is it?” I asked, not sure there was an answer.
“We’re done here, right?” Jack said.
And then, without even waiting for me to respond, he just… closed the door. Presumably to go recount the story of the dumbest, most gullible security guard in all of history to some vicious group of A-list movie-star friends gathered around a charcuterie board.
This was how the love of my life would end? With me as the butt of Jack Stapleton’s joke?
It’s so hilarious when you think about it.
I have no idea how long I stood there after that. For all I knew, time had collapsed in on itself in an infinity loop.
My brain felt like white noise. My throat felt like sand. My entire being positively vibrated with shame. The humiliation was total. There was no cell in my body that wasn’t saturated with it.
He was acting. He was acting. He’d been acting the whole time.
Of coursehe was acting.
Of course.
In slow motion, I squatted down to take off my sandals, and I noticed for the first time how bad the cut was on my injured foot, and how slippery the blood was making the sole.
