I put Jack on speakerphone and put him next to the keyboard. My hands shake as I load my channel and I think I might throw up.
Immediately, I know something’s wrong.
My subscriber count is up by seven thousand since last night.
So I’m not being canceled, but . . .
And then I see it.
Right there, in pride of place at the top of my channel, my most recent upload, posted right on schedule at nine o’clock this morning.
Dear Charlotte.
“Oh fuck,” I whisper, loud enough that Jack hears it through the phone.
“Ethan?”
It’s a miracle I can even click the video open, my hands are shaking that much. It’s the thumbnail I made last night, the description for the video I’d planned. And then the video starts to play: me in yesterday’s rumpled gray T-shirt and green flannel shirt, my hair a mess.
I hold out hope. Please, please, please, say I just named the file wrong because I had it on my mind, please, please . . .
But the me in the video says, “Dear Charlotte,” and I see it’s almost an hour long, and I die inside.
I hit pause and col apse over the desk. “Fuuuuuuuuck.”
“You saw it, huh?” Jack says. He’s sympathetic, sorry, and he sighs.
“Judging by the thumbnail and stuff, and the fact that you edited none of this, I’m guessing you really didn’t mean to upload this.
Which is what everyone else thinks, too, in the comments section.
It’s viral on Twitter, too, you know. There’s a BuzzFeed article about it already and everything. You’re going to be the new face of quarantine romance.”
“This isn’t happening,” I groan. I keep my eyes squeezed shut and fist my hands tightly in my hair. “This is a fever dream, or I’m just still drunk. That’s it, I’m drunk. I’m going to go back to bed, and when I wake up again, this won’t be happening.”
“I’m sorry, mate.”
I moan. It turns into a weird noise that’s part laugh, part sobbing.
“Is it too late to take it down?” I ask.
“You tell me. You’re the expert. Take a look at that view count, Ethan.”
Grudgingly, I peel my head up, cracking open one eye to take a look.
It’s at half a million views. I cringe and refresh the page. Another forty-odd thousand gets added to the view count.
I want the world to swallow me whole.
My chest is tight and I’m on the verge of vomiting, and I’m sweating through my pajamas. I don’t normally share a lot of my personal life on my channel, not to mention, this will totally mess with the rest of my feed, and, shit, and that’s not even the worst part.
“You think she’s seen it?” I croak.
Jack’s hesitation is answer enough.
“Fuck,” I say again. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe I was so stupid.
I was uploading it after the Twitch stream last night and . . . Oh my God. I hate myself so much. She’s going to hate me. This is the worst.”
“Since when were you planning on proposing, anyway? I thought you’d have told me something like that, mate. This isn’t the cabin fever talking, is it? Like, you don’t think this is just you going a little stir-crazy or anything?”
“Did you watch the video, Jack?”
“I watched the highlights reel on LadBible. It was you talking about how head over heels in love with your girlfriend you are, for an hour—so, no, I didn’t watch it all.”
“I love her. I want to spend the rest of my life with her.”
“Good luck telling her that after you told the rest of the world first.”
I cringe. “I’ve gotta call her, haven’t I?”
“Yes, you do, mate. Let me know how it goes, okay?”
I groan in pure, utter despair, and Jack laughs before hanging up on me. Staring into space a few seconds longer, I know there is no pulling this back now, and how humiliating it all is, before snatching up my phone again and calling Charlotte.
It goes straight to voicemail.
I call her again.
And again.
After the eleventh time, I call Maisie.
The first time, it rings out, but the second time, she answers.
I barely even say “Hi” before I’m subjected to her laughing down the phone at me for eight minutes straight, quoting the worst bits of my video back at me before bursting into giggles again.
“I mean,” she wheezes, “you actually said you wanted to marry her because of that time you both got the flu and she threw up on you.
Do you know how goddamn weird that is, Ethan?”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Dude, the whole world knows what you meant. You love her even having been around her in that kind of state. It’s just a weird goddamn thing to say when you’re trying to propose, you know? Like, you really . . . you really thought . . . ”
She’s laughing too hard again for me to get a straight sentence out of her.
“Maisie,” I say, kneading my forehead with my knuckles, really glad I didn’t FaceTime her to have to see her laughing at me like this.
Somehow, the concept of hundreds of thousands of total strangers having seen the whole video is less painful than this. “Where is she?
She’s not answering her phone.”
Maisie takes a few gasping breaths, finally clearing her throat and telling me in a haughty voice, “She said she needed some time to think. She’s gone out.”
“Out? Out where? Practically everywhere is shut.”
“Just out. Look, Ethan, I’m sure you’ll hear from her later, okay?
It’ll be all right.”
“Yeah, I’ll believe that when you stop laughing at me.”
She just laughs at me all over again.
apartment #15 – isla
Chapter Thirty-two
While I’m having a rare lazy morning snuggling with Danny in bed, Maisie sends me the video before I see it for myself online somewhere. I recognize her sister’s boyfriend in the video.
Like Serena, he’s a neighbor I follow on Instagram and smile and say hello to when I pass him in the hallway, but we’re not especially close.
I’m not even really that close with Maisie’s sister, Charlotte, having only met her in person a couple of times.
I was vaguely aware that the boyfriend, Ethan, was a vlogger. I didn’t know he was kind of a successful one. And I definitely didn’t know he was going viral this morning until Maisie sent me the video.
I watch it avidly, cringeworthy as it is. Danny watches it with me too.
“That poor boy,” I murmur, as he sighs and stammers at the screen, frowning to himself as he tries to figure out how to word his sentence about why he loves Charlotte in spite of her flaws, without sounding like he’s insulting her. “He must be absolutely mortified.”
“I dunno,” Danny says. “Probably a publicity stunt.”
I scoff. “Please. Who would embarrass themselves this much for a few extra followers?”
Danny chuckles, nuzzling his nose against my cheek and saying, “What, you’re telling me you wouldn’t be totally charmed if you received a proposal video like this?”
“I absolutely would not,” I tell him. “The last thing I want is a public proposal.”