“Oh my God,” he tells me, eyes blown wide. “That’s Charlotte.”
“Wait—wait, Charlotte like from the video?”
He nods, scrambling out of the bed to peer out of the window, trying to see. Earlier this morning he’d been browsing YouTube on his iPad when I woke up, watching a video from some guy he follows called Ethan. It was a really dorky, really sweet proposal to his girlfriend. I’m not totally sure he meant to upload it. When I’d opened my own phone my friend Jaz had shared it in the group chat. It was basically viral.
“Hang on,” I bark at Nate. “You’re telling me that vlogger lives in your building?”
“Yeah,” he says, still peering out of the window, not getting the big deal. “Ethan. He’s the guy I went to borrow clothes from, for you, on Monday.”
“YOU’RE TELLING ME I BORROWED CHARLOTTE OF DEAR CHARLOTTE’S LEGGINGS?” I shriek, my voice about three octaves higher than normal.
He winces, and there’s more shouting outside. A guy has joined in now. Ethan, I’m guessing.
And, oh my God, he’s here, and she’s here, and there is a viral moment happening right outside, right now, and I have to know if she says yes.
I fall over myself grabbing my underwear from by the bedroom door. The Ramones shirt is in the laundry basket but it’s either that or the duvet right now, so I grab it and wrestle my arms through, bumping into the wall as I run out of the bedroom and throw open the balcony doors.
I lean over and there’s a guy hanging over the railing of the balcony directly below Nate’s apartment, and a girl standing beneath that. I was picturing someone blond and glamorous and tall and curvy, with a full face of makeup. I was picturing a literal celebrity, I realize now. But Charlotte is just . . . normal. She’s plump and has a wavy ginger mane of chin-length hair and is currently yelling at Walter White, the caretaker who is not a serial killer. We think.
(Although, actually thinking about it, he probably does have enough cleaning products to dissolve a body in his bathtub if he wanted to.) Nate joins me on the balcony, wearing a burgundy dressing gown.
His arm wraps around my waist, hand curling around the railing on my other side. It’s oddly intimate, but I kind of like it.
“This is essential, you miserable bum!” Charlotte is yelling at my buddy Walt, but it’s promptly followed by, “Sorry, Mr. Harris, I didn’t mean to call you a bum, or miserable. I promise I’ll go in a minute, I know I can’t stay.”
Someone from an apartment above yells down, “What’s going on?
What’s the shouting?”
Charlotte cups her hands around her mouth, craning her head back to shout a few floors farther up, “Do you mind? My boyfriend kind of just proposed to me online and I’m locked out of the building!”
Oh my God, she’s talking to us. We’re a live audience and this is not a show, and I forget any sense of public decency or decorum I might have otherwise had to scream down, “Oh my God, it’s Dear Charlotte!
Dear Charlotte, I’ve been wearing your clothes! You’re famous!”
She laughs at that, and other apartments start pitching in, too, shouting down. Nate chuckles near my ear and says quietly, “Oh man. Ethan’s going to be dying of embarrassment right now.”
I don’t get why, if he’s the kind of guy with a decent following online he seems to be, but I take Nate’s word for it. I give him a quick kiss before turning to watch the show unfold, and Nate tucks me a little tighter into his body, chin tucking over my shoulder as he watches too.
apartment #22 – olivia
Chapter Thirty-eight
Duties as maid of honor include but are not exclusive to: being invested in any and all wedding-related matters; a knowledge of princess-cut rings and what is an appropriate amount to spend on them; current trends in the wedding industry, such as which song to walk down the aisle to that is current but not too overdone.
I’m not sure a viral YouTube video exactly counts as a proposal trend, but no offense to Kim, her engagement was definitely not as good a story as vlogger Ethan Maddox and his mystery girlfriend, Charlotte.
Addison saw it online this morning and made us all watch the entire thing after breakfast. She squished herself between me and Kim on the sofa, and I wasn’t sure if she was trying to snuggle into me or if she was just trying to get comfortable.
Kim gave me a look, but I still wasn’t entirely convinced. Maybe she’s just a tactile kind of person, I thought.
I still wonder if I’m reading too much into it now that we’re sat on the balcony, and she’s laughing that honking, loud laugh of hers at something I just said about work, even though it really wasn’t that funny. She reaches over, her fingers brushing against my arm.
“Oh my God,” she says, pretending to wipe a tear away. She grins at me, but there’s something . . . if I’m not wrong, there’s something coy about it. And I swear to God, she flutters her eyelashes. “Where has Kim been hiding you all this time?”
I mumble, blushing.
It’s not as though I’m a useless flirt, but something about Addison feels . . . different.
Charged.
I’m snapped out of it by shouting from somewhere down below.
I get to my feet and lean over the balcony, Addison following suit.
From five stories up it’s hard to see much more than a redhead standing outside the building.
“Look,” Addison points to one side. “Isn’t that the caretaker?”
As if it could be anybody else in that luminous yellow hazmat suit.
“What’s going on?” she wonders aloud, just as some guy a couple of floors below yells down to ask the same thing.
I can’t quite make out the ginger girl’s reply, but then another voice is added to the mix: some brunette hanging off the balcony just above her who shouts, “Oh my God, it’s Dear Charlotte! Dear Charlotte, I’ve been wearing your clothes! You’re famous!”
Loathe as I am to bring up any wedding-related conversation after Kim has finally stopped being a bridezilla and returned to being an actual human, I am left with, quite honestly, no choice.
I cannot, cannot, let this go unnoticed.
“Oh my God,” I say, grabbing Addison’s hand on the balcony and squeezing it tight. “It’s her! It’s Charlotte, from the video!”
“Shut the fuck up,” Addison tells me, leaning farther out, her mouth agape.
I let out a high-pitched squeal before I can stop myself and shriek, “No way! Kim, Luce, get out here, it’s the couple from that video!”
“And bring the rose petals!” Addison barks at them. She wraps her hands around my arm, leaning in close and tucking her chin over my shoulder as the girls hurry out to join us.
Maybe it’s not a good idea to drag Kim into some kind of wedding drama, but if there is one thing I have learned in my time as maid of honor, it’s that nothing is more important than celebrating romance.
And this viral-video-turned-real-life proposal is, quite probably, with no offense to Jeremy and Kim, the most romantic thing any of us will ever witness.
apartment #15 – isla