Chapter Thirty-nine
“Oh my God,” Danny murmurs. “Isla! Isla, are you seeing this?”
He springs up from my favorite rattan chair to lean over the balcony, both hands clapped over his mouth, his eyes shining, utterly enchanted—despite his cynicism that it was all some publicity stunt.
I’m already up and videoing, zooming in and focusing the camera on Maisie’s slightly shorter, slightly chubbier twin, Charlotte. I can’t see their balcony or Ethan from here, but I can hear him calling back to her, “Is it really you?”
It’s London Lane’s own personal rom-com, I think, unfolding right before our eyes.
And as embarrassing as this probably is for Ethan, it is very sweet.
She’s yelling at Mr. Harris when Zach calls down, “What’s going on? What’s the shouting?”
Charlotte asks him politely to shut the hell up, but someone else from an apartment downstairs is shouting down—something about how she’s wearing Charlotte’s clothes—and another girl upstairs calls for people to come and join her.
I see Zach lean far out over the balcony, his body twisted so he’s looking up toward the top of the building. He cups his hands around his mouth to shout, “Shut up! Let them talk!”
And since everybody else is participating, I can’t help myself either. I shove the phone into Danny’s hands, jumping up and down and waving my arms wildly, while Charlotte’s attention is directed up at all of us instead of at her boyfriend.
“Charlotte!” I cry. “Charlotte, it’s me! Hi! Maisie told me you were on your way. I’m recording it all!”
She’s smiling so wide, and her face is flushed, and she’s not even really gotten to talk to Ethan about his weird, awkward, online proposal yet. She looks like she’s on cloud nine.
I glance at Danny, expecting to find him still focused on the scene below, but instead he’s looking at me, beaming, eyes creased around the corners.
And I know, I just know, that in that instant, he’s thinking exactly the same thing as me. Momentarily, he’s oblivious to the scene playing out below us, with only one thing on his mind.
I love you.
There’s more commotion below, though, and we tear our eyes away from each other. Let Charlotte and Ethan have their moment, I think, stealing another glance at Danny. I can tell him later.
apartment #6 – ethan
Chapter Forty
My face is burning, and I’m glad I can’t see anybody else on the other balconies right now. Charlotte’s face is pink and flushed, too, but she’s got this great big, goofy grin on her face and giggles when she looks back at me.
She’s waiting for an answer.
“I forgot what you said,” I admit.
“Did you mean it?” she repeats herself. “All those things you said in your video? Is that really how you feel about me?”
I don’t remember most of what I said in the video, to be quite honest, but I do know I meant every word. So I yell back down to her, “Yes! All of it!”
“Then yes!” she shouts up to me, jumping again.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, I’ll marry you, you moron! I love you!”
“I love you too!” I shout, but I’m not even sure she can hear me over the chorus of cheers and excitable shrieks that erupt from all the other balconies on this side of the building. A cascade of rose petals flutter down from one of the apartments above. A couple of them land in Charlotte’s hair and she giggles at them, blowing a kiss to whoever threw them and then looking at me with a smile so big, so goddamn ecstatic, it melts my heart.
She said yes.
She—said— yes.
Sunday
apartment #14 – imogen
Chapter Forty-one
It’s already light out. It’s early but already bright, sunlight pouring through those rubbish venetian blinds and encasing the room in a hazy glow. Birds are singing. I hear a few cars pass by, and the steady, heavy breathing of Nate beside me. There’s a cold foot against mine, and an arm tucked under my neck, wrapped around me. The mattress creaks as I shift, stretching and yawning.
I knock him in the arm with my elbow when I try to lift my arms, and Nate grumbles in his sleep, rolling onto his back. He scrubs the back of a hand over his mouth while I rub the sleep out of my eyes.
“Sorry,” I whisper, my voice thick with sleep.
He doesn’t answer, though, because he’s still fast asleep. I consider waking him up but as soon as my hand reaches across the bed to shake him, I stop myself.
It’s Sunday.
It’s Sunday and the lockdown is over and we can go outside and—and I can go home.
I draw my hand back toward me. No, I think. I’m not going to wake him up.
My bare feet make almost no noise when they touch the floor, and I ease myself gradually off the bed. Nate is still flat out, and I’m as quiet as I can be as I collect up my things. My newly purchased ASOS order is bundled in one of Nate’s dresser drawers and I open it slowly, quietly, to get my things. I pull on a pair of the yoga pants, find my bra on the floor by the wardrobe, and wriggle into one of the T-shirts.
Nate had seemed like a great prospect for a one-night stand.
He’d been easy to talk to, could take a joke, but he was still a pretty sensible-sounding guy. And both of us had been upfront: we weren’t looking for a relationship.
Don’t get me wrong, I love guys.
But that’s sort of the point. Why tie myself down to just one of them?
I don’t know when this went from being trapped in the apartment of my one-night stand and casual sex to actually liking the guy, but . . .
It’s kind of nice.
Extra nice that he’s been trying to help me and not be too judgemental about the haphazard (read: somewhat-shitty) state of my life since yesterday, doing things like helping me make a budget and setting up a standing order to pay off a little on my credit cards each month, and helping me write an email to the landlord about some of the things in my house share he should be fixing for us—all the things I told him I’d been putting off, because it was intimidating and I didn’t even know where to start.
Extra extra nice that we had sex again after our talk on Friday night, and a few times since, and that it’s really good sex.
Not so nice that he’s very adamant I am not allowed to keep his Ramones T-shirt as I’ve become particularly attached to it this week.
We’ve been using it as a kind of bartering tool. Our own personal in-joke.
“You can have the shirt if you cook dinner and do the washing up afterward.”
“I’ll give you the Ramones top if you clean the bathroom and let me do the living room instead.”
I’m still not totally sure when the cuddling had become such a thing, though. I’m not usually a cuddler. Mostly, really, because I was always too busy getting up and sneaking out of the guy’s place, or getting up to get dressed so he knew he had to leave.
It was never like there was any point in pretending. I wanted to spend the night with the guy—whoever he was—not a morning in bed pretending we were a couple, and this was what we did. I had places to go, people to see. Sometimes, I just had to get to work. I didn’t want to waste my time like that—and neither did he, not really.