Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,118
amiss. The correspondent, to his credit, didn’t miss a beat. He picked up right where I’d left off; tossing me a no-brainer question about what it was like to work with Georgia Torres, the renowned director.
I was thankful, and tried to muddle together a response that I hadn’t already used a thousand times, so he could take a fresh sound bite back to his bosses, but my distraction was evident. My attention was split as I watched Cam out of the corner of my eye. What could have been so important that he took a phone call in the middle of a televised interview? He was far enough away that I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his body language was tense and his mouth moved rapidly against the receiver pressed to his face.
Finally, the reporter wrapped up our conversation, and only once we were off camera did the smallest ounce of irritation gleam in his too-blue eyes. I hadn’t given him anything newsworthy at all. They’d be lucky to edit together anything usable from me at all. My only condolence was that I was sure Madeline had turned on the charm, always doing anything in her power to increase her success.
I was just racking my brain for an excuse to hurry over and find out what was going on, when Cam suddenly looked up and met my eyes. I saw, rather than heard, the meaningful sigh that left his body. There was defeat in it, and the oddly deflated demeanor didn’t leave him as he walked towards me, extending the flat cellphone in his hand like it was a gift.
“It’s for you,” was all he said, and then at the same time, seemed to disappear into the crowd milling about the red carpet.
I hesitated, but only for a moment, my body pulsing with expectation. “Hello?”
“I read it!” the hollered exclamation exploded in my ear. I balked at the volume, but held the phone strong.
“Adley?” Even amidst the exorbitant chatter trying to drown out her voice, I recognized it. I plugged a finger in my other ear, trying to single out just the sound of her and not the chaos shrieking in the background. “Where are you?”
“You wanted me to see that I have to let people make their own choices. I read Cam’s letter from the book. I know I’m not the girl in the yellow dress.”
I didn’t know if she hadn’t heard me speak or if she was just so swept away in the moment, desperate to speak her peace that she couldn’t stop, not even for a second.
“I can barely hear you,” I shouted back. “Where are you?”
For a second, all I could hear was raucous clamor from her end, and I was sure she was gone. She’d said what she’d needed to say, and it was over…for good that time. Our loose ends tied into a neat little bow. The moral of the story had been learned. The end.
“I’m here.”
My heart jolted.
She was there. The erratic noise suddenly made sense. My eyes darted up, ravaging wildly through the crowd held at bay on either side of red carpet by guardrails and security guards. I was making a spectacle of myself, and people were starting to notice. I was going against the script. The publicist was in my face, her mouth moving with words of strained kindness trying to herd me back into protocol.
I ignored her, shifting my gaze through the crowd, trying to find one girl in a sea of hundreds. It was impossible.
And then I found her.
There was an ocean of people between us. They swarmed and clamored for my attention, oblivious to the fact that I was blind to everyone but her. To them, she was no one, just another face in the mass, but to me, she was everything.
“Hi,” she said, and I could easily make out her hopeful grin across the distance separating us.
“Hi.” It was all I had in me.
“I lied,” she admitted as she was jostled by a few overly eager girls. “That day, I lied to you. I do want you. I always have. I didn’t want to…but I did. And I still do.”
“Why?” I didn’t realize until the question slipped out, just how badly I needed the answer. “Why do you want me?”
Her mouth fluttered open. She hadn’t been expecting that.
“Because you’re terrified of birds!” she blurted forcefully.
“Excuse me?”
“And because you have a ridiculous book club with your chauffeur.”