Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Ergo, I have decided I hate love.
I outlined a new book last night. It’s basically about a woman who falls in love with a man but she’s a hot mess and he rejects her, so she walks off a cliff. Except at the bottom of the cliff is a big bed of pillows—because I’m not really into literary fiction or horror—and then she suffocates in the pillows. Except she doesn’t suffocate, she just rolls around and feels sorry for herself until Uber Eats gets there with her Krispy Kreme order.
I also threw this outline in the trash.
And then I tried to sleep, because this week is probably the most important week of filming, but “sleep” mostly looked like me lying facedown on my bed crying into my pillow.
I want to go over to him, pull him aside, and tell him that I won’t ever do that again, I won’t run off like that. Does he know how much I admire his cautious side? He is the stillness to my storm, the shadow to my bright sunlight, the Styles to my Harry.
The date with Isaac is awesome. I mean outwardly, of course. Inside, I am all marionette strings and positive self-talk. Dad cracks his dumb, awesome jokes; Isaac talks about his job in AI research, and I can see my mother quietly losing her mind imagining a trio of smart grandbabies. I sip from my bottle of lime Perrier. Product placement deals for everything from sparkling water to sunblock to clothing retailers have started to crop up, so I am careful to keep the label turned out. See, Connor? I can be a team player.
My parents talk about what it was like to move to the U.S. from Hong Kong in their twenties, and the struggles of raising three kids with such different personalities. It will make for incredible, authentic television. In my quiet moments of dissociation, I can see this from above and know that we’re all doing a really great job.
There’s satisfaction in getting something right, I guess—I’m faking it like a pro while ignoring the hot giant behind the camera. Isaac is gorgeous and smart—my mom is half in love with him before we’ve even made it to entrées, and my dad keeps giving me that Eh? He’s pretty great, eh? look that means he’ll be asking me about Isaac for the next several months. This is exactly why I’ve never introduced my parents to a guy before. It would be one date and then six months of questions about how long I expect to wait for a proposal. I worry that they don’t entirely understand the premise here—that we’re just trying this dating thing out, and this isn’t a Meet the Family meal in the way that it usually would be—but I can’t even get it up to worry too much because I’m just so fucking sad, and right now every ounce of my focus has to be on getting through it.
“I like him,” Mom pronounces into her still-live mic as soon as we’re up and standing. “You should pick him. Think of how smart and pretty your babies will be.” Called it.
The crew chortles in the background and I reach up, carefully unclipping her mic from her collar. “The audience decides the winner, Ma.”
“But he should be your boyfriend,” she continues, unaware as I fumble to turn it off. “You look so good together.”
On instinct, my eyes turn to the row of cameras. Connor reaches up, slipping off his headset and placing it on the seat beside him before he picks up a clipboard and casually writes something down. No reaction, certainly no consternation. He doesn’t even look up the way he used to, that reactive flash of jealousy heating his eyes. Now it’s just relaxed Connor, not caring about the prospect of someone else being my boyfriend.
It’s cool, I’m fine.
Allow me to fling myself off a cliff into a bed of pillows.
Hugging my parents, I see them out to the confessional trailer to meet with the man himself, and then I sit down, waiting my turn.
A half hour passes before my parents find me for goodbyes.
“We told Connor that we think you should marry Isaac!” my dad whisper-yells, and then kisses my cheek.
I give them the best smile I can produce. “Awesome, I’m sure he loved that.”
Isaac leaves for the confessional and, honestly, I would pay a lot of money to be a fly on the wall in that room. I bet it’s the size of a teacup with the combination of their two hulking bodies, Connor’s quiet intensity, and Isaac’s dazzling charm.
Or maybe it’s fine. Maybe the room isn’t cold at all, and Connor isn’t weird with Isaac in the slightest, even though one of my favorite parts of Connor’s body was inside my body one week plus forty-eight hours ago and a casual observer would say that we were both being pretty dramatic about our big emotions. But I’ve never been in love, so I’ve never fallen out of it before. Maybe it does happen like that for some people—a switch flipped down, a match blown out.