Part 28 (2/2)

”In fact,” I said. ”They mostly only seem to show up when I'm with...you.”

”I know,” J.P. said. ”It's so annoying, isn't it?”

Yeah. It is. Because it only started happening, really, when I started going out with J.P. My very first date with J.P., when we went to see Beauty and the Beast together. That was the first time the press got a shot of us, coming out of the theater, looking like a couple, even though we weren't.

I'd always wondered who'd called and told them we were there together. And every other subsequent date we'd gone on, many of which there'd been no way they could have known about in advance-like when we'd gone to Blue Ribbon Sus.h.i.+ the other night. How had they known about that, a casual sus.h.i.+ date around the corner from my house? I go out to eat around the corner from my house all the time, and the paps never show up.

Unless J.P. is there.

”J.P.,” I said, looking up at him in the blue and pink party lights. ”Are you the one who's been calling the paps and telling them where they can find us?”

”Who, me?” J.P. laughed. ”No way.”

I don't know what it was. Maybe it was that laugh...which sounded just slightly nervous. Maybe it was the fact that after all this time, he still hadn't read my book. Maybe it was the fact that he'd put that s.e.xy dancing scene in his play, for everyone to laugh at. Or maybe it was the fact that his character, J.R., seemed to want to be a prince so very, very badly.

But somehow, I just knew: That ”No way” was J.P. Reynolds-Abernathy IV's Big Fat Lie Number One. Actually, make that Number Two. I think he was lying about the hotel room reservation, too.

I couldn't stop staring at him, gazing down at me with that nervous smile on his lips.

This, I thought, wasn't the J.P. I knew. The J.P. who didn't like it when they put corn in his chili and who kept a creative writing journal that was a Mead composition notebook exactly like all of mine and who'd been in therapy for way longer than I had. This was some different J.P.

Except it wasn't. This was the exact same J.P.

Only I knew him better now.

”I mean,” J.P. said, with a laugh. ”Why would I do that? Call the paparazzi on myself?”

”Maybe,” I said, ”because you like seeing yourself in the paper?”

”Mia,” he said, looking down at me with the same nervous smile on his face. ”Come on. Let's just dance. You know what? I heard a rumor we might get voted prom king and queen.”

”My foot hurts,” I said. This was a lie. But for once, I didn't feel guilty about it. ”These are new shoes. I think I have to sit down a minute.”

”Oh, no,” J.P. said. ”I'll go see if I can find you a Band-Aid. Stay here.”

So J.P. is looking for a Band-Aid.

And I'm trying to figure this out.

How could J.P.-J.P., who is so big and blond and good-looking, the guy with whom I have so much in common, the guy everyone liked so much better for me than Michael-be someone it turns out I may have nothing in common with at all?

It can't be possible. It can't be.

Except...what was Dr. Knutz talking about the other day?

His story about his horse, Sugar. The thoroughbred, who looked so good on paper, but in whose saddle he could never find a comfortable place? Dr. Knutz had to give up Sugar, because he never wanted to ride her, and it wasn't fair to Sugar.

I get it now. I so get it.

Some people can seem perfect...everything about them can, on paper, be just right.

Until you get to know them. Really know them.

Then you find out, in the end, while they might be perfect to everyone else, they just aren't right for you.

On the other hand...

What's so wrong about a guy who loves his girlfriend getting a hotel room for the two of them on prom night, months in advance? Oh, big crime.

So he screwed up with the play? If I ask him to, I'm sure he'd change it. I- Oh my G.o.d. There's Lilly.

She's in black from head to toe. (Well, so am I, actually. Only somehow I don't think I look like a trained a.s.sa.s.sin, the way she does.) She's heading for the ladies' room.

Okay, I think this might const.i.tute stalking. But I'm going in after her. She dated J.P. for six months.

If anyone will know if my boyfriend's a great big phony, she will. Whether or not she'll even speak to me is another story.

But Dr. Knutz did say, when I figured out what the right thing to do was, I'd do it.

I really hope this is it....

Sat.u.r.day, May 6, 11 p.m., the Waldorf-Astoria,

ladies' room

Okay. I'm shaking. I have to stay in here until my knees stop trembling long enough for me to stand up again. For now I'm just going to sit here on this little velvet settee and try to write this down so it makes some kind of sense- In any case...

I guess I finally know why Lilly was so mad at me for so long.

I walked into the bathroom and there she was putting bright red lipstick on in the mirror.

It looked exactly like blood.

She glanced at my reflection and sort of raised her eyebrows.

But I wasn't going to back off, even though my heart was pounding. Grant me the courage to change the things I can.

I checked to make sure we were the only people in the room. We were. And then I went, to her reflection, before I could lose my nerve, ”Is J.P. a total fake, or what?”

She very calmly put the lid back on her lipstick and slipped it into her evening clutch. Then she said with an expression of total disgust, turning around to look me in the eye, ”Took you long enough.”

I won't say it was like she plunged a knife into my chest, or anything dramatic like that. Because the part of me that used to think I loved J.P. had stopped thinking that as soon as I spilled the hot chocolate on Michael last week, and I realized that whole loving J.P. thing had just been wishful thinking. I mean, I guess I could have trained myself to fall in love with J.P. eventually, if Michael Moscovitz had never come back from j.a.pan and then been so nice to me and made me realize I'd never fallen out of love with him.

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