Page 43 of I'm Gonna Get You Back
“Other lives?”
Heat worked its way up my face. “Yeah. Okay, like, in one, I live at the beach and surf every day—like, it becomes my entire personality. I’m one with the waves.”
“If you’re in a bathing suit that’s the one I vote for,” he said.
I smacked him playfully and kept going. “In another, I live in Italy or France. I obviously become multilingual and buy pastries and flowers at outdoor markets and film the countryside while riding bikes through fields.”
His smile widened as he listened.
“In another, I don’t live anywhere—I liveeverywhere. After I go to CAFA, I make documentaries that let me travel the world, learning new things, meeting new people. Answering every question I could possibly think of. Making films that matter.” I sighed. “The dream.”
Reid studied me like he was really seeing me for the first time. Ipulled on a loose thread of the comforter and asked, “What about you? Any other lives?”
That adorable line of concentration formed between his eyebrows as he considered the question. Finally, he said, “You know how sometimes in movies everything stops for a second?”
“Like a freeze-frame?”
He brightened. “Exactly. Everything’s moving at a normal speed until suddenly the music, the action, the talking—it all juststops.” He held up a hand, suspended in the air between us in a pause. “And you realize just how fast normal had gotten.”
Our eyes met, and he slowly lowered his arm.
“That pause? That moment of complete stillness… I wouldn’t mind living in that sometimes.”
I rested my head against the headboard, taking in just how sweet he looked in the golden light. “You really are a poet.”
His expression grew self-conscious and he joked, “Nah, that didn’t even rhyme.”
As our laughter faded, his eyes drifted back to the picture.
“Do you talk to him a lot? Your dad?”
“We try.” I shrugged. “But since he doesn’t ever stick around long, I don’t see the point. He even forgot my birthday last year.”
Reid frowned. “That’s…reallyshitty.”
My laugh was humorless. “I’m used to it. It’s just another day, anyway. Except this year, when I can finally get a tattoo from my Aunt Lisette.”
He arched a brow. “Of what?”
“I’m not sure yet. I have lots of ideas.”
None of which really stuck for long, though. It needed to mean something real. To be something that would always matter.
“Well, I won’t forget it,” Reid said with a grin. “I already saved your birthday in my calendar.”
My heart sped up in my chest. How did he do that? Stitch up a wound I didn’t even know was bleeding.
I got up and fiddled with the track pad on the laptop to wake it up, avoiding his gaze and the fizziness coursing through me. “Ready?”
He nodded and settled deeper into the bed. “My first Clara Suarez original. I wish I had popcorn.”
In my Attenborough voice, I said, “Please reserve your opinion until the end.”
He gave me a small salute, and I gnawed on my thumbnail the entire time the doc played.
In the video, I featured those gunning for Legacy other than myself. First was Amaya, who had already secured a spot at NYU early admissions but who still seemed stressed about becoming a theater Legacy and securing the scholarship to pay for it. Focusing all her time on the fall and spring shows, as if moving on to the next level of such an incredible college didn’t matter as much as proving she was someone to Woodhurst.
I included footage of Delaney’s dance rehearsals and strict diet and the workout regimen she put herself through. She came across as strong but anxious. Too focused on her failings, so hard on herself. Like the way she weighed herself after every workout seemed too revealing. As her best friend, it was hard to watch, even though it was true.
