Page 63 of When Grumpy Met Sunshine
Or, as he then pointed out, that honesty about certain passable things about her had gotten the better of him. “It was just a factual description of you, Mabel,” he said. And she was glad he did. Because now she got to be as plain speaking about it.
“Yeah, but the point is: the factual description was really excellent, mate.”
“You don’t have to say that. I’m fine about it, all right? Writing isn’t for me and that’s okay. I just don’t want it rubbed in my face, that’s all. I don’t want everybody to know I’m rubbishat my dream job. And the fastest way for everybody not to know is this fucking foolish idea.”
“Well, at least you concede it’s foolish.”
“Of course I fucking do. It’s like the plot of a romantic comedy. Bill Pullman has to pretend he’s married to Sandra Bullock so nobody finds out that he is secretly really terrible at being the one thing he always wanted. Like, I dunno. Becoming a president who saves the planet from a massive alien invasion.”
He rolled his eyes at himself, then. And with good reason, too. Itwasan absurd thing that he was proposing, after all. Even if it was slightly less absurd than it had been ten minutes ago.
However, she couldn’t really focus on that right now.
Because of the example he’d used to show how absurd it was.
“All right, there are two things here that we need to extensively go over,” she said, and could tell immediately that he knew he’d gone with the wrong thing. He closed one eye in a kind of half wince. Then braced himself.
“And I’m guessing I’m not going to want to hear either of them.”
“You are really, really not.”
“Go on then. Hit me with them.”
She held out a finger, ready to tick items off on it. “Okay, well, firstly: I seem to be Sandra Bullock in this scenario.”
“It was just an example. And off the top of my head, no less.”
“Which I will accept. So that means we can move on to the other thing.”
Now his whole face was a wince. In fact, the wince was so intense he couldn’t take a drink when he tried. His teeth were gritted too hard.
Though she couldn’t show him any mercy.
She wanted to know about this too badly.
“You like romantic comedies?” she asked.
And he spread his hands.
He just spread his hands.
“Honestly, who doesn’t,” he said.
But oh, there was no chance she was going to let him get away with that. Because okay, it wasn’t as disturbing as being a footballer who hated football. Or even as astonishing as a dude with a reputation for liking a drink not actually liking a drink at all. However, it was still pretty wild.
And on the end of what was now a long list of wild things.
So what could she do but point that out?
“Typically, footballers who headbutt people.”
“I told you I didn’t mean to do that.”
“How on earth did you not mean to?”
“Me neck just slipped.”
God, the way he puts things sometimes, she thought. Themeinstead ofmy, the use of the wordneckthere, the idea of such a thing happening because you slipped—it was all so good. And so hard not to laugh at. In fact, she was no longer sure why she was even bothering resisting. It seemed silly, after all this.
