Love.
Love.
What I felt for William was love, and it was glorious.
I heard the door open and close softly, and William gently padded into the bedroom. I assumed he went in to see me, but when he didn’t emerge for ten minutes, I wondered what was going on.
“William?” I asked loudly. “Come here, I want to talk.”
He emerged from our room with my planbooks in his hands. “So do I.”
Shit.
He tossed five of the books onto the couch. “Care to tell me about these, Cerise?”
I shrugged, pretending to feel nonchalant about his discovery. “That’s where I write out our scenes. Well, not our scenes, necessarily, just the role-play ideas that come into my mind.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “That’s an understatement.” He fingered the pages, flipping wildly. “Cerise, there are ten years’ worth of scenes in these books.”
“Well, some are past scenes,” I huffed. “But yes, I do have plans that go into the future. What’s the problem?”
“The problem?” he asked, voice raising awkwardly. “Cerise, this is fanatical. You have planned out role-play scenes for three days a week, fifty-two weeks of the year, for ten years. I know you have your quirks, but this is just . . .”—he trailed off—“insane.”
“How dare you,” I spat. “You have journals detailing your miserable whining for much longer than that. What’s the difference?”
He dropped the rest of the stack. “The difference is that the journals are real. You have clearly spent entire months of your life planning out things that never even happened. Cerise,” he said passionately, “what happened to make you do this?”
I crossed my arms and backed away from him.
“Oh, so this is clearly a product of some psychosis? What if I’m just a creative and organized person who borders on OCD?”
His tone softened. “Honey, this isn’t normal.”
“You’re not normal—you’re a vampire! We’re not normal,” I said, shaking my head, mortified. “Fuck normal.”
“Why don’t we shelve these for a while? Spend a month just being spontaneous.” He picked the books off the floor and put them protectively under his arm.
I snatched them back. “No.”
“No?”
“But I’ll let you keep this one, since that’s the one we’re on. You can get a jump on this month. I expect to do the fan scene on Monday.”
He took a deep breath and spun on his heel. “I’ll start my homework, then,” he grunted and disappeared.
I forgot to tell him I loved him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
William
Dear Miss Norrel,
I’m so excited to have won the “Date with Cerise Norrel” contest from E! News. You have been my favorite actress for years, and to finally get to meet you is a dream come true. I loved your comedic side in Work It, Girl, and truly, Running Out was a nonstop thriller. Your acting is so versatile, and you’ve never chosen a bad role. I really hope that the next year is an Oscar year for you, Cerise. Anyway, I just wanted to say again how much I’m looking forward to finally meeting you and getting a chance to know you. I promise I won’t be a weird creepy stalker fan, haha.