Will you live here and find yourself
and wait for me to come home?
That’s too much to ask.
You ask me where I go when I’m far away.
I say, “Home, with you.”
Chapter 6
He Adored Me for Twelve Goddamn Years!Me!
Benny has Matty, Monroe, Tyler, and me hunched around one of the flat screens watching and taking notes onMy Best Friend’s Wedding. I quickly learn that the movie is about Jules, a famous food critic (which Benny swears is divine coincidence given my viral content and further cements the need to watch this as a blueprint for “our” plans), who gets a phone call from her best friend (a very hot dude named Dermot, apparently?) that he’s getting married. There’s only one problem: she’s in love with him. So she flies out to Chicago intent on stopping the wedding and proclaiming her love for her best friend. When her best friend’s fiancée asks her to be her maid of honor, she resorts to a whole lot of evil scheming and backstabbing, and eventually at the final brunch the day before the wedding, Jules kisses her bestie and tells him to “pick me, choose me, love me, marry me,” but then! Spoiler alert! Dermot sees his fiancée and leaves Jules to chase after her and basically does not choose Jules in the end, which, like, weird choice, right?
Benny even has his iPad out, propped up on a table, with a whiteboard app open. At the top in red digital ink, he scrawls the following:
Operation: Ricky @ Second Glance
“Very funny.” My restless leg is acting up. Matty puts his hand on my thigh to calm it, but nothing helps.
“I thought so,” Benny says. “Okay, so as we learned from the incomparable rom-com queen herself, Ms. Roberts, we might need to resort to some trickery here.”
“But here’s the thing, I don’t want to scheme. And she doesn’t even end up with the guy in the end. So, this doesn’t bode well for me.” My head knocks against the wall of the plane, feeling the effects of the mimosa.
•Lite Sabotage, Benny suggests as bullet number one.
“Maybe let’s look at where Jules went wrong,” Monroe adds. “Instead of backstabbing, trying to manipulate Ricky into thinking the worst about Cam, you have to get him to remember what he loved aboutyou.”
“Which shouldn’t be too hard,” Matty says with a smile.
“Sure, that sounds super easy and not at all vague,” I say.
Benny scribbles:
Win over Ricky’s family
Get Ricky alone to see if he still has feelings for me
Remind Ricky what he’s missing
Show him how much I’ve grown and changed
Compare/Contrast: Pros of Fielder vs. Cons of Cam
Figure out if Ricky actually loves Cam
Isolate (then eliminate) Cam!
“How’s that?”
“Great. Now all we need is a movie script to follow. Should be easy,” I say, completely checked out as everyone else is fully invested and I’m unconvinced that this can work in real life.
Matty looks up and sees the Coven making their way toward us. “Maybe we should table this until we land.” He looks to me. Neither of us needs the family to know about this plan, so Matty motions for everyone to be quiet. “I think Fielder is overwhelmed.”
Ding-ding-ding.
The rest of the flight is a blur of talking about Ricky, thinking about Ricky, trying not to look at Ricky (and Cam), and wistfully daydreaming about all the ways in which I can flush Cam down the airplane toilet or push him out of the emergency hatch door midflight.
