**
“I’m still slightly stunned at Robbie,” Charlotte says, shaking her head. “I’m trying to see why he would want to do this. It certainly isn’t because of me. Is it?” She asks the producers, knowing that they were never going to give her a straight answer. “When he was growing up in London, he always seemed to resent me, flitting off from place to place, taking every chance to get away. I never told him how much it meant to me that he actually came to San Francisco for me, that he’d actually stayed as long as he has. Robbie isn’t running away now.”
**
“You weren’t supposed to fall in love with her, you know,” Charlotte says, leaning back against her seat and smiling at him knowingly.
“I know,” he says, giving her the exact same smile. “But how could I not?”
**
“Robbie’s never really been the romantic sort,” Charlotte says in her interview, after Rob left her office. She is grinning widely. “But if there is anyone he is going to fall in love with, I’m really pleased that it is with Nellie. It’s like a dream come true for a mum like me!” She laughs, shaking her head.
“What does petit chou mean?” a producer asks, and Charlotte smiles like she knows exactly why they were asking her that question.
“It means ‘my sweetheart’,” she says, her eyes sparkling. “That or it’s a name of a piece of pastry.”
**
“Jason,” Nellie says, brushing a stray stand of hair away from her face. She is slightly breathless, seeing as she practically ran to their meeting spot in boots. “And I’m sorry I’m late, it’s just been crazy with the wedding and all.”
“It’s fine,” Jason says, standing up and brushing imaginary dust from his pants. “I get it. When we’re up to our eyeballs in depositions and files, we tend to lose track of time too.”
They decide to meet on the stairs in front of the Dewey Monument in the middle of Union Square Park. The cameras are on them from three different angles and have microphones that can pick up everything they say. Jason is wearing a sweater over his collared shirt, and looks even more adorable than he usually does. He pushes up his glasses over his nose and smiles at Nellie.
“Thanks for still wanting to see me,” he says, picking up a takeout bag he has beside him. “I got us coffee and cupcakes, kind of like a picnic.”
“Sounds great,” she says, sitting beside him on the steps, her legs splayed out in front of her.
**
“I decided to still go out with Jason,” Nellie says to the cameras, smiling comfortably. She is just wearing a swipe of lip tint and mascara, and her confidence shows. “I really like him, in spite of everything. He made his case to me over the phone,” she says, giggling as the cameras show her sitting on the bus and listening to Jason explain his side. “He said that he really did like me, had always planned to ask me out. He never really had the chance to, though, until you guys,” she eyes the producers, “gave him one.”
“Anyway. I have two hours free before I have to run to Quince in Telegraph Avenue for Renée and Ewan’s rehearsal dinner. They’ve patched things up,” she says, and the cameras show Renée and Ewan talking about what happened. They hadn’t been allowed to record audio, but there was a lot of hand holding and Ewan apologizing. “He said that he had no idea that she’d gotten the prenup, he was so mad he actually fired someone over the whole thing. It was actually quite sweet,” Nellie says, her focus distracted for a moment before she goes back on topic. “So we’re having a small (read: huge) gathering at the city’s best restaurant the night before their wedding.”
“Of course I had arranged that as well, as if the huge wedding tomorrow wasn’t enough. But I’m happy to do it, and Donna has done more than her fair share of chipping in with the decorators and the arrangements with the restaurant. She’s been a godsend through this whole thing. I’ve recommended her to Charlotte to become a planner too.”
**
The show decides to simply air a montage of Nellie and Jason’s date. They both laugh and smile a lot at each other. He is passionate about his job, telling her about really weird cases he’d handled (like the cat that inherited a fortune and the guy that tried to buy all the airspace in San Francisco) and how close Suits actually is to his real life (not at all). Like Donna had predicted, Jason is awkward and just a little bit geeky. He is deeply into independently published comic books, and Wes Anderson films, just like Nellie. They both gush over the Grand Budapest Hotel, and but agreed that The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Royal Tenenbaums were their favorites. He is on Tumblr too, and is just starting to watch Doctor Who.
**
“As afternoons go, I have to admit, this is more fun than I thought it would be.” Nellie smiles at the cameras. She’s in an infinitely better mood now, more comfortable being asked questions about her life.
**
The montage continues, showing how they split their cupcakes in half and trade so they can taste both flavors. They never seem to run out of things to talk about. The air is cool and comfortable, and she barely notices that the sun is starting to set. It is comfortable and fun, like she is talking to a friend.
**
“But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Nellie muses. “While Jason is cute and funny, there just isn’t anything between us. No friction, no spark, no banter, no little flirty smiles or touches . . .” The cameras counterpoint this with a black-and-white montage of Nellie and Rob: her laughing at his jokes, the two of them dancing, arguing over which donuts to get. There’s a clip of Rob teaching Nellie how to play the guitar, but the both of them are laughing so much that not a lot of learning gets done.
Nellie’s gaze is unfocused when the cameras return to her. “He’s a new friend, that’s all. And if I could give Jason a chance—oh my God,” she says, burying her face in her hands. She looks up at the cameras with wide eyes.
**
Back at Union Square Park, Nellie looks up at the sky. Her eyes widen when she sees that it is actually getting a bit dark. “Oh, shoot, I have to go,” Nellie explains, checking the time on her watch. “There’s a rehearsal dinner tonight, and I have to pick up Donna, so . . .”
“Don’t let me keep you,” Jason says, jumping up from his seat too and pulling on her hand to help her up. Nellie leaps forward, tripping up a bit and ending up slightly squashed against him.
“Sorry!” she exclaims, laughing. She is smiling, and so is Jason. The lights on Saks Fifth Avenue in Union Square turn on, making his face light up brilliantly. She holds back a laugh.
**
“Here he is, my dream guy, and I don’t want him as much as I thought I did.” Nellie sighs. “I was looking for something else entirely.”
**
“So,” Jason says, smiling as the lights of the city reflect in his glasses, “see you in the office? Maybe you could accidentally walk into my office sometime.”
Nellie laughs, and shakes his hand in a cordial way. “Definitely.”
**
“How was the date?”
“It was . . . okay?” Nellie says hesitantly. “I think we both saw that there wasn’t really anything romantic between us. I felt like I spent the day hanging out with a new friend.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No,” she says with a sigh. “But it does mean that I need to give someone else a chance.”
**
When the cameras turn off for the interview, Adam, the producer, comes up to Nellie and sits across from her. She sits with her lips flattened into a straight line, clearly still upset at what had transpired with Rob and Jason. She may not be upset with the boys, but she’s still upset at the producer who made them do it. He sighs.
“If it makes you feel any better, we didn’t ask him to do anything,” he explains, “except to find a way to help you with Renée’s wedding so he’s seen on screen more often. Charlotte assigned him Ellie’s wedding, so we filmed some of that too. But everything he says is real.”
&n
bsp; “But he told you all my secrets,” Nellie sighs, her angry facade faltering immediately. “Everything is in there. He showed you the planner, so he must have read the secrets out to the camera.”
“Oh, believe me,” Adam chuckled, “it took a lot for us to convince him to read out one or two. He’d absolutely refused. He actually kept the stuff in your notebook pretty hush-hush, and I’m pretty sure he paraphrased most of what he did read to the cameras.”
“But—”
“Just give him a chance, all right?” Adam asks. “The viewers love you guys. The staff does too. But he’s not going to be on the show next season anyway, after he quit—”
“He what?” Nellie exclaims, halfway to removing her microphone.
“Oh yeah. He quit his job this morning, signed the final papers with us and everything,” Adam confirms. “You’ll see it when the show airs. He and Charlotte had a really nice moment out of it too. Now let’s go over the filming schedule for the big wedding tomorrow . . .”
The cameras show a small corner restaurant in a busy San Francisco street, with paparazzi lined at the door. This is Quince, one of San Francisco’s best restaurants. Nellie and Donna make it to the restaurant in good time. The entire place is full of guests for Renée and Ewan’s gathering, and they were photographed at the door by paparazzi who thought they were important enough to snap a photo of. She laughs that off, even if Donna wanted them both to go back out and ham it up for their fifteen seconds of fame.
**
“Quince is one of the priciest places in the city,” Nellie starts explaining as she and Donna are interviewed by the door. “It’s mostly considered an Italian restaurant, but it is famed for its revolving, ever-evolving, nine-course tasting menu.”
“The chef said he was making a whole new menu for the couple! Ugh, I love it, I love it,” Donna added, dancing to invisible music.
“The dining rooms at the back have gorgeous red brick walls, the kind you don’t see too often anymore,” Nellie points out, indicating the inside of the restaurant. “The rest of the restaurant was a bit too minimalist for Renée’s taste, so we remedied this by bringing in big, bright green palm plants to add a little color. Then Donna—”
“Yes, I’m amazing, thank you.”
“Found some vintage posters of Grace Kelly movies in one of our prop rooms, and the restaurant agreed to hang them on the walls just for the evening.”
“We made sure to design more to Renée’s tastes, especially with the massive portrait of herself and Ewan in the back of the room, which, by the way, I diiiie. I gaaag on its eleganza!”
**
The couple is standing at the back and center of the room, dressed like Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in Monte Carlo with her in an ice blue dress with a sweetheart neckline, and him in an impeccable grey suit. The music is all ’50s Louis Armstrong type of big-band songs, with a live band.
“Nellie! Donna! Come here, darlings!” Renée yells at the top of her lungs from across the room, and Nellie had to smile. Renée throws her arms around her wedding planner and squeezes like she is trying to suck the life out of her. Then she brings Donna into the group hug, and Donna looks like she’s about to faint with glee. Then, Renée starts jumping up and down, which makes Donna and Nellie do the same, all three laughing like they have known each other forever. “This is all so beautiful! Tomorrow is going to be fantastic, and I am naming my first daughter after you two!”
“Okay?” Nellie asks hesitantly, but smiles as she sees Ewan laugh and put an arm around his fiancée. His smile is so bright anyone could have lit a Christmas tree with it. And it is all for the woman currently choking Nellie and Donna with love.
**
“Has your opinion on Renée and the congressman changed?”
“Oh, yeah,” Nellie concedes. “You know I can’t imagine him trying to tamp down who Renée already is. They seem to really love each other. It’s a little strange how she confided in me the other day though . . .”
“Of course she would,” Donna points out beside Nellie. “Renée is famous for being a loner. Her mom pimped her out to Ewan, her record company treats her like a product most of the time . . . My girl Renée probably doesn’t have time to have any friends of her own, until she had to plan her wedding.”
Nellie blinks at her friend’s insight. “But what about the bridesmaids?”
“All chosen by her agent and Ewan’s political people,” Donna brushes off. “It’s so obvious.”
**
“She’s been working on telling you that all day,” Ewan tells Nellie with a chuckle. “It also helps that she’s already a little drunk. But seriously, thank you for everything.”
“Just doing my job,” Nellie says, helping Ewan detach the celebrity from her. “I’ll have a waiter get her something to drink.”
“Oh, she only drinks—”
“Vitamin water, I remember,” Nellie assures him, disappearing with Donna into the throng of well-wishers to find a waiter. They are just about to go to the back when they hear someone call Nellie’s name. Donna and Nellie turn their heads to see Rob standing in front of them, dressed in a crushed blue velvet jacket and a slim grey tie. His freckles stand out even more under his brown-red hair. He seems upset, and Nellie resists the urge to ask him what is wrong, apparently remembering that she is supposed to be upset with him.
“Nellie,” he says, his bright blue eyes boring into hers. Nellie stands beside Donna, facing him. While she had decided to give him another chance earlier that day, it is quite different having him standing there in front of her, and she fidgets slightly.
“We need to talk,” she tells him point-blank.
“Sure,” he says, scuffling his toe into the floor, his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets.
“I’ll get the water,” Donna volunteers, squeezing Nellie’s shoulder before giving Rob a warning glare. Then she disappears into the kitchen, and Nellie and Rob are alone. Well, as alone as two people could be with a crowd of 120 guests and more outside.
“Wanna get out of here?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest. He nods and sighs in relief, putting his hands in his pockets before he lets Nellie lead the way out the door.
They make it to Rincon Park along the Embarcadero after a short drive. It’s a small park that features a gigantic statue of a bow and arrow planted on the grass, with the lavender flowers growing in the middle distance sprawling out to a view of the Bay Bridge on the right side and the San Francisco Bay in front of them. The night is a bit foggy, and it makes the bridge look like it is vanishing into the clouds. The cameras stay a bit away from the couple as they walk together. There is no audio recording, just a cameraman capturing a video of them walking together.
There is a harpist busking in front of the statue, and “La Vie En Rose” is the soundtrack to a few other people going out for a cool night stroll. Nellie vaguely worries that this is another network setup, but shakes the thought immediately from her mind. She pulls her coat closer to herself, walking along the side of the bay with Rob walking beside her. They are uncharacteristically silent, and it’s getting uncomfortable.
“I never drink anything out of a can,” he suddenly says, apropos of nothing. They pause, and she looks up at him in confusion. “I always have to decant it into a glass, or else I can’t drink it ’cause I think it’s disgusting.”
“What?” Nellie asks. He doesn’t seem to hear her though, and keeps talking.
“I also hate strawberries. I told my mum I was allergic to them when I was ten, and she’s made sure not to have any around, even if she absolutely loves them,” he continues. “That weekend when I posted that blurry photo, I was in London to interview for a job at a publishing company. I was so ready to quit, pack up everything, and go . . . until the first Pink Wine Night.”
“Rob,” Nellie sighs, sitting down on a nearby bench. “Please don’t say things like that.”
“It’s true though,” he shrugs, sitting next to her. “The pro
ducers showed me the final version of the first episode. It’s so obvious, it makes me kind of glad we record all of this before it actually airs.”
“What are you saying?” Nellie asked, her brow furrowing.
“You know, you’re not the only one who keeps a diary,” Rob points out. Then he brandishes something from the inside of his jacket pocket, slipping it into Nellie’s hand. It’s a small, slim notebook, the kind with thick pages for drawing. She opens to a marked page and sees that it’s a little drawing of her, sitting on one of the chairs from the conference room, her bare feet crossed at the ankles as she laughs and holds a glass of pink wine in her hand. The date is marked as the same date as the first Pink Wine Night he joined. There are other little drawings too, quite a few of her during the wedding, and Nellie’s smile becomes wider with each one. She notices that in most of them, she still wore her old clothes, her dumpy flat shoes, and frumpy old cardigans.
“This belongs to you,” he said. “I don’t know how to make up for what I did, and I’m really sorry. I’ve always liked you, Nellie,” he explains, running a hand through his hair nervously. “And when I found your planner, it told me what I always knew: that you’re wonderful, shy, but so passionate. I thought that I just wanted to do something nice for you, as a good-bye present for a friend before I left, so I pushed you toward Jason, but that night, at your sister’s wedding . . . I couldn’t imagine you with him because I kept seeing you with me.”
She finally looks up, his sharp blue eyes meeting her wide brown ones, and she knows he wasn’t lying. She believes him. She believes him with every part of herself, because she knows it isn’t as impossible as she thought. Someone like him can be, and is, in love with someone like her. Not because he pitied her or felt sorry for her, but because he just did.
“I’ve never loved anyone like I love you,” he says, and her smile, if possible, gets wider. Nellie laughs. She leans forward to kiss him on the lips, her hands sliding around to the back of his neck.
Marry Me, Charlotte B! Page 8
