We only skimmed through the video. It was blowing up online, so we couldn’t not watch it a bit, but it was . . . well, safe to say, it was a bit weird to watch such a long, rambling proposal when Zach and I were on the verge of maybe breaking up.
“That’s Dear Charlotte,” he tells me, in pure, utter delight, and I whisper, “Oh my God,” and we lean over the balcony together to watch.
Charlotte is yelling up, “Did you mean it? All those things you said in your video? Is that really how you feel about me?”
It’s definitely weird to have what might just be one of the most beautiful, strangest proposals happening just a few stories below us when Zach and I are still trying to work out if we actually want to get married and want the same things from our life, but right there, in that moment, it doesn’t matter.
All I know is that this is exactly the sort of thing I will miss sharing with him.
apartment #14 – imogen
Chapter Thirty-seven
The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and I do not want to be anywhere else.
I snuggle against the pillows and sheets, wriggling a little closer into Nate’s body. His skin is smooth and warm. I hook one leg over his, my foot skimming up and down his shin.
Nate, however, seems much more interested in the spreadsheet open on his laptop screen, where he has been working out a budget for me for the last half hour. I know I thought he was a stick in the mud, but I’m in no position to question his dedication to completing a project now that he’s helping me out.
“How much did you say you spend each month on nights out?”
“Maybe like five hundred pounds?”
He whistles, long and low.
“What? I don’t think that’s so bad. Few rounds of drinks at the pub, few cocktails at a bar . . . If I go for a meal with anybody . . . Plus taxis there and back, sometimes. Entry fees at a club, sometimes.
There’s usually a bachelorette party or something for somebody too.
Bachelorettes are expensive.”
“Wedding season,” he says, with sympathy, nodding. “I had that start last year. You know I spent, like, two grand just on presents and hotels and stuff?”
“The trick is to not book the hotel, and then have someone take pity on you at the end of the night and let you kip on their floor.
Saves you a lot of money, believe me.”
“Don’t people get pissed off with you?”
“Not if you buy them enough drinks. Which is still cheaper than the cost of a bed-and-breakfast in whatever rural village they’ve decided to get married in.”
Nate laughs. “Okay. Five hundred pounds. Any chance you could make that more like two hundred?”
I almost have a heart attack at the prospect of all those nights I’d have to cut short, or even miss out on entirely.
But, I guess, I would like to pay off my overdraft. And maybe my credit cards.
“Fine,” I tell him, “but only because you’re so dang cute, Honeypot.”
I reach up to cup his cheek in my hand, his stubble tickling my palm, and I wriggle up the bed so I’m close enough to be able to kiss him. I notice his lips start to curve up into a smile before my eyes slide shut, and my heart does a little skip when he sucks lightly on my bottom lip and deepens the kiss.
We’re still kissing when there’s some commotion outside, a girl yelling, “Mad Man Maddox, get your cute butt out here!”
I don’t realize what the noise is all about at first, but Nate pulls away from me and sits bolt upright, recognizing the name immediately—and I guess, the voice too.
“Oh my God,” he tells me, eyes blown wide. “That’s Charlotte.”
“Wait—wait, Charlotte like from the video?”
He nods, scrambling out of the bed to peer out of the window, trying to see. Earlier this morning he’d been browsing YouTube on his iPad when I woke up, watching a video from some guy he follows called Ethan. It was a really dorky, really sweet proposal to his girlfriend. I’m not totally sure he meant to upload it. When I’d opened my own phone my friend Jaz had shared it in the group chat. It was basically viral.
“Hang on,” I bark at Nate. “You’re telling me that vlogger lives in your building?”
“Yeah,” he says, still peering out of the window, not getting the big deal. “Ethan. He’s the guy I went to borrow clothes from, for you, on Monday.”
“YOU’RE TELLING ME I BORROWED CHARLOTTE OF DEAR CHARLOTTE’S LEGGINGS?” I shriek, my voice about three octaves higher than normal.
He winces, and there’s more shouting outside. A guy has joined in now. Ethan, I’m guessing.
And, oh my God, he’s here, and she’s here, and there is a viral moment happening right outside, right now, and I have to know if she says yes.
I fall over myself grabbing my underwear from by the bedroom door. The Ramones shirt is in the laundry basket but it’s either that or the duvet right now, so I grab it and wrestle my arms through, bumping into the wall as I run out of the bedroom and throw open the balcony doors.
I lean over and there’s a guy hanging over the railing of the balcony directly below Nate’s apartment, and a girl standing beneath that. I was picturing someone blond and glamorous and tall and curvy, with a full face of makeup. I was picturing a literal celebrity, I realize now. But Charlotte is just . . . normal. She’s plump and has a wavy ginger mane of chin-length hair and is currently yelling at Walter White, the caretaker who is not a serial killer. We think.
(Although, actually thinking about it, he probably does have enough cleaning products to dissolve a body in his bathtub if he wanted to.) Nate joins me on the balcony, wearing a burgundy dressing gown.
His arm wraps around my waist, hand curling around the railing on my other side. It’s oddly intimate, but I kind of like it.
“This is essential, you miserable bum!” Charlotte is yelling at my buddy Walt, but it’s promptly followed by, “Sorry, Mr. Harris, I didn’t mean to call you a bum, or miserable. I promise I’ll go in a minute, I know I can’t stay.”
Someone from an apartment above yells down, “What’s going on?
What’s the shouting?”
Charlotte cups her hands around her mouth, craning her head back to shout a few floors farther up, “Do you mind? My boyfriend kind of just proposed to me online and I’m locked out of the building!”
Oh my God, she’s talking to us. We’re a live audience and this is not a show, and I forget any sense of public decency or decorum I might have otherwise had to scream down, “Oh my God, it’s Dear Charlotte!
Dear Charlotte, I’ve been wearing your clothes! You’re famous!”
She laughs at that, and other apartments start pitching in, too, shouting down. Nate chuckles near my ear and says quietly, “Oh man. Ethan’s going to be dying of embarrassment right now.”
I don’t get why, if he’s the kind of guy with a decent following online he seems to be, but I take Nate’s word for it. I give him a quick kiss before turning to watch the show unfold, and Nate tucks me a little tighter into his body, chin tucking over my shoulder as he watches too.
apartment #22 – olivia
Chapter Thirty-eight