Backstage Romance: An Austen-Inspired Romantic Comedy Box Set by Gigi Blume (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📕

in for a forceful kiss. She melted in his arms, and they fell to the floor. Fade to black. Then a commercial for Tide filled the screen. That was my cue to open the blinds and force Jane to return to the human race. Preferably the English-speaking variety. But when I reached for the remote, she clawed it close to her chest and hissed.

“Give me the remote, Jane,” I warned.

“Go away.”

“I live here.”

She pouted in silence.

“I paid for half of that TV.”

Oh yes. I went there.

She shifted on the couch, giving me more of her back.

“Okay,” I said, stomping towards our flat screen Visio. “You asked for it.”

It was time for some tough love. I reached behind the TV, sifting through the tangle of cables to where I could disconnect them randomly. I didn’t know a thing about how to plug them back in, and neither did Jane. It was a sabotage I was willing to make even though it meant I’d miss the next few episodes of Outlander.

“No!” she cried in panic, almost flying off the couch. “Don’t do it.”

I turned slowly to her with my hand extended, bidding her to give me the remote like in a hostage situation.

“Give me the remote.”

Her fingers were white around the little device, clinging onto it as a lifeline. I’d never seen her so wild looking. Her face was so pale, it was almost translucent, and there were bits of Cap'n Crunch in her disheveled hair. Geez, whatever Bing did to her, he would pay big time—as soon as I got the current situation under control. Lydia stood to the side of the couch with her knees bent and her arms extended… ready for what? To catch Jane in case she flew in her direction like a fly ball?

“Give me the remote, Jane,” I warned again. I felt like I was talking Meg Giry down off the Coney Island Pier. (#spoilers)

Give me the hurt and the pain and the remote, Jane.

She shook her head in tiny protests, but I could tell her resolve was crumbling. The commercials were almost over, and I had to act fast. With careful steps, I inched closer to Jane, my palm outstretched in gentle supplication. I was moments from my target when Lydia reached for the spray bottle we used to mist the plants and squirted Jane in the ear, momentarily distracting her. I grabbed the remote, and Jane dissolved into a heap on the floor, bellowing like a tired toddler. I shut off the TV and flew to her side, rubbing her back and pulling her sticky hair from her face. Lydia joined us on the floor, and we group-hugged in a mess of wet tears, sweaty pajamas, and sticky Cap'n Crunch hair for a full ten minutes.

At length, Jane allowed us to take her into the kitchen for a paper towel, which she wiped her face and blew her nose with it as she sat at the table. I gave her a minute before speaking, exchanging the dirty paper towels in her hand for clean ones. Toilet paper would have been better, but the bathroom was too far. I didn’t want to lose my patient.

“Are you ready to tell me what happened?” I asked.

“Did he cheat on you?” Lydia growled. Clearly, she was hungry for blood. But Jane shook her beautiful, blonde head with a sniffle. Bing wasn’t the cheating type.

“Did he break up with you?” I gently bid. She just shrugged.

“Does he have herpes?” chirped Lydia. I furrowed my brow at her incredulously, but Jane released a minuscule laugh through the tears, a small breakthrough in her woe.

“No,” she said softly.

“Tell us what happened,” I said, still stroking her back. My other hand labored to shove the remote in my back pocket undetected. We didn’t want any relapses here.

“I’ll break his pate across,” warned Lydia. Ah, how comforting a Shakespearean threat is when one is brokenhearted.

“I don’t know what happened,” Jane feebly admitted. “He won’t talk to me.”

“The fiend!”

“Thank you, Lydia,” I said, slicing her a pointed stare. “You can sheath your rapier.”

And turning back to Jane, I whispered, “Tell it to us from the beginning.”

Bing had gone with Will to New York for Thanksgiving. When his phone went straight to voicemail, Jane assumed he’d run out of battery or forgot to turn it back on after his flight. But the next day, it rang and rang before her call was redirected to a new, more formal greeting for his outgoing message. She knew he had heard her messages if not seen her texts. She didn’t hear from him all weekend. No calls, no texts. Nothing.

“I tried to ignore my suspicions,” she said quietly. “He was in New York, having fun. He didn’t need to check in with me.”

I wanted to tell her that a man in love like Bing was with her wouldn’t let a day go by without calling. It didn’t make sense. Bing couldn’t keep his hands off her before he left California. But I kept my mouth shut and let her finish her story.

Then she told us that his social media was filled with photos of him all over New York with a beautiful girl I could only assume was Georgia Darcy. She was fresh faced with a brilliant smile—her shoulder-length, honey hair blowing in the wind in front of Rockefeller Center, on the Empire State Building, in Central Park—and Bing posed with her like a silly tourist with rosy cheeks and bundled in scarves against the autumn chill.

But he wasn’t a cheater. Jane was sure of that. Still…

“I wasn’t jealous,” she assured us. I believed her. She wasn’t the jealous type. “But on Monday, Caroline took me aside and told me Bing was going out with Will’s sister.”

Why that little busybody.

“I don’t buy that for one second,” I exclaimed. “Caroline just likes to stick her fake nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“I’ll steal his phone,” offered Lydia. “I can check his call history to see if he’s been calling her