Subscribing to the Enemy: An Enemies to Lovers YA Sweet Romance

by Jen Brady

  “You can sit on the end of the bed if you want,” I offered. It wasn’t the ideal spot to reach my desk from, but I wasn’t used to working with other people, so I only had one chair.

  She eyed the wad of clothes on the end of my bed that may or may not have included yesterday’s boxer shorts. I grabbed the whole pile and tossed it in the general direction of my hamper. Most of the items went in, but a pair of jeans fell on the floor, and the boxer shorts ended up hanging off the lid of the hamper. My initial instinct was to rush across the room and shove them out of sight, but playing it off like it didn’t bother me seemed the more respectable route to go, so I turned to her casually, as if my blue- and white-striped boxers weren’t on display and gestured to the now-empty spot.

  Joanna laughed and shook her head.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said, but she still had a smile on her face, as if she were enjoying an inside joke. It was better than her crabbing at me, so I’d take it, even if her amusement came at my expense.

  I sat down in my desk chair and pushed a pile of 3DS games aside. They nudged an old baseball trophy, which pushed a stack of D&D cards right off the desk and onto the floor.

  “Oops.”

  Her laugh was as melodious as her speaking voice, like she was still enjoying the joke. I ignored what had just happened, leaving the cards on the floor to pick up later.

  I had my documentary pulled up in preview mode. When we’d texted plans to meet, I’d encouraged her to come over and see it before we started filming so she could get a feel for my style. She’d have to recreate it when she was behind the camera to make sure the entire film looked consistent, although all I needed her to do undirected was film my interview with Mr. Matthews. The rest of the time I could guide her through exactly what I needed or, even better, convince her to let me handle the camera myself.

  I maximized the window of my editing program and fidgeted in my seat as the opening image filled the screen. I don’t show anybody unfinished films. The first time anybody sees anything I’ve created is after I’ve uploaded it to the channel—fully-finished and ready to be published. Now I had to play my work-in-progress for a virtual stranger.

  “Remember, it’s not a final cut.” Maybe if I lowered her expectations right off the bat, she’d be less harsh with the criticism I knew was coming.

  “I know.”

  “I still have a lot of work to do on it, so it’s not close to how it’ll actually look.”

  She fixed me with a stare that was part boredom, part challenge. “Just play it. I have chem homework to do tonight, and I promised my sister I’d help her fix the wiggly leg on her piano bench.”

  I rested my hand back on the mouse, but my cursor hovered over the play button. Maybe I didn’t actually have to show it to her. I could give her a transcription of the dialogue and she could read it on her own. Then, we could film the rest of what I needed, and I could get the footage from her and part ways without ever having to show her anything. It’s not like she was interested; she’d already expressed her assumption that it’d be boring.

  As I sat stewing in indecision, Joanna leaned over and covered my hand with hers. A jolt of electricity zinged through me from the back of my hand up my arm. It must have gotten all the way to my chest because my heart started hammering—my body rebelling at the thought of sharing my work-in-progress, I guess.

  She pressed down on the left mouse button, clicking twice, and the film started loading. As it went through its process, she rummaged around in her backpack and pulled out an apple. Apparently, she’d brought movie snacks. She held it up, her eyes questioning.

  “You don’t mind, do you?”

  I would have gone with candy or popcorn, but to each his own.

  “No. Go ahead.”

  She bit into the apple and turned her attention to the computer screen. I cringed as I appeared on-screen in front of the mall’s main entrance. I’d forgotten how dorky I looked in the intro. It was on my list of things to fix, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

  “We can skip this part,” I said, reaching for the mouse.

  She swatted my hand away and gave me a sneaky smile. “Now I really want to see this part,” she said, then bit into the apple with a loud crunch.

  “Hi,” the me on-screen said. “I’m Rick Bhaer from Bhaerly Believable, and today you’ll get to meet three unsung heroes of the Concord Crossings mall.”

  “It’s not the best start,” I said.

  “Well, you should probably not look and sound like you’re going to a funeral.”

  “I don’t!”

  “Oh no?” She took another, bigger bite of her apple while dragging the slider at the bottom of the video back.

  I watched as I delivered my line again. I did look awfully stiff and dour in my dark suitcoat. But I’d wanted to look professional.

  Crunch.

  I winced. Her crunching was like nails on a chalkboard—only with the added bonus of spit. I could practically hear the juice spraying.

  I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. She was leaning forward, scrutinizing the me on the screen and mowing down that apple. Sharing my work-in-progress was so much harder than I thought it’d be, which was saying a lot because I’d dreaded it immensely. The way her eyes bored into the screen made me feel vulnerable. This was way worse than even standing naked in front of someone. That was just your outer appearance; my film was everything I’d poured out from my heart and soul.

  Her nose wrinkled and her expression soured, as if she didn’t like what she was seeing. My eyes snapped back to the screen. It was the opening montage of scenes from the mall. The view went from the second-floor entrance down the escalator, then rolled smoothly past some of the ground floor storefronts as classical music played in the background. It was one of the best parts of the film, so her puckered face couldn’t be about that. Maybe her apple was a Granny Smith. It was green, after all.

  “Cool, huh?” I asked about my camera-work. I’d worn Rollerblades to get the panning as smooth as possible, which wasn’t such a great idea on the escalator and got me ordered to leave by a crabby mall cop but really captured the mood I’d wanted for the scene.

  “Um . . .” She met my eyes with an apologetic look this time. “It’s kind of slow.”

  I turned back as the camera shifted and headed toward the center of the mall. The music played in the background, nice and even, as I panned to the fountain and clock. It wasn’t slow. It was a creative way to establish the setting. I didn’t want to race around and make viewers’ stomachs churn with shoddy, bumpy camera work.

  Another crunch startled me as the montage faded into a clip of Mr. Barnes talking about being the head custodian. About half of her apple was gone, so I just had to endure the grating sensation her crunching gave me for a few more minutes.

  The interview got going, and I watched, trying to ignore her smacking noises. It moved from Mr. Barnes to me asking a group of teenagers what they loved best about Concord Crossings. Then it went back to Mr. Barnes as I asked him to speak about the working relationship he had with Mrs. Paulson, the decorator. I mouthed along, knowing by heart every word that was about to come out of his mouth from all the times I’d listened to his interview.

  After a few minutes, I realized I’d been engrossed in my own movie. I snuck a peek at Joanna, hoping for a better reaction this time.

  Her apple was down to almost-core, and she was scrolling through something on her phone.

  “Uh . . . are you watching?”

  “Mmm hmm,” she said absentmindedly.

  “Then why are you staring at your phone?”

  Her eyes shot up, looking slightly guilty. “Oops. Yeah, sorry. It’s just . . .” She set her apple core on the edge of my desk. Just what I needed. Food waste on my workspace. I tried to ignore it as, from my computer, Mrs. Paulson spoke animatedly about the challenges of using thousands of Christmas lights safely.

  “Just what?” I pressed.

/>   “Just . . . sort of . . . boring.”

  Boring? Boring? It was no “We Put 5000 Bath Bombs in My Grandpa’s Pool,” but boring? My stomach hardened. She was hardly qualified to judge other people’s films.

  “You weren’t even watching it,” I pointed out.

  “Because it’s boring.” I opened my mouth to let out a huff, but before I could protest, she held up a hand. “Look, Rick, I know you probably love it, but you’re not deciding who wins the contest. Vance Sanders is. Or at least his assistants are or whoever. And trust me. This—” She jerked her thumb toward the screen, where Mrs. Paulson was now telling the viewers about hypoallergenic alternatives to using straw for fall décor. “—is not interesting.”

  “What? It’s plenty interesting. Just because it’s not the pointless, slapstick garbage you film doesn’t make it boring.”

  “Slapstick? You think Ted and I made a slapstick movie?”

  I scrubbed my hand across my face. “Based on the junk you post on YouTube? Yeah.”

  Her pink cheeks flared a deeper crimson as she popped to her feet. “We have a million-plus subscribers who evidently like our junk.”

  “There’s no accounting for taste.”

  I knew I shouldn’t have fallen for her baiting, but really, how could that many people subscribe to dumb videos about toilet-papering trees and tricking little kids into sitting on whoopie cushions when there were so many better things out there to watch?

  “You’re impossible,” she muttered.

  I forced my gritted teeth apart, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. We needed to reset if we were going to get anything done. “Okay,” I asked as pleasantly as I could, “what was your movie about then?”

  She turned to me and fixed me with a sassy glare. “None of your business.”

  I sat down in my chair. “Fine.”

  She looked as if she were ready to grab her backpack and take off. For a handful of heartbeats, I wondered if I’d pushed her too far. Then she took a deep breath and sat on the end of my bed again.

  “You’re too close to the project,” she said, all business again. “It’s happened to me before. I’m not trying to be mean, but if my name’s going to be attached to this, I don’t want it to suck.”

  Like I wanted her name attached to it in the first place. There was no way I would let her turn my documentary into the nonsense she and Laurence churned out.

  “If you’re such a good judge of what’s boring and what’s not, what was your movie about?”

  The clouds came back to her gray eyes. Instantly, I felt like a jerk for bringing her lost work up again, and I had the urge to reach out and comfort her again. This time, I managed to restrain myself without any awkward moves.

  “I know you said it’s none of my business, but I’m honestly interested.”

  “It was an epic fantasy.”

  “Oh, so like dragons?”

  Her eyes flashed. “Not really. You wouldn’t understand. Let’s just finish watching this. I need to get going.”

  We watched, and she didn’t check her phone again, but she also didn’t laugh at any of the amusing bits or look very interested.

  When the credits rolled, she nodded once and stood up. “Okay. I have some ideas. Maybe we can talk about them next time we get together.”

  She had ideas? For my film? Ideas that would make it silly and unprofessional, no doubt. I’d agreed to give her credit in the contest for helping me, but if she thought she was going to turn my serious journalism into a stupid JoJo+Teddy video, she had another thing coming.

  “Also, could we maybe work at my house next time?” She glanced around my room and grimaced. I probably should have been more embarrassed at her thinly veiled disgust than I was, but I was too irked by the sting of her criticism to care what she thought about any other part of me.

  “Sorry,” I said with a shrug. “My files are on my desktop, which I can’t lug all over the place.”

  Her face fell as she gave my room another once-over. “You could upload it to Wrap Up Pro.”

  I let out a sharp laugh. “No way I can afford that.”

  “It’s not that expensive,” she said. Yeah, easy for her to say. She didn’t have a camera that needed replacing. She lived in a ritzy neighborhood if Laurence’s house, where they often filmed, was any indication. “There’s also the free version.”

  “Which I’m sure has tons of bells and whistles,” I said sarcastically.

  “The free version does kind of suck,” she admitted.

  “So we’ll meet back here tomorrow then?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  I watched as she turned and walked to the door, her pretty hair swishing behind her. She didn’t bolt down the stairs and out of my house like I’d expected. Instead, she lingered in the doorway, then slowly turned. Her eyebrows knit together, a contemplative look crossing her face.

  “There’s another option.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m listening.”

  She leaned over and grabbed a pen and piece of scrap paper off my desk and started scribbling. Then she held the paper out. I took it. Scrawled in messy handwriting were two lines:

  JoJoTeddyBFF!72

  Mya666$ucks666

  “It’s our user name and password for Wrap Up Pro. You can upload your files to our account. That way we can work on it anywhere and aren’t stuck to one, um—” She glanced hesitantly around my room again. “—location.”

  No way. I handed the paper back to her, shaking my head.

  “I can’t accept that. It’s your account.”

  “It’s fine. There’s a great transition feature on it that will save you a ton of time. Besides, we’re not using it at the moment. Might as well get Ted’s money’s worth.”

  “What plan is it?”

  “I’m not sure. Ted signed up for it, so you’d have to ask him. I don’t think it’s the basic one. The second tier one, I think? There are like four or five tiers.”

  It was tempting. I’d heard that Wrap Up Pro was the new gold standard for digital film editing, created by Vance Sanders himself. But if I uploaded my files, Joanna and Laurence would have full access to them. They could do whatever they wanted with the pieces of my project or the entire project itself. Mentioning that seemed rude, though, after her offer, so I voiced my second concern.

  “Seems kind of risky, given what happened to your files. I wouldn’t want to lose everything.”

  I didn’t add the part that I’d make sure to upload everything to my own computer before transferring it to the online editor. That felt like pouring salt into her wounds, and I didn’t want to be that guy.

  “It’s a reliable program as long as you don’t have a bratty little sister who would go in and delete everything. Plus, we changed the password, and I’m careful to log out every time I use it now.” She scowled. “Didn’t think I had to take precautions around my own family.”

  Wow, so her sister had been responsible for the loss. That had to sting. My older sister might be my parents’ perfect favorite with impossible-to-live-up-to ambitions like graduating from law school, but she’d never purposely hurt me that way.

  I didn’t know what to say to that so I held up the paper Joanna had handed me and pretended to contemplate it.

  “Maybe I’ll check it out,” I lied.

  The corners of her mouth turned up in a miniscule smile. “Okay. Text me your plan for filming and we’ll work out a schedule.”

  And before I could offer to show her out, she was gone. I rushed to the window and watched her leave, just as I’d watched her arrive. I’d seen nothing of the goofy girl who played pranks on her YouTube channel. She’d been so serious, and the vibrance in her smile hadn’t appeared once. It was like she was a different person from the one she showed the world online.

  11

  JOANNA

  I SWUNG BY THE KINGS’ to pick up Megan on my way home from Rick’s. She chattered on about how cute Hattie King looked in the new PJ
s she’d gotten for Christmas. I half-listened, but I was drained. Working with Rick was exhausting. He was so serious and intense. And he took every tiny comment I made personally. I was just trying to help his documentary not suck so much.

  I pulled into the driveway and hit the garage door opener. We both got out of the car as Ted’s car pulled up to the curb and Mya got out. She was laughing as she leaned in and grabbed the pink drawstring bag she always brought to cheerleading practice. His deeper laugh rang out with hers.

  My stomach clenched. “That traitor.”

  “Who, Ted?” Megan asked. “What’d he do this time?”

  I flung my arm out in the direction of Princess Mya, who shut the car door and gave him a little wave.

  I hadn’t spoken to her since she’d pitched our flash drive in the river. I guess that’s not completely true. I did speak to her. Once. She’d come into my room without knocking and asked to borrow my fine-point Sharpie set for some lame drawing she was doing, and I’d said, “Bug off.” But that was it.

  She’d destroyed our movie, put my chances of going to film school in jeopardy, and forced me to get stuck working on Rick’s boring documentary.

  And Ted was back to carting her royal butt all over Concord like nothing had happened. He should have let her walk home in the cold. By giving in, he was teaching her that she could be a selfish brat and people would still cater to her every whim.

  Mya started up the walk with a bounce in her step and a smile on her face. Her pretty, perfect face. No dark circles under her eyes. She wasn’t losing any sleep over what she’d done. I turned and strode out of the garage, heading toward Ted’s house before Mya could get close enough to ask if she could borrow something else.

  “Hey, how was practice?” Megan asked behind me, and Mya started going on about something pointless. I ignored her and picked up the pace so I could duck under Ted’s garage door before he closed it.

  “Hey!” he said when he turned and found me in front of him. A smile spread across his face. “How was the movie-making session?”