I grab my bags from the back and walk away. I glance over my shoulder when I reach the doors to the terminal.
Her car is already gone.
PART EIGHT
December 2021
CHAPTER 38 Molly
I’ve always considered writing an act of commerce. I don’t journal. I don’t pour my soul into autobiographical novels or write personal essays processing my life through the lens of, like, butterfly migrations or ghost towns in Texas. I write bullshit screenplays for money. That’s it.
It is therefore odd that at this moment, when I’ve been fired from my job and broken up with my boyfriend and have nothing but time to work on my flailing career, my overwhelming impulse is to write something that isn’t for sale.
It’s a speculative fantasy occurring in a world uncannily like our own. It’s called Better Luck Next Time.
You’ll recognize the story. Two exes, a divorce attorney who’s a hopeless romantic and a rom-com writer who doesn’t believe in romance, make a bet at their high school reunion: whoever can more accurately predict the outcome of five relationships before their twentieth reunion must admit that the other is right about soul mates.
It might be the most marketable thing I’ve ever written—that elusive mainstream script my agent has been harassing me to produce for years. But I haven’t sent it to my agent.
I’m writing it for myself.
In a rom-com, this would be the black moment beat, where I’m forced to look inside myself to understand my failings so I can grow into the partner Seth deserves.
But I don’t think that’s what this is. Understanding my failings was never the problem.
It’s the growth I can’t hack.
I panicked when Seth proposed, predictably. It was shortsighted, predictably. Had it not been for the shock of Dezzie’s divorce and the sting of my father’s indifference, maybe I would have said yes.
But it wouldn’t have mattered.
Saying yes would not have changed the fact that there’s a terror of love buried inside me like a land mine, and it would have erupted eventually. The closer you get to the blast radius, the more inevitable it is that you’ll be hit by shrapnel. And Seth’s heart was so close that sometimes I still imagine it beating beside me. That low, safe, soft thrum.
Maybe it was a blessing that it only took me five months to destroy us. Had our relationship gone on any longer, would the fallout even be bearable? Because, as it is, it’s a wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-can’t-breathe kind of loss. A cry-in-the-shower, then sob-in-the-car, then weep-at-the-grocery-store heartache that seems to get worse every day. I am mourning Seth Rubenstein. And I’m grieving the woman who, for a few months, thought she’d healed enough to trust herself with him.
And so as a gift to myself, I’m writing that woman’s story. The happy ending I wish I could have had in real life.
A text rolls in, and as I do every time my phone buzzes, I hope it’s Seth, then realize it’s not going to be, then hate myself for continuing to have this impulse, then don’t want to look at the message at all. Were it not for my desire to be there for Dezzie, I might just silence my phone for good.
It’s from Alyssa.
Alyssa: Daily check in
This is her new ritual to reassure herself that I’m still alive.
Molly: Fine. Breathing. Go about your day
Alyssa: Report stats
I obediently tap out the proof that I’m doing the basics of functioning.
Molly: Slept 5 hours
Molly: Ate food
Molly: Put on sunscreen, so extra credit
Alyssa: 5 hours is not enough sleep!
Alyssa: What food?
Molly: Froot loops
Alyssa: Doesn’t count. At least make TS!!
(She means The Salad.)
Molly: Stop worrying I’m fine
Alyssa: You’re not. CALL SETH
Not a day has gone by when she hasn’t demanded I call him, in all caps.
“You’ll feel better if you clear the air,” she tells me. “You guys loved each other too much to let it end like this.”
“Loved” is inaccurate phrasing. What I feel for Seth could never be in past tense.
And I know Alyssa is right. I owe him more than silence.
