But I can’t bring myself to make the call. I’m too scared of what he’ll say.
“An open wound can’t heal,” Alyssa says, like she’s a doctor and not an accountant.
But I don’t want to heal. I don’t want to let go of this ache. My devastation is all I have left of Seth.
Thus, the script. It’s my way of keeping him with me. Immortalizing my love for the person I can’t stand to keep, or to lose.
I’m up to the break into Act III—the point in a rom-com when one of the lovers, despite having been thwarted in their desire for the other by various obstacles for the past seventy minutes, decides to try one last time.
The scene begins at a destination wedding in Bali. (It’s a movie, after all; I’ve taken some creative liberty with the set pieces.) Our lovers, Cole and Nina, run into each other during the toasts. Up until this point, despite some near misses, their old flame for each other hasn’t gotten a chance to ignite. They’ve been in other relationships, or in mourning for them, or angry at each other, or denying their attraction. But now, finally, they are both single. And tonight, they can’t take their eyes off each other.
Cole asks her to dance to “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” (In my fantasies, our movie has the music budget for Elvis songs. Also, I can dance to them without falling over.)
It’s electric. Nina melts as Cole whispers the pivotal words in her ear: I’m carrying a torch for you.
They go home together. And this time, it’s right.
She’s softer now, ready to open her heart to him. He’s out of fucks, ready to go for broke and try to make her see she’s his soul mate.
They run away for a week to a beautiful house on the coast of Maine. (Which has cliffs, and is therefore a bit more cinematic than Lake Geneva, with all due apologies to Wisconsin.)
We flash to a montage of Cole and Nina falling in love: holding hands as they walk the bluffs above the ocean, looking for whales. Having lazy sex on a rainy day while Etta James’s “I Found a Love” plays in the background. Singing along with lullabies before bed.
Cole proposes. Love might not be perfect, he says to Nina. But I know this: we’re perfect for each other. You’re my soul mate.
I think you know what she says here. The line writes itself:
I don’t believe in soul mates.
She’s too scared.
She leaves him.
She breaks his heart.
And then we switch to her POV, a week later.
Like me, she’s all alone, and she’s miserable.
Like me, she can’t stop thinking about the person she left.
Like me, she knows she’s made a mistake.
But unlike me, she’s in a rom-com.
So she decides to be brave.
When I’m done, I’m crying.
I wish I were Nina.
I wish Seth were Cole.
I wish our ending could have been like this one: poignant and redemptive and beautiful.
I have an overpowering feeling, as I type “THE END.”
I want Seth to read it.
He loves my movies—probably more than anyone else on this earth. And I know, if we were still together, he would delight in the idea of making one out of our story. He’d treasure this artifact of our love. He’d watch it over and over. Memorize all the lines. Lord it over me that he wrote the best ones himself.
My phone rings—my mom. I’m leaving in the morning for Florida. She probably wants to confirm for the third time when to pick me up from the airport.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hiiiiiii my Molly Malolly,” she trills.
She hasn’t called me that in a long time. It’s her special nickname for me, and it’s so like the goofy names Seth calls me, and I miss him so much, and I’m so disappointed in myself, and so exhausted from this last month of 4:00 a.m. wakeups, and so unmoored by what I just wrote, that I burst into big, ugly tears.
“Molly!” my mother cries. “Honey, oh no! What’s wrong, sweet girl?”
“It’s Seth,” I warble. “I really, really miss Seth.”
“Oh, sweetie,” she says. “I wish I were there to give you the biggest hug. But you’ll be here soon and I’ll take such good care of you and we’ll have a wonderful Christmas and it will all be okay.”
“I know,” I choke out. But I can’t stop crying.
“I fucked up, Mom,” I say. “I’m just like Dad.”
