To: mollymarks@netmail.co
Date: Fri, Dec 31, 2021 at 4:44 pm
Re: Re: Subject: As requested …
Molly! I am SO sorry—I mixed up two emails I had queued, and I mistakenly addressed this one to you and the one for you to Seth Rubenstein. Which means … I accidentally sent him your screenplay. I’m SO embarrassed. I’ll send him a note asking him to disregard it. It’s in Final Draft so I doubt he opened it anyway.
I’m sorry again!!! I feel terrible!!! I’m attaching the proofed version for you here.
This cannot be real.
I deserve bad things for what I’ve done, but not this.
If Seth reads that file without context, he’s going to think that I’m trying to make a movie out of what happened between us. Profiteering off his broken heart, without even asking him if it’s okay.
He’s going to hate me so much I can’t stand to think about it.
I try to tell myself that he’s the most ethical person I know, and that no matter how curious he was when he saw the attachment, he wouldn’t want to invade my privacy by opening it.
But he’s also human.
Of course he’s going to open it.
And I can’t stand it—the thought of him reliving the best parts of us, and the worst, without knowing I wrote it for him.
I think about what I yelled at my dad: Do you really want to ruin another holiday?
I can’t do that to Seth.
Fuck Chicago. Fuck what his family will think of me. Fuck the cold, grinding fear in my heart.
I run downstairs trying not to fall out of my four-inch stilettos, slip out the door past the tipsy Marks Realty clients calling my name, and steal my mother’s big, ridiculous SUV.
CHAPTER 41 Seth
I have resolved to be cheerful for New Year’s Eve.
Buoyant, even.
I will cast off my annual dread of the last night of the year and lose myself in the melee of my parents’ dearest friends and golf rivals. I love schmoozing with retirees. The mid-60s seems like a fun age.
Plus, my mom, who eschews the trappings of bourgeois elegance when she entertains, is serving all of my favorite norm-core party foods. Chicken fingers. Deviled eggs. Cocktail wieners. I adore cocktail wieners and you just don’t see them at parties anymore.
So I’m cruising through this backyard shindig with a smile on my face. I’m circulating on the pool deck, downing way too many tubular meats. I’m chatting up Sue and Harry Gottlieb about their grandkids. I’m flirting with Pris Hernandez, who I’ve had a crush on since she taught AP Spanish in high school. I’m wearing my Happy New Year’s crown. You can’t be depressed in a sparkly crown, even if it’s a little too small and bites into the sides of your head.
And you know what? My good mood is not entirely an act.
Because I’m holding Molly’s screenplay in my heart.
I’m still sad that this is how she chose to express her love for me. But my hope overpowers my pain. Maybe I’m deluding myself, casting my usual rose-colored tint on the possibility that passion and tenderness can overcome fear. After all, Molly always said that rom-coms bring the fake happy endings that don’t exist in real life.
After all, I haven’t heard a word from her in a month.
But I just can’t bring myself to believe that in an autobiographical script, her character’s grief for the loss of our relationship wasn’t based in real mourning.
And as my shaky heart reverberates with this emotion, I discuss doubles tennis with a pair of retired dentists.
“It used to be impossible to get on the courts, and now you can’t even set up a good round robin,” Dr. Steele complains.
Dr. Yun nods. “Everyone left for pickleball.”
Dr. Steele is about to say something scathing about pickleball, judging from his facial expression, but then he freezes.
He’s staring at something behind me.
He elbows Dr. Yun. “You see her?”
Dr. Yun slowly nods, as if in a trance. “Yowza.”
I glance over my shoulder to see what they’re ogling.
It’s a disco ball.
Or, at least, a woman wearing a dress the approximate size of a disco ball—the shortest, tightest, sparkliest dress I’ve ever seen outside of a Katy Perry video. Her legs are long, set off by towering silver stilettos. Her dark brown hair is down to her ass.
She’s Molly.
My Molly.
