How to End a Love Story(103)
“It’s easier to track all the chapters when I’m drafting a novel,” she’d said, and shown him the spine of a story in the left-hand panel. “I’ve been keeping a separate file for the show—I create a new ‘chapter’ for every day’s notes.” It had seemed like a genius way to organize his thoughts without cluttering up his hard drive, and Grant had downloaded it immediately.
He feels a weird itch to delete the program from his laptop now.
Grant loosens his tie and stares at his shoes across the room. Get up and put them on, he tries to mentally command himself.
Instead, his brain decides to play its new favorite game—what scene comes next?
Grant tries to redirect his thoughts, but the movie starts anyway—
INT. SOME FANCY FUCKING VENUE – NIGHT
Grant enters. He sees Helen right away. She sees him too.
GRANT
Helen. I know what you said in that hospital, and I know you ignored my call that day on the train, and I know I haven’t heard a goddamn word from you since, but . . . I’d let you break my heart a thousand more times in exchange for just one more night.
Helen reaches out and places a hand on Grant’s heart. She smiles at him sadly. He covers her hand with his.
A beat. She smiles, he frowns, and she pushes her hand farther, farther, until there’s a POP and a CRUNCH and her hand is in his fucking chest.
HELEN
Does this hurt? Sorry.
Helen pulls out Grant’s bleeding, still-beating heart with a triumphant smile. She holds it between them, then spikes it on the ground.
Grant snorts. He sips his scotch and mentally switches to the next film reel.
INT. / EXT. GRANT’S HOUSE – NIGHT
The doorbell rings. Grant opens the door. It’s Helen. They stare at each other. Words aren’t necessary.
They move toward each other at the same time—lips meeting, hands searching, bodies crashing. He pulls her into his house and out of her clothes.
The rest of this movie goes full NC-17.
Grant glances at the door stupidly, hopefully. Nothing.
He glances at the clock. It’s a quarter past nine p.m.
The screening’s over. They’re probably at the after-party by now.
His phone dings and his heart leaps and it’s the old writers room group chat, resurrected by photos of Owen, shirtless, wearing sunglasses and a shit-eating grin. Happy premiere night from Bali xx, the text reads.
Grant thinks about chucking his phone off a cliff. But that would require getting up and walking out the door.
He tries one last scenario—
INT. GRANT’S OFFICE – NIGHT
Grant sits at his desk, replaying every memory he’s ever had of Helen, drinking away the taste of her.
He texts the group chat—looks like a hell of a party, sorry to miss it!!!
He looks up the hotel where they’re hosting the premiere. He sends her roses, without a note.
Grant pours himself another drink. He gets mind-numbingly drunk alone. Tomorrow, he will download Hinge and swipe until he fucking feels something.
He decides to go with the last one, in the end.
Wednesday, August 24, 9:30 p.m.
looks like a hell of a party, sorry to miss it!!!
Helen stares at the text in the old group chat—the first contact of any kind from Grant since that missed call in the New York Public Library—and an awful, drowning sensation floods her chest, overflowing from that one locked room of unwanted memories and useless emotions. She looks around at the loud, glamorous party that’s celebrating the culmination of so many years of hard work and mind over matter and productive uses of personal pain.
They’re in a ballroom that’s hosted nearly a century’s worth of glittering, glamorous parties, and the vintage dress she’s wearing is a constricting, beautiful thing made from layers of cinched black tulle and tiny hand-sewn crystals. It felt perfect when she put it on hours ago, and it feels utterly pointless now.
The room is decked in a fortune of florals and ice sculptures and she has the strangest thought just then, that they’re all dancing on a sinking ship and she’s the only one who knows. A waiter passes by with a platter of oysters, and the disco ball above the dance floor casts tiny, rippling reflections of the blue party lights. Helen realizes with sudden dread, maybe it’s too late and we’ve already sunk.
What else did you expect?
She searches for a way out of this mental spiral and discovers instead a small, secret compartment of hope she must have deliberately ignored these last four months—some tiny part of her that must have whispered this whole time, maybe just seeing him again will fix everything.
She hates herself for her own inconsistency. Foolish, stupid Helen, she admonishes herself. Haven’t you already filled your quota of pointless regret?
Across the dance floor, the lead actors are having a dance-off with Suraya, Tom, and Nicole, while Eve and the rest of the cast hold up comically large scorecards from the sidelines. The blue-purple party lights cast an otherworldly glow on the bizarre scene, and Helen thinks she could probably go over there and smile and laugh and dance and ignore this numbing dead feeling growing inside her for another fifteen or twenty minutes.