How to End a Love Story(2)

Two





Thirteen Years Later



When the phone rings on Tuesday morning, Helen already knows it’s going to be good news. Her literary agent Chelsea Pierce sends bad news in sympathetic couplets over email—they didn’t go for it; fuck ’em—but she picks up the phone for good news.

“I hope you hate your apartment because you’re going to Hollywood!”

Helen laughs and immediately feels a rush of cautious energy flood her. Don’t get too excited, the paperwork isn’t signed, everything could still fall apart.

She’s grown superstitious. When she published the first book in what would become the Ivy Papers series, she told herself, Don’t get ahead of yourself, people might hate it, or worse, maybe no one will even read it. When it became a bestseller and the New York Times put her on a list of voices to watch in the young adult space, she admonished herself, It doesn’t really matter, the work is still the same as it was before it made the list, and what if they don’t like the second book?

Her entire career so far could be linked from cautious mental disclaimer to disclaimer, right up to the announcement that some fancy Hollywood people are turning her books about moody prep-school teens keeping dark, academic secrets into a soapier, sexier TV show.

“What do you do about imposter syndrome?” she once asked a much more successful, senior author over a celebratory brunch.

“Well, at a certain point, it becomes unseemly,” he told her.

Six weeks later, as she opens the door to her new waterfront condo (all living expenses during prep and production paid for by the studio, plus per diem) across from the Santa Monica Pier—Helen thinks, perhaps, she’s reached a certain point.

The place comes furnished in expensive beiges and smells like a trendy hotel. Late-September sunshine filters through the floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto her private balcony, and it makes Helen wonder if she could become a totally different person here, the kind with morning routines and inner peace. There’s a shared common area on the top floor she can reserve for parties (Helen doesn’t know enough people in this city to throw a party, but she nods politely at the building manager anyway) and her kitchen window looks out onto the patio of her temporary neighbor, Academy Award–winner Frances McDormand.

“How very LA,” her East Coast friends say when she tells them.

“Who?” says her mom during their first bicoastal FaceTime.

“Frances McDormand, Mom,” Helen sighs as she unpacks the groceries. “She’s, like, an actress, you would know her. She’s in . . .”

Helen pauses, as her mind suddenly erases the entirety of Frances McDormand’s illustrious, award-winning career from existence. She was in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, but Mom hasn’t seen that.

“I think she played the Queen in something. Oh, and she’s the mom in Moonrise Kingdom!”

“I don’t know her,” Mom says. “Never mind. What are you making for dinner?”

Helen dutifully recites her dinner menu—just something easy, I still have to get more pots and pans, yes I’ll add something green, thanks, Mom—and is treated to another forty minutes of hand-wringing over the history of earthquakes in LA County.

“If the ground opens up, I’ll jump right in so it’ll be quick and painless,” Helen says as she finishes off her tomato and egg rice bowl. “Don’t worry so much. Love you, bye!”

She searches “moving into a new apartment in LA” on Spotify and puts on someone else’s well-curated playlist over the state-of-the-art Bluetooth speaker system.

Helen has never been cool enough to be “a music person.” She prefers leaving that up to strangers on the internet who’ve experienced the same specific soundtrack-worthy moments in life—“cozy October morning in the kitchen” or “driving toward my uncertain future”—and hoping they’ll tell her exactly what songs would bring those feelings out best, like a purple scarf for green eyes.

As Stevie Nicks croons about time making her bolder and children getting older, Helen hangs her clothes up in ascending length in the walk-in closet and thinks about the times when life files itself neatly into chapters.

Travel is a way of turning the page, Helen reminds herself, reciting her therapist’s counsel. Maybe you’ll finally be able to write something new.

Helen mentally strikes out that maybe with savage determination.

She hopes this chapter is a short, productive one.



When the phone rings on Wednesday, Grant already knows it’s going to be a shit conversation.

“Just take the meeting,” his TV agent Fern wheedles. “What’s the harm in taking a meeting?”

“I didn’t like the book,” he says, not untruthfully.

Prep-school teens and their sex lives aren’t exactly his area, and Grant was hoping to break this unemployment streak with something more exciting, like a feature (which he’s going to finish as soon as he has the time) or at least a development deal somewhere (it’s not his fault he missed pilot season because his mom hired some shady contractors who did such a bad job he had to spend the entire summer back in New Jersey undoing and redoing her floors).

“So you didn’t respond to the material—that’s nothing we haven’t gotten over before,” Fern says. “If anything, it means you’re a better candidate than some loser who’s obsessed with the books. You can see its flaws, you know how to fix it, blah, blah—”