How to End a Love Story(31)

She looks down then, and it occurs to Grant that he doesn’t know much about Helen’s personal life. He’s never heard her mention anyone waiting for her back home.

“No current prospects?”

“No,” she says, and he can’t tell if she feels any type of way about that.

“What about Ian Rhymer?” he asks. “I hear he’s still kicking around Dunollie.”

Helen laughs. “I know, I usually stop by his pizzeria when I’m in town. But he got a Mohawk in senior year and I never really got over that.”

“So shallow,” Grant grins.

“What about you?” she eyes him as he finishes off his burger. “Do you ever hit up any of your old flames when you’re back home?”

He looks away, and she hits his arm with delighted shock. “You do! You have a hometown sex friend!”

“Let’s talk about something else,” he says. “What are you doing for Christmas?”

Helen snickers. “I bet I can guess who it is. Brittany Clark. No, wait, Desiree Evans.”

“Desiree got married last year,” he says evenly. “I sent her a nice card and money for her honeymoon fund.”

“Who was that other girl, the one you were with senior year for a hot second, the one with the bangs—”

“Lauren,” he says quietly. “Lauren DiSantos.”

“Right, her,” Helen says. “I always forget about her because she wasn’t a cheerleader. It’s her, isn’t it?”

It feels weird to talk about Lauren and Dunollie, New Jersey, when he’s still on California soil. He feels slightly itchy thinking about it, like he’s a bad person and he’s not sure who he’s disappointing here. Lauren, maybe, though he doesn’t think she’d mind being discussed outside of New Jersey. Maybe he’s just disappointing himself.

“I haven’t seen her in a while,” he says truthfully.

“But you’ll see her this trip?”

He shrugs a shoulder noncommittally.

“How did it start?” Helen asks.

“I don’t know. I was home for winter break in college and she didn’t mind the company,” he says. “Why are you so curious?”

“It’s kind of romantic, in a fucked-up way,” Helen says. “You’re the hometown boy who made it big, she’s your high school sweetheart who waits for you to come home every Christmas, hoping you’ll stay for good this time.”

“Stop projecting,” he says, feeling a twinge of annoyance. Lauren isn’t waiting and hoping for him; they both know what it is.

“She doesn’t ask too many questions and you like that, but that’s just because she googles you the rest of the year.”

“Stop,” he says. “Lauren’s a real person, not one of your characters we’re gonna punch up.”

Helen looks stricken, and he wants to kick himself for causing that wounded look in her eyes.

“Sorry,” she says. “You’re right, it’s none of my business.”

“It’s fine,” he says, and looks away.

“I have a hard time with people from high school,” she says finally.

“I know,” he says, and when he glances back at her, she’s looking at him too.

“I didn’t like myself very much back then,” she says. “And I worry, when I see people who knew me then, that they still see me the same way. So I make up mean stories about them in my head and they become less important, and it doesn’t matter because I’ll never see them again.”

The corner of his mouth lifts at this.

“You didn’t have to make up mean stories about me, though, did you?”

She’s saved from having to answer, as an announcement tells them their delayed flight is now boarding.



On the plane, Grant convinces the older woman next to him to swap seats with Helen.

“It’s my friend’s first time flying, and she gets nervous,” he says.

The woman agrees happily, saying something about adorable, and Helen rolls her eyes as she takes the seat beside him. “Your ego couldn’t take being the one who gets nervous flying, huh?”

Grant shrugs. “Window or aisle?”

Helen prefers the window. She likes looking out over the wing to see the moment they leave the ground.

“Works for me. I hate moving over people to go to the bathroom,” Grant says.

They share snacks that Helen bought back at the terminal, and after trading barbs about each other’s initial media choices on the flight—Die Hard for him (“so obvious”) and The Great British Bake Off for her (“what’s the point if you can’t taste the food?”)—they agree to watch the same thing.

“I love this movie,” she says, placing one earbud in her left ear as he takes the other and places it in his right.

“It’s a classic,” he agrees. “And a Christmas movie, though no one ever seems to count it as one.”

As three small mice appear on the screen to narrate the first chapter of Babe, Helen sinks farther under the thin, airline-supplied blanket and lets herself feel cozy. She glances up at Grant, who looks rapt by the adventures of an animatronic pig, enough that she can study him without feeling too easily caught.