How to End a Love Story(81)

Helen laughs softly. “You’re so fucking corny,” she says, and kisses him sweetly. “I love you.”



She’s lying, she’s pretending, this isn’t real.

“You did that so well,” Grant says, as some knife of a feeling twists in his chest.

Helen lets out a half-embarrassed laugh and ducks her head.

“I would have fallen in love with you sooner, if you’d let me,” he says, and lifts her chin so he can watch her hear it. “You’re so easy to love, Helen.”

She kisses him then, and he thinks to himself still counts still counts still counts as he loves her back.



Helen wakes up in the blue light of four a.m. and gets in her car. She pulls up a Spotify playlist—“driving away from the stupid damn love of my life”—and heads home.



He shows up at her condo Sunday afternoon, looking tired and drawn.

“I’m sorry,” he says first, and reaches out. She buries herself in his arms in a crushing hug, and he rubs a soothing hand down her back and up the nape of her neck. “Won’t bring it up again, crackerjack. I know the rules, I promise.”

“This is all I can give you,” she whispers. “This is the best I can do.”

“I’ll take it, you know I’ll take it,” he says gruffly into her hair, thinking some senseless, endless stream of want, need, give, take, please.

He kisses her then, and she kisses him back.





Twenty-Six




The night before the first day of filming, Helen can’t sleep.

“That’s normal,” Grant tells her sleepily, when she shows up on his porch at one a.m. “It’s like Christmas, or the night before open-heart surgery.”

He won’t be on set in the morning; he’ll be in the writers room still, as they finish breaking the last episode of the season. For the best, probably—ever since his birthday, it’s felt like they’re on borrowed time and she’s trying to get used to the idea of not having him around always. It’s almost March—and in a few weeks, he’ll be done and ready to move on to a new show and it’ll be the most convenient time to let him go. But she can already feel herself coming up with more excuses—why not wait until they’re done with production in late April—even as she knows it’ll only hurt more the longer they wait to break things off.

She starts crying when he hugs her and he laughs into her hair.

“You really hate being comforted that much, huh,” he says, and she nods into his shoulder.

He kisses the side of her face first, then the salty tears off her cheeks, before he reaches her mouth. “Helen, I’m not trying to comfort you. I’m trying to seduce you.”

She laughs and kisses him back, her arms twining behind his neck as he lifts and carries her into the bedroom. She has to be on set at seven a.m., and she lets him keep her up until almost three in the morning—laughing, gasping, touching.

When she slips out of bed at six a.m., he’s still half sleeping, his hair tousled and a slight frown on his face from the early-morning light.

“You’re always leaving me,” he mumbles, and she walks off before the squeezing in her heart makes her do something foolish, like stay.



Helen calls as she drives home from set—it’s just after six p.m. and they wrapped almost an hour early their first day.

“That’s a good thing, right?” she says anxiously. “It means the director knows what she’s doing? Or is it, I don’t know, leaving things on the table . . .”

“It’s a good thing,” Grant says. “Production can be brutal if you’re going a full twelve hours every day. Wrapping early on your first day sets a good tone.”

She tells him about meeting the crew and how she thinks the first assistant director hates her but she has an ally in the director of photography, how the wardrobe team had questions for her that she was able to answer (surprising!), and how the cast looked so different in costume and full hair/makeup, she was thrown.

“It was like they stepped out of my brain and into reality—it was so weird in a good way. I felt like I was starstruck by my own characters.”

Grant smiles at this and feels a strange sense of pride. A memory from high school randomly comes online—Helen, standing at the front of their AP English classroom, reading her essay to the class at the request of the teacher, as an example of good writing. He remembers no one paying much attention, himself included, and feeling a little bad about it. It had obviously meant a lot to her to be chosen.

He thinks people will pay attention this time, when the show comes out. It’s a good one, and they’ve done a lot of work to keep what’s special about her books in the series while letting it grow into its own thing. One of his favorite storylines isn’t in the books at all, and Helen had surprisingly agreed it was one of her favorites too.

“Good first day, then?” he asks, when he opens the door and she’s on the porch, still on the phone with him.

“Mm.” She nods, and falls into his waiting arms. “Missed you, though.”

He smiles into her hair and wonders how much longer they have.



Helen hits the stop button on her phone alarm, telling her it’s time to drive to LAX.