How to End a Love Story(88)
She drops Dad off with the sleek black shuttle to take him back to the hotel and he gives her a gruff, one-armed hug. It’s probably the third hug he’s ever given her in his life—she remembers one at her college graduation, and another awkwardly coached one by a photographer at one of her book events. They’re just not the hugging type. But she smiles, pats him awkwardly back—anyone watching would think he was an old favorite professor of hers and maybe that describes her relationship with her father the best—and waves as he’s driven off.
As she walks to her car, she briefly considers the dinner options waiting for her at home—she stupidly left all the takeaway sushi at Grant’s house last night and she doesn’t have the energy to cook something from scratch.
She isn’t ready for it when she sees his familiar gray convertible in its designated parking spot across from hers—he’s still here. She looks back toward the building containing the writers room and wonders what’s keeping him here so late. A last-minute meeting with Suraya, maybe, or revisions ahead of the table read. She tries not to think of all the late nights they’ve spent here, flirting across a table, or playing a game where he tries to distract her as she works.
Some traitorous part of her tugs at her feet and she takes a half step toward the building.
But then the rest of her—mind over matter—wrestles back control of her disloyal limbs and she gets in her car and drives off the lot.
She has a long enough drive back to Santa Monica to talk herself into and out of various drive-through options, finally concluding that the leftover chicken salad in her fridge will have to do, and she probably has a protein shake in there somewhere too.
She’s still vaguely entertaining a left turn into an upcoming McDonald’s—she would like fries with this sadness, please—when there’s a thundering boom that makes her think for a moment of a theme park roller coaster, a slow-motion surrealness as her surroundings seem to spin away from her, and then her world flips upside down once, twice, and then there’s a horrible, metallic screech, before it all crashes into splintering black and crunching glass.
Twenty-Nine
She wakes up to the faint beep of a heart rate monitor and Suraya’s frowning face.
“Good,” she says. “You’re awake.”
Helen looks around and sees she’s in a clean, if very pink, hospital room, and the dull ache in almost every bone in her body reminds her why. She’s wearing a yellow patient gown, the air smells like lemon cleaning products, and she feels strangely color-coordinated to the room’s pastels, as if she belongs here.
A doctor—a very pretty one, and Helen wonders vaguely if she’s ever considered acting—comes in before she can muster a proper response to Suraya. The doctor briskly recites a catalogue of the ways Helen Zhang has been broken—broken arm, broken clavicle, and a fractured rib that narrowly missed becoming something more serious and potentially fatal.
“And whiplash,” she adds. “That’s pretty common. We put you on a lot of pain medication and sedation so you could sleep. Your parents are outside, asking to see you.”
“No,” Helen says, and realizes it’s the first time she’s spoken out loud in—however long she’s been out. Her voice is croaky from lack of use. “Not—not yet.”
The thought of her mother’s white-lipped concern is more than she can bear right now and she doesn’t feel even a little bad about preserving her peace a bit longer.
“Suit yourself,” the doctor says, and leaves to see to some other injured, pastel patient in need of care.
Leaving her alone with Suraya.
“I’m sorry,” Helen says automatically.
Suraya waves a hand. “What do you have to be sorry for? It’s not your fault that truck blew a red light out of nowhere.”
Helen suddenly wants to cry and she’s not sure why. She smiles apologetically at Suraya instead. It hurts unexpectedly and she realizes there are bandaged cuts on her face. “You shouldn’t have to be here right now. I know how busy you are.”
“Well, the fact is I’m here now. Meetings get pushed all the time for less,” she says. “But why am I your emergency contact?”
“Oh.” Helen flushes with hot embarrassment.
Of course. Suraya didn’t come just out of friendly concern; she came because someone looked up Helen’s records and called her. The sting of humiliation at this hurts more than the rib fracture.
“I didn’t really know anyone in LA, when I was filling out all those forms,” she says. “I should have asked. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Suraya says, with a glint of humor. “A little weird—I wouldn’t recommend doing it on your next job—but then, I think you have more friends in this city now. Nicole and Saskia are out there. Saskia’s been crying her eyes out, the poor girl.”
“Oh,” Helen says, and some warm feeling takes her by surprise. She has friends waiting for her.
“Grant’s here too, obviously,” Suraya says, and Helen tries to unpack every word of that brief sentence.
“Right,” she says blankly.
Suraya gives her a half-hearted smile. “I like you, Helen, and you seem strong enough to take this, so if I could give you a little unsolicited advice?”