How to End a Love Story(94)

It sounds so awful and dramatic out loud, she almost can’t believe she’s said it. Helen lets out a shaky exhale. “You don’t leave me an inch of space to breathe.”

Mom stares at Helen, stunned. “I’m your mother,” she says.

“I fucking know,” Helen snaps.

She looks up, and she’s never seen Mom look at her like this—like she wants to reach out and slap her. (Dad has retreated to the chair in the corner and is studiously watching the production feed on Helen’s iPad.)

“You read my diary in high school, you read my texts now, you don’t leave me anything,” Helen says.

Mom stares back at her. “Because you give us nothing. What else am I supposed to do? How else will I know what’s going on in your life?”

This would be the part of the episode, Helen thinks idly, where mother and daughter finally have a heart-to-heart. Walls come down, they finally, truly see each other, and all is resolved at last. It’s the all-American fantasy she’s been peddled by every episode of her favorite Emmy Award–winning, syndicated television dramas featuring tough-but-loving families.

But for some reason, she and Mom always seem to miss each other.

“We should let her rest,” Dad says from the back of the room. “This conversation doesn’t have to happen here.”

Mom stares at Helen, her fingers balled in tight fists at her sides. Dad stands then, and returns Helen’s iPad to her. He nudges Mom.

“Come on,” he says.

Helen watches Mom’s throat working, her eyes glassy with fresh tears.

I don’t hate you, she wants to say. I just hate the way you love me.

But Mom wouldn’t be able to hear that. Helen watches silently as her parents move toward the exit and knows this is the end of the scene, there’s nothing else left to work out between them. There’s no point. They’re almost out the door when—

“Wait.” Helen clears her throat, desperate to tell them something. “I’m not writing YA anymore.”

Her parents stop, confused.

“What, you have a new book deal?” Dad asks.

“No,” Helen says, her heart pounding. She isn’t even sure she means any of the words she’s saying and thinks suddenly maybe this is the thrill other teens experienced when they shouted “I hate you!” and slammed the doors to their childhood bedrooms. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just know I don’t wanna write about teenagers anymore.”

Mom and Dad exchange a bewildered look.

“I don’t care what you write about,” Dad says slowly. “But maybe it is not so good to jump without knowing first where you will land.”

“Michelle did,” Helen says, hurling the words like knives across the room. “Maybe it’ll work out better for me.”

Dad grips the door handle as if he’s been hit. Mom stares at her with an expression of horrified betrayal. “How could you say such a terrible thing?” she hisses.

Helen laughs and wipes at tears that are flowing inexplicably down her face.

“I don’t know, Mom, I’m probably very broken inside. I wonder why.”

Then Dad tugs at Mom’s elbow, and her parents leave.

Finally.





Thirty




Grant has three weeks off between his last day covering The Ivy Papers and his next show, a high-budget Netflix reboot of one of his favorite hard-fantasy book series from childhood. He’d been genuinely excited when he first landed the job, and he remembers taking Helen on a trip to his favorite bookstore in Los Feliz to buy her a copy of the first book.

He’d spent the better part of their lunch afterward trying to explain the complex mythology of it. She’d asked follow-up questions and wrinkled her nose at a few outdated plot points they would obviously fix in the adaptation, and by the time they got to his car, he’d said, “You’re not gonna read it at all, are you?”

She’d laughed, smiled up at him in that way that made him feel like he could do anything, and said, “I’ll just read your version of it.”

It’s not going to be his version, though. He’ll be the number two, but he’s pretty sure if he does a good job on this one, he’ll be able to leverage it into some kind of development somewhere.

“You’re always creating so many extra steps for yourself,” she’d said in passing. “Why don’t you just tell your agent you want to take some time and develop something of your own?”

It had stopped him in his tracks, just for a beat. Of course Helen would think that—she always seemed so sure of her next steps. Graduate high school. Major in creative writing. Write a novel. Sell it. Turn it into a bestselling series. Have writer’s block? Turn the series into a TV show and negotiate a spot in the writers room. She always had a solution, and once she’d unlocked how to apply that skill in the writers room, she’d been pretty damn magnificent to watch work every day.

He had felt a bit like a fraud, standing next to Helen. He’d picked his college because California was as far away from New Jersey as he could imagine getting, and he signed up for a screenwriting course only because he’d had to fulfill an English elective requirement. LA was an industry town, so everyone had just assumed he was an aspiring screenwriter and he went along with it because it had seemed easier than coming up with a whole dream of his own. Eventually, it did become his dream, and he discovered the terrifying feeling of wanting something for himself and not being sure he would ever get it.