How to End a Love Story(97)

She knows he’s on a cross-country trip and is somewhere in Chicago eating tacos with someone named “Julie” right now. It’s embarrassing how much she knows. She’s been watching his Instagram stories from the official Ivy Papers account and she thinks she’ll probably always associate tapping to log into that shiny, pre-verified account with stalking Grant Shepard.

Nicole has all but moved into her condo to help her around as she heals. At this point, Helen can mostly get everything she needs for herself but Nicole insists on staying anyway.

“Your place is nicer than mine and I can’t come over if you accidentally slip and die in the bathtub,” she says, and Helen’s honestly grateful for the company. She hasn’t had a roommate in seven years and she’s forgotten how nice it is to have someone to share chores and meals and thoughts with.

Nicole tells her about the new show she’s writing on, some godawful mockumentary about suburban parents in a competitive e-sports league, but the people running the show are really great and her reps think it’ll establish her more firmly in the comedy space, which she’s been trying to break into since, oh forever.

“Not that I don’t appreciate our dramarama time together.” Nicole pats Helen’s arm. “It brought me to this condo.”

Helen laughs and wonders what she’ll do next month, when production’s over and she has to either find a place of her own in LA or move back to New York. Or move somewhere else? She isn’t sure at all where she’s going next and thinks randomly of Lisa Shepard and her Irish sheep farm plans.

“How do you feel, when you think about New York?” Nicole asks, when Helen mulls over her impending decisions out loud.

“Well, it’s where I lived for so long. And it’s a great city,” Helen says. “There’s always something happening, people living their lives out in the open right in front of you. It’s kind of relentless but also kind of good, if you’re a writer? And it’s beautiful in the fall, and at Christmas. Walkable, which LA isn’t.”

“I didn’t ask for facts. I asked for feelings,” Nicole says. “Like how do you feel, in your body?”

This is the kind of LA hippie question Helen’s New York friends probably would have laughed at, then written into a novel, alongside references to green juice and hiking. But Helen tilts her head and closes her eyes.

“I feel . . . even,” she says. “Like something’s tugging down a little, and up a little, and I’m right . . . here.”

She touches her chest, opens her eyes, and feels slightly embarrassed. But Nicole nods, like this makes perfect sense.

“How do you feel when you think about staying in LA?”

Helen’s breath gives an involuntary shudder and she closes her eyes tightly. She can feel the frown and tries to smooth it, but somehow that makes her think of Grant. She takes a heaving breath then, and swallows, and it feels like too much, like her chest is full and her head is too tight and she wants to gasp for air, and then she does and she’s crying suddenly, out of nowhere, and her eyes aren’t even shut anymore but she can’t see anything, all she can see is the floral pattern on Nicole’s navy pajama pants, and Nicole says, “Oh, honey,” and strokes Helen’s hair soothingly like an anxious pet in her lap.

“I loved him, I really did,” she babbles stupidly into Nicole’s pajama pants.

“I know,” Nicole says softly.

“I loved him, and he loved me, and it’s over now, and I’ll never get it back,” she cries.

“You don’t know that,” Nicole says.

“I do, though,” Helen says. “He hates me now. And I hate me now. I’m such a stupid—dumb—crying mess.”

“Yeah,” Nicole says sympathetically. “I mean, I don’t know. Maybe don’t hate yourself.”

“The worst part is I think he meant it,” she says. “I think he would take me back if I asked, but eventually, he’d meet some cool LA director chick who really gets him and doesn’t come with the—the family and the history that I do and he could be happy with her and he wouldn’t really even consider it but I would know deep down I was keeping him from who he was really meant to be with, and, and . . .”

Helen takes a few deep, shuddering gasps.

“This is some wild fanfic you’re spinning, babe,” Nicole says, and rubs her back gently. “I can’t wait to hear where it goes. And?”

“And it would kill me,” she says. “Knowing I was standing between Grant and his happily ever after.”

“Well, that’s why you did what you did,” Nicole says.

“I never told him I loved him back,” Helen says.

“He knows, though.”

“But I never told him, why couldn’t I tell him?”

Helen knows she isn’t making any sense and she cries for the loss of her good words and him and how just out of reach everything feels, and eventually she runs out of tears and Nicole brings her a mug of tea and says gently, “So it sounds like New York takes the lead.”



Dunollie, New Jersey, in the spring is mostly muddy gray skies and fog, especially at the top of the mountain, but Grant finds he doesn’t mind it so much.

“I was hoping you’d bring the California sunshine with you,” his mom says as she kisses him on the cheek. He feels like he’s been stooping lower for her kisses lately and the thought makes him sadder than anything about closing up their big old house for good.