Everything Leads to You

And then there is the simple, pure thrill of seeing my first work on a big screen in a private screening room on the lot of a major studio.

I take a breath, overwhelmed by all of it. What I feel is too complicated to explain to Morgan, so I just smile and let her interpret that however she wants to.

~

Forty minutes later we are in the parking lot, standing in between our respective vehicles, trying to brush off the awkwardness of having watched countless takes of a girl losing her virginity. Morgan leans against the side of her truck, and since I’m standing on the passenger side of my car, I figure it’s never too soon to begin the unlocking process.

When I emerge from the passenger’s seat, she reaches for my hand. Against my better judgment, I let her take it. I feel the familiar tightening somewhere below my stomach when I think of all the times she’s touched me. Maybe I’m supposed to step into her now, like so many other times when she took my hand. Maybe we’re supposed to be kissing, bodies pressed against the truck. But instead I just stare at my hand in hers until I find my voice.

“What are you doing?”

“Are you going to make me ask you?”

“Ask me what, exactly?”

She shakes her bangs out of her eyes and really looks at me.

“If you’ll come back. I want you back.”

I close my eyes and when I open them again I make sure that I’m looking at something other than her.

This conversation isn’t that different from the five others we had before getting back together. But it feels different, because wanting someone is not the same as loving her, and now I understand that Morgan does not love me. When you love someone, you are sure. You don’t need time to decide. You don’t say stop and start over and over, like you’re playing some kind of sport. You know the immensity of what you have and you protect it. So I look into Morgan’s eyes, and I say, “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Oh,” she says, letting go of my hand. “I thought you wanted to.”

I’ve never been on the lot this late. Most of the buildings are completely dark, only a few lights shining from offices. I met Morgan only a few buildings over, by a set built for a TV show, and it was bright and hot and I was a newer and more confident version of myself. I was the girl people wanted to kiss. I didn’t know what it felt like to be unwanted.

“To you I was just a girlfriend in a long string of girlfriends,” I say. “But it was something else for me.”

“You had girlfriends before me.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

I can almost hear Charlotte telling me that Morgan was my first love, telling me that it’s over. And if Morgan needs me to, I’ll repeat both of these things to her so that everything is clear and final. But soon she says okay and she doesn’t ask me anything more. I guess she knows already. My one-sided love was probably obvious to everyone all along.

She sighs and then smiles. And even though the smile is just further proof that I don’t matter that much to her, I find myself relieved. I don’t feel any trace of the satisfaction I once imagined would come with turning her down. I just feel tired and a little bit sad.

“So what happens with you now?” she asks. “Is there someone else?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “There might be.”

“That sounds like a yes.”

“No,” I say. “Really. Nothing has happened. I’ll be shocked if anything ever happens.”

“That’ll make one of us.”

And then she’s stepped forward, she’s put her arms around me. It’s a good-bye, so I hug her back, breathing in the tangerine shampoo that I will associate with her forever, remembering how we used to shower together in her tiny blue-tiled bathroom after days spent by the pool, and how in the beginning, when things still felt easy and right, holding her close like this—underwater, in the sunlight, in the quietest nighttime hours—was the best feeling in my life.

When she starts her truck I start my car, too. But after she’s pulled out and disappeared, I turn off the engine again. In the parking lot, I sit for a long time, nothing but stillness and darkness through the windows.

Then I dial Charlotte.

“Okay,” I say when she answers.

“Okay?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”

This time, I know exactly what I mean.

“Oh,” she says, after a few seconds of silence. “Good.”





Part 2


    THE LOVE





Chapter Ten



“I read it twice,” Ava says, dropping her purse on Toby’s couch and perching on the armrest. “I’ve never read a screenplay before and it took me a while to get used to it. But once I did the story just took off. All of the characters feel so real.”

“They do, right?” I say.

“I like how it’s so focused on all these tiny details. Like the baby food jar that cut Miranda’s ear.”

“We were thinking you could sit in the orange chair,” Charlotte says, attaching the camera she borrowed from her mom on its tripod.