Page 57 of It's a Love Story

CHAPTER 24

WE GO HOME AND I TAKE THE FIRST SHOWER. WHENI’m back in the bedroom and Dan’s in the shower, I think of my mom and how absolutely dreamy she’d find Dan. She’d call him devastatingly handsome and close her eyes as she described him to her friends.Like a model, but also a firefighter,she’d say. And that wouldn’t be too far off. I’m smiling at this thought because it gives me a little perspective on what it would be like to be my mom, a believer. To really let yourself get excited about big love. I think I would like to be that brave.

I text her: I hate that I’m missing movie night.

She replies right away: No worries! I’m headed to the Hollywood Bowl

Me: Well that’s better than movie night Mom: Nothing is

Which is exactly what I was hoping she’d say.

I dry my hair in the bedroom so as not to hog the bathroom. I’m not doing a complicated straightening thing because I’m sort of over it and the humidity will undo all that work the second I walk outside.

Dan comes in from the bathroom in just jeans, toweldrying his hair. His white towel covers his head and shoulders, leaving his torso on full display with no one there to stop me from running my eyes down the ridges of his abdomen. I keep drying the same clump of hair, hypnotized by the inch of skin just over his top button. Is there a zipper under that button, or is it buttons all the way down? I need to know. When he tosses the towel on the floor, his hair is standing straight up. He turns to me and tries for anoofface, knowing full well how crazy his hair looks, but he catches me staring. He gives me a smile that tells me he’d be happy to answer all of my questions about his zipper. I smile back, but the din of the hair dryer in my ear keeps me from saying anything. He sits down on my bed and pulls a blue T-shirt over his head. He doesn’t speak, and neither do I. When I turn off the hair dryer, the room is completely silent.

We’re looking at one another. I could take three steps forward and I’d be right in his personal space.

“You got your line?” I ask. No one kills sexual tension like I do.

“I do now, I probably won’t when I’m up there all wrapped up in the chaos. I really hate this stuff.” He runs his hands through his wet hair.

“Is that your date outfit?” he asks.

I look down, and I am, in fact, in jeans and the same blue-and-white blouse I’d picked out for our ill-fated first date.

“Yes.”

“Probably would have gone well,” he says. “Though I like that white dress too.” He’s picturing me naked—I can see it in his eyes. It’s my turn to speak, something flirty, I think, but I have the sense of not knowing exactly where I am. My body is telling me that we are alone in this house and that one step forward would change everything, though inside my heart, I already feel like everything’s changed. I am on a tightrope made of something as fine as a spider’s web, and I want to be light enough to cross.

I say, “We should go.”

CHAPTER 25

THEPARTYISANACTUALBLAST.FINNHASSURPRISEDeveryone by getting a guy with a guitar to perform oldies up on the little karaoke stage. There are definitely a hundred people crammed into the pub—Reenie and Cormack’s friends, the brothers’ friends. All the kids are there, babies passed around. We eat mini hamburgers with bacon butter and pigs in a blanket. Irish nachos and spinach salad with warm hard-boiled eggs. I’m drinking red wine from a jelly jar, and it’s delicious.

I talk with Marla and Paula and the guy from Chippy’s Diner and forget that Sammy is on my hip. He’s resting his head on my shoulder and gripping my waist with his legs. It feels primal, like we’re primates. When he goes heavy, Marla takes him and lays him down in an unoccupied booth in the back. She returns to us and jumps back into the conversation.

Dan finds us and places a hand on the small of my back. It’s something you might do when you approach a person in a group. But it feels like something altogether new. I lean into his hand. “So the nightmare’s about to start,” he says, indicating the small stage.

“It’ll be fine,” I say. “Or at least quick.”

The guitarist takes a break, and Cormack and Reenie take the mic onstage. Cormack tells the story of meeting Reenie on the beach in Oak Shore when she was dating someone named Wallace. He talks through the various underhanded ways he tried to steal her away while Reenie holds his hand and laughs. This feels like wealth, I think. This is the thing you save up for. You live your whole life so that you can be surrounded by too many people in too small of a room and tell the story of how it all happened. An old ache flares up in my heart, not for me but for my mom. I want to tell my mom that I’m starting to believe in love but that I think it’s different from what she’s described, that it’s quieter and more powerful. But we’ve been lying to each other for so long about love, I would never know where to start.

Cormack raises a glass to the crowd but holds Reenie’s eyes in his, and I feel the same shift in my heart thatTrue Storygives me. It’s a nudge from someplace buried, turning my head toward actual evidence of true love. I wish my mom were here, and I realize what I’ve wanted fromTrue Storyall along. I want to make this movie so my mom can see it. I want her to watch that love story and give up her tireless pursuit of the Hollywood kind. Love isn’t a helicopter ride to Catalina; it’s everyday care and treating the other person like they’re your house keys. I want this movie to say the thing I can’t say.Mom, you’re chasing your own lie.

Dan comes up behind me and puts his hand on my waist. I want to tell him what I just realized about the movie, and I wonder if he loves it because it reminds him of his parents. But Brooke is walking toward us. She’s in a short pink dress that feels both effortless and sexy. I turn around and watch Dan watch her.

“Danny!” she says. The greeting is too enthusiastic for a person you saw two days ago. She throws her arms around his neck, and I want to ask her—politely, not like a crazy person—to stop it. I see her bury her face in his chest and smell him, and boy, I do not like this one bit.

“Hey,” Dan says, taking her hands and removing them from his neck. “You remember Jane, and do you know Finn’s wife, Eileen?”

“Of course, hi,” Brooke says. Eileen gives her a greeting that makes me think she’s as happy to see her as I am. The music has started again, and Brooke is moving her hips in a way that suggests to me that she’s a good dancer. Like she has natural rhythm and the confidence to follow it. “Dance with me,” she says and takes Dan’s hand.

“Still don’t dance,” he says. “Can I get anyone a drink?”

The music stops again and Connor has the mic. “Can my brothers please report to the stage.” Everyone cheers.

Dan turns to me and I touch his forearm. It’s not even subtle, and I kind of hope Brooke sees this blatant caress because I’m a total maniac now. “This is going to be totally fine,” I say.

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