Page 69 of It's a Love Story

I need to get out of this limo. “Yes, well, it all worked out. Thank you for the time.” Jack didn’t even connect that I was the one who threw a soda at his car—that’s how unmemorable I am. I keep my head down as I step out of the limo. I am dangerously close to tears, and I don’t want anyone looking at my face.

Dan is standing in the open stage door, waiting for me. Music is blaring behind him and he walks down the steps. “No? Your face is telling me it was no.”

“It was no.”

Dan takes me in his arms and I’m a little too numb to feel it. “Let’s get out of here,” he says into my hair.

We walk for a few silent minutes before he stops me and asks, “So what happened? Did you have a chance to pitch the movie or did he just shut you down?”

“He shut me down all right.”

“He remembered you though. He had to.”

“Yep,” I say. “He remembered me exactly right.” I have never been described so precisely. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I start walking. I wonder if a nervous breakdown feels like having every thought you’ve ever had all at once. I am thinking about that night and the cold feeling in my heart reading the words “I do love you, Terry, but fatherhood is brutal.” I think of the next time my mom told me their story and repeated theNotebookthing that stupid, believing, younger me had come up with, and how alone I felt seeing the lie on her face. I think of Hailey making it and Jack making it and even Will selling real estate for a camera. I can feel it bubbling under my skin, a smattering of rage cross-pollinating and growing. I knew this already. I am not compelling enough for love. I am not worth sticking around for. And all of this has to stop. Jack is a total douchebag, but he was right about that.

“I don’t know why you brought me here,” I say. And I mean to Long Island and into his bed and into this place where I have big feelings and a bracelet and believe in unicorns. Of course this isn’t going to end as a big happy thing.

“Well, you asked me to,” he says and takes my hand.

I stop and take my hand back. “I didn’t have that much of a choice.”

Dan looks completely calm. “This is going to be fine, we’ll find another way to get this made.”

I look up at his impossibly handsome face and the way he’s looking at me like he loves me. It’s so cruel to look at me that way. It’s just because he’s only known me a week. He’ll understand soon enough. This might actually be our fourth date. A sadness washes over me, a fresh cut on an old wound, and then the rage starts to surface.

“Maybe you’re going to be fine, Dan. With your big perfect family and your weird quiet projects. But I’m not fine.” It hurts a little coming out, but it’s the truth so I say it again. “I’m not fine.” I start walking again, so he does too. “I don’t know what happened here, or even what we were trying to do. But this is so stupid, it’s just a story. It’s bullshit.”

“What’s bullshit?” he asks. He takes my hand and stops me. “What are we talking about? Don’t say us.”

“All of it. You want a list? This script. Me finally making a movie. Me and you together. Standing with you in the rain. Some shitty watercolor. It’s just too fucking humid here, that’s all.”

He pulls me into his arms and holds me tight. I listen to his beating heart. I smell his quiet smell. I know this is the last time, so I just take a second, like a fading dream. I am awake now.

“Okay, that’s enough,” I say, pulling away. “Sorry for the little meltdown and sorry for all of it. Let’s get back to your parents’ house and just put this behind us.” I start walking, maybe rudely fast, and he’s walking alongside of me.

“Jane. Talk to me. You’re really upset. This isn’t another thing you can gloss over.” He grabs my arm.

“Another thing?” The words shoot out of my mouth like a bullet. “I don’t gloss over things.”

“You do. Like with your mom. She’s been lying to you this whole time, but you’re lying right back.”

Literally how dare he. I stand there and look at his wide Batman eyes, and I feel a hot burning in my chest. “So I’m a liar now? And you’re an expert on my relationship with my mom? Just want to be super clear here.”

“No, of course not. I just want to know what happened with Jack so we can talk about it. Like, let’s face it and move on.”

“Face it and move on” enrages me. It’s an oversimplification of the dumpster fire of my feelings. Of my dad leaving and my mom not wanting me to know I was never enough.

He takes my hand. “I know you’re angry right now— can we just go back to when I was telling you why you’re lovable?” He reaches to touch my clenched jaw and I step back.

“Oh, stop. Quit trying to turn everything into a love story. Everything isn’t always about love. We’re just people on a trip. It’s called a fling, Dan. Look it up.”

He stops walking and I turn to see him, recoiled like he’s been slapped. “Those are some pretty broad strokes, Jane,” he says.

We are at a standoff here under the old-fashioned street- lamps on this stretch of road unimaginatively named Main Street. I could reach out to him now and apologize—it’s clear that I’ve hurt him. I’ve taken something that felt specific and once-in-a-lifetime, and I’ve turned it into a weekend at Club Med with a guy named Bruno. I should take his hand and tell him that he is it for me, that I want to go back to LA and turn him into forever. But I am too small for big declarations right now. The part of me that can get up and be brave has retreated through the gaping hole in my heart.

So I say, “Right?” It means nothing. It’s too light, and the nothingness of this comment feels mean.

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