Page 25 of Romance Is Dead

I couldn’t bear to picture the look on his face when I told him he’d never get to go to an opening night of one of my films ever again.

“Also, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.” My dad popped the crust of his piece of bread into his mouth. “About an opportunity.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Well, more of a favor.”

“Ok. . .” I had a bad feeling about this.

“One of my buddies, we go way back to the early Puzzle Face movies. He’s finishing the script for a new project. It’s a little experimental—a classic slasher but from the perspective of the killer, who’s a woman. He asked if you might be interested.”

I mumbled something indecipherable.

“I know, I know.” He chuckled as he added onion and beef to the skillet. “It’s probably not cool, teaming up with your old man’s friend.”

“It’s not that. . .”

“But it sounds like a great project, and I think it’d mean a lot to him if you gave him a call.”

I hesitated. The project did sound interesting, and it’s something I would have jumped at in different circumstances. And I knew I would have to be honest with my dad. Eventually. But at that moment, I just. . . couldn’t.

“Yeah.” I feigned some enthusiasm. “Maybe I will.”

“Great.” My dad beamed. “And speaking of old friends and old memories. . .’ He grabbed a can of tomatoes to start the marinara. “I was finally cleaning out the storage unit and found something I’d like you to see.”

“Sounds great.”

Once the sauce was simmering, my dad and I relocated to the living room, where he sank onto the sofa and pulled a faded photo album out from under the coffee table.

He wiped some dust from the cover as he cracked it open. “Your mom made this with photos she took on the set of the first Puzzle Face movie.” On the first page was a photo of the two of them, my dad decked out in his costume as he wrapped an arm around my mom and kissed her neck. She was laughing, head thrown back, as she threw up a peace sign. Around the photo, she’d pasted cute decorative cutouts: a movie camera in one corner, a reel of unwound film in another.

“Mom made this?” It was hard to imagine my mother, so career-driven and analytical, creating something so sentimental.

“Oh yeah, she had a big scrapbooking phase for a while.” He chuckled. “Didn’t last long. I think this was the only one.”

As we flipped through the pages, I tried to take in every detail, thirsty for glimpses of my parents when they were still happy. On one page she’d stuck a photo of my dad listening intently to the director next to a snap of my dad holding up bunny ears behind the same man when he wasn’t looking. On another, there were photos of the two of them—my mom and dad curled up napping between scenes or eating together with the cast. I tried to ignore the pangs of sadness that my mother had thought it important to document her early relationship with my dad but not the early years of her only child. Baby photos of me existed, but not in anything even remotely resembling a baby book.

“Did you tell her you found this?”

My dad shook his head, a wisp of a rueful smile on his face. “Nah, I’ll show her at Christmas.”

There was no bad blood between my mom and dad, and my relationship with her wasn’t too strained either. She flew down every year for the holidays, and we spent the week together, catching up and watchingA Christmas Storyon repeat as we baked cookies. But while my dad and I had formed a close, natural bond before my brain had even started to form memories, my mother and I struggled to find things we had in common. I was sad when they divorced, and it was a transition when she moved east to take the New York City real estate market by storm, but my dad had always been my rock, grounding me even when things were uncertain.

My mom and I texted on occasion and had a monthly phone call, but that relationship was nothing like the one I had with my dad.

Finally reaching the end of the scrapbook, we turned to the last page, which featured a huge photo capturing the entire cast and crew. I peered from face to face, each of them beaming exhausted but happy grins. There was just one that hadn’t bothered smiling, a glowering man standing all the way on the left side who looked strangely familiar.

I peered closer. There, staring back at me, was the face in Trevor’s Instagram photo. It was the man who’d been so angry when Trevor and Teddy broke the lamp on the first day.

“I know him,” I murmured, my pulse thumping. “That’s our props master.”

“Scott Rossi? He’s still in the business?” My dad frowned, his whole face darkening. “Stay away from him, ok? He’s not a nice guy.”

“Why? What’s he done?”

“He was the props assistant on this first movie. Real piece of work. Always in a bad mood, and I saw him punch an extra for ruining a prop once. It was just an old boom box, not even anything expensive. The guy’s an asshole.”

“Yikes.”

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