8. Holden
EIGHT
Holden
LIKE TEXTUALLY
I’m glad I gave Shay a chance. Our chats on Backroom have been fun. She doesn’t seem needy, she definitely doesn’t seem like an idiot. She’s pretty clever, actually, and she seems like a genuinely nice person. I like her. But the future of our textual relationship hangs in the balance depending on how she responds to my last question.
ShayAnything.83: I do like Die Hard, actually! I watch it with my dad every year. But my favorite Christmas movie that isn’t marketed as a Christmas movie is Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, and When Harry Met Sally. And Love Actually. It’s a four-way tie. Don’t make me choose.
Welp. We had a good run, I guess.
HoldUp.76: I’m pretty sure Love Actually is marketed as a Christmas movie. Specifically, it is marketed as a holiday romantic comedy, even though it features a woman who has a codependent relationship with her brother and there is a married man who cheats on Emma Thompson. Also, the President of the United States of America, who was for some terrible reason portrayed by Billy Bob Thornton, sexually harasses a British lady who works for the bachelor Prime Minister and then the Prime Minister walks in on them and has her relocated.
ShayAnything.83: These are all facts. The film itself is flawed and perplexing yet lovable in the way that family members are flawed and perplexing yet lovable. And I’m not changing my answer. Because Colin Firth.
I glance up from my phone to see if Rory is back from the ladies’ room yet. I succumbed to the guilt of not hanging out with her in public anymore, so I offered to spend an entire afternoon with her doing whatever she wanted, wherever she wanted. She wanted to see a matinee of Wicked on Broadway even though she’s seen it five times, and then she wants to do something in the middle of Times Square. I even offered to take her ice skating, but no. This. There’s no sign of my sister, and I clock a group of girls in the lobby who are poised to come over here. I’ve gotten really good at being unnoticeable, especially in New York, but only when I can keep moving. If I make eye contact with them, I could get stuck here talking about CGI dragons for fifteen minutes. So I will continue this very important text convo about one of the most god-awful movies to come out of the United Kingdom.
HoldUp.76: I do get the Colin Firth thing, and that’s the storyline I hated the least. Actually, I liked the porno stand-in one the most. But it is alarming how many scripts still get pitched as Love Actually—but XYZ. “It’s Love Actually, but everyone’s a dead superhero!” “It’s Love Actually, but with retired baseball players at a bachelor party in Vegas!”
ShayAnything.83: I would watch both of those movies, FYI.
HoldUp.76: I got sent one of them. It was so bad. You wouldn’t believe how many bad scripts I get sent. It’s alarming how many scripts get past my agent’s assistant.
ShayAnything.83: Well, that’s a shame. I recently got a very charming script that I want to star in. It didn’t come through my agency. It was from someone I know personally.
HoldUp.76: Oh yeah? That’s cool. I’ve had to start telling people to send their scripts to my agency if they say they have something I should read. Unfortunately, my grandma refuses to go through the proper channels.
No response.
HoldUp.76: I’m just kidding btw. I did read my grandma’s script, of course. She doesn’t even want me to be in it, she just wants me to get it to Richard Gere.
HoldUp.76: That part is not a joke. What’s the script you like?
ShayAnything.83: It’s a romantic comedy.
HoldUp.76: Oh, great.
HoldUp.76: I would rather drink eggnog every day for the rest of my life than star in a romantic comedy—and please understand that I would rather stab myself in the face with a fork than drink eggnog even once. That is how much I don’t want to star in a romantic comedy.
No response.
No moving dots.
Too harsh?
HoldUp.76: Sorry. That was dickish. I’m glad you found a script you like. That must be a nice feeling.
ShayAnything.83: Almost as nice as that first long awaited sip of eggnog each December…
HoldUp.76: LOL. I have to say I appreciate that you haven’t screamed at me like most girls do when I mention hating romantic comedies.
ShayAnything.83: Well, I’m not most girls, Holden.
ShayAnything.83: And maybe you just haven’t seen or read the right romantic comedy yet. I have faith.
HoldUp.76: Faith is an awfully important thing to waste on romantic comedies.
ShayAnything.83: LOL You do realize that sentence you just wrote sounds like the first line of voiceover from a Hugh Grant rom-com?
HoldUp.76: Just don’t expect me to do stupid disco moves down a flight of stairs. I am way too good a dancer.
ShayAnything.83: Sounds like you’re pretty intimate with Love Actually for someone who claims to hate romantic comedies, Holden.
HoldUp.76: I think it’s important to be accurate and articulate about the things I despise. But to be clear—I hate romantic comedies. They’re so predictable.
ShayAnything.83: Yes. The endings are predictable. And it’s not a real rom-com if it doesn’t have an HEA.
ShayAnything.83: HEA=Happily-Ever-After btw, not Holden Everett Archer.
HoldUp.76: You know my middle name?
ShayAnything.83: Um. I think everyone does.
ShayAnything.83: Anyway. All genres have a structure. People call it a formula for rom-coms, which I happen to think is demeaning, but it’s no different from horror movies or thrillers or family comedies. They all have formulas. It’s about being surprised by the journey. We all want the ending we’re expecting, or we wouldn’t start watching the movie or reading the book in the first place. It’s the way storytellers surprise us while keeping us comfortable that makes it fun and wonderful. In any genre, but especially romance. In rom-coms it’s really about the moments. The meet-cutes and missed connections and first sightings and magical first kisses. There are ridiculous coincidences that happen in romantic comedies that I will somehow accept as long as the score is bouncy or swoony enough and the actors are believable. If enough moments make you feel the way you want to feel when you decide to watch a rom-com, then you just ignore the stuff you don’t like. Like evil ass-grabbing presidents.
HoldUp.76: You’re making a lot of sense, Shay. I do like The Princess Bride, FYI. And Tootsie.
ShayAnything.83: I am not exaggerating when I say that I would block you if you didn’t. FYI I’m waiting in line for something. In Sedona, I mean. So I might not be able to get back to you for a while.
HoldUp.76: No worries. And I did like Say Anything, although it’s more of a teen movie than a rom-com.
ShayAnything.83: Agreed. I bet you liked Before Sunrise.
HoldUp.76: I like Julie Delpy and I loved the idea of that movie, sure. But it was definitely not a romantic comedy.
ShayAnything.83: You’re right. But it made you believe they were in love and it made you want to fall in love with a beautiful stranger, didn’t it?
HoldUp.76: For sure.
HoldUp.76: So, you like surprises, huh?
ShayAnything.83: LOL as long as they’re within the bounds of something comforting and familiar, yes.
HoldUp.76: Good to know.
“Who are you texting?” Rory asks with the suspicious tone of a little sister who has never once liked one of my girlfriends.
“Finally,” I say as I close the app, slide the phone into my pocket, and pretend I didn’t hear her question. “Was there a line or something?”
“Yes. And I had to reapply my lip gloss and fix my hair and stuff. Why didn’t you tell me my hair was so wonky?!”
She’s fourteen now. I can’t believe she’s fourteen. She’s all bundled up in a coat and scarf now, but she’s growing in all the ways my dad and I don’t want her to grow. It’s fascinating and terrible, but she’s still inherently Rory, so I guess things could be worse. “I thought wonky was what you were going for.”
She nudges my arm. “We should get out of here,” she says. “There’s a group of girls over there who’ve spotted you.”
“Oh, I know. Where are we headed now?”
“The New Year’s Eve Wishing Wall on the Broadway Plaza!”
“The what?” I pull the beanie hat out of my coat pocket, put it on, and put my aviators on, even though it’s overcast. Then I hold the door to the sidewalk open for her. “That’s not a thing.”
“Oh, but it is!” She loops her arm through mine, and I can’t believe how tall she is now. “Between 45th and 47th!” We head toward Broadway. “It’s so cute! They have a stand set up all through December, and people can write their wishes on pieces of confetti paper that will get dumped over Times Square at midnight on New Year’s Eve! It’s nice, because if some stranger reads the wish when the ball drops, they might wish for it to come true for you.”
“That is cute.”
“Yup! You can submit your wishes online too. But I think it’s more romantic to actually write it out myself on the confetti.”
“Romantic? I don’t like the sound of that.”
“I mean in the Romanticism sense, like the poets.”
I am about to make a sarcastic comment, but she’s so damn excited, I stop myself. “I actually think Byron and Shelley would love the idea of writing a wish for humanity on confetti that ends up stuck to the bottom of some tourist’s shoe.”
“Yeah, it can be a wish for humanity or to meet Harry Styles…you know, whatever.”
“I definitely don’t like the sound of that.”
“You’re such a cynic.”
“How is it cynical if I don’t want Harry Styles anywhere near my baby sister? What happened to Shawn Mendes?”
“I still like Shawn, but I’m more into Harry now. I’m writing RPF about him now, you know. I don’t post those stories, though, because RPF can be controversial. It’s fun, though.”
“RPF? I don’t understand half the things you say anymore.”
“Real Person Fiction. I told you I’m writing fanfic now.”
“Oh yeah. I blocked that out.”
I get another nudge and an epic eye roll for that. “Deal with it. It’s not a phase.”
We get to the plaza and go to the end of a short queue for the Wishing Wall. It’s not the gigantic wall as tall as a skyscraper I had envisioned when she said the words; it’s a simple pop-up stand with a counter for writing on and a large bulletin board with multicolored pieces of paper pinned to it. But it is a nice idea, and it’s the kind of thing I love about this city.
There are a few young women writing their wishes at the table up ahead right now, but only one of them catches my eye. Dressed in a short plaid miniskirt, tights, and boots, she has the same mass of long dark hair and thick bangs as that girl I saw outside the club in LA earlier this week, except she’s wearing dark-rimmed glasses. Her fair skin looks porcelain in contrast to the cherry-red lipstick on her juicy mouth, but her cheeks and the tip of her nose are pink from the cold air. She’s probably in her early twenties, but there’s something so charming and girlish about the way she’s gently biting her lower lip and concentrating as she writes wish after wish on several pieces of brightly colored paper the size of Post-it notes. I watch her pause to consider before writing on a blue piece of paper. She closes her eyes, and it looks like she’s whispering the wish to herself as she writes out a sentence.
She’s all bundled up for winter, but I can tell her legs are slammin’.
She tilts her head to one side as she inspects what she just wrote, nods, then caps the pen and goes over to pin her confetti to one side of the bulletin wall. The blue one is on top of the little pile of squares. She takes a call on her cell phone and doesn’t even look in my direction before heading uptown. When I accompany my sister to the counter, I casually glance over at the blue square that girl just pinned up and read the carefully written sentence.
I meet HEA face-to-face, and he figures out it’s me he’s been texting with.
That’s interesting.
I am, as Shay just mentioned, an HEA.
But I guess that girl’s talking about her happily-ever-after.
I look around the plaza, but there’s no trace of her.
To prove Rory wrong about my cynicism, I silently hope that hot girl with bangs in the miniskirt and boots gets her wish.
In the car on the way back to my parents’ place, Rory tells me more about fanfiction.
“I still like to read,” she explains, “but for the past year or so it’s been more fun for me to write for myself. I haven’t started submitting my stories yet, but I read and comment on stuff in a lot of fandoms.”
“Fandoms, huh?”
“Yeah.”
I wish I could prevent myself from asking this question, but I just can’t. “Are there fanfic stories about Riders of Storm and Fire ?”
She snort-laughs. “What do you think?! It’s one of the most popular categories on FictionAxis. Which is surprising, since it’s relatively new. The most popular ones are still Supernatural , MCU, DCU, HP , Star Wars , LOTR , Sherlock Holmes. There’s tons of RPF now and stuff about K-pop bands. ”
She keeps listing fandoms, but I’m stuck on Sherlock.
“Anyway,” she says. “Most of the fanfic is inspired by the books. There are self-insert stories inspired by the movie and a certain actor, and I would rather drink eggnog every day for the rest of my life than try to read one of those.” She makes a gagging sound.
“I hear you.”
“But one of the top stories in the ROSAF book fandom is a romantic-comedy version with a meet-cute between Zephyr and Ember, and it’s so fun! You should read it.”
“No thanks.”
“It was written by someone with the handle PiperThanFiction, and I went down a rabbit hole. She has a lot of stories on there, but she hasn’t shared anything in a couple of years.” She makes a sad trombone sound.
“Wait. PiperThanFiction is the handle of the person who wrote the fanfic? On FactionPixel?”
“FictionAxis! Yeah. She has tons of followers, but I guess she got bored of fanfic or got a boyfriend or something.”
I wonder.
Why does that fill me with melancholy all of a sudden?
My phone buzzes, and since we’re still several blocks from the apartment, I check my messages.
There’s a new message from Shay on Backroom.
“Who are you flexting with?” my sister asks. “Is it an LA person?”
“Sort of.” I put my phone back into my pocket. “Not at the moment, though. She’s on vacation in Sedona.”
“Where’s Sedona? Sounds like the kind of place young actresses go to get their buttholes bleached.”
“Rory!”
She can’t stop laughing. “I’m not wrong!”
“It’s in Arizona, and it’s the opposite of that kind of place. I think.”
“But I’m right about the young actress part.”
“Her name is Shay. We’re just getting to know each other.”
“Ew. Not Shay Nicholls !?”
“Why? What have you heard?”
“Ugh. I haven’t heard anything, I just hate her pointy face. There’s a reason she’s always playing shallow B-Faces.”
“What did I tell you about making assumptions like that about actors?”
Rory’s eyes instantly well up with tears and her lower lip starts quivering. “I can’t believe you’re defending her!”
“I’m not defending her. I just don’t want you to?—”
“Oh my GOD, you’ve turned into such a superficial Hollywood asshat!” She crosses her arms in front of her chest and turns away from me. “I can’t even talk to you anymore!”
“How does that make me?—”
“All guys are the same and you all like the same stupid girls and I’m JUST SO SICK OF IT!” She sticks earbuds into her ears and stares out the window, and I don’t know how she did it, but I feel like a worthless piece of shit who just ruined her life.
What the fuck just happened?
It’s like there’s an invisible wall between us now. It is not an exaggeration to say that at least half the teenage female population of the world is a little in love with me, but my own sister thinks I’m garbage all of a sudden because—what? Because I don’t hate Shay Nicholls like she does?
The driver is looking back at me through the rearview mirror with the pained, knowing look of a dad who’s been frozen out many times. He shrugs, as if to say, This too shall pass.
My mum had mentioned something to me yesterday about Rory being terrifying, but my sister seemed so happy to see me I figured my mother was exaggerating.
I don’t know who to talk to about this.
Actually.
I sort of almost used to know someone.