Chapter 9
D rake suggested tacos on the drive back from Jen and Marc’s house. Ellie was hungry, too. Her defeat had kept her from ordering a scoop at Mae’s, and the sight of a glowing taco sign made her stomach growl.
“Fantastic Taco,” Ellie read as the car dove under a spinning hard shell and fell into line. Drake’s fingers drummed on the wheel. “Clearly, it’s not a fantastic taco. Although Questionable Taco doesn’t have the same ring to it—”
“Ellie,” Drake said, dragging her name out. “Focus. We just saw a place undo decades of damage within, like, minutes.”
She had been there for it. She didn’t need a reminder.
What Ellie needed was a way to crawl inside Drake’s brain and have a look around.
She sensed that his thirst for answers about the cinema would be enough to get him back there, but she wanted one more tool in her arsenal: a way to convince him to stay and watch the movies.
“Tell me what you’re feeling, Drake,” she said as the car inched forward.
“What really makes you so nervous about of all this?”
He tsked. “Well, for one, this place seems to magically disappear and reappear.” The cinema hadn’t technically disappeared.
Ellie wasn’t going to point that out. “But, it’s more than that.
” She gave him the space to carry out the thought without interrupting.
“If I’m being honest, I’m also afraid that we’ll see something bad in our past.” Drake glanced her way. “I mean, what if I see you having sex?”
“You see that all the time—”
“With someone else, I mean.”
Ellie feigned an aghast expression. “It’s not that kind of a theater.”
Drake’s foot released its hold on the brake, and the truck rumbled forward. “Careful,” Ellie snapped. They stopped inches from a minivan filled with teens late for their curfew.
“What if you loved one of those …sex people?”
“What if I loved a sex person?” Ellie crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, I didn’t.
You, Drake, are actually my first big love.
” Surprise took over his face, followed by something else.
Pride. Then, only because the question had presented itself, Ellie asked, “What, did you have some running-through-a-field type love story before me that you never happened to mention?”
The fact that Ellie hadn’t loved anyone before Drake was unusual at her age, she knew.
The idea of romantic love had reminded her of two gorillas she’d seen at a zoo.
After Ellie observed them for a while, the female and male gorilla had started a food fight of sorts.
She thought those gorillas represented what she had heard about marriage.
Resentment built up as people spent a lot of years stuck together.
Eventually, they started to throw food at each other.
Now that she was engaged to someone she loved, Ellie was much more hopeful.
Drake still hadn’t answered her question.
“So, you had some big love story before me, huh?” She crawled her hands up his back, deliberately playful.
The topic of their past relationships was one Drake had avoided from the beginning.
He wanted to focus on them , he told her on their third or fourth date.
It seemed novel at the time. Now, she couldn’t help but notice how quickly Drake changed the subject.
“It’s just … What if I did something that would make you see me differently? Like, what if I went cow tipping?”
“You would remember cow tipping. The cows are fine.” The car lunged forward again.
“I mean, the equivalent of cow tipping,” Drake said. “What if I made fun of someone? Broke some girl’s heart.”
Ellie squinted to try to see the menu, searching for a palatable option. If anyone were tipping cows, it would’ve been her.
“You have to admit the cinema is amazing,” Ellie told him, switching gears.
Drake sat with this a minute, then nodded in agreement. “Of course, it’s amazing,” he said finally. “I mean, I was a baby. I could see my mom again—young—and all the goofy expressions I made. So yeah, it’s amazing.”
Ellie was winning him over.
“But look, things are really good with us now. Right?” Drake asked.
They were, but he didn’t wait for her response.
“I don’t want to go hunting around our pasts to find something that messes with our future.
What if we get into some big fight about what we see—something that doesn’t even matter now? ”
They pulled up to the window, and Drake handed his credit card over, then set two lukewarm tacos on Ellie’s lap.
He had a point, she knew. The cinema could change the way they saw each other.
It could put a rift between them, bringing the past right home when they were supposed to be moving forward.
But as terrified as she was for him to observe her life before they met, her need to know what she’d forgotten was stronger.
The taco verdict, Ellie decided after the first bite, was “less than fantastic.” Tomatoes spilled out onto the wrapper as she ate.
They kept the conversation light while driving home, but Ellie wasn’t fully paying attention.
In the driveway, Drake unbuckled his seat belt, opened Ellie’s door, and gave her a look she didn’t quite recognize.
“For the record, you are my only big love story, Ellie,” he said. “That’s why I want to protect this.”
The outdoor lights were dead, which was an unusual oversight on Drake’s part.
Ellie lost track of his face in the dark.
Their boots crunched over the stone path and up the front steps.
Then, back inside the house, the same look she’d noticed before on Drake’s face came into view again.
She could see it now, for exactly what it was.
He’d just lied to her.
Ellie’s insomnia was relentless that night.
Drake was hiding something. She knew that anytime he concealed the truth, he was trying to avoid hurting her.
But as Ellie had told him and displayed so many times, she wasn’t a jealous person.
Life didn’t allow for a truly clean slate; people came with fascinating, complicated histories.
People including herself. Whatever Drake was so nervous about her seeing, Ellie could handle.
How could she prove this to him?
Things would’ve been so much easier if there wasn’t a wedding on the horizon.
Labels and rituals meant something to Drake.
If she were already his wife, already committed to him officially, she had the sense he’d be more willing to go to the cinema together.
If only , she thought, for the hundredth time.
If only they had just eloped in Vegas a few months earlier, Drake would have more confidence that no matter what Ellie saw, she wasn’t going anywhere.
“I think we should elope,” Ellie had suggested as they dragged their suitcases over tired carpet and past a row of slot machines blinking a rainbow of lights.
“You’re serious?” They stepped onto the elevator.
Drake rested his weight against a poster advertising a Salisbury steak special.
The steak was gray and lined with wear. Ellie wished she hadn’t let Drake choose a hotel with a gray steak special.
He’d wanted to plan the trip himself in honor of their engagement. It was thoughtful, so she’d let him.
The elevator dinged. Ellie followed Drake to a room at the end of the hallway.
She was serious, she insisted. The possibility of getting hitched without the hassle of other people was tempting, wasn’t it?
Drake considered the question as they unzipped their bags and swung the drapes open, revealing floor-to-ceiling views of the Strip under the relentless afternoon sun.
“Let’s do it then,” he said, looking out the window.
“Really?” she asked.
He pulled her close. “If it means I get to marry you sooner, I’m in.”
The chapel they found was a retro white church illuminated by two halves of a neon heart that bounced together to form a whole.
Ellie skipped to its pulse across the parking lot.
A woman who had taken a smokey eye too far ushered them inside and situated them at the back of the room to witness drunk humans— potentially business colleagues—make a huge mistake.
Ellie’s excitement shifted to doubt as she looked around.
The stained glass windows were actually plastic.
The Styrofoam columns near the fabric-floral archway had taken both too much and not enough inspiration from the Roman Colosseum.
Then there was the soundtrack—were those organs playing?
Elvis moved his way up the aisle and onto a small elevated stage where the happy couple stood awaiting their nuptial king.
“I know I suggested this,” Ellie told Drake under her breath. The groom stumbled. The bride, who was confirmed to be his colleague, snickered in response.
“Yeah?” Drake asked.
Ellie flattened out the wrinkles on her thrifted wedding dress, which they’d picked up hours earlier. “I don’t think this is right.”
Drake’s face fell a few stories. “You don’t think … getting married is right?”
“Not in this venue,” Ellie said. As if to prove her statement, the organ music stopped, and Elvis started to sing and sway.
“Who cares about the venue?” Drake insisted. “We’re getting married.” He kissed her cheek. “That’s all that matters.”
“Well, maybe I don’t want to do it this way,” Ellie said, firmer this time.
In theory, Vegas was the perfect situation for a wedding—there was no one around to stir things up and nothing to go wrong.
But Drake deserved more. She knew he dreamed of elaborate speeches and rehearsal dinners, of passed hors d’oeuvres.
He’d once used the word showstopping in reference to their first dance.
She wanted to give him all of that and more. Still, he looked startled by her words.
“Why not?” he asked.