Chapter 17
A ll of the awe that tended to sweep Ellie away upon her discovery of a magical place was back.
Since visiting My Mother’s Shop, she was losing track of time again, positioned for hours above a noisy keyboard in her office.
Melinda had spouted off so many tidbits about the town that inspired her, like the trees being named after local do-gooders, and how she believed her dresses had personalities.
Ellie tried to imagine the distinct voice of each one.
What would a mermaid dress whisper? Ahoy, ye wayward sailors. No. Let me be your muse . That was it.
Ellie added that line to the story draft she’d been working on, attached the document to an email chain with Nolan, and hit send. She was so wrapped up in the accomplishment of writing something new, in record time, that she jumped at the sound of Drake’s voice.
“Whatcha doin’ there?”
Ellie’s spine straightened. He was right behind her.
Surely, he must have seen her screen. Now was the appropriate time to surrender with her hands in the air.
“I’ve been writing about your ex,” she would have to admit.
“The one who I drove out to the suburbs to meet without telling you. After seeing her in your memory.”
But when Ellie turned to face the music, Drake was sporting a cheesy grin. “I’m taking you out tonight,” he said and pulled her off her chair.
“Out where?”
Drake spun her into him, landing a move from the one swing class they’d been dragged to by Jen and Marc. “Not The Garlic Bread Place. Somewhere spicy.”
Sal’s Cantina was a time capsule. Nothing inside its walls ever changed.
Layers of Christmas lights draped from the ceiling, and glow-in-the-dark cutouts of Día de Los Muertos skeletons grimaced on the walls.
The photo booth where Ellie used to pose with her dates of years past still sat at the back of the dining room.
All those black-and-white strips had been lost to time, except for the one on Ellie and Drake’s refrigerator from their first official date.
“Back to our booth,” Drake said as they slid into the bruised brown enclave. He always said this when they went to Sal’s: “Our place. Our booth.” Ellie didn’t bother to tell him that Sal’s couldn’t be their place because it was her place with everyone else.
As soon as the chip basket hit the table, Drake shoved a handful of the salty bites into his mouth, barely stopping to chew.
Ellie knew why he was stress eating; things between them were a little uncomfortable after the most recent movie.
They had spent the last few days being absurdly polite to each other, folding their small talk into something soft and presentable. Verbal origami.
“Isn’t it …” Drake rummaged around the chip bowl.
Ellie flagged down the waitress for margaritas.
“Isn’t it mind-blowing to think that each of these chips was a tortilla?
” He held one of them up for reference. “Maybe not one chip per tortilla, but I’m sure the chip-to-tortilla ratio would baffle us.
I’ve probably eaten like a hundred tortillas already. ”
A familiar band started to play in the back of the restaurant, a band Ellie had heard on so many previous dates.
She swore the players were focused on her, that their eyes were criticizing her for coming here on repeat.
Ellie lost track of the lyrics. Each line joined into a damning chorus of You’ve Done This Before.
When the song finished, Drake went up and threw a five in the tip jar.
“That was a good one,” he said. “I loved it.” He clapped until his hands must have hurt.
Ellie found it irresistible when Drake was so genuine and, in that moment, oblivious to the fact that two booths had turned to study his thunderous burst of applause.
After the song, the waitress came by and scribbled down their orders.
Their menus were folded. Fajitas were on the way.
Drake reached for the chip basket again, but Ellie pulled it back in her direction.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked him.
“The reason you already flew through a whole basket?”
“I mean, maybe,” Drake said. The margaritas landed quickly. He spun his glass around before picking it up. “I guess I feel like things have been distant between us the last few days. Am I breaking the rules by saying that?” Drake took a too-large sip.
“I think it’s fine,” Ellie told him, grabbing the glass to slow him down.
“Our conversations since the last ticket feel like we’re—”
“Two strangers on a cruise trapped at the same dinner table against their will?”
“Right.” He nodded. “Well, first I wanted to clear the air and say—you don’t need to worry about Melinda.
I mean, bottom line, we weren’t right for each other.
Really.” Ellie took a sip of her margarita at the mention of Melinda.
The same Melinda he had zero clue she had just met in person.
Drake was breaking the rules, but she was happy he was being more forward.
She decided to let it slide. “And what I was trying to say—I’ll keep it vague— but I was trying to tell you that …
It’s hard to see the person you love in that …
situation . I didn’t mean to judge you. I was being a real boy about it. ”
“You are a boy,” Ellie said, quoting the crying girl from his second memory. They were setting the rules on fire tonight, weren’t they? Drake started to laugh. His laugh, and how easy it was, took her back to their first date at this same booth.
At the beginning, Drake had been good at dating but assumed he was bad at it.
He didn’t care about having slick moves.
In the part of the relationship when most people were likely to Frankenstein versions of themselves together, Drake had been honest. He talked about getting overwhelmed when breakfast restaurants gave him too many bread choices and how he was afraid of space because it was so vast. He also insisted they pose in the photo booth.
When they did, he set his hands on his legs and told her he was emulating the Lincoln Memorial.
“The photo booth,” Ellie remembered out loud. “Can we go back to the photo booth?”
Moments later, the curtain clinked open. Ellie and Drake stepped inside the carpeted walls, squared themselves off toward the camera, and tapped the red button to begin the shoot.
Drake started with jazz hands, Ellie with an air-kiss.
“You’re so schmaltzy,” he told her.
Snap.
Drake switched to the thinker. Ellie fanned her hands over her eyes.
“You look like a poster boy for a department store portrait studio,” Ellie said.
Snap.
Drake gave her a little nudge. Ellie retaliated. He tickled her. She squealed, delighted he’d brought her there tonight. Romantic gestures really were his opus. A part of Drake was still the boy doling out roses and chocolates. These days, his offerings were going to a more receptive audience.
Snap.
Drake sat on the small bench behind them and pulled Ellie onto his lap. “Why don’t we give them a show?” he said. She could taste the salt on his lips.
“There aren’t any photos left,” she said.
He pulled her closer. “Even better.”
After dinner, they walked past a familiar street corner.
Drake guided Ellie beneath the pale blue sign for LOVE YOU A LATTE .
It was the exact spot where he’d kissed her at the end of their first date.
Ellie had felt like the high-rise building nearby was cheering them on, all those illuminated windows chanting, “You’ve got this!
” After the kiss, Drake drove her home and walked her to her door.
But this time, Drake didn’t wait to kiss her in front of the coffee shop, and he didn’t stop kissing her when he walked her to her door.
Their door. He pressed Ellie against it, her hair already tangled in his hands as the key slid in, then against the railing and onto the stairs.
Her tights peeled down and off each foot, her lips still warm with tequila on his neck.
And then, as they bumped their way up the stairs, flung the door to the bedroom open, and climbed on the bed, something unfortunate happened.
Another person popped into her head.
Melinda.
Ellie swore Melinda’s eyes blinked right in front of her.
She was stunning, wasn’t she? It was the ease of Melinda’s beauty that was unsettling, Ellie decided.
The ease that magazines and movies so often attempted to portray.
I simply wake up this way , the beauty proclaimed.
I scoff in the face of makeup and skincare.
Life is so good . Did Drake ever miss her rosy outlook?
As he’d mentioned earlier, it was hard to see him with someone else.
On-screen, he was having a true romance.
Ellie’s memories, meanwhile, played out like violent B-roll footage from the film True Romance .
Then, something that had been at the back of Ellie’s mind demanded her focus.
It was startling how wrong she’d been about herself.
Before the first movie, Ellie had thought she was above jealousy.
She’d held her head high and perhaps even judged other people for feeling such a human thing.
The past was the past, she believed, and nothing Drake had experienced before her could change what they had.
But Ellie had been wrong. What she could easily handle was a story about the past—a skewed retelling with certain details left behind, where genre and tone shifted.
Engaging with Melinda in person had only made things worse, Ellie decided as Drake went to light a candle.
The visit had brought Melinda even more into their present.
She needed to pull the story she’d already written and leave Melinda to the past. Nolan had the draft, but nothing was in print.
Besides, there was no guarantee he would even like it.
She would call it off before Drake ever found out.
“Ellie?” Drake said. He was beside her again. “Hey. Where are you right now?”
“I’m with you,” Ellie told him, getting up to close the door and shutting the rest of the world out with a single click.