Chapter 25
S ince reading Ellie’s story, Drake kept returning to one thing: the photos.
Their details became more menacing with time.
Why had Ellie not brought them up yet? He reminded himself, for the third time that week, that this was how she handled conflict.
Her big moments were stored out of reach until they exploded.
Drake feared the explosion would happen soon.
As Ellie and Drake parked that Saturday night for the seventh showing at the cinema, paid for the tickets, and found their seats, Drake hoped it would show the end of his love story with Melinda.
He was ready to see it all come crashing down.
But the title that appeared after the dancing hot dogs warned him there was more romance in store.
TICKET SEVEN: TOGETHER
The movie’s structure was different that night, Drake noticed right away. They weren’t seeing a single memory. Instead, they watched a montage of younger Ellie’s romantic escapades with a string of eccentric characters:
The dry cleaner heartthrob.
The park guy.
The professor who played Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man .
The opera guy.
The silver fox with a front-tooth gap who sang while he made burrata.
The girl with the—Drake sputtered a cough—girl with the paint-stained overalls and Joni Mitchell collection.
The photographer with a bunker-style loft.
The dancer into dark wave.
The taxidermist-motorcycle man.
The Orwell-quoting line cook.
And so on.
Drake sighed. The sequence overwhelmed him.
He considered ducking out of the theater, but that had led to an argument last time.
So, Drake stared at his feet while the show continued, glancing up every now and then in morbid curiosity.
It was humiliating—not what Ellie was doing, exactly, but the act of having to watch it back with her.
How was she so calm in the seat next to him? The liaisons progressed:
At the dry cleaners.
In a park.
In the dressing room for a production of The Music Man .
In the empty reception hall of an opera house.
Over the kitchen counter.
Inside a pair of paint-stained overalls.
In front of a camera.
On a worn-out leather recliner.
Watched by hundreds of carefully placed dead animals.
In the parking lot of a restaurant.
And so on.
Drake squirmed. It was just sex, he reminded himself.
So, Ellie had a life before him—a vibrant and experimental life.
Who was he to judge her for it? He channeled his calm side until the movie took a new turn and focused on the endings of these encounters.
Ellie was always the one who left. At first, she told lies to untether herself, but then seemed to realize disappearing was simpler. She was ruthless.
She darted out the door before the burrata was ready.
She crawled out the window while Joni was Blue .
And snuck down the fire escape of the photographer’s loft.
She changed her walking route to avoid the dancer.
She left the taxidermist on read.
She ignored the doorbell when the line cook placed dinner on her doorstep.
And after all of that, the memory slowed down. Ellie met someone new.
The guy with the rooftop-level loft had the right things to say and the right suits.
His name was Lucas. Lucas also had a specific glass for everything.
Wines got the correct swirl, morning espresso came in bright stacked cups, and he knew what kind of liquor to put in a Nick and Nora glass.
But along with being slick, he was sweet.
In the mornings, Lucas left sticky notes by Ellie’s bed with sayings that made him think of her.
He talked about his family often. On her birthday, he rented out a roller rink and invited Ellie’s friends.
He held her hand as they wound their way through neon lights to slow jams, bumping shoulders with other twentysomethings already nostalgic for their youth.
Drake couldn’t help but compare himself to the person he was seeing on the screen.
The similarities were easy to stack up. Lucas was Drake, but successful.
Drake, but smoother around the edges. If there were an ideal person for Ellie to build a relationship with from her past—anyone to end the casual string of cameos—it should’ve been this guy.
But the morning after the roller party, after he’d told her he loved her, Ellie snuck out his door while he showered.
“It’s over,” she told Jen later over scrambled eggs at brunch. “With Lucas, I mean.”
Jen hesitated. “But he’s perfect for you.”
“Meh.” The waitress topped their mimosa glasses.
“Lucas is the guy everyone wants,” Jen told her. “He’s so thoughtful .”
“Or boring.”
Jen grabbed Ellie’s arm. “What kind of person rents a roller rink for their girlfriend?”
“Girlfriend?” Ellie threw her hands up in protest. “No. No.”
“Okay,” Jen said. “Well, if it’s not Lucas, then who?”
“I’m not sure.” Ellie shook herself out.
Her smile reminded Drake of a pharmaceutical ad.
Ditching Lucas brought about the same feelings as leaving those pesky seasonal pollen allergies behind.
“Maybe I’m meant to be free. On my own.” She crunched down on the edge of her English muffin.
“Men get to do that. I want life to be exciting. I want to get somebody’s number as I walk out the door right now. I want to fall in love with my work.”
The check came. Jen tried to grab it, but Ellie reached it first. “I’ve got this,” she said. “Just promise me something. If I ever become some boring married person, please come over and shake me by the shoulders.”
As usual, the memory started to blur.
Drake felt Ellie nudge him as the movie prepared to switch protagonists.
She was asking if he was okay. Nothing is wrong here, she seemed to insist. But Drake had learned something different.
It was so easy for Ellie to lie, to leave, to skip out on a good thing, and the person she was with was always the last to know.
Would Ellie wake up one day and believe that she had made a mistake with him?
Did she even want to be married?
“I’m okay,” he swallowed. “I just—”
Suddenly, Melinda got in the way of everything all over again.
Melinda had the world’s worst couch; it was more like a chair for one person.
Drake’s half of the couch-chair creaked as he settled in and started up the movie.
Melinda didn’t have a television, so he’d carried over a grainy spare, plus a dusty DVD player from his parents’ storage closet.
And then Drake, in the audience, remembered where this memory was headed.
Oh. No .
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was the entertainment for the night. It was the same movie musical he had watched recently with Ellie. Melinda was pitched forward in the seat next to Drake, her eyes glued to the screen.
“I saw the cutest kid at the hardware store today,” he mentioned a few minutes into the film.
Melinda pressed pause and her body stiffened as she set the remote down between them.
“Anyway, this kid came in and asked for gardening shears. Well, they were for his mom.” Drake was mostly working construction jobs at this point, but he still picked up the occasional shift at Peat’s Hardware.
“I thought,” he said. “I don’t know, it’s weird, but this kid kind of looked like me? ”
“That’s sweet,” Melinda said.
Drake wasn’t sure why he brought up the kid.
Since leaving Peat’s that afternoon, he kept thinking about him.
When he turned to the passenger seat to grab his mom’s groceries, he pictured the kid sitting there instead of the lemons.
When he pulled up to Melinda’s shop, he felt a little hand in his, too.
It was new, the presence of wanting another, smaller person around. He liked it.
Melinda pressed Play on the movie. She reached for one of the French macarons she’d set on the coffee table and took a bite before hitting Pause again. “Drake,” she told him, turning her focus in his direction. “You know I don’t want kids. Right?”
The television had frozen on the lead actress inside of the film’s titular umbrella shop.
Drake tried to remember if he’d ever seen a store that specialized in umbrellas.
Maybe Melinda should add that to her growing list of niche ideas she was keeping, he thought.
The Umbrellas of Main Street. So what if the shop in the movie wasn’t doing well? It was fiction.
“I didn’t say I wanted kids,” Drake insisted, even though that’s exactly what he’d been thinking. Voicing the truth when Melinda didn’t want them was too big of a risk. It opened the possibility of conflict. An ending, even. Then, “Why …” He cleared his throat. “Why don’t you?”
Melinda tried to face him. There wasn’t enough space on the couch. The two of them shifted apart a little to look at each other. “I just don’t,” she said. “I’m loving how simple things are right now.”
Drake thought her words over. They were vague, weren’t they? He knew she’d had a tough childhood and lost her mom not long ago. Maybe time would give her a new perspective. Maybe he could change her mind.
“You’re not going to change my mind,” she insisted before he said it.
“No,” Drake told her. “Of course not.”
“If that’s going to be a make-or-break for you, we should talk about—”
“It’s not. You’re everything I need.”
Melinda put her feet up on his lap and pressed Play. Drake, in his memory of this conversation, hadn’t noticed the way she watched him instead of the movie. She was sleuthing. Analyzing. Trying to figure out what he might not be telling her.
“Hey, are there really shops that exclusively sell umbrellas?” he asked.
“Shh,” Melinda said, finally easing back into the plot.
“I bet that’s a thing in Seattle—”
“Shh,” she warned again, handing him a cookie to quiet him.
The screen turned black. The lights rose.
Drake stood first. He knew Ellie wouldn’t be happy with that night’s screening.
He’d lied about having seen the French musical because what was the point of telling her he had watched it with Melinda?
But between The Garlic Bread Place and the movie, it could seem like he was repeating his last relationship all over again.
Ellie got up quietly. Her half of the movie wasn’t great, either.
Drake couldn’t help but wonder about her past relationships.
She’d left so many people before things could develop.
Had she ever been in something serious before him?
Could she be in something serious? The night at the taco drive-thru, she’d mentioned that Drake was her first love.
A quote came to mind from her piece called “Yellow Dress.”
“A first love is about finding yourself. A second love is about sharing the self you found with someone new.”
Which person was Drake in this equation?
He thought back to one of the plaques inside the lost and found he’d seen.
Love Affair , one of Ellie’s items had been called.
Drake couldn’t remember what it was, though.
He needed an excuse to look again. So when Ellie wasn’t paying attention, he reached for the excuse Ellie had used the night they returned to the cinema with Jen and Marc.
He set his scarf on the seat and left it behind.
The bokeh of soft lights, dusting of snow, and cheery music on the radio must have brightened Ellie’s mood because she seemed okay in the car. Drake did his best to let the night’s memories slip away. When she suggested they put on a movie back at home, he agreed.
“What do you want to watch?” Drake asked.
“Oh, why don’t you pick?” Ellie suggested. Her tone was playful, but the remote hit his lap with a hard thud. “I wouldn’t want to choose something you’ve already seen.”
It was understandable she’d be hurt by his omission, even if it was small. Drake tried to turn things around.
“Well, it’s two days till Christmas,” he said. “How about a holiday movie? One where some guy who works at a tree farm falls for a city girl, and she learns the magic of the season?”
“Sure, Drake.” Ellie nodded. “There’s nothing quite like watching a small-town romance, is there?”
Drake ignored the comment.
Later, as the movie played, Drake couldn’t focus on the plot as a girl who volunteered at the petting zoo fell in love with an animal whisperer. How many little moments, Drake wondered, had he repeated in their relationship without realizing it?
And why the hell was he doing that?