Chapter 27
W hat is it you’re missing?” Natalie asked the following Saturday night as she led them over to the glass lost and found case for the second time.
When Drake intentionally left his scarf behind, he had been wondering the same thing.
What was he missing from Ellie’s story? Last week, he’d watched her fly through dozens of quick-lived flings.
Seeing her lack of commitment play out had shaken him.
What if their relationship was a science experiment to test if Ellie could handle something real?
He knew this fear wasn’t fair or warranted.
He also knew the movies would give him more information in time.
But Drake’s curiosity was insatiable, and he couldn’t wait another week to see what memory might be tied to the plaque labeled Love Affair .
His eyes darted around in a desperate search.
On the bottom shelf, an object that had once seemed innocent took his breath away.
Witness to Ellie’s Accident , the plaque read.
The object was devastating having learned its story, the cheap dinosaur toy from Ben’s rearview mirror so small and vulnerable inside the glass case.
A white Stetson cowboy hat was one spot over from the dinosaur.
Cowboy Love Affair , the plaque read. Cowboy love affair?
Drake pictured Ellie on the back of a horse, wild wheat waving, a small wooden cabin on the horizon.
He saw her in a white dress, petting a goat, sitting by a crackling fire.
He turned to look at her behind him. Technically, they were inside the cinema walls. He could ask the question on his mind.
But Drake wasn’t prepared to talk about what sat at the far corner of the bottom shelf from his own life, so close to the item in question.
“I’m glad they have your scarf,” Ellie said, breaking him from the visuals that were best left in a country music video.
Natalie handed the scarf over, and Ellie pulled them toward the staircase on the right that led to the balcony level with a quick “thanks” thrown behind her.
Halfway up the stairs, Ellie paused and looked out.
“I want you to know that … I think I overreacted,” she told him.
Drake stopped at her side. “Overreacted about what?”
Ellie hesitated. “I mean, since we’re inside cinema doors, I guess I can say it. Seeing that you’d watched the same movie with Melinda got to me. I think it was because we had just seen The Garlic Bread Place. You told her you loved her there.”
“I know.” Drake sighed.
“But look, it’s just a few similarities,” Ellie decided. “I get how it could be a coincidence. In a long relationship, things might get repeated, right? I was mad about it until I remembered Sal’s Cantina.”
“Sal’s?”
“I took you there on our first date,” Ellie said. “You called it our spot. I let you. But I wrote about Sal’s a few years before we met, and I took …” She made a tally on her fingers, then gave up.
“I took a lot of dates there.”
“Oh.” Drake gained a better understanding of her jealousy. All along, he’d thought Sal’s was their place. Their photo booth moment. How many people had Ellie shared that moment with before him?
“Anyway, I get how that could happen,” she said. “The restaurant. The movie. Just … don’t go repeating yourself again. Okay?” There was some humor in her voice, although she was a little serious, too, he could tell.
Inside the auditorium, they chose a row where they had never sat before, near the front of the balcony. Drake tensed, waiting for some kind of cowboy on a white horse to whisk Ellie away. The lights lowered. Drake tried to push the cowboy out of his mind.
After the cartoon, a new title flashed against the screen.
TICKET EIGHT: I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU
Tonight’s movie took them to a vintage shop.
Drake recognized the shop right away. In the years since Ben had brought Ellie there on her birthday, organizational changes had been made, and someone had added bright signs to help customers navigate the racks.
WESTERN WEAR one of them read. COWGIRL said another, which seemed to be the more adventurous version of WESTERN WEAR .
He wondered if this was where the cowboy entered the story.
But GRAPHIC TEES was the rack Ellie sifted through before she headed to the front counter.
“Can I help you?” the salesgirl asked. She was dressed like Wednesday Addams, only with two blonde pigtails stuck against her shoulders.
“Hi,” Ellie said. She was a little older here than in the last memory, and her hair was chin-length now. The cut made her features look larger, or maybe it was just the raw emotion on her face. Grief still, and something else. Loneliness, maybe. “Do you, umm, take donations?”
“Sure,” the girl said. “But there’s a Buffalo Exchange down the street.”
Ellie recoiled. “No. I don’t want a Buffalo Exchange .”
“They pay at Buffalo Exchange.” The girl dropped her head in apology. “Here, it’s—well—we pay almost nothing.”
“Well, it’s not about the money.”
“Oh. Well, then why don’t you keep your stuff? You never know when extra clothes will come in handy for a costume party—”
“Because,” Ellie snapped. “I don’t have the room for it.” She sighed. “Anyway, it’s all in the car.”
Ben’s clothes filled the space inside of Ellie’s trunk.
Most of the items had been bagged up, but a few were still loose, as if thrown in at the last possible second: button-down shirts and distressed graphic tees.
Blue jeans, black jeans, and a questionable pair of white overalls.
Drake wondered if this meant Ellie had sorted through Ben’s closet by herself.
It would’ve been a terrible task to push on a kid, even a twentysomething kid.
And was Ellie, who coveted old things, really about to give up her brother’s treasures?
Ellie shifted in the seat next to him; Drake sensed she was far away, digging until she hit her deepest layer of regret.
As younger Ellie threw the loose clothing items into one of the bags, the significance of the memory clicked together.
Drake had known that Ben was the reason Ellie loved old places.
What he hadn’t quite understood was her logic for choosing the heirlooms that piled on their shelves.
Ellie’s vintage hunting extended beyond the practical need of furniture or the aesthetic one of art.
She picked up personal items, too—abandoned trophies or the occasional family photo tucked inside a souvenir frame.
Watching this moment, her behavior made sense.
Ellie had given the last pieces of Ben’s life away to a stranger.
Since she could never get his things back, she collected the aftermath of other peoples’ lives and relationships.
She treated these items with care and love—the same way she hoped someone out there was watching over Ben’s things.
Drake heard himself sniffle. He hadn’t felt himself tearing up and hoped the light from the projector wouldn’t give him away.
Embarrassment rolled through him. This was her pain, her grief.
He needed to be the strong one. It was the thought of Ellie going through Ben’s clothes, scraping the dirt off his sneakers, hoping for the last time that he would come back and fill them—
Drake sniffled louder the second time.
Ellie pulled his arm tighter around her. Her face surprised him. Was she relieved? Maybe this is how it was meant to be—that Drake was meant to share in this pain, to wade around in it with her so it was less lonely.
“These are all the things,” Ellie told the salesgirl.
“What I want donated. Wait …” She held her hand up.
There was one more item in the front seat.
It had earned a special place in the car, a special goodbye.
Her hands found the studded leather jacket Ben had worn the night they went to the abandoned mansion.
Ellie hugged it to her chest, then passed it over to the girl while trying to not look too hard at it. “This, too,” she said.
“I’ll get a cart,” the girl told her. Moments later, Ellie’s trunk slammed, and the physical contents of Ben’s life wobbled from the car and into the shop.
When the salesgirl handed over a few measly singles, Ellie quietly pleaded, “Please make sure this stuff finds a good home.” She set a hand on the salesgirl’s shoulder. “Please.”
Drake could guess the plot of the next memory.
He also knew that Ellie was going to lose her mind.
But in his defense, it was only a song. “You take the John Mayer, I’ll take the Whitney Houston” wasn’t something people negotiated during a breakup.
Besides, Drake loved the song before he’d even met Melinda.
Based on the hissing sound Ellie was making, though, that detail wouldn’t matter. She leaned so far toward the screen that he imagined her head might spin and get stuck in the wrong direction, like a scene from Death Becomes Her .
On-screen, Melinda rolled the car windows down and Drake turned up the stereo.
They were belting along to Whitney Houston; both of them were terrible singers.
Melinda punched her fists into the air as the song transcended into a new octave.
There was a naive twinkle in Drake’s eyes.
They weren’t singing. They were serenading each other with the lyrics of “I Will Always Love You.” This was it, the moment in the movie when the audience realizes the leads are supposed to make it.
Only, Drake had shared this same movie moment with Ellie a few weeks ago at Finn’s.