Chapter 29 #2
“Drake?” Ellie asked in the seat next to him. He was too upset to face her. He stayed focused on the movie, watching her younger counterpart type away, happily. Smug, almost.
Then, before he could dig deeper into what happened, the scene blurred and switched over.
The memory started in the high school hallway, as he’d remembered.
With his mom’s silk blindfold shielding Melinda’s eyes, Drake steered her down the rose-petal aisle, past the dusty orange lockers, to eventually face the circle of candles surrounding the ring box. “Are you kidnapping me?” Melinda asked.
“Not a kidnapping. I promise.” Drake moved to grab the small music box in the middle of all the candles and landed at her feet.
He cleared his throat, announcing Melinda could remove the blindfold and face the banner he’d strung from the ceiling.
A question was suspended in the same space where streamers from school dances once decorated the halls.
WILL YOU MARRY ME?
Drake waited for her response. It was hard to gauge her reaction.
Melinda’s hand went to her mouth, and a big breath filled her chest. She was surprised, but it wasn’t clear whether it was a good or bad surprise.
Drake’s knee started to hurt; the hard floor pressed back on him as he willed an answer out of her.
Yes , he thought. How difficult was it to say yes?
They were so close to a life together above her shop.
He had never wanted to stay in town, but with Melinda, it would be all right. Life would be good.
“I can’t do this, Drake,” Melinda said as she stared at the ring inside the box.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” His face felt hot.
“It isn’t working,” Melinda said. Then, her back was to him, and she was moving away.
Was she leaving? No, she was sitting— right on the floor against one of the lockers and patting a space next to her.
Drake accepted it. They weren’t far from where they once had talked at the entrance to the dance.
He swore he could hear the thud of the heavy bass knocking on the gym walls, that he could smell the perfume that lined her wrists that night.
Melinda’s thumb ran over the splinter Drake had gotten that morning.
Hours ago, they had joined the limbs of a wooden side table together, then climbed back in bed.
He made eggs and English muffins. When had this feeling started for her, this feeling of an ending?
Even as he parked the car outside the school, they had spoken about taking a vacation.
Melinda wanted to go to Italy. They would rent Vespas.
They would eat offensive amounts of pasta.
“Since when is it not working?” Drake struggled to get out. “Five minutes ago, everything was fine.”
“Five minutes ago, we were just kids,” she said.
“What do you mean?” He set down the music box at his side.
“I think that—you and me—we’re stuck in the past,” she told him.
“In this idea of what was . We live like we’re in high school still.
You’re even proposing at our high school, Drake.
But we’re adults now. You haven’t taken a single step forward in your career since we’ve been together.
And I haven’t pushed you to do that, either. ”
“That’s not true,” Drake said, even though it was true.
“Look, I want to stay in this town forever. These people, my store … It’s my future.
And you, Drake, this isn’t for you. You love big gestures and tall buildings and places with possibility.
You fight it, but you do love those things.
And I love slow mornings where we sit reading in bed and everything is simple. ”
“I could work on homes in the city,” Drake insisted. “Spend some time there. Then drive right back here—”
“It’s not just about your career.” She wrapped her arms around her knees.
Melinda had a way of getting comfortable wherever she was, even in the middle of a breakup on a cold floor.
“Everything is so easy with us. We don’t push each other.
Challenge each other. We’re so agreeable that I’m afraid if we got married, one or both of us would wilt.
” Melinda noticed the word wilt had particularly crushed him.
She pressed on. “I don’t even know if I want to be married.
I mean, I love your company, but—I’m independent and …
also, I’m not going to change my mind about kids.
I couldn’t live with myself if I pressured you into a different life than the one you want. ”
Melinda rested her head on his shoulder. Then, things got embarrassing.
“I love you,” Drake pleaded. “Please, just think about this. Please. Just … Please.” Melinda covered his lips with her finger.
The begging carried on for several brutal minutes.
They were meant to be together. Drake didn’t care what his life brought, so long as they were together.
Dreams, who needed them? She was his dream.
He threw the word destiny around until it got grimy.
Tears were shed, the picture someone would point at to define an ugly cry.
Eventually, Melinda helped him blow the candles out, which was somehow more devastating than doing it on his own.
Before that, though, she flipped the lid of the music box back open and spun the key several times.
Soft piano poured out from it, and a ballet dancer spun at the center with her arms extended over her head.
The song stopped and started again, stopped and started.
Melinda held her hand out and asked Drake to dance. After a few rounds of the music, she set her head on his chest. She smelled like millions of flowers distilled into two spritzes from the pink glass globe bottle he’d watched her use so many mornings.
“You’re going to find that person,” Melinda said.
Drake pulled away. Even if he did find someone else, he was always going to love her. “I will love you forever,” he repeated. His own word—forever—wagged a finger at him. A diamond was forever. He wished he’d gone with the stupid diamond.
Instead, he’d chosen a sapphire.
The exact sapphire that was now on Ellie’s hand.
When the lights went up, she was twisting it around her finger. “You proposed to her,” she seethed. “You proposed with my ring .”
“I know.” Drake swallowed. It was unusual to sit in the auditorium with all the lights on; they usually left right away. There was safety in the darkness. Everything suddenly felt much more severe.
“I thought if you saw it all play out, it would make it better,” he said.
“But look, the memory didn’t happen how I remembered it, Ellie.
Not at all.” Drake was rambling; he could barely punctuate his sentences.
“The breakup was more mutual than what we saw. Sure, I proposed, but I remember being okay after she turned me down, you know? I remember feeling like not getting married was right. I don’t know what the hell just happened.
Maybe I forgot the details because they were hard for me. Almost like how you forgot—”
She shook her head to stop him. “Don’t even think about making that comparison. Just don’t.”
Drake nodded. He was searching for common ground, but he’d taken a misstep.
Ellie’s hand trembled on her lap. He reached for it.
“That night you found that photo at my mom’s place—those few photos at the end of the album …
I wanted you to understand the full story.
That’s the only reason I suggested we come back here.
But I’m afraid I made everything so much worse. ”
“What photos, Drake?” Ellie asked.
His stomach turned. Something was wrong.
Her question should’ve come with a tone of accusation.
At least a knowing smirk. But Ellie was genuinely curious.
He’d assumed that she was holding the secret above his head like an invisible lever she was waiting to pull.
But what if she’d never flipped to the back of the album?
What if she’d never seen what he did—a few photographs of him in the jewelry store picking out Ellie’s sapphire ring years before they’d met. For someone else.
Ellie’s forehead creased in confusion as she waited for an answer, which confirmed what Drake had pieced together. She hadn’t known about the proposal, or the ring, until right now. And Drake had dragged her there to watch every miserable detail magnify before her eyes.
Ellie wouldn’t look at Drake as they drove home.
They drifted through the streets, passing all the familiar neighborhood landmarks in silence.
There was the house that put out too many inflatables for the holidays, the one with the bright red mailbox, the one with the neighbor who always called them by the wrong names.
But even in this world of sameness, everything was different.
Ellie hadn’t known about the proposal until tonight.
Now she had seen it happen with the same ring on her finger and the same music box that was on their shelf.
The memory was much worse than he’d remembered.
He had been so stupid. If they had only talked, she could’ve learned the truth without having to live it.
Instead, Drake had forced her to watch him declare his undying love for Melinda.
“I’ll love you forever,” he’d repeated over and over.
Those same words he used when he proposed to Ellie.
The car slid into the driveway. Drake opened Ellie’s door for her.
He held the front door open, too, which he’d fixed the squeak on last week, but she still hadn’t noticed.
Ellie needed space, he figured. The whole thing would blow over.
He sat on the couch while she threw the keys onto the shelf over their shoes and stomped into the kitchen.
Drake could hear the spoon clinking inside the expensive canned food the vet gave them for Nancy’s upset stomach, then the sound of her aggressively eating the food from the bowl.
He waited and waited for Ellie to emerge from the kitchen, but she didn’t.
The house was too quiet; he put on one of her crooner records to make it feel more lived in.
When Drake swung the kitchen door open, he found her sitting at the table they never used, her eyes wide and possessed, like a still image from one of their Thursday-night monster movie marathons.
Ellie looked like she had “ seen things.”
Cautiously, he slid out a chair, sat across from her, and cleared his throat. “We should talk about all of this, Ellie,” he said. “Where do you want to start?”