Chapter 30
E llie set her hand on the table, forcing Drake to address the ring.
“Let’s start here,” she said. She was right to be mad about the ring.
Drake still hadn’t thought of an excuse she would find acceptable.
To say he felt attached to it in the store—and later believed it was meant for her—wouldn’t be easy to digest, even if it were true.
“I’m … I’m so sorry, Ellie. I know how this all must look—”
“Well, let me summarize it for you. It looks like you used my ring”—she wiggled her fingers—“to get engaged to someone else.”
“I wasn’t engaged,” Drake insisted. He cleared his throat and slouched his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “But to be engaged, the other person has to say yes. It’s a two-way thing.”
Ellie scooted her chair out. He was going for cute or sarcastic, but neither was landing. Ellie got to be the cute, sarcastic one. “But you would’ve been engaged,” she said. “How could you not tell me that?”
The loud ticking of their wall clock took Drake’s focus.
Ellie had hung up a nineteenth-century Vienna Regulator that never displayed the correct time.
Their conversation was either happening five minutes early or five minutes late.
“I thought you knew,” Drake explained. “That night at my parents’ place?
I thought you saw photos of the ring in that album.
I figured that’s why you weren’t yourself.
” Drake reached out for her. Ellie pulled her arms to her sides.
“But I should’ve told you everything way before that.
At the beginning. I just didn’t know how you’d take it. ”
Ellie shot up to stand. She hovered over him on the other side of the table.
“No. No, don’t make it sound like I can’t handle difficult conversations.
You didn’t tell me about the proposal because it was too hard for you .
Because you’re such a good person, Drake.
You’re so, selfless, you know?” She smirked as she bent forward and pinched his cheek. There was that sarcasm part.
Drake’s mouth dried out. Ellie couldn’t even hear his side of things.
The meanness in her tone lifted him by the shirt collar and threw him into a fight.
“You know what I can’t believe?” he said, pushing himself up to her level.
“That you wrote about that guy’s late wife. And not even accurately, by the way.”
Ellie moved to the darkest corner of the room.
Ironically, this was the place where the sunlight came in strongest during the day.
Nancy would sit there and sunbathe, tethered to the floor.
It was supposed to be a happy pocket. “There are …creative licenses you’re not considering,” she huffed.
“As an artist, you can’t get all caught up in other people’s feelings—”
“You started your career on a lie, Ellie,” Drake summarized, to underline his point. He walked toward her. She flinched. “And now, I can’t help but be nervous that you’re going to start our marriage on a lie, too.”
“And what lie is that?” Ellie turned to him.
“I don’t even know,” Drake said. “You didn’t tell me about going to see Melinda for so long. You didn’t take the time to explain to anyone in your long string of boyfriends why you were leaving them—”
“Are we back to this?” Ellie snapped. “Your utter woe and bitterness over my sleeping with other people before we even met?”
The clock got louder. Tick. Tick. Tick. Stupid clock.
“I’m not jealous,” he said. “I’m upset about the way you left them.”
Tick. Tick. Tick.
“Like how she left you?”
TICK. TICK. TICK.
“No!” Drake insisted. He slammed his palm against the refrigerator.
He could hear the bottles shifting inside, ketchup on the run.
“Melinda and I, that’s not the same. It’s not.
None of those people you dated even got a goodbye.
You ran out their door or snuck down their fire escape before you had to face anything real.
” Ellie wove behind him and sat back down.
He joined her on the other side of the table.
The table was keeping them safe, Drake felt.
“You’ve built this career around connecting to the past, but a part of me thinks you’re just afraid of connecting with people in the present. ”
“My career … You hate that I’m successful, right?” Ellie asked. “You never went after what you wanted to do, and here I am, rubbing that in your face.”
He could feel her disdain. Ellie hated that Drake’s choices didn’t align with her lifestyle , despite that lifestyle beginning with a long history of family money. “You know it must be really nice,” he said, leaning forward. “To start what you wanted to do with all that cushy support.”
“Cushy support,” Ellie repeated. “From the parents who barely spoke to me after my brother died.”
“Your mom just threw a party for us,” Drake said. “Your dad had us over for Thanksgiving. And you sat there and picked apart every little thing wrong with his house and with him. Just like you do with my family.”
“You’re right.” Ellie nodded. “I don’t fit in with your wonderful family and all of their unnecessary second holiday celebrations. But you know who does? Melinda. I bet they wish that ring was on her finger.”
“Come … Oh, come on,” Drake said. “That’s so far from the truth. The truth is so far away from you right now. It’s out in Boise.” He pointed in the general direction of Boise behind him. Suddenly, the wall clock chimed to announce a new hour. Drake jumped. Ellie let out a shriek.
“Holy shit,” he said.
“God dammit.”
“That thing really got me.” Drake felt himself start to calm as they shook off their nerves. “Look,” he told her. “Let’s slow down. I love who you are now, Ellie.”
“Right.” Ellie nodded. “And what if I miss who I was then?” She started to shake.
Something was wrong. Tears wet her mascara.
“I mean, I used to go out and live . I would listen to records on strangers’ beds, meet weirdos at house parties, people you should never meet in real life.
I once met a man named Gilligan. Gilligan.
And he’d never heard of the show. You can’t make this up.
And I think those are the kinds of moments that made me write well.
That made me myself. Only now, they’re drying up. ”
“Because of me,” Drake pieced together. “That’s what you’re saying. Right?”
Headlights flooded the windows and car doors slammed outside. There were smiling voices. Laughing voices. They paused and waited to continue.
“That’s not what I said,” Ellie insisted.
“It is, though,” Drake told her. “Everything has to be so interesting with you. You can’t sit still and be comfortable.
You can’t buy a new rug or a new sweater or make anything easy on yourself because easy is boring , and God forbid anything be boring, even for a second. It’s reckless, Ellie. Truly.”
“Well then,” Ellie said, “what do you love so much about me, Drake?”
“Oh, come on. Don’t do that. You know what I mean.”
“No. I really don’t.”
“Okay. Well, I love that you’re passionate and artistic, and we have so much fun together, and you appreciate old things—”
“Huh. That sounds familiar.” Her face turned red.
“ ‘I’ll love you forever,’ ” she recited.
“I’ll love you forever?” Ellie stood and pushed the door to the living room open.
Drake followed behind her. The record he’d put on earlier was skipping as they circled the coffee table like animals in a chase.
It was tough to tell who had the advantage.
Finally, the skipping stopped, but the music sounded like it was playing underwater because it was on Dorothy III.
Nancy had ducked behind the couch to hide.
“I said the same thing to you,” Drake told her. He stopped moving and held his hands up. “That I’d love you forever. And I meant it.”
“Right. Thanks for making that point for me.” Ellie stopped straight across from him.
“You said the same things to both of us. You used the same ring, played me the same songs, took me to the same restaurants, watched the same movies, gave me the same sappy proposal. You love me because I remind you of her, Drake.” Ellie marched over to him.
“You can’t even be original with who you love. ”
“That’s not true.”
“It is, though. You have decades of memories. The cinema could play any of them. And the only thing it ever seems to play is you with Melinda. She is the storyline that haunts you the most. Ben, and the aftermath, is mine.”
Drake paused. He knew Ellie was right, in a way.
Only, he didn’t still love Melinda. Why were those memories the only ones that came up?
This realization had been bothering him for weeks.
“I want nothing more than to marry you,” Drake told her.
“Tell me you still want to marry me?” He made it sound like a question, but really, he was groveling again.
Groveling for her to stay, to tell him this wasn’t going to end in another failed proposal.
A part of Drake always imagined Ellie would leave.
He was trying to stop her from proving him right, but it came out all wrong.
“Tell me, Ellie. Say you want to marry me.”
Ellie ignored his plea. She turned to look up at the wooden wall shelves.
Her hands passed the antique ship they had been gifted on the night of their engagement party, beyond the framed collection of matchbooks, and then she had a firm grip on something.
Her fingers curled around the music box Drake hadn’t intended to give to her so long ago.
She set it down on the coffee table so it couldn’t be ignored.
“She’s always been in the room with us,” she said. “Right from the beginning. Hasn’t she?”
Every part of Ellie was pulling away from him. Her footsteps were loud against the stairs. Drake waited in the living room as her bag unzipped, followed by the sound of items making a crash landing inside of it. A few minutes later, she came out of their bedroom with her packed bag.
It wasn’t the duffel bag she used for overnights. It was a much bigger bag.
Halfway down the stairs, Drake begged her not to do the thing she always did. He wasn’t sure how to walk back from this.
“I’m going to Jen and Marc’s,” Ellie said. “I need space.”
Drake wanted her to stay so he could convince her that, yes, he had loved Melinda, but his love for Ellie was different.
It was real. If she stayed, she would brush her hands through his hair.
They would talk it out. They would wake up the next morning and have breakfast together.
They’d break the spell they’d put on the now-cursed kitchen table, and also, the now-cursed coffee table.
“I’m sorry,” Ellie would say. “I love you, Drake. Pass the milk?” Drake would pass the milk.
He would hear her laugh again. Not the laugh that she laughed for other people, but the one that was just for him.
But that’s not what happened.
Drake followed Ellie outside to the driveway. The car beeped as it unlocked, and the ignition gave in to her demands. She lingered for a moment, probably to call Jen, and then he was alone.