38. Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lila
The theater was too nice to feel real.
Not in the way that made me feel unworthy. In the way that made me feel staged.
The seats were velvet. There were soft aisle lights. A ceiling scattered with tiny stars. Apparently, someone looked at a room built to watch strangers cry and thought, sure, let’s make it cosmic.
I stepped into the auditorium with Grant at my side and Harper and Finn behind me, moving in a tight formation that felt less like friendship and more like a small shield.
People murmured around us in that polished, careful way. Rich people and movie people did this when they wanted everyone to know they had opinions, but not emotions.
Studio executives, publicists, actors, critics, and, of course, influencers pretending they were too cool to care while filming everything for content.
My pulse still hadn’t recovered from the carpet. My dress felt cool where it exposed my back. My clutch dug into my palm because I was gripping it like a tiny formal weapon.
Then I saw my parents.
Mom stood near the front of the auditorium with Dad’s hand resting at the small of her back, both of them surrounded by people congratulating them like they had personally invented love and tax fraud.
Dad looked ridiculous in the best way, all handsome nerves in a suit he kept tugging at like it had offended him.
Mom looked calm, but I knew her. Her smile was too bright.
Her fingers kept finding Dad’s cuff, smoothing it, touching him, making sure he was still there.
Oliver and Molly Russell.
My parents.
The reason this whole room existed tonight.
The movie was based on Dad’s book. Dad’s book was based on them. Their disaster. Their almost. Their second chance. Their wedding that became a story people bought tickets to cry over in expensive shoes.
Mom caught my eye across the aisle.
Her face softened immediately.
I almost lost it right there.
Dad followed her gaze, saw me, and lifted two fingers in a tiny wave that somehow said, You good, baby? And please do not make me emotional in public; I am barely holding this tuxedo together.
I smiled back, small but real.
Harper leaned in. “You did good out there.”
“I feel like I might throw up.”
Finn’s mouth twitched. “That means you care. Sit down before you faint.”
“I’m not going to faint.”
Harper gave me a look. “You said that last time.”
I glared. She smiled back, fully unbothered.
We found our row, guided by an usher with a flashlight and the calm of someone who had definitely watched famous people lose wars with basic seating arrangements.
My seat sat near the center, with Grant and a studio rep close enough for the post-screening Q&A, assuming my brain remained attached to my body long enough to form sentences.
Mom and Dad were two rows ahead, closer to the aisle, where the producers could parade them out after the screening if needed. Mom turned as we approached and reached for my hand before I could sit.
“You look beautiful,” she whispered.
“Don’t,” I whispered back, because her eyes were already wet and mine were not stable enough for that kind of parental ambush.
Dad leaned around her. “You look terrifyingly expensive.”
“That’s actually the goal.”
“Good. Nailed it.”
Mom squeezed my fingers. “Proud of you.”
My throat tightened.
I nodded, because words were suddenly a luxury item I could not afford.
I slid into the seat behind them and let my shoulders drop a fraction.
Then I looked.
Evan sat several rows ahead and to the side, far enough that we weren’t in the same line of sight unless one of us turned. His posture was straight. His suit jacket had a crease at the shoulder, probably from someone tugging him around on the carpet. His hands rested on his thighs, still.
He wasn’t surrounded by his band. He wasn’t laughing. His team sat scattered nearby. River sat two seats down, already leaning toward someone and whispering with a grin.
Evan turned his head slightly, as if he sensed my gaze.
I clenched my jaw, heart jolting, and forced my gaze away before our eyes could catch. My shoulders stiffened, a familiar wave of dread washing through me.
We sat apart, but aware.
That was the story of us lately. Separate lanes, same orbit.
Harper settled into the seat beside me and crossed her legs. She looked far too comfortable for someone who had spent the last hour ready to bite a reporter. Finn sat on my other side, hands folded, expression neutral. He looked like he belonged in a theater like this. That was annoying.
Grant leaned in briefly. “No phones. No filming. Just watch.”
I nodded.
I slipped my phone into my clutch anyway because my hands needed something to do, then forced myself to set the clutch in my lap and keep it there.
A few feet ahead of me, Mom reached for Dad’s hand in the dark.
Dad took it.
Something in my chest folded.
The lights dimmed.
The murmur of the room faded into a hush. Someone cleared their throat. Someone laughed, then stopped.
The studio logo hit the screen, and the sound system filled the theater, deep and clean.
My body went very still.
I wasn’t nervous about Evan looking at me.
I was nervous about being seen as myself, exposed, every wish and failure on display, as if the film’s light could burn right through me.
That included being seen as my work.
And tonight, somehow, it also included being seen as theirs.
Oliver and Molly’s daughter.
The girl who grew up in the aftermath of the story everyone else was about to meet for the first time.
The movie began with a kiss.
A chaotic, breathless, absolutely wrong kiss in a church garden, sunlight catching on flowers, a bride shouting from somewhere off-screen, and the heroine looking like she had just detonated her own life with her mouth.
The audience laughed, startled and delighted.
I knew enough about my parents’ story to know it wasn’t supposed to be funny yet. Not really. Not to them.
But the way the film cut backward from that kiss to twenty minutes earlier, to Molly stumbling into the wrong wedding during the bridal march, made the room titter again.
She stood frozen in a red dress that looked one bad decision from unraveling.
Her eyes were wide as every head turned toward her.
On screen, Oliver stood at the altar in a navy suit, looking like a man who had just seen a ghost walk down the aisle and realized he wanted the ghost more than the future waiting behind him.
My dad, but not my dad.
My mom, but not my mom.
Actors wearing their history like borrowed clothes.
Harper leaned toward me, whispering, “Okay, this already hurts.”
“Rude of it,” I whispered back.
The film moved quickly after that.
Molly fled. Oliver followed. Their argument in the garden was funny until it wasn’t. The teasing landed first, jokes about wrong rooms and dramatic entrances and old humiliations, but beneath it was the ache of two people who had been circling the same wound for years.
Then came the kiss again, this time in full.
Not glamorous. Not clean. Not the kind of movie kiss that asked permission from good taste.
It was messy and desperate and doomed the second it started.
My throat tightened so suddenly it felt like my body was refusing to let the moment in, breath snagging behind my ribs.
Because sometimes one kiss wasn’t a beginning. Sometimes it was an autopsy.
In the row ahead, Dad’s thumb moved over Mom’s knuckles.
Mom didn’t look away from the screen.
Neither did I.
Finn shifted beside me when Paula appeared on screen, bouquet clutched like a weapon. The actress playing her was beautiful in a sharp, polished way, every smile a little too perfect at the edges.
“That one,” Finn muttered, barely moving his mouth. “Nightmare in satin.”
Harper covered a laugh with her hand.
The movie didn’t soften Paula. It didn’t turn her into a cartoon either. Somehow that made her worse.
She was the kind of villain who didn’t look like one if you weren’t paying attention.
She cried at the right times. She said the right words. She touched Oliver’s arm like comfort and control were the same thing.
When the story moved into the aftermath, into Molly sitting in her car sobbing and then dragging herself back to her bakery, my chest pinched.
The bakery was warm on screen, bright in that soft movie way, with flour-dusted counters, buttercream roses, and customers who felt like they belonged there. Molly put on an apron like armor. She smiled at people while falling apart behind her eyes.
I pressed my tongue to the inside of my cheek.
There it was.
The part no one clapped for. The part where a woman could be broken and still have to frost cupcakes.
That part was my mom.
Not the romantic legend. Not the adorable woman in interviews who joked about bad signage and worse timing. My mom, who made birthdays feel sacred and boxed up pastries for every person who looked a little sad too close to closing time.
Harper’s shoulder brushed mine for half a second.
A reminder.
I wasn’t alone in my own head.
Then came Marvin and Edna, the old couple at the bakery. Their story unfolded gently, an almost-love for life, a funeral kiss, a second chance arriving late but not too late.
The theater went completely quiet.
Even River stopped whispering.
I glanced forward carefully.
Evan’s shoulders were still. His head angled slightly down. He looked locked into the film, as if he couldn’t look away even if it hurt.
I turned back quickly.
The middle of the movie hit harder than I expected.
Oliver began to unravel the truth. Not all at once, and not in some grand speech with heroic lighting.
It was piece by piece. A blocked number.
Returned letters. Friends who had tried to reach him.
Molly’s life cut out of his, like someone had taken scissors to the past, then told him the empty space was his own choice.