Chapter Twenty-Eight
I knew it would feel good, but I had no idea just how triumphant it would feel to attend the wrap party of A Crush for Christmas Two after inking a deal for my movie. I kept it together in the meeting, eating three bites of my asparagus and goat cheese salad
without spilling it on my shirt, while dreaming out loud with the two producers about casting and shoot locations. I sat up
straight and pretended that being at Soho House was no big deal at all. I made funny little quips as though I made this kind
of deal all the time. I didn’t ramble about how I’d paid to get my hair blown out and my nails painted the colour of strawberry
yogurt. I just silently acted like this was the regular me. They flattered me with comments about my vision and unique perspective
on the idea of love, and I told them their confidence made me feel twenty feet tall and I was so grateful for their belief
in me.
I sat in the car outside the wrap party venue signing the contracts on my iPad, weeping, on the phone with Jeff. I did it.
The next movie I made would be mine. I was officially the writer, and a co-executive producer.
And to the surprise of everyone—including myself—it was a romantic comedy.
Complete with happy-ever-after. A Nora Ephron–esque romp.
I was going to be paired with a director who was tasked with mentoring me on the shoot.
I could not be fired as the writer. That’s how much the producers liked the script.
Usually the writer had no protections built in.
My next movie after this one would be all mine, as writer/director, and I would know what I was doing.
I’d gotten in the car. I was on the road of my real career.
When a dream comes true, you don’t feel the way you expect to feel, because you have to keep doing life as normal. You have
to find a parking spot and think about what to do on Thanksgiving as a single person with divorced parents and a sister working
doubles on holidays to afford her first house. You still scroll in your car to quiet your mind instead of going inside to
a party.
Then an email popped up. From Dave. I almost deleted it, thinking it spam. We hadn’t spoken since the wedding. The text of
the email said, You inspired me. I’ll never stop loving you. Give me another shot? I’d never opened an attached PDF so fast. It was a movie script called The Ballad of Goldy and Buckeye.
I sat in the car and read until the end. It was beautiful. This was his declaration of love. It was like he’d been to film
school and this was his masterpiece thesis. I would’ve been jealous if it wasn’t also a quirky nineties-style road trip movie
fantasy about him and I running away together. It was part Tarantino, part Ephron, the perfect combination of our filmic sensibilities.
I sent the film to my agent with a note: I want to co-direct this.
Reading the script made me late to the party, which was already in full chaos mode when I got off the elevator and stepped
into the production offices that had been turned into a venue for the night. I kept it together until I got to coat check,
handed a tall, pretty woman my jacket, and realized I was grinning at her like a maniac and my hands were shaking when she
handed me my little numbered ticket.
“You good, sweetheart?” she asked, voice like honey.
“Best day of my life,” I admitted.
She looked relieved I wasn’t about to rob her.
People wore a variety of Christmas-related attire, there was a bar serving snowball shooters—peppermint- and cocoa-flavoured
alcohol—in glasses that looked like tree ornament balls. Someone made a dart board out of a giant poster of Santa. I knew
from experience to stop at one snowball shooter or you get the most punishingly sweet hangover of your life. Gary was seated
with his wife Carla on one of the long couches against the wall, and he was the first person I told about the movie being
greenlit, production starting next month.
“I always knew you could do it, kid,” he said, in such a fatherly way, “but I’ll miss you at the jolly romance factory.”
“Well, the movie is a romance, actually. I’m still in the game!”
“This is your last one!” Carla slapped his arm playfully. Carla worked in the costume department. They had been talking about
retiring for the last five movies. This love was inspiring.
“Viva Forever” by the Spice Girls started up, and I turned to see Marlon on the dance floor, arms outstretched, waiting for
me. He was wearing half a Grinch costume.
“Congratulations on writing a corny gay Christian patriarchal propaganda movie sponsored by a greeting card company.”
“I fulfilled a dream.” I laughed, as we swayed to the song we’d loved in high school. He told me that he finally got a new
gallery show. I told him about the movie. There may have been more snowball shooters. It got a little fuzzy from that point
on. I caught Ben out of the corner of my eye, making out with Cassie-Andrea-Wolf-Girl. They both had side parts in the sequel,
as siblings of the grooms. It made me laugh. I had been right to not invest my heart in that guy and I also felt happy for
him.
“He’s just in town for a night, apparently doing well in LA,” Marlon said.
“Good for him. I want only good things for him, honestly.”
“I don’t know how to respond to that when I had excellent insults prepared.”
“He surprised me. He wasn’t just a Christmas actor dude.”
“Did the scarecrow have a brain?” He laughed. “But do I hear some regret in your voice?”
“None at all, actually.”
I went home in an Uber with Marlon and Kris, grateful for our little second-floor family on Queen Street. But as I cuddled
into bed with Okanagan, a little drunk, I wished there was someone I could celebrate my win with. I sent Dave a one-line email.
Your movie is brilliant. He replied right away, on text.
What are you doing for Thanksgiving?
My sister was working over the weekend, saving for the house they were dreaming about. My mom and Charles were on a second
honeymoon in Spain. My dad and Pamela were, well, I’m sure just in Oshawa but I didn’t want to spend it with them. I’d planned
on crashing Marlon’s family Thanksgiving, something I often did.
What did you have in mind?
Meet me at the cabins? Saturday, noon?
Deal.
I gave Marlon instructions for how to feed Okanagan and got in the car early Saturday morning.
I pulled in at the Agrarian bakery and café and bought all the bread and treats I’d been missing, and ran into Neve on the
porch outside.
“You didn’t tell me you were coming!!”
“It was a last-minute thing,” I said, blushing.
She paused and stared at me, longer than was comfortable.
“You love him, don’t you?”
“I do. I’d do anything, really, to be with him again.”
“I knew it. I knew he was misunderstanding you. I think he’s been kicking himself, honestly. When I told him you hadn’t gone to LA with my brother, he looked elated.”
I thought about the ending in his script, the two lovers reunite a decade later to co-run a weird motel with a circus theme.
They get married on a trapeze. It’s a metaphor, right? I wrote in the margins.
“I’m on my way to the cabin now,” I said.
“I knew he was going to invite you, but I didn’t know if you’d come. Dave was being so freaking wishy-washy all summer.”
“Well, it was a complicated situation.”
“True. Well, I’m rooting for you both,” she said, giving me a big hug.
I got back in the car and felt a bit shook by Neve’s perception that Dave was one foot in and one foot out. I tried to access
my brain, make sure I gave my heart a stern talking-to. Do not jump in if Dave isn’t ready to say how he really feels.
I looked the printout of his movie script that was sitting on the passenger seat. I skimmed the third act. Fictional Buckeye
tells Goldy what he feels. He wrote how much he was in love with me, that he was afraid he’d hold me back from the life I
wanted. That there was so much he couldn’t give me, at the circus motel, as a parent who couldn’t leave.
I had been so frustrated that he couldn’t imagine that I could live here, make movies here. Plenty of people had families
and made movies. But in the script, he made it clear—he wrote about how he was afraid of how much he felt for me. How it would
feel to have that, and to lose it. He was afraid he just wasn’t good enough. He’d already failed his first wife. He didn’t
want to do it again. But in the end scene, there they are. On a trapeze in wedding attire, ready to make the literal leap.
He did love me. It was definitive. In fact, if I was his editor, I’d have highlighted several passages as redundant—He loves her!
I played Modest Mouse on the short drive, my pulse racing, accidentally speeding through the village of Cherry Valley. When
I turned down the laneway and pulled up to the cabins, Dave was sitting on the steps, surrounded by boxes on the porch. He
was all packed up.
“Hey,” I said, getting out of the car.
“Hey,” he said, standing up, pulling me in for a hug.
“I don’t think everything is going to fit in the trunk if you’re planning to run away with me. Where are you moving to?”
“I bought the little blue house down the road.”
“You did?!”
“I had to make some choices. For my future. It felt right. But Elise, I realized while I was writing that movie how wrong
I was to just panic and freeze, you know? I think I was obsessed with Ben and you being a better fit, and jealous of him because
I was afraid that we’d get together and then you’d be disappointed. I couldn’t admit that feat, or what I really wanted. And
I didn’t want to put you in the position for me to leave you again, you know? If we really try to do this, I have to be ready.
And I’m ready now.”
“So, in your movie. That was real?”
“What do you mean?”
“Does Buckeye really want Goldy to move to the small town and run the circus motel with him?”
He laughed, pulling me close to him.
“Yes, he does. I do. I’m laying my cards out on the table. I think we should try to make it work. I’ve never been more certain
of how much I love you, the right now you, Goldy. No nostalgia, right this moment,” he said, his voice sounded rough, whispered.
He kissed me in a way that I’ll describe in every movie-script kiss scene for the rest of my days. A few months later, we
celebrated the best Christmas of my life, the snow and joy and romance was real and it was all mine.