Chapter 38. Molly
I’ve always considered writing an act of commerce. I don’t journal. I don’t pour my soul into autobiographical novels or write personal essays processing my life through the lens of, like, butterfly migrations or ghost towns in Texas. I write bullshit screenplays for money. That’s it.
It is therefore odd that at this moment, when I’ve been fired from my job and broken up with my boyfriend and have nothing but time to work on my flailing career, my overwhelming impulse is to write something that isn’t for sale.
It’s a speculative fantasy occurring in a world uncannily like our own. It’s called Better Luck Next Time.
You’ll recognize the story. Two exes, a divorce attorney who’s a hopeless romantic and a rom-com writer who doesn’t believe in romance, make a bet at their high school reunion: whoever can more accurately predict the outcome of five relationships before their twentieth reunion must admit that the other is right about soul mates.
It might be the most marketable thing I’ve ever written—that elusive mainstream script my agent has been harassing me to produce for years. But I haven’t sent it to my agent.
I’m writing it for myself.
In a rom-com, this would be the black moment beat, where I’m forced to look inside myself to understand my failings so I can grow into the partner Seth deserves.
But I don’t think that’s what this is. Understanding my failings was never the problem.
It’s the growth I can’t hack.
I panicked when Seth proposed, predictably. It was shortsighted, predictably. Had it not been for the shock of Dezzie’s divorce and the sting of my father’s indifference, maybe I would have said yes.
But it wouldn’t have mattered.
Saying yes would not have changed the fact that there’s a terror of love buried inside me like a land mine, and it would have erupted eventually. The closer you get to the blast radius, the more inevitable it is that you’ll be hit by shrapnel. And Seth’s heart was so close that sometimes I still imagine it beating beside me. That low, safe, soft thrum.
Maybe it was a blessing that it only took me five months to destroy us. Had our relationship gone on any longer, would the fallout even be bearable? Because, as it is, it’s a wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-can’t-breathe kind of loss. A cry-in-the-shower, then sob-in-the-car, then weep-at-the-grocery-store heartache that seems to get worse every day. I am mourning Seth Rubenstein. And I’m grieving the woman who, for a few months, thought she’d healed enough to trust herself with him.
And so as a gift to myself, I’m writing that woman’s story. The happy ending I wish I could have had in real life.
A text rolls in, and as I do every time my phone buzzes, I hope it’s Seth, then realize it’s not going to be, then hate myself for continuing to have this impulse, then don’t want to look at the message at all. Were it not for my desire to be there for Dezzie, I might just silence my phone for good.
It’s from Alyssa.
Alyssa:Daily check in
This is her new ritual to reassure herself that I’m still alive.
Molly:Fine. Breathing. Go about your day
Alyssa:Report stats
I obediently tap out the proof that I’m doing the basics of functioning.
Molly:Slept 5 hours
Molly:Ate food
Molly:Put on sunscreen, so extra credit
Alyssa:5 hours is not enough sleep!
Alyssa:What food?
Molly:Froot loops
Alyssa:Doesn’t count. At least make TS!!
(She means The Salad.)
Molly:Stop worrying I’m fine
Alyssa:You’re not. CALL SETH
Not a day has gone by when she hasn’t demanded I call him, in all caps.
“You’ll feel better if you clear the air,” she tells me. “You guys loved each other too much to let it end like this.”
“Loved” is inaccurate phrasing. What I feel for Seth could never be in past tense.
And I know Alyssa is right. I owe him more than silence.
But I can’t bring myself to make the call. I’m too scared of what he’ll say.
“An open wound can’t heal,” Alyssa says, like she’s a doctor and not an accountant.
But I don’t want to heal. I don’t want to let go of this ache. My devastation is all I have left of Seth.
Thus, the script. It’s my way of keeping him with me. Immortalizing my love for the person I can’t stand to keep, or to lose.
I’m up to the break into Act III—the point in a rom-com when one of the lovers, despite having been thwarted in their desire for the other by various obstacles for the past seventy minutes, decides to try one last time.
The scene begins at a destination wedding in Bali. (It’s a movie, after all; I’ve taken some creative liberty with the set pieces.) Our lovers, Cole and Nina, run into each other during the toasts. Up until this point, despite some near misses, their old flame for each other hasn’t gotten a chance to ignite. They’ve been in other relationships, or in mourning for them, or angry at each other, or denying their attraction. But now, finally, they are both single. And tonight, they can’t take their eyes off each other.
Cole asks her to dance to “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” (In my fantasies, our movie has the music budget for Elvis songs. Also, I can dance to them without falling over.)
It’s electric. Nina melts as Cole whispers the pivotal words in her ear: I’m carrying a torch for you.
They go home together. And this time, it’s right.
She’s softer now, ready to open her heart to him. He’s out of fucks, ready to go for broke and try to make her see she’s his soul mate.
They run away for a week to a beautiful house on the coast of Maine. (Which has cliffs, and is therefore a bit more cinematic than Lake Geneva, with all due apologies to Wisconsin.)
We flash to a montage of Cole and Nina falling in love: holding hands as they walk the bluffs above the ocean, looking for whales. Having lazy sex on a rainy day while Etta James’s “I Found a Love” plays in the background. Singing along with lullabies before bed.
Cole proposes. Love might not be perfect, he says to Nina. But I know this: we’re perfect for each other. You’re my soul mate.
I think you know what she says here. The line writes itself:
I don’t believe in soul mates.
She’s too scared.
She leaves him.
She breaks his heart.
And then we switch to her POV, a week later.
Like me, she’s all alone, and she’s miserable.
Like me, she can’t stop thinking about the person she left.
Like me, she knows she’s made a mistake.
But unlike me, she’s in a rom-com.
So she decides to be brave.
When I’m done, I’m crying.
I wish I were Nina.
I wish Seth were Cole.
I wish our ending could have been like this one: poignant and redemptive and beautiful.
I have an overpowering feeling, as I type “THE END.”
I want Seth to read it.
He loves my movies—probably more than anyone else on this earth. And I know, if we were still together, he would delight in the idea of making one out of our story. He’d treasure this artifact of our love. He’d watch it over and over. Memorize all the lines. Lord it over me that he wrote the best ones himself.
My phone rings—my mom. I’m leaving in the morning for Florida. She probably wants to confirm for the third time when to pick me up from the airport.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hiiiiiii my Molly Malolly,” she trills.
She hasn’t called me that in a long time. It’s her special nickname for me, and it’s so like the goofy names Seth calls me, and I miss him so much, and I’m so disappointed in myself, and so exhausted from this last month of 4:00 a.m. wakeups, and so unmoored by what I just wrote, that I burst into big, ugly tears.
“Molly!” my mother cries. “Honey, oh no! What’s wrong, sweet girl?”
“It’s Seth,” I warble. “I really, really miss Seth.”
“Oh, sweetie,” she says. “I wish I were there to give you the biggest hug. But you’ll be here soon and I’ll take such good care of you and we’ll have a wonderful Christmas and it will all be okay.”
“I know,” I choke out. But I can’t stop crying.
“I fucked up, Mom,” I say. “I’m just like Dad.”
I hear her take a sharp breath. “No. You are not. How can you say that?”
“I’m not good at love.”
“My darling,” she says instantly, with great authority, “that is not true. If anyone on the planet should know, it’s me.”
“Mommy, I leave people, like he does. I throw them away.”
“Molly, listen to me. Your father leaves people because he is not capable of loving them enough. You left Seth because you love him so very much. You are the opposite of your father.”
“I broke his heart,” I choke out.
“And you broke yours, too. And my love, I know you’re scared, but I really, really do think you should tell him how you’re feeling.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“If I remember correctly,” she says, “you didn’t think it was a good idea when you broke up with him after high school either.”
This makes me feel worse. I hate thinking about that time.
I woke up in the middle of the night dying to call him for months. I took to getting blackout drunk just to sleep. I lost my virginity to a twenty-four-year-old ski instructor and then slept with a string of older men, thinking that it would dull the pain. It didn’t. The stress was so intense that clumps of my hair fell out and I stopped getting my period.
“And so you spent about two years regretting your decision and missing him,” my mother continues, “calling me sobbing every week, all the while refusing to try to make up with him. And you knew he was hurting, because all your friends told you, but you couldn’t bring yourself to say that you’d gotten scared and made a mistake. When you could have just told him, and fixed it.
“And I feel very guilty about that, Molly,” she says softly. “Because I wasn’t in a healthy place myself back then. I was so negative about anything having to do with relationships, and I dismissed what you were feeling as puppy love. I wish I’d been able to help you through it better. I think I’d have encouraged you to try again.”
“Mom!” I protest, my voice raw and hoarse. “We were eighteen. Of course we broke up. I was going to be sad either way. It’s not your fault.”
“That might be so,” she says. “But you know what? I think you both stayed a little bit in love with each other all those years. And that’s why you fell so hard again. In fact, I think he’s the only boy you’ve ever loved.”
I lose it completely.
My mom murmurs into the phone, like she’s soothing a baby, and I just listen to her and cry. When I’ve tired myself out, she says, “Sweets, call him. The worst thing that can happen is that you’re right, and he doesn’t want to hear from you, and you’ll stay just as sad as you already are.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say. “I’m sorry for being a mess.”
“You can be as messy as you want. I’m your mother. And, Molls? Loving you has been the honor of my life. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me.”
Her words send a chill of recognition up my spine. Because that’s how it felt, to be the person Seth Rubenstein loved. An honor. And it was an honor to love him in just the same bone-deep, lifelong, weak-at-the-knees desperate way he’s always loved me.
And when you love someone like that—when they love you like that—you owe them something. Maybe your relationship ends, but that doesn’t mean the connection between you just breaks.
I’ve been telling myself I don’t deserve to get Seth back. And I don’t. But that misses the basic point.
I need to apologize for hurting him.
For lashing out to avoid my terror of losing him. For panicking at how much I love him and want him and need him. For seeing my mistake and doubling down on it, because I’m so afraid he won’t want me back.
If I apologize, I risk learning he can’t forgive me.
That I’ve finally hurt him for good.
But just because the results won’t be fairy-tale perfect doesn’t mean you can’t try your best to be vulnerable.
When you hurt someone, you do what you can to fix it.
When you’re scared, you do what you can to be brave.
“I love you, Mommy,” I sniffle into the phone. “I have to go, okay? There’s something I need to do before I pack up.”
She hangs up, and I reopen the screenplay.
Fuck it.
I’m going to do the grand gesture beat.
I drag the screenplay file into my email and address it to Becky. She’s proven such a worthy intern that I’ve hired her as a part-time assistant.
From: [email protected]
Date: Wed, Dec 22, 2021 at 4:01pm
Subject: Can you proofread this?
Becks—attaching something new. Can you give it a read for typos and make sure the formatting, etc. is right? I need it back before NYE. Thx!