Chapter Fifty-Five
I ? Ramen was my mom’s favorite place for us to be—as she called it—alone together.
It had opened in the shopping center near our house when I was in middle school.
Mom and I always bypassed the booths and tables, opting instead for the little bar meant for single diners.
We would each bring a book or a magazine and sit in silence while we waited for our food.
Alone. Together. Ruby was baffled by the experience and always tried to start up a conversation, missing the point entirely.
Tilly, the older woman who owned the restaurant with her husband and their two daughters, sat at the hostess stand wiping her dry-erase seating chart. “Where’s your mother?” she asked without even bothering to say hello.
The same soft, rehearsed expression I’d grown accustomed to using when I broke the news about Mom settled on my face. “She passed away earlier this year.”
Tilly nodded slowly, her usual frown growing deeper. The staff here had known Mom was sick since it was one of the only places we still made an effort to go to toward the end and they always went out of their way to make sure she was as comfortable as possible.
“You know, any time she finished a book, she always left it for me to read,” Tilly said. “Sometimes, she’d highlight passages and write in the margins too.”
“She did?” I asked. I vaguely recalled Mom talking to Tilly about her books, but I hadn’t realized she’d passed them along to her as well.
Tilly nodded and pointed to a shelf full of dilapidated paperbacks behind the counter. “My daughter Sue always said that your mom’s notes and highlights were like reading a book with a friend. I let solo diners borrow from the shelf if they want.”
“She would have loved that,” I told her.
Tilly led me to the usual spot where Mom and I sat. The last two seats at the end of the bar nearest the wall.
I ordered a milk tea and a bowl of ramen with extra fish cakes and then I took out the script and began to read.
At first, I started with a pen in my hand, but after it took me fifteen minutes to read the first two pages, I forced myself to put it away and just read. The itch to change every little word and piece of punctuation was intolerable. I had to sit on my hands at one point.
My food came and I slowly ate my ramen as I continued, thankful for something to occupy my hands and hoping to find a spark of inspiration.
The script was . . . fine. It was an unmarked file, so all of the notes and edits I’d made over the years were gone, but I didn’t need them to guide me.
Because with each passing page, I felt more and more distanced from The Wunderkind.
And not just the script itself, but the person who wrote it.
It was the same feeling I would get in middle school or high school when I found a relic from a long-lost hobby or interest and felt embarrassed for even liking the thing in the first place.
It was like rediscovering your toys and realizing that they were only ever just overpriced chunks of plastic.
I was wholly disconnected as I bit down on my lower lip, my brain doubling over a very shitty metaphor about pigeons and doves.
My phone lit up with a text from Brody.
Brody:
How’s it going? Like falling in love all over again?
My fingers hovered over the screen as I contemplated my response. I was only forty pages into the hundred-and-two-page script.
Of course Brody loved the script. Now, seeing it with new eyes for the first time, I could plainly see that The Wunderkind was about him after all. It was about us. And it was written by the girl he met in college. The girl who made him feel like he could do anything.
The screenplay was from the girl’s point of view. Poppy. And yet every page lived in service of her love interest—an overgrown Peter Pan who had once felt whimsical to me . . . but now . . .
It all came down to this: I wasn’t twenty-one anymore.
I wasn’t the girl who was so obsessed with the feeling of being in Brody’s orbit that I had to write about it.
I remembered those emotions, of course. But twenty-one felt like a universe away.
Hell, I wasn’t even the same Vera I was ten months ago.
And just reminiscing felt like taking ten steps backward.
At the time, this story was the quirky fantasy version of falling in love that I’d told myself. The version that twenty-one-year-old me had romanticized. This wasn’t a story I knew how to tell anymore. It didn’t feel true anymore.
Behind me, the bell above the door rang and Tilly greeted the incoming diner.
I was flipping through the next few pages, looking for anything that felt salvageable, when someone sat down one chair over from me.
I glanced at them quickly before turning back to my work, but then .
. . my brain stuttered and I looked up again.
A kelly-green sundress lined with embroidered margaritas and open-toe slides encrusted with huge chunky gems.
“Ruby?” I asked. Of all the places in Southern California, my grandmother was here. We lived in the same retirement community and I’d managed to avoid her for weeks, but somehow here we were in LA just one place setting apart.
She scoffed and shook her head. “Would you believe that I came all the way out here to spend time alone thinking at the one place you and your mother always forced me to sit with my own damn feelings? And as my luck would have it, I’m not alone at all.”
I nodded. Of course, she was the inconvenienced one. God, something about her made me revert to an enraged fourteen-year-old. “Right. I guess there’s no use in pointing out that I was here first.”
She sighed and untied the silk scarf she was wearing over her hair and then put on her reading glasses to peruse the menu.
I forced my attention back to the pages, even though there was no use. As Ruby placed her order and shuffled through her purse to find her compact mirror, I read the same scene heading over and over again.
I made an attempt at the next line as I sipped some of my broth.
“You sound like a farm animal when you slurp like that.”
Instead of responding, I slurped again, but louder.
The waitress brought Ruby a yuzu lemon drop martini and I managed to make it through a few more pages, even though I hadn’t formed a critical thought since she’d walked in.
After I pushed my bowl of ramen to the side, I felt Ruby watching me as I dug out my credit card for the waitress.
“Well,” she finally said, “aren’t you going to tell me what you’re reading?”
Without looking up, I said, “I thought you came here for some quiet time.”
“The quiet is boring.” She paused for a moment before swiveling her body to face me. “I could never understand it. Why you two would go to the trouble of going out to dinner only to sit together in silence.”
“Haven’t you ever had that with someone? A person you could do nothing with.”
She shook her head. “I don’t like the quiet.”
“What about Hollis?” I asked.
She drummed her nails on the countertop. “The woman invented stoicism. But she doesn’t seem to mind when I fill the silence with chatter.”
“Sounds like you’ve met your match,” I told her as the waitress came back with the check.
“I fear that is the truth.” She sounded despondent. Regretful.
“It’s an old screenplay of mine,” I said, holding up a page. “Brody’s starting a production company and he wants to option it.”
She grinned tightly, doing a poor job of hiding her delight. “Well, it’s about time that job paid off.”
I shook my head, unable to hold eye contact with her as I said, “I’m not going to say yes.”
With that, she slid off her stool and came to sit next to me. “Vera.” She rapped her knuckles on the counter. “You’re not getting any younger, dear. This business is tough, especially for a woman of your age.”
I wanted to respond with a quip about how out of touch she was, but I couldn’t in good faith. The film industry had progressed, but not so much that she was entirely wrong. Still, I was angry at her for pointing out the truth. This could very well be my only shot.
“I started writing this when I was in college,” I told her as the waitress brought my card back, and I thanked her before signing the receipt.
“I want to tell stories, but I don’t think this is what I want to say anymore.
And I know that you know this industry, and that you have opinions, but I think I need to do this on my own terms. I took my time getting here.
I don’t want to throw away my first impression on something I don’t even connect with anymore. Something I’m not really proud of.”
She inhaled through her nose for a long moment.
“Forgive me. Perhaps it’s gauche, but I believe there’s something to be said for taking every job.
Every deal. It gets your name out there, Vera.
” Her voice was desperate now. “This could be that for you.” She shook her head.
“As someone who has seen the underbelly of this town firsthand, I’m offended that you would turn your nose up on a perfectly good offer. ”
I opened my mouth, ready to defend myself, my temper beginning to rise.
She held up a hand to stop me. “I know you think I don’t understand you, Vera. And I know I wasn’t the ideal grandmother. You’ve made that very clear, and you’re not entirely wrong.”
She paused, waiting for me to correct her, but that wasn’t going to happen.
“I was never very good at comforting. Even with your mother. Lord, she had such a soft heart. I didn’t dote on you like I should have. But I did push you in the same way I wished someone had pushed me.”
“I’m not you, Ruby.” It was a phrase I’d said so often that it might as well have been carved into my forehead.
She chuckled. “You know, when your mother grew up, I thought that was it and I was done being a mom. I thought it was just something you could clock out of, but then you came along and your mother’s health . . . Well, I took on a role with you I’d never planned for.”
“You resent me for it,” I said softly. “It’s more obvious than you think.”