Page 39 of The Second Chance Cinema
“Oh, yeah,” Ellie said, before she realized she didn’t know what Melinda meant. Ellie assumed she was referring to how nervewracking it is to be out with a new friend, so she said, “Don’t worry, I save all my celebrity impressions for the second outing.”
Melinda chuckled. “No, I meant …because of Drake.”
Ellie froze. She searched for the right move to make, but she wasn’t sure what game they were playing yet. Melinda had looked her up. She’d claimed to be a writer who could help her store, and what—Melinda wouldn’t do a quick search to make sure that was true? The room was closing in on them; the perimeter pushed itself so close that the velvet paintings hanging on the walls were about to rub up against her bare arms. Ellie expected, knew, that she was about to be called out.
“I recognized …” Melinda started. “Well, mostly, I recognized you from Beth’s photos,” she admitted, which Ellie was not expecting. Surely there was another Beth, a communal Beth, a Beth who wasn’t Drake’s mom. There had to be aBethwho she’d met at some cocktail party who somehow kept a trove of Ellie’s photographs strewn around her apartment. Oh,thatBeth. Stalker Beth.
But she only knew one Beth. And if anything, Ellie was the stalker here.
“We bake together sometimes,” Melinda said. “We’ve stayed close.” Ellie was ready to spit fire. The Beth who was about to be her mother-in-law had “stayed close” with Melinda? The horror grew as she imagined Melinda attending casual gatherings at the Nielsons’ condo, Melinda spooning some kind of deliciously complicated casserole on each plate. “Anyway, I know why you didn’t tell me.”
“You do?” Ellie asked, curious to be enlightened about her own antics.
“Drake would want this whole thing to seem random,” Melindaexplained. “Gosh, it’s typical Drake, isn’t it?” She rested her head on her hand. “I mean, hewouldsend you to help me stay open and make it seem anonymous. You know how he is.” The you-know sneered at Ellie. She did know. She didn’t need Melinda to tell her about her fiancé. “But I’m not good at secrets. And I also figured that’s why you called me here.”
The drinks landed, along with some chips. Ellie took a big gulp of her Dragon’s Lair and started to cough.
“Are you okay?” Melinda asked.
“Oh, I’m fine.” Ellie pointed to her glass. “My drink has a spicy rim. It’s a festive kind of affliction.” Melinda shook her hair down her back and took the smallest sip of her gimlet, like she was at a tea party. A memory came back into play again: Drake and Melinda on the hardwood floor, sipping hot beverages from chipped mugs, all starry-eyed. “Anyway, you got me,” Ellie said. She wasn’t sure why she was about to go along with Melinda’s version of the truth. If, and more likely when, Drake found out about all this, she’d be digging herself deeper. “Drake did want it to seem anonymous.” Now that Ellie was in the hole, why not keep going? “Speaking of,” she said, “he’s been fairly shy about the whole thing. What happened between you two, anyway?”
Melinda pushed back a little in her seat. “He didn’t tell you?”
“I mean, he did, yeah.” Ellie chewed on some of the chips. She was doing a bad cover-up job. “I’d just like to hear it from your perspective.”
“Ellie,” Melinda said. “Look, I’m all about honesty. But it seems like this is a conversation for you two.” Ellie could see Melinda piecing together their relationship in her mind. She had decided something was wrong with it, Ellie suspected. She and Jamie probably sat around the table assigning colors to their feelings, or whatever it was that show-off communicators did when left to their own devices.
Melinda’s judgment made Ellie want to play her own powercard—theI’m calling the story offcard—but the events that would follow unfolded in her head. Melinda would reach out to Drake, heartbroken, and detail Ellie’s transgressions. Drake would sympathize. He might even go to the shop to comfort her. Maybe he would bend over to pet Pasta the cat and a wave of nostalgia would take over. Ellie was spinning in circles, all the more reason she should’ve untangled herself right then. But she couldn’t; she was stuck in a trap she’d built herself.
The plan had changed. Ellie would keep the story. She needed to show Melinda that she was the one in control of this narrative.
The waiter arrived to check on them, and Ellie turned up the charm. “Drake and I will talk,” she said casually. “But, back to business. Now that we gotwhyI asked you here out of the way, tell me more about Jamie,” she said, crossing her fingers under her chin. “I’m almost done with my new draft, and I’d love to add some detail there.”
Ellie replayed the exchange with Melinda in her mind as she drove home. She now knew more about her fiancé’s ex than was healthy, through no fault of Drake’s. It was always going to bother her that Melinda and Beth were friends. What else would she discover if she kept this investigation up?
As Ellie pulled into the driveway, she debated calling the story off for the second time that day, but her thought spiral was broken by the chirp of a text. It was from Nolan. He’d already read the draft she sent him and sent a frenzied paragraph-long response using too many emojis. He wanted to meet for breakfast to talk. Was she free tomorrow?
Tomorrow was eager. Nolan was excited about something. Ellie’s biggest mistake in all of this, she realized, was not telling Drake first. He would be furious when he found out she’d gone behind his back. She vowed that she would sit him downand tell him the truth that night, but when she got home, he immediately hopped up to microwave a buffet’s worth of leftover Thai food for her.
“Is it too late for a movie?” Drake asked.
“Sure,” Ellie said. “I mean, no. It’s not too late.”
“It’s your turn to pick,” he told her, setting their food down, along with a small snack plate for Nancy so she wouldn’t feel left out. “Any genre. We don’t need to be monster-exclusive tonight.”
Ellie chose a French film. Drake disliked the foreign films she loved. When she had put onAméliefor him one time, he insisted the subtitles were too fast and couldn’t follow the plot. Knowing he would fall asleep in minutes, she pressed Play on a movie musical calledThe Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
“Just what this night needs,” Drake said next to her on the couch, stealing a bite of the food he had heated up. “A musical about a struggling umbrella shop.”
Ellie nearly choked on her noodles. “Have you seen this before?”
“No,” Drake insisted. “Not my thing. Hey, how was Jen?”
“Why?”
“Because you were just out with her.”
“Yeah, sorry,” Ellie said. “I’m kind of tired.”
