Page 72 of The Second Chance Cinema
“Because she’s amazing,” Drake said. “She’s confident and adventurous. She’s talented. She’spassionate. She, she pours herself into things without thinking about why she shouldn’t and goes for what she wants.”
“And you’re not those things?” Jamie clarified. “Passionate? You don’t go for what you want?”
“Not really,” Drake said. “I’m not great at taking risks. New endeavors. That kind of thing.” It was uncomfortable to admit this truth out loud, especially to someone he’d met only a few times.
“Well,” Jamie said, placing his hands on the table. “I think you need to trust Ellie when she says she wants to be with you, man. And I think, for your own sake, you need to go after what you want in life.”
“Just like that?” Drake asked.
“Just like that.”
When the food arrived, Jamie loaded his pancakes up with butter and syrup. They talked about the town and its traditions as they ate. When they were finishing up, Jamie signaled for Cindy to come back. “We’ll take an order of pancakes to go,” he told her. “This is Beth Nielson’s son, by the way.”
“Oh, I love Beth!” Cindy said. “Get that coffee in my belly!” she shouted, pointing at Drake before she walked away. Jamie laughed at a punchline that Drake didn’t understand.
“What was that?”
“Another one of your mom’s bits,” Jamie explained. Seeing Jamie’s comfort in the place where he grew up and ease with Cindy made Drake realize something about the booth. He had thought this washisbooth with Melinda, but it wasn’t. Restaurant booths, and the people in them, were always evolving. Drake wasn’t meant to sit there forever, and Melinda had made new memories there with Jamie. Now, it wastheirbooth—a place where the two of them talked about their friends, the store, and philosophies on life.
“Well,” Jamie said once the check was wrapped up, “youready? I’ve got to get back to the party. You know how Melinda is with setting things up.”
Drake nodded. He recalled the gathering she’d once thrown on his birthday. Thirty minutes before their guests arrived, the kitchen had sounded like a full brass band was clattering around. “Yeah,” he said eventually with a chuckle. “I do know, actually.”
Drake’s dad was out for a walk when he arrived with the pancakes. His mom, delighted over the unexpected drop-in, started asking too many questions about why he was there. A show starring two sisters who renovated tiny homes was on television. Beth was such a creature of habit that Drake had correctly predicted the exact outfit she’d be wearing when he walked in: navy sweatpants and her white sweater embroidered with London’s Big Ben.
As he often did when he arrived there, Drake fixed the leg on the kitchen table that always gave out. Then his mom sat in one of the dining chairs and opened the Styrofoam food container, pouring the syrup on top of the pancakes and taking a big bite. “They’re good,” she said. “Not like Smithe’s, but good.” The credits for the show started rolling. Drake already knew the show they liked about beach apartments would play next.
Beth spilled a little syrup on her sweater and wiped it with a napkin.
For some reason, Drake was fixated on that London sweater tonight. He was pretty sure he’d never asked his mom about it. It was an odd choice because it looked like something she would pick up on vacation, but Beth had never been to London. “Why London?” he asked.
“Hmm?” Beth paused midbite and glanced down at her own sweater again. “Oh this,” she said. “I bought it over at Clara’s a few years ago. She had it out on the display table next to all those candles.”
“But why?” Drake asked.
Beth chewed and shrugged. “What do you mean, why? Because your dad and I have wanted to go to London our whole lives. I saw that sweater and thought, that’s nice. It’s like going to London.”
She smiled. Her smile made Drake sad. He shook his head to indicate that he didn’t agree. “But it’s not at all like going to London,” he said, stealing a bite of her food. “It’s more like …You bought a travel sweater from a store you can walk to from your home. Why wouldn’t you just go to London?”
Beth took a few more bites of pancake. “What’s all this about?” she asked.
“I want to know why you never went.”
His mom proceeded to list a series of small, but inconvenient, events that could potentially take place if they traveled internationally. She mentioned some kind of ticket fraud. They could get food poisoning and be far from her doctors. There were loads of scams there; she’d seen a special about London scams on television. “Plus, why leave this place when it has everything we need?”
“Because …” Drake started. He felt his eyes water a little bit. Something clicked together in his mind. A part of him understood Ellie more, her resistance to the mundane, her desire to push him toward what was special in life. “Somewhere out there could be a great thing,” he said, paraphrasing what she had told him when they first met. “The best thing ever might be a place you haven’t gone to yet. And by staying here, you’re missing it.”
Drake’s phone beeped.Ellie. Ellie was texting him. He rummaged around to find his phone. Only the message wasn’t from her. It was Marc.Baby’s coming soon, it read.Head over when you can.Ellie and Drake were on call since their friends’ parents hadn’t flown in yet. Drake showed Beth what the text said, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and flew out the door to drive to the hospital as fast as he could.
It wasn’t just about the London sweater, Drake realized in his car.
His parents’ life was a series of comfortable decisions. It was safer to stay in the familiar than to risk something new, they had taught him, on repeat. Flying to London could come with food poisoning and travel scams. Taking any kind of risk was to be avoided.
There it was: the lesson he had been taught growing up. Taking risks led to pain.
When Drake was young, he’d taken risks anyway. He bought every girl in class a Valentine’s gift. But Drake stayed in the safe zone after that day, hadn’t he? He volunteered to become the school mascot instead of going out for the basketball team. He worked for someone else instead of starting his own business. He didn’t tell Melinda that hereallywanted kids because it would disappoint her. And then, when Drake finally put himself on the line again with a proposal, it came back to bite him.
So Drake returned to a life of familiarity. He changed jobs to something even safer. He ate at the same three restaurants. And when he met Ellie, he re-created all the special parts of his last relationship without even realizing it. He’d regurgitated lines Melinda once loved, brought up things she’d laughed at, and repeated moments she found charming. He gave Ellie the same ring.
