Page 73 of The Second Chance Cinema
None of it was fair. Ellie and Melinda weren’t the same person.
Ellie nudged him in ways Melinda never had. What did he want? Where was he going next? What new place could they try that night? Didn’t he want to visit a magical movie theater that would reveal things they needed to see about themselves?
She had her flaws. He was still irritated by how brash she could be. But Drake loved Ellie, fiercely and passionately. Marrying her was a risk, he knew—an exciting, beautiful risk he couldn’t wait to take.
Maybe the cinema had been trying to tell him this.
There was a memory they’d only seen the first few minutes of—the one that started playing the night of Ben’s death, before Ellie left the theater. Drake and his dad went on a long ride out into the woods for a camping trip. Only the first moments of the drive made the screen, but Drake remembered everything that followed. After they set up the tent, his dad gave him the jean jacket he still wore. They didn’t camp much, so Robert insisted they not leave the area. But in the middle of the night, Drake couldn’t sleep. He hiked out for a few minutes on his own to a small lake they had passed earlier in the day. The moon and the stars were reflected in the water. Then, a shooting star. Drake was in awe that he’d seen something so serene. He thought about waking up his dad to join him, but knew he wouldn’t come. He was sad that his dad was missing out on something this special.
Drake turned onto Main Street again; it was the fastest route to the highway. The party at My Mother’s Shop was just beginning. He could see Melinda inside. She was helping a woman pick out a light pink dress. It was a party that, without Ellie, wouldn’t have existed. Her article had come out the week before, and people were already vying to get inside. Ellie, he realized, despite her love of the vintage, the decaying, the almost-broken, wasn’t a collector of old things at all. She saw the new possibility in them. And in him.
Melinda must have noticed his car had slowed outside because she looked up and waved through the window. Drake smiled and waved back. Then, she was interrupted by something. Jamie was passing out appetizers on a plate and stopped to give her one. He kissed her. They looked happy there, in this life, and Drake got the sense they were exactly where they were supposed to be.
He was headed that way, too.
32
It seemed like the whole world was at the hospital that night. Drake parked near the farthest edge of the visitors’ lot and jogged through a labyrinth of minivans to reach the entrance. Automatic doors whooshed open to greet him. Everything smelled too clean inside; lemon and mint were working hard to cover up secrets.
“Baby. We’re having a baby,” he told the receptionist. The running, coupled with an aversion to medical buildings, had taken Drake’s breath away. “I mean, my friends are having a baby. I’m not. That would be a wild ride, wouldn’t it?” Drake waited to be directed somewhere, but the receptionist was too busy adjusting pens inside a cup. “Where do I go?”
Past a gift shop, Drake was greeted by a cardboard stork. The chairs in the waiting area were as uncomfortable as they looked. A gap-toothed kid grinned up at him from the front cover of a parenting magazine:5 Ideas to Make Your Toddler Smile This Fall. Drake flipped through the pages and got lost in an article about creative uses for raisins until someone took the seat next to him.
Ellie. There she was.
“Hey,” Drake said, trying to sound casual. Ellie wore a lacy black cocktail dress that didn’t belong in a hospital. She looked ready to blow on a pair of dice for an oil tycoon. Was this just what she had packed in a hurry, or had she been out withsomeone? Drake stopped that thought in its tracks. He tried to calm himself down before he responded, pretending to be invested in the syndicated comedy show playing on the small television set above their heads.
Finally, he spoke. “I’m so happy to see you.”
“Me too,” Ellie said. He could feel her waiting to see if he was going to ambush her in some way. And if this were a different night—say, last night—he would’ve called out what she was wearing. The dress was all the proof he needed to know that she hadn’t been at Jen and Marc’s. Instead, he waited for her to fill in the gaps.
“I stayed at a hotel,” Ellie admitted. “Room service?”
“Oh yeah,” she told him. They seemed to have both cooled down in their time apart, but the tension was still there. Ellie shrugged. “Once I headed to Jen’s, I realized that it wasn’t fair to show up on the front step of my super-pregnant friend. There’s enough on their plate right now.”
“Understatement of the year,” Drake agreed.
Another couple walked behind them. The husband assessed a vending machine that needed to be restocked. Drake pictured Ellie at a hotel with dark lighting. Lighting made a big difference when it came to hotels. If the lighting were dark, she might’ve called one of her ex-boyfriends and insisted she’d made a mistake back then.
He sounded bizarre, even in his own head.
An ad about a lotion for back pain with a ten-syllable name teed up a commercial break.
“I’m really—”
“I’m sorry,” Ellie told him, before he could say more.
“I’m sorry, too.”
“I shouldn’t have left,” she said. “I was so mad at you about what happened, but I realized that I proved your fears right.”
Drake turned toward her a little more. “I shouldn’t have freaked out,” he admitted. “I mean, I don’t love some things you did, but … It’s not fair to be mad about what happened in the past.”
She gave a little nod of acknowledgment. “Thank you.”
“You can be nasty in a fight.”
“I’m self-aware enough to know that.” Ellie nodded.
