Page 58 of The Second Chance Cinema
“I’m not sure.” Ellie shook herself out. Her smile reminded Drake of a pharmaceutical ad. Ditching Lucas brought about the same feelings as leaving those pesky seasonal pollen allergies behind. “Maybe I’m meant to be free. On my own.” She crunched down on the edge of her English muffin. “Men get to do that. I want life to be exciting. I want to get somebody’s number as I walk out the door right now. I want to fall in love with my work.”
The check came. Jen tried to grab it, but Ellie reached it first. “I’ve got this,” she said. “Just promise me something. If I ever become some boring married person, please come over and shake me by the shoulders.”
As usual, the memory started to blur.
Drake felt Ellie nudge him as the movie prepared to switch protagonists. She was asking if he was okay. Nothing is wrong here, she seemed to insist. But Drake had learned something different. It was so easy for Ellie to lie, to leave, to skip out on a good thing, and the person she was with was always the last to know. Would Ellie wake up one day and believe that she had made a mistake with him?
Did she even want to be married?
“I’m okay,” he swallowed. “I just—”
Suddenly, Melinda got in the way of everything all over again.
Melinda had the world’s worst couch; it was more like a chair for one person. Drake’s half of the couch-chair creaked as he settledin and started up the movie. Melinda didn’t have a television, so he’d carried over a grainy spare, plus a dusty DVD player from his parents’ storage closet. And then Drake, in the audience, remembered where this memory was headed.
Oh.No.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourgwas the entertainment for the night. It was the same movie musical he had watched recently with Ellie. Melinda was pitched forward in the seat next to Drake, her eyes glued to the screen.
“I saw the cutest kid at the hardware store today,” he mentioned a few minutes into the film. Melinda pressed pause and her body stiffened as she set the remote down between them. “Anyway, this kid came in and asked for gardening shears. Well, they were for his mom.” Drake was mostly working construction jobs at this point, but he still picked up the occasional shift at Peat’s Hardware. “I thought,” he said. “I don’t know, it’s weird, but this kid kind of looked like me?”
“That’s sweet,” Melinda said.
Drake wasn’t sure why he brought up the kid. Since leaving Peat’s that afternoon, he kept thinking about him. When he turned to the passenger seat to grab his mom’s groceries, he pictured the kid sitting there instead of the lemons. When he pulled up to Melinda’s shop, he felt a little hand in his, too. It was new, the presence of wanting another, smaller person around. He liked it.
Melinda pressed Play on the movie. She reached for one of the French macarons she’d set on the coffee table and took a bite before hitting Pause again. “Drake,” she told him, turning her focus in his direction. “You know I don’t want kids. Right?”
The television had frozen on the lead actress inside of the film’s titular umbrella shop. Drake tried to remember if he’d ever seen a store that specialized in umbrellas. Maybe Melinda should add that to her growing list of niche ideas she was keeping, hethought. The Umbrellas of Main Street. So what if the shop in the movie wasn’t doing well? It was fiction.
“I didn’t say Iwantedkids,” Drake insisted, even though that’s exactly what he’d been thinking. Voicing the truth when Melinda didn’t want them was too big of a risk. It opened the possibility of conflict. An ending, even. Then, “Why …” He cleared his throat. “Why don’t you?”
Melinda tried to face him. There wasn’t enough space on the couch. The two of them shifted apart a little to look at each other. “I just don’t,” she said. “I’m loving how simple things are right now.”
Drake thought her words over. They were vague, weren’t they? He knew she’d had a tough childhood and lost her mom not long ago. Maybe time would give her a new perspective. Maybe he could change her mind.
“You’re not going to change my mind,” she insisted before he said it.
“No,” Drake told her. “Of course not.”
“If that’s going to be a make-or-break for you, we should talk about—”
“It’s not. You’re everything I need.”
Melinda put her feet up on his lap and pressed Play. Drake, in his memory of this conversation, hadn’t noticed the way she watched him instead of the movie. She was sleuthing. Analyzing. Trying to figure out what he might not be telling her.
“Hey, are there really shops that exclusively sell umbrellas?” he asked.
“Shh,” Melinda said, finally easing back into the plot.
“I bet that’s a thing in Seattle—”
“Shh,” she warned again, handing him a cookie to quiet him.
The screen turned black. The lights rose.
Drake stood first. He knew Ellie wouldn’t be happy with that night’s screening. He’d lied about having seen the French musical because what was the point of telling her he had watched it with Melinda? But between The Garlic Bread Place and the movie, it could seem like he was repeating his last relationship all over again.
Ellie got up quietly. Her half of the movie wasn’t great, either.
