Page 68 of The Second Chance Cinema
Ellie hadn’t known about the proposal until tonight. Now she had seen it happen with the same ring on her finger and the same music box that was on their shelf. The memory was much worse than he’d remembered. He had been so stupid. If they had only talked, she could’ve learned the truth without having to live it. Instead, Drake had forced her to watch him declare his undying love for Melinda.
“I’ll love you forever,” he’d repeated over and over.
Those same words he used when he proposed to Ellie.
The car slid into the driveway. Drake opened Ellie’s door for her. He held the front door open, too, which he’d fixed the squeak on last week, but she still hadn’t noticed. Ellie needed space, he figured. The whole thing would blow over. He sat on the couch while she threw the keys onto the shelf over their shoes and stomped into the kitchen. Drake could hear the spoon clinking inside the expensive canned food the vet gave them for Nancy’s upset stomach, then the sound of her aggressively eating the food from the bowl.
He waited and waited for Ellie to emerge from the kitchen, but she didn’t. The house was too quiet; he put on one of her crooner records to make it feel more lived in. When Drake swung the kitchen door open, he found her sitting at the table they never used, her eyes wide and possessed, like a still image from one of their Thursday-night monster movie marathons. Ellie looked like she had “seenthings.”
Cautiously, he slid out a chair, sat across from her, and cleared his throat. “We should talk about all of this, Ellie,” he said. “Where do you want to start?”
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Ellie set her hand on the table, forcing Drake to address the ring. “Let’s start here,” she said. She was right to be mad about the ring. Drake still hadn’t thought of an excuse she would find acceptable. To say he felt attached to it in the store—and later believed it was meant for her—wouldn’t be easy to digest, even if it were true.
“I’m … I’m so sorry, Ellie. I know how this all must look—”
“Well, let me summarize it for you. It looks like you used my ring”—she wiggled her fingers—“to get engaged to someone else.”
“I wasn’t engaged,” Drake insisted. He cleared his throat and slouched his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “But to be engaged, the other person has to say yes. It’s a two-way thing.”
Ellie scooted her chair out. He was going for cute or sarcastic, but neither was landing. Ellie got to be the cute, sarcastic one. “But you would’ve been engaged,” she said. “How could you not tell me that?”
The loud ticking of their wall clock took Drake’s focus. Ellie had hung up a nineteenth-century Vienna Regulator that never displayed the correct time. Their conversation was either happening five minutes early or five minutes late. “I thought you knew,” Drake explained. “That night at my parents’ place? I thought you saw photos of the ring in that album. I figured that’s why you weren’t yourself.” Drake reached out for her. Ellie pulled herarms to her sides. “But I should’ve told you everything way before that. At the beginning. I just didn’t know how you’d take it.”
Ellie shot up to stand. She hovered over him on the other side of the table. “No. No, don’t make it sound like I can’t handle difficult conversations. You didn’t tell me about the proposal because it was too hardfor you. Because you’re such a good person, Drake. You’re so,selfless,you know?” She smirked as she bent forward and pinched his cheek. There was that sarcasm part.
Drake’s mouth dried out. Ellie couldn’t even hear his side of things. The meanness in her tone lifted him by the shirt collar and threw him into a fight. “You know what I can’t believe?” he said, pushing himself up to her level. “That you wrote about that guy’s late wife. And not even accurately, by the way.”
Ellie moved to the darkest corner of the room. Ironically, this was the place where the sunlight came in strongest during the day. Nancy would sit there and sunbathe, tethered to the floor. It was supposed to be a happy pocket. “There are …creative licenses you’re not considering,” she huffed. “As an artist, you can’t get all caught up in other people’s feelings—”
“You started your career on a lie, Ellie,” Drake summarized, to underline his point. He walked toward her. She flinched. “And now, I can’t help but be nervous that you’re going to start our marriage on a lie, too.”
“And what lie is that?” Ellie turned to him.
“I don’t even know,” Drake said. “You didn’t tell me about going to see Melinda forsolong. You didn’t take the time to explain to anyone in your long string of boyfriends why you were leaving them—”
“Are we back to this?” Ellie snapped. “Your utter woe and bitterness over my sleeping with other people before we even met?”
The clock got louder. Tick. Tick. Tick. Stupid clock.
“I’m not jealous,” he said. “I’m upset about the way you left them.”
Tick. Tick. Tick.
“Like how she left you?”
TICK. TICK. TICK.
“No!” Drake insisted. He slammed his palm against the refrigerator. He could hear the bottles shifting inside, ketchup on the run. “Melinda and I, that’s not the same. It’s not. None of those people you dated even got a goodbye. You ran out their door or snuck down their fire escape before you had to face anything real.” Ellie wove behind him and sat back down. He joined her on the other side of the table. The table was keeping them safe, Drake felt. “You’ve built this career around connecting to the past, but a part of me thinks you’re just afraid of connecting with people in the present.”
“My career … You hate that I’m successful, right?” Ellie asked. “You never went after what you wanted to do, and here I am, rubbing that in your face.”
He could feel her disdain. Ellie hated that Drake’s choices didn’talignwith herlifestyle, despite that lifestyle beginning with a long history of family money. “You know it must be really nice,” he said, leaning forward. “To start what you wanted to do with all that cushy support.”
“Cushy support,” Ellie repeated. “From the parents who barely spoke to me after my brother died.”
“Your mom just threw a party for us,” Drake said. “Your dad had us over for Thanksgiving. And you sat there and picked apart every little thing wrong with his house and with him. Just like you do with my family.”
