“I know. It’s confusing. I’ve spent the past weeks so mad at you. I mean, what you did—”
“What I did?”
“The baseball cards. It was like you turned into a crazy person.”
“Can we go back to why I did that? From what I remember, you told me that you were in love with my best friend’s sister and you wanted—”
“I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to find a way to get through it. But you went crazy.”
“Yes. Crazy.” Ella rolled her eyes. “Sims, you broke my heart. I didn’t know what to do. I came undone. Who wouldn’t? But you can’t say we aren’t together because I threw a few baseball cards in the Dumpster.”
“A few baseball cards?”
“I know. I know. John Smoltz. I get it.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“I don’t think you get it,” Ella said, and took two steps away from the kitchen, away from getting him the coffee he asked for. “I don’t think you get it at all.”
Sims’s eyes welled up. Was he crying?
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I messed up, Ella. I don’t know how to fix this. I hurt you. I am so sorry. And now it’s like you aren’t even you. You hate me. I’ve never seen you like this.” He reached to hug her. She let him.
His arms were strong around her. She closed her eyes and allowed his warmth to soak into all the lonely places. Finally she stepped back. “Tell me, Sims. What is it? What do you need?”
“I don’t know. I’m confused, Ella.”
“Confused about what?”
“I think I made a mistake.”
“A mistake? In like you don’t really love Betsy? That she isn’t the love of your life?”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“That’s how I heard it, Sims. Love of your life. I’m only repeating.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not like that. She’s not. I do love her, or it feels like it. But you—”
“Me?”
“I still love you, Ella. I do. I’m such a mess. We’re a family. You’ve always been my home.”
“Listen, Sims. Why don’t you go get your head together and then tell me what you want? I can’t be with you if you’re in love with Betsy. I can’t.”
“I know. But can we slow down on the divorce proceedings though? Don’t go to the lawyer today.”
“No. I’m going today.” Why didn’t she agree to the one thing she wanted—to slow it all down? She had no idea.
“I’ll pay for a nicer apartment if you want one. I can’t stand to think of you living here.”
“No.” She felt outside her body now, watching all of this unfold. “I want to move back home. That’s all I want.”
“I guess we could do something like week on, week off while we try to figure out what we’re … what we’re doing.”
“You mean, whether we are getting divorced or not?”
“I hate that word. I can’t stand to think of us as that.”
“Sims, you are acting like I left you. Like I was the one who ran away. And you’re telling me that you’re confused.”
“I know.” He sat in the sole chair and dropped his head into his hands. “Who is the guy I saw you with at the Patio? Same guy Billy saw you with at Sunset?”
“Seriously?”
“Amber said his name was Hunter Adderman and that he was from California, writing a history book or some shit like that. But I looked him up, Ella. There is no such person or such writer.”
“That’s what this is about? Hunter?”
He looked up and in the dim light she saw how tired he was, the way his eyes were half-lidded, the stubble on his chin, the dry lips. “No, it’s not just about that. It’s about how I’ve ruined everything.”
Suddenly she was exhausted. She didn’t want to placate him. How on earth could he expect her to make him feel better when she didn’t even know how to make herself feel better? How could he think that he even deserved to feel better? “Sims, it’s probably best if you leave now. I have so much work to do.”
“I thought today was your day off.”
“It is, but I’m doing other … things.”
He stood and looked at the pile of sketches on the warped table. “These are really good, Ella. But I’ve always told you that.”
Now she wanted to tell him everything. All there was to know about her life and how she’d missed him, how she’d fantasized about his return, how she needed him back. But she didn’t. She had to bide her time, make him want it. Don’t give in too early or too easily.
He looked up at her. “So, you won’t go see a lawyer today?”
She saw the gap in time, the slim moment she had. “No, but I want to move back in today.”
He stared at her and she trembled inside with the need to fill the silence, to drop words and explanations in the space where he decided what to do. “Is tomorrow okay? Starting tomorrow we will do week on, week off while we try to figure out what to do.”
“Okay,” she said. “But what does ‘figure out what to do’ mean?”
“I don’t know. But I know I’m not ready to start dividing things and signing forms. Are you?”
“No,” she said quietly. “No, I’m not.”
“Okay…”
“Wait!” She looked up. “Are you still with Betsy? I mean, are you still together? Like when I’m not at the house, will she be there?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“I just don’t. I’m confused and I’m trying to work it out so we can find a way to fix this.”
Ella held up her hand. “Stop. You’re serious, aren’t you? You want me to stand here and wait while you try to decide whom you love best? Do you have a scale you’re using to weigh us?”
“It’s nothing like that, Ella.”
“It’s not?”
“No.”
“What do you want, Sims?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out, Ella. Can’t you see that?”
She stepped toward the door. “This is absurd. You come here to tell me you love me and miss me but you’re going back to Betsy also? You’re not just confused, you’re ridiculous.”
“You are twisting my words. I’m here to say I love you, and I’m sorry.”
“And you’re confused. I heard that part loud and clear, too, Sims. I’m learning, slowly, I guess, that I can’t just hear the parts I want to hear.”
“I guess I should go.” He glanced toward the bed and she knew what he wanted. She knew what she wanted. But she would deny them both for the long run. For the good, for later. For the real reconciliation.
“Yes,” she said, “you should go.” She opened the front door.
He walked toward it and then turned to her. “I never got that coffee.”
“No, I guess you didn’t.”
She shut the door quickly, before she made him that cup of coffee, before she took him to the bed and reminded him of all they were together.
If she’d known all it would take was seeing her with another man, she would have hired someone a month ago. Her heart picked up its pace. She stood to the side of her window and looked out to watch him walk away. He pulled out his cell phone to call someone. Probably Betsy. Would she ever, even if she could reconcile, would she ever not think about every phone call he made? Every moment he couldn’t account for his whereabouts? Was trust destroyed for good?
Sims stood there outside her window, alone. It took everything in her not to run down and beg him back, tell him she loved him and only him and to please leave Betsy. Hope, it was a powerful thing.
thirteen
The week went by like a single day. Blake slept when he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer, ate when Ashlee brought him food, and made love when he needed to clear his mind. The story obsessed him. He finished it faster than anything he’d ever written. The only time he’d even come close was when he wrote with the producer who shot The Mes
s of Love. They’d written that in six weeks.
His office was a mess—a beautiful mess full of Post-it notes, charts, and graphs. Plot points were written in red marker on large white sheets. Scene notes scribbled on scrap paper and then pinned to the bulletin board. Discarded scenes clustered together in an origami-like pile next to the trash can. The pictures he’d taken of the house, of Ella, of the water, the bay, and even the slave relic museum were attached to the wall with double-sided tape. He looked at everything now. He’d been living inside this story until this very moment, when reality seeped back into his world, little by little, cracks of light.
He ran his hand across his face. He needed a shave and a long run on the beach. Fresh air. Real food. Sun. And a change of underwear, too. The thought made him laugh as he stood and walked to the wall where the pictures hung. He would save the photos for the director lucky enough to get this screenplay. He wanted it to look exactly like this. And the main character to look … He touched Ella’s photo. Her hand was up, trying to prevent him from taking the picture. Her eyes, those blue eyes with the long lashes, red tipped and flirty. He’d described them in the script without even having to look at the photo.
Returning to his computer, he typed “Fade out” and leaned back in his chair, stretched. He knew it was good. Not in a conceited, too-big-for-his-britches kind of way, but with the innate understanding about how a story worked and when it didn’t. His last two flops … he’d known they weren’t working, he’d just hoped that the audience would be fooled. But this? It worked. It only needed a title, and then he would send it off and get things moving. It would go quickly now. This was what they’d all been waiting for: a great love story. Everybody—producers, studios, agents—would be telling him how much they loved his work … as soon as he’d scored another hit. And this was it.
Ashlee walked in the room. Her yoga pants stretched over her ass like a second skin. Her tank top a scrap of material. She was sweaty from her workout. “You’re done, aren’t you?”
“I am,” he said.
“Let’s celebrate.” She ran toward him and jumped into his lap. “I’ve missed you. You were here and not here at the same time. Now I can have my man back.”
Blake kissed her, tasted the salty sweat of her workout. “I couldn’t have done it without you. The notes. The organization. The food … the…”
“Really great sex,” she said. “I know you couldn’t have done it without that.” She kissed him again.
“Yes, that, too. Absolutely,” he said, and shifted her to move off his lap. “I still need a title and then I hit the send button.”
“Don’t you want me to read it before you send it off?” she asked.
“No.” He twisted a coffee cup in circles on the desk. “You don’t have to do that. I know it works.”
“Oh,” she said, and shrugged. “Just thought you might want a second eye before you hit send.”
“I’m not going to ask you to do one more thing,” he said.
“I want to,” she said. “I want you to ask me to do one more thing.”
“All right then.” He turned back to the screen and keyed in a few letters. “I just e-mailed it to you.”
She jumped up. “I’m on it.” Ashlee was gone, running to her computer in the bedroom while Blake tapped his fingers on the keys. A title. A title.
He closed his eyes. This was the first story he’d ever written without the touchstone of a title hanging on a note above his computer. Behind his eyelids, like an inlaid mosaic, he saw Ella walking, her skirt swinging around her knees and her bangs swept sideways by the wind. The story wasn’t about her, he told himself over and over, but it wouldn’t exist without her. In the end of his story, her lover returned, unharmed and safe, willing to sacrifice himself but not needing to. Her lover spared, washed ashore safely when everyone had thought him gone, swept to sea.
What had Ella said about him? Something about never loving again. “He’s the only one.”
His eyes popped open and the smile he felt move across and then up his face was both authentic and relieved.
The Only One.
He typed the words on the title page and then underneath that, his name and the date. He attached the screenplay to an e-mail and typed his agent’s name in the recipient line. In the subject line he wrote, “This Is It.”
He wanted to call Ella, tell her how she’d inspired his breakthrough, how she’d changed him. But that action came with a cost. Calling Ella would require admitting his lies.
He’d imagined, a few times, how he would go to her and tell her the truth, that he’d mined her story for his own good. For his career. What stopped him was the pain he knew he would see in her eyes, how she would look at him with disgust. That pain wasn’t any worse than thinking he’d never talk to her again, but he knew from experience that his desire to talk to her would fade. Desire always dissolved. He’d even told her that. Her look of disgust would never fade, so he chose the lesser of two evils: never telling her in trade for never seeing her again.
“Blake,” Ashlee called from the bedroom. “Get in here.”
He entered his bedroom, lit by the late-afternoon sun, a warm glow across the bedspread where Ashlee sat in lotus position with her computer open. She looked at him with a curious expression, her eyes drawn downward, her lips pursed out. “Blake?”
“Yes?”
“Did you fall for this girl? The one you wrote this story about?”
“What?”
“Did you … fall for her? Sleep with her?”
“God, no. What are you talking about?”
“The way you describe the main character, this ‘Emily.’ It’s like she’s a goddess. You have her photos all over the bulletin board out there. You describe her hair and eyes like you … really know her.”
“It’s called fiction, Ashlee. Writing. Making it up. She’s just … a girl who lost her husband and designs wedding dresses.”
“Okay, then.” Ashlee continued reading. “This is brilliant, Blake. Really amazing. You’re right. You nailed it.”
“Thanks so much. I’m going for a run. I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Uh-huh,” Ashlee mumbled and scrolled through his script. He could see over her shoulder. She was at the part where the boat’s rudder was found.
Blake slipped on his running clothes and when he bent over to tie his shoes, he was dizzy. The room spun like he’d been drinking JD for days. He was so deeply tired that he changed his mind and walked into the living room, flopped down on the couch, and fell into a sleep so deep that he didn’t even notice when Ashlee came in, dropped a note on the desk, and left.
* * *
Nesting. That was the divorce term for their week-on-week-off arrangement, although usually it applied to families who were taking turns living in the house and taking care of the kids, not to a man staying put while two women rotated in and out of his life. Being there, in her house, with her things, obliterated almost all other concerns.
Amber was there the last morning of Ella’s “week.” They sat across from each other at the kitchen table where they cradled their coffee mugs in their hands.
“Either he’s in or out,” Amber said. “He can’t have it both ways like this.”
“You want him to end up with your sister, don’t you?” Ella didn’t feel any heat in the words; it just seemed a fact. “Can’t you just be happy that we are trying to work things out?”
“I am happy for you. If you want Sims back and he’s coming back, I’m happy for you. But I’m not happy that he’s jerking you both around. Keeping you both on a string while he figures out what is best for him.”
“That’s not what he’s doing. He’s been with me every day. We’ve never talked so honestly. We are talking about why it might have happened. Where we went wrong. How we can fix it. We’ve talked about forgiveness and reconciliation and how to prevent growing apart again.”
“Prevent what he did? Like you can get a shot for it? Or wear protec
tive gear?”
“No.” Ella exhaled. “I don’t know what to say to you, Amber. I love him. He’s my husband. We’re talking it through. I haven’t even let him spend the night yet.”
“Well, then where do you think he’s spending the night?”
“At the apartment he rented.”
“Sure thing.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not saying anything. I just don’t want you to get hurt again.”
“Listen, there are two parts to every marriage and I know that I wasn’t perfect, either. Relationships are complicated and…”
“Have you considered therapy or anything like that?”
“Maybe … not yet.”
Amber reached across the table and took Ella’s hand. “I know. And I also know that I’m not a relationship expert. Hell, I can’t make one last more than six months. But please don’t take blame where there isn’t any.”
“Can we talk about something else, please?”
“Absolutely. Like me?”
“Like you,” Ella agreed. “Tell me what is going on in Amber World.”
“Well—” Amber leaned back in the chair and smiled. “Now that you ask. Let’s see. Best Day Bakery wants to sell my cookies but I really don’t want to get into that—you know, becoming a full-time baker or whatever. I love just making them for special occasions. What would my parents do? I mean, I’m here to run the family gift shop. It would collapse without me.”
“But you could be the Sister Schubert of sugar cookies,” Ella said.
“Great, so I get famous for making everyone fat, and my parents lose their store.”
“So dramatic,” Ella said. “But you know what this town really needs?”
“Good men?”
“That, and a movie theater and a bookstore.”
As they talked through the options, life appeared as it always had: something manageable that could be solved over a cup of coffee. They talked about friends Ella hadn’t seen or had been avoiding, about Amber’s parents’ need for her to work for them and not go out on her own. They debated the pros and cons of the town’s wedding business and whether Amber would ever want to marry after seeing all the heartbreak of her best friend and sister.
The Idea of Love Page 17