Page 41 of Take 2

Chapter Thirty-Eight

P roductivity has been of the utmost importance to me for as long as I can remember. But yesterday’s list of accomplishments was just: send two emails and cry on the phone with my ex. That’s as much as I could handle.

Today, maybe I’ll go nuts and wash my hair or something.

Rain hits the windows, so it doesn’t feel like there’s any point.

Not that I’d be going anywhere. Which also leads to: what’s the point?

At least the weather is thoughtful enough to be gloomy when I am.

LA would keep being sunny and beautiful like, Why aren’t you smiling?

Curling up on my childhood bed in my pajamas at almost ten a.m. is kind of negating my claim about being an adult.

But my parents aren’t complaining. I almost wish they would.

The times when I’ve been so insanely disappointed in myself—okay the one time—the ‘it’s okays’ almost killed me.

Because it wasn’t okay, and I didn’t want to be the only one thinking I was a failure.

This is undoubtedly the opposite of what every sane person wants, but there was something unnerving about them still being proud of me when my life was in shambles.

Maybe it invalidated all the other times they said it. Or maybe I’m just nuts.

HBO Max has Missed Opportunities . I stare at the screen with the movie poster and summary for a while before I build the nerve to start it.

The remote rattles in my shaking hand as I hit play.

I pull my blanket tight around myself when a familiar tune washes over me.

It’s been a while since I heard it, and I usually skipped this song whenever it came on in its heyday.

That I had to have the movie attacking me via an original song too, felt excessively rude.

Ryan may not have written the song, but it was still part of his story, and I avoided anything related to it.

Choosing to put myself through this feels incredibly masochistic.

The beautifully scruffy, blue-eyed singer comes into focus, sweating in the spotlight.

When he raises his face from the guitar, a smoldering gaze amps up the intensity of the sweet words he sings.

It cuts to the face of the pretty girl on the receiving end of that stare.

She glows with the knowledge that this musical poem is for her.

Everyone else is blurred because he only sees her.

When the song ends, they meet backstage for a passionate kiss.

Her boots kick up off the floor as he spins her.

“You killed it,” she says, still gripping the sides of his face.

“That felt incredible.”

“Better than sex?”

“Better than any sex I had before I met you.”

Their exit from the small venue is when the opening credits roll.

Written by Preston Greene makes my jaw clench, and I shake it out.

It’s not like I needed the reminder to know who wrote it, given we had that exact exchange after he scored the winning touchdown in the final seconds of the Illinois game.

When I start to seriously consider whether I can watch this multi-verse version of my relationship with Ryan, the main character’s pickup truck flips several times before landing upside down.

The image threatens to tear me in half. On the one hand, it finally makes the story undeniably not us .

On the other, I’ve so thoroughly equated the singer to Ryan that the thought of such a crash makes my core turn to ice.

The girlfriend crying over his unconscious form in the hospital makes me squeeze my arms around myself under the blanket.

When they get to her helping him through physical therapy, I shift from upset to defensive.

Jesus, Ryan, were you trying to point out there could have been worse things to happen to us and these characters manage?

She stress-bakes through it, and this might be even more wishful thinking on Ryan’s part. Write a character who bakes because I don’t. Nice.

The guy’s loss of his music career is in line with Ryan’s football career.

Her support is certainly familiar. It’s when she isn’t around that he truly breaks down about it, though.

Questioning who he is if he isn’t a musician.

Guilt over no longer being able to give her the life he promised.

It taints all the good things happening for both of them.

She’s taking off on YouTube with a baking channel, and he seems happy for her.

Until she gets a call to guest-judge a baking show.

His support is tenuous at best as they go to New York. She’s awed by the studio. He mutters about how fake and sterile it is. Her giddiness over the glamour of hair and makeup is only tempered by his disappointment that she doesn’t ‘look like herself’ done up like that.

It’s our fight. Ryan always hating on Hollywood. I don’t want to watch this. I don’t need to. I lived it.

She still does a stellar job, charming the producers and her co-judges. When they watch her episode back home in Tennessee, their family and friends are thrilled, but he stays quiet. A week later, when she’s offered her own show, she’s not even surprised he isn’t on board.

“Guess you’re moving to New York then,” he says.

She presses her lips together and shakes her head. “I’d like to be able to say we are moving to New York.”

“But even if we aren’t, you still will.”

“Don’t make this sound like I’m not choosing you. I want you to come with me. If you’re not going to do that, it’s you not choosing me.”

His cheek pinches in like he’s biting the inside of it. “Better to do it now than drag it out. It’ll only be worse later.”

There it is. In the wake of our divorce, Ryan wished we had just let things end when I went away to CalArts. My tears blur the image as I picture him proposing, our wedding, the good moments we had in LA—all the things he wished never happened.

My breath comes out shaky. Why did he ever want me to see this?

When I pull my focus back to the movie, the woman is thriving, growing more lovely and funny in every episode that he never misses.

The man is in a downward spiral, collapsing in on himself as time passes by.

Still, he watches every second. Then, when she makes little gift boxes out of cookies and presents the collection of them—which had been made ahead of time—only to find a diamond ring in one of them, his eyes bulge.

He tosses magazines out of the way to find the remote, but the TV is still on to show her squeal when a man comes into the kitchen to propose. In his desperation, he grabs a mug and hurls it at the screen. A spiderweb of cracks breaks up the kiss, and the TV goes blank.

I rub my temple. The urge to text him makes my fingers itch. Is that really what he thinks would have happened?

When the main character finally goes to therapy, he’s asked what he would change if he could go back.

He pictures not getting in the pickup truck the day of the accident.

Making it in music. Her always there backstage with a smile and homemade sweets.

Traveling the world with her by his side.

She looks happy in his vision, cheering him on.

Then he pictures watching her bake while he’s recovering from the crash.

Her filming YouTube videos, and he has a smile on his face.

Going to New York that first time and encouraging her.

Being the most excited person in her life when she got her big opportunity and helping every step of the way to move together.

He pictures himself off-camera at the studio kitchen instead of her backstage at a concert.

Instead of sweaty kisses, they share baked goods and laughs.

He’s the one who puts the ring in the cookie box.

“If I could go back and change anything, I’d have supported her half as well as she always supported me.”

I cry through the end of the movie.