Page 42 of Take 2

Chapter Thirty-Nine

I made it to the couch. I am so accomplished.

Did I only do that because I needed to go downstairs to get tea anyway and didn’t want to drag myself back up the stairs? Sure. Do I look like hell after all that crying? Probably. There’s no reason to care, though.

I don’t want to talk to Ryan on the phone, but I’m too wrung out to book a flight just yet. Soon.

The doorbell rings, and Mom’s footsteps thump to the door. The deadbolt clicks when it unlocks, and Mom gasps. In LA, I might be worried her life was in danger, but here, my biggest worry is that it’s an actual visitor—not just an Amazon delivery—and I’ll have to hide.

“Oh my god, look at you!” That’s more excitement than a delivery warrants. Whoever is there is, unsurprisingly, way quieter than my mom, so I still don’t know what is happening.

Please be a puppy. Can a puppy ring a doorbell?

“Yes, she’s in the living room.”

Crap! Who is she letting see me? I throw the blanket off myself and scramble to smooth out my flyaways. I’m not wearing a bra. What is this woman thinking? I’m about to bolt for the stairs when Ryan comes into view.

I suck in a breath, but oxygen doesn’t seem to make it to any of my limbs.

My legs are jelly, and I sink back into the couch.

Mom indiscreetly scurries to the stairs, and he walks over to me with damp hair and a Starbucks carrier full of drinks.

He’s in a red Badgers T-shirt and jeans, just like the Wisconsin version of him I used to know.

He sets the drinks on the ottoman and sits next to me.

“Unexpected phone calls weren’t enough?” I ask. “Had to go further back in time for surprise visits?”

“Had to make a trip just for you.” Despite this being the exact opposite of what I told him to do, I soften a little. “Actually, I probably would have listened to you about not coming, but…”

“Anna?”

He nods. “She’s … had some feelings about us getting back together.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I ruined her first plan by winning the Oscar this year, and it’s pretty much been a downward spiral since then. I’m surprised she didn’t give me a black eye when we found your Oscars speech in the elevator.”

“You what?”

He pulls a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. I take it from him and look at my incoherent notes and list of people to thank. It was in my bra, and I’d taken my bra off in the elevator.

“When she saw she was still on there,” he says, “she had some choice names to call me.”

I bite my lip and sniffle. “I had promised her.” I glance at the coffee collection. “Expecting more people?”

“Mhmm.” He lifts the carrier and points to each drink as he explains.

“Caramel Frappuccino for college Bella. White chocolate mocha for grad school Bella. Chai latte with vanilla and cinnamon for Bella who misses autumn. And the brown sugar latte with real milk for Oscar-nominated Mirabelle Sheridan.”

Don’t cry over your freaking coffee orders, you dumbass.

My eyes prickle against my wishes. Traitors.

“Mirabelle, Bella, Mira—”

“You sound like Billy Connolly in Muppets Treasure Island.”

“The best Muppets movie.” He puts the drink caddy back down.

“Of course.” I swipe a tear from my eye.

“Mirabelle Elizabeth Sheridan, we’ve known each other for a long ass time.

You’ve known exactly what you wanted to be since you were fourteen, and I love that about you.

I was wrong about what I wanted to do. Thanks to you, I fell into something I really love.

I’ve gone through a wider range of versions of myself because I figured it out as I went along.

But you’ve changed too. Can you even imagine drinking a caramel Frappuccino now? ”

I grab the whipped cream-covered drink and take a sip. “It has promise as a dessert, I guess.”

“I didn’t write a movie to steal your dreams from you.

It was just how I got through losing you.

It was only a halfway decent screenplay because of you.

Everything I learned about doing this was from you.

And I wasn’t trying to impress you, though I won’t lie; I like that I can understand you better now.

It wasn’t to get you back, but I always wanted to do that. ”

I weave my fingers together. “I just watched it. The movie about us.”

“What did you think?”

Our eyes meet like magnets snapping together. “She wouldn’t have moved on like that. Nothing would feel like enough without him.”

Tears make the green of his irises sparkle.

“I wanted you to be happy. I meant to write it so that we both ended up happy. The light at the end of the tunnel. A possible future in which every day wouldn’t hurt.

” I squeeze his hand, and he continues. “It wouldn’t come, though.

Any new relationship I wrote myself was shallow.

Success was meaningless. Everything came back to you. ”

I pull a deep breath into my tight chest. “And you’d choose my dreams over your own if you had to?”

“Every time. I’d quit writing now if that’s what you need. I didn’t mean for it to get this far anyway, but—”

“I don’t want you to quit. I like your movies. And I need to beat you for an Oscar at some point.”

His shoulders relax, and his lips curl up. “We’re not the same people we were twelve years ago, and as much as it killed me for us to be apart, I think our experiences can make us stronger together if we try again.”

Again, I’m crying on my parents’ couch with Ryan, just like when Kathryn Bigelow won her history-making Oscar less than twenty-four hours after we met.

Here we are again in the same room where I cried when he proposed.

This time, there’s no dress or makeup, but I’ve never felt like he’s loved me more.

He takes the plastic cup from my hands and puts it with the rest. Then he slides closer and wraps his arms around me.

I melt into the familiar warmth of his solid chest. How is it possible that being in his arms can illicit such a range of feelings?

Sometimes, it’s impossibly sexy. Sometimes, it’s the comfort of a security blanket.

This is more. He’s my support without implying I don’t have my own strength.

He’s just … here. To be whatever I need.

It makes me wonder what I was trying to prove by insisting I didn’t need him. Even if needing him is a little scary.

“Could you explain to me …” I pull back, and my gaze flicks to his lips. Not yet. The conversation is super done if that starts. “What were the film clips of us?”

He glances down and runs his hand up and down my back.

“I love storytelling. I understand how you get lost in it now, and seeing it come together is incredible. But no story I’ve written, read, or watched has ever compared to ours.

I guess it’s become a habit to capture stories that way, and I’d be lying if I said I don’t like replaying the way you looked at me on the boat and all those fleeting moments they caught.

I don’t know exactly what I was going to do with it, but it would have been romantic as fuck. ”

The reprieve to laugh at the end of that is like a lifesaver thrown to me in the water. As per usual, he was the one who pushed me in. “Or, I would have lost it and thought you were a freak.” A grand romantic gesture turned screaming match plays in my head. That’s so us.

“You already know that.”

I laugh again and rub my eye. “You’ve upped your game.”

“It’s not that crazy. There were cameras everywhere.”

“They weren’t supposed to be pointed at me.”

“There’s always behind-the-scenes shit.” He’s talking with his hands like this is really a defensible act of lunacy. “Having our best moments recorded is so romantic!”

“Nope. Filming sex without my knowledge or consent is illegal . ”

His chin drops as he shakes his head at me. “Those aren’t our only good moments.”

I shrug and take another sip of semi-frozen sugar before setting it back into the carrier. “Ryan Preston Greene.” I lean my side against the back of the couch. “Why are you so good at everything? First football, then screenwriting …”

“I failed at the most important thing.” His eyes pierce mine, and memories of them assault me from the first time I saw them at a bar on my birthday to the way they glistened when we got married and yachting on the Mediterranean.

I really am stubborn to have claimed I didn’t like the color green.

That green of the dress I wore for my twenty-first birthday Oscars, the green of the emerald he put on my finger that night, the green of the scrunchie holding up my bun right now, is definitely my favorite.

“You never failed at loving me. We failed at figuring out life.” I slide onto his lap. “My priorities frequently suck, but I swear I do love you more than writing.”

His lips curl up. “That’s not even a compliment. Writing is awful.”

“Well, yeah.” I sniffle and smile. “But even the best parts.”

“Oh, well, that’s something.”

I clasp the sides of his face and kiss him like it’s still been years and not days since we did this. In a way, that’s true. Or maybe this is our first kiss. We’re no longer Wisconsin Ryan and Bella or Hollywood Preston and Mira. We’re culminations of our past selves.

He pulls back and scrunches his nose. “You taste like pure sugar.”

“Because I’m so fucking sweet.” I lean over to swipe a finger through the whipped cream and plop it onto his nose.

He wipes it on my neck as I squeal, and we fall into a heap on the cushions. Laughter rips through me as he sucks the rest of the whipped cream off my finger and then licks it off my neck.

“Um, my parents are home!”

We both laugh at how ridiculous it is to say that in our thirties. “Should I ask them if I can take you on a date tonight?”

“Don’t let the Frappuccino fool you into thinking I’m younger than I am.”

“Well, we went back to condoms, so how should I know how much of college we’re repeating?”

I pinch him and laugh. “It was kind of force of habit. And we hadn’t been together in a really long time.”

“I didn’t complain. Just saying … you know I wouldn’t have put you at risk for anything.”

“I know.”

“And it had been a while. I may have taken your theory on us meeting in our thirties a little too seriously and had a countdown to your thirtieth birthday.”

His warmth seeps through me. “I guess we’ve proven the theory about women in their thirties.”

“Are you going to try to maintain our pace from the trip?”

I shrug. “I’ll need a lot of sex cookies.”

“That can be arranged.” This kiss feels more movie-perfect than the yacht, hot mess and all. His nose brushes mine, and he speaks close to my lips. “Are you my girlfriend today?”

“Looks like it.” He pulls up away from my face, giving me a full view of his smile. “This isn’t the movie script second chance you planned, though.”

“You’ve always been good at wrecking my plans.”