She leaves him.
She breaks his heart.
And then we switch to her POV, a week later.
Like me, she’s all alone, and she’s miserable.
Like me, she can’t stop thinking about the person she left.
Like me, she knows she’s made a mistake.
But unlike me, she’s in a rom-com.
So she decides to be brave.
When I’m done, I’m crying.
I wish I were Nina.
I wish Seth were Cole.
I wish our ending could have been like this one: poignant and redemptive and beautiful.
I have an overpowering feeling, as I type “THE END.”
I want Seth to read it.
He loves my movies—probably more than anyone else on this earth. And I know, if we were still together, he would delight in the idea of making one out of our story. He’d treasure this artifact of our love. He’d watch it over and over. Memorize all the lines. Lord it over me that he wrote the best ones himself.
My phone rings—my mom. I’m leaving in the morning for Florida. She probably wants to confirm for the third time when to pick me up from the airport.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hiiiiiii my Molly Malolly,” she trills.
She hasn’t called me that in a long time. It’s her special nickname for me, and it’s so like the goofy names Seth calls me, and I miss him so much, and I’m so disappointed in myself, and so exhausted from this last month of 4:00 a.m. wakeups, and so unmoored by what I just wrote, that I burst into big, ugly tears.
“Molly!” my mother cries. “Honey, oh no! What’s wrong, sweet girl?”
“It’s Seth,” I warble. “I really, really miss Seth.”
“Oh, sweetie,” she says. “I wish I were there to give you the biggest hug. But you’ll be here soon and I’ll take such good care of you and we’ll have a wonderful Christmas and it will all be okay.”
“I know,” I choke out. But I can’t stop crying.
“I fucked up, Mom,” I say. “I’m just like Dad.”
I hear her take a sharp breath. “No. You arenot.How can you say that?”
“I’m not good at love.”
“My darling,” she says instantly, with great authority, “that is not true. If anyone on the planet should know, it’s me.”
“Mommy, I leave people, like he does. I throw them away.”
“Molly, listen to me. Your father leaves people because he is not capable of loving them enough. You left Seth because you love him so very much. You are theoppositeof your father.”
“I broke his heart,” I choke out.
