Happy Again (5 page)

But to her surprise, he began to laugh, the kind of laugh that’s helpless and impossible to stop, that starts in your belly and works its way right up to your eyes.

“Come on,” she said, breaking character as she slumped back in the seat. “It couldn’t have been that bad.”

Graham’s eyes were watering, and he reached for one of the extra napkins, dabbing at them theatrically. “I can honestly say that was the least intimidating thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

This only made her glower at him for real this time, and he waved the napkin, as if in surrender, still laughing.

“Now that,” he admitted, “is a step in the right direction.”

By the time they finished eating, it was fully dark and a little bit chilly, the kind of night that’s caught somewhere between summer and fall, old and new.

Outside the restaurant, Ellie bounced up and down on her toes a few times, glancing reluctantly in the direction of the theater. She didn’t feel ready to let go of Graham just yet, to return him to the throngs of screaming fans and hyperefficient handlers who were tasked with moving him around from city to city, film to film, as if he were a piece on a game board.

Ellie looked over at him, and her stomach fluttered.

They’d only just found each other again. And for the first time in a long time, there was still so much to say.

Graham pulled his phone from his pocket, and Ellie could see that there were several new texts and messages, no doubt many of them from Harry.

“We still have a little time,” he said, shoving it back into his jacket without reading them. “Should we take the long way back?”

She nodded, not quite trusting herself to say more. Graham stuck the Yankees cap back on his head, pulling down the brim, and then, to her delight, they began to walk in the exact opposite direction of the Ziegfeld.

Fifth Avenue looked magical at this time of night, a sea of bobbing lights from cars and taxis, the shop windows like aquariums in the dark. Neither of them spoke as they crossed Fifty-Eighth Street, and the pale facade of the green-roofed Plaza Hotel came into view. Beyond that was the great blue-black sweep of Central Park, and without any discussion, they turned toward it.

“I like this place,” Ellie said as they waited for the light to change, standing so close that the fabric of Graham’s jacket brushed against her bare arm, making her shiver. “I wasn’t sure I would.”

“You’ve never been?”

She shook her head.

“I’ve been here a lot lately.”

“You’ve been everywhere a lot lately.”

“It’s kind of weird,” he said as they began to cross over to the park. “I never went anywhere as a kid. And now I’m all over the place. Sydney, London, Paris, Tokyo…I can’t even remember all the cities.”

Ellie glanced over at him. “But?”

“But I get homesick,” he said with a shrug. “Which I realize is crazy, since all that’s waiting for me there is a pig. But still.”

They were just inside the park now, tracing a path along the edge of a murky pond, where a ring of streetlamps made blurry reflections in the water. They stopped beside an empty bench, and Ellie sat down on one end, waiting for Graham to do the same. But he just stood there, staring down at her with a thoughtful expression, his hands deep in his pockets and the tail of his suit jacket fluttering in the breeze.

“I can’t tell if you’re happy,” she said, trying to meet his gaze beneath the brim of the baseball cap, and he ducked his head, hesitating a beat too long before answering.

“Honestly,” he said, “I can’t really tell, either.”

He sat down beside her, leaving too much space between them. A woman walked by with an enormous dog, straining hard on its leash, and when they were gone and the path was empty again, Graham shook his head.

“I don’t really mean that,” he said, sounding frustrated. “I know I’m lucky. And I know people would kill for this kind of life, these types of opportunities…”

“I’m not a reporter,” Ellie reminded him. “You can be honest with me.”

He’d been absentmindedly curling the end of his tie, and now he let it drop, and they both watched it unwind again. “Sometimes it’s just a lot.”

“I can imagine,” she said, but she saw him wince and changed her mind. “No, you’re right. I can’t.”

“Lately, I’ve just been feeling kind of suffocated. Like I can’t get enough air. Which is why it’s nice to escape sometimes.”

“By driving way too fast.”

“It’s not
that
fast.”

“I’ve seen at least three stories about you getting pulled over.”

“I can handle it.”

Ellie gave him a hard look. “Just be careful, okay?”

“You sound like my parents,” he said, and then his face softened. But before she could ask him whether things were better now—whether he still worried over the distance between them in the aftermath of his sudden fame—he nodded.

“I’ve been seeing them a lot more lately, which is good,” he said. “My dad’s gotten completely obsessed with the landscaping at my house. I’ve got a whole crew that comes out twice a week, but whenever I’m in town, he usually just ends up dragging the mower out himself. And my mom—she thinks I eat too much takeout, so she’ll come over and spend a whole day cooking, and then my fridge ends up looking like I’m preparing for the apocalypse or something.”

Ellie smiled. This is where most guys she knew would stop, concluding the story with an eye roll. But not Graham. She knew what it meant to him, these kinds of mundane gestures, and how hard earned they were.

“And Wilbur loves having them around,” he said, leaning back against the bench, more relaxed now. “My mom even knitted him a sweater last Christmas.”

Ellie laughed. “Pig in a blanket?”

“Don’t even joke,” Graham said, giving her a stern look.

“I’m happy for you,” she said, swiveling so that they were facing each other again. “That all sounds really…normal.”

“I’m trying,” he said, pulling off his cap and ruffling his hair. “I mean…things are okay. I can’t really complain, obviously. But happy? I don’t know about that. I think maybe the last time I was truly happy was last summer.”

Ellie turned to look out at the pond. The water rippled just slightly in the breeze, and she thought again of that last night she and Graham had spent together back in Henley. Everything had felt so big then: the rough stretch of beach and the churning water and the endless night sky. And now here they were again, on a smaller stage, hemmed in on all sides by trees and bushes, buildings and people, everything stifling and somehow much too close.

What had Graham said? That it felt like suffocating, like it was hard to get enough air.

“Me too,” she said finally, and he flinched at the words.

“You’re supposed to be happier without me,” he said, looking pained. “Otherwise, what was the point of all this?”

“All what?”

“The last year,” he said, kicking at the ground with his heel. “Not talking for so long. I mean…why else did you stop writing?”

“Because you did.”

“That’s not true,” he said, jerking forward, suddenly tense. “I wrote you a bunch of times last winter, and you never wrote back.”

“Come on,” Ellie said, annoyed. “You were basically just talking about the weather at that point. It was starting to seem like a chore for you. And I didn’t want to be that. I mean…you had all these exciting things going on, and reading about my stupid high school drama while you’re busy meeting the prime minister of France—”

“It was the president, actually.”

“I just figured you’d moved on,” she said, ignoring this.

He shook his head. “You were the one who was pulling away. You stopped talking about anything that mattered. You stopped daydreaming with me about college, or telling me about the letters you were writing to your dad. You stopped sending me poems.”

“That’s because they were all about you,” she said, her face burning. “And it was embarrassing, okay? I was supposed to be over you by then.”

“Who says?”

“Well, you,” she said, glaring at him. “I had to see pictures of you with other girls pretty much every single day, while I was stuck in Henley, writing poems about you like a complete idiot.”

“Were they at least better than Wordsworth?” he asked with a smile. “That guy was a total hack.”

She laughed. “He was okay.”

“Hey,” Graham said, sliding a little bit closer to her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Honestly, it felt like you were the one who was over it. I thought you were moving on. I thought I was boring you.”

“How could you—”

“All I was doing was working,” he said with a shrug. “You were actually having a life.”

“Do you have any idea how boring Henley is?” she asked, then shook her head. “It wasn’t so bad before you showed up. But once you left…”

“Trust me, it wasn’t boring to me. There have been so many times I wished…” He trailed off, giving her a long, searching look. “I haven’t been sleeping lately, so I got this noise machine that plays ocean sounds. Now I fall asleep every night thinking of that beach, wishing I was back there again. I just didn’t know how to tell you that.”

“I wish you had.”

“It hurt too much,” he said, his eyes on the ground. “Writing to you.”

She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“There was so much I was trying not to say. I guess it was easier to talk about nothing than about how much I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” she said, her heart tumbling around in her chest at the thought of all that lost time. They’d both been trying to protect themselves, and in doing so, had managed to push each other away. And now it was too late.

“And besides,” Graham was saying, “I figured you were better off without me and all my craziness.”

Ellie sighed. “I happen to like you and your craziness.”

They both fell silent, looking out at the trees and the pond and the silhouettes of the people walking over the footbridge on the far side of it.

“Maybe we peaked last summer,” he said after a moment. “Maybe we’ll never be that happy again.”

In spite of herself, Ellie laughed. “There’s a cheerful thought.”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You know how I always think of my life in terms of before and after—”

“The first movie?”

“Yeah. But lately I’ve been thinking about you too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like…before and after you.”

Ellie blinked at him, suddenly annoyed again. “Then you should’ve tried harder. You should’ve come to visit. Or said something sooner. You should’ve done
something
.”

A couple in dark jackets walked past, but they didn’t look over. This was clearly a city used to minding its own business, and the anonymity of the place gave Ellie a little thrill. Even without his hat, it was too dark now to see Graham clearly. They were just another couple having an argument in the park tonight.

“Why didn’t
you
?” he asked, standing abruptly.

“My life got split too,” she said, rising to her feet as well. “That was the old me. That’s not…that’s not me anymore. At least I don’t want it to be.”

He looked confused. “So who are you now, then?”

“I’m not someone who falls for movie stars,” she said, giving him a stubborn look. “And I’m not someone who waits around for them to write back. I don’t want to go to premieres, and I don’t want to be reading gossip blogs or those stupid magazines at the grocery store. I don’t want to care about any of this stuff.”

Graham looked at her evenly. “You mean you don’t want to care about me.”

“It makes no sense,” she said, her voice cracking a little. “You and me.”

“I know that,” he said, reaching out and taking her hand, and the feel of his skin on hers nearly knocked the breath right out of her. “Sort of. But sometimes I think…”

“What?”

“That maybe it’s the
only
thing that makes sense.”

Ellie glanced down at their hands, which were swaying between them, and below that, to Graham’s shoes, shiny even in the dark. Around them, there was the rustle of leaves, and beyond that the muffled hum of the rest of the city, punctuated by the occasional honk of a car horn. Across the pond, another couple was perched on the bridge, but otherwise it was just the two of them here in this quiet oasis, where Ellie could hear her own heart beating, could feel the pulse in Graham’s hand, could picture what would happen if she were to tip her head back right now to look up at him.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she cleared her throat. “Look, I know it’s not fair to you—”

“Ellie…”

“It’s not who you are, all that craziness. I get it. But it
is
your life,” she continued, her head still bowed. “And the hardest part isn’t the travel or the cameras or the press, you know? It’s the rest of it. The waiting and worrying and wondering. I don’t want that, and I know it’s ridiculous for someone like me to be saying that to someone like you, but I’m just not sure I could—”

“Ellie,” he said again, and this time, he stooped so that she was forced to look at him, and something in his eyes stopped her short. “I’m not asking you for anything.”

She stiffened. “I know.”

“I know how hard that would be,” he said. “How unrealistic.”

“This isn’t a movie,” she reminded him—reminded herself—and he gave her a weak smile.

“I know that too,” he said. “I just wanted to…”

“What?”

He gave her hand a squeeze, just the smallest bit of pressure in the center of her palm, but Ellie felt it travel up her arm like an electric current. She hadn’t realized how cold she was, but now she started to shake, and Graham dropped her hand, taking off his jacket and swinging it over her shoulders.

When she pulled her arms through, the sleeves were much too long, and without saying anything, he began to roll them up for her, one at a time, which for some reason made her feel like crying.

“It was real,” she said, her voice thick. “Wasn’t it?”

He looked up at her. “What was?”

“Us,” she said. “Last summer.”

“Yeah,” he said, stepping back again. “It was.”

Ellie had spent so much time trying to convince herself that it wasn’t, that he was just a movie star who came to town and that she was just the sucker who fell for him. But standing here now, his coat hanging from her shoulders, her hands poking out of the carefully rolled sleeves, she knew for sure that she’d been wrong.

“I want to be happy again,” she said quietly. “I want that for both of us.”

Graham smiled. “I do too.”

“And I want…”

He raised his eyebrows, waiting.

“I want you to be more careful when you drive.”

“I told you, I
am
careful—” he began, but she cut him off.

“And there are so many things I always wish I could tell you. I want to be able to write to you and not worry about what it means. I just want to know you’re out there.”