Page 79 of This Changes Everything

Across the ballroom, Hannah was looking back at me with a sad smile. She mouthed, Let’s go. And I nodded, struggling to keep more tears from falling.

Chapter 31

LOS ANGELES 26 years old

I PARKED ALONG MULHOLLAND DRIVE AND STOOD IN FRONT OF my car, looking out at the smoggy night scene laid out before me. The lights of downtown Los Angeles, the winding curve of Highway 101, the blur of speeding cars, and the scattered homes of the Hollywood Hills were below me. Beverly Hills and Century City were to my right.

I’d left Rory and Juniper Golf Club feeling exactly the same as I had when I left them at sixteen. Empty.

When I’d gotten to work that morning, after waking up at 3 a.m. to make a 6 a.m. flight, my boss, Dan Burke, had asked me to lunch. Instead of giving me a formal performance review, as he called it, he sat me down and, over salads, asked me only one question: “Do you spit or swallow?”

My focus blurred, and the restaurant’s walls and ceiling pressed against my body. My blinking was heavy and strained, as if blinking wasn’t ever meant to be a reflex.

I didn’t tell him to fuck off. I didn’t scream or slap him. I didn’t storm off or go to HR, because there was no HR at the company, or any production company I worked for. I thanked my boss for his generosity. I thanked him for sponsoring my visa and for the opportunity he had afforded me to build my résumé and learn from him. I asked him to be a reference. And then I quit my job.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t know my next step. With the job went my visa, and the life I had built and fought for. I needed to immediately find a new job that would sponsor me, or I would be sent back to Canada, proving that everything I had said about myself was wrong. That nothing I believed about myself was true. None of it was real. Everything I gave up . . . everything I left behind . . . none of it was worth it.

As I stepped back into my car, my phone rang.

It was Ben.

“Hello?” My nerves darted up my spine. Ben and I hadn’t talked much since we’d broken up six months earlier. It was too difficult. The distance and the air between us felt tangible, like we were separated by quicksand, and when we finally stopped struggling to grab hold of one another, we could actually breathe again.

“Hey,” Ben said quietly.

“What are you doing? It’s . . .” I looked at my phone to see the time. “It’s two in the morning for you.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“Are you okay?” I didn’t know where to look, so I fixed my stare through the windshield on the stream of red and orange rear car lights streaking the freeway beneath Mulholland’s overhang.

“I’m okay . . . I got a movie. Kind of a big one.”

My pulse picked up. “What? Really?”

“Yeah. It hasn’t been announced, and I had to sign an NDA, but I’m going to Atlanta for four months,” he said as if he didn’t know how to feel about it.

“Wow, Ben. Wow.”

“Yeah,” he whispered with uncertainty. “There was no one else I wanted to tell.”

The silence between us had substance. I could taste it.

“How’s LA?” he eventually asked.

“Not great.” I couldn’t be honest with Rory, but I could be with Ben. Ben already knew the answer.

“No? What’s going on?”

“Just a bad day at work.” I felt myself splinter.

“Dan?”

“Yeah.” I knew it would take only one more knock against my broken glass for me to shatter completely, but I somehow managed to keep myself together. I pulled the phone away from my face for a brief moment and covered the microphone, trying not to get caught catching my breath. He caught me anyway.

“Don’t let them break you, Ellie. That’s not who you are.”

I nodded and tugged on my lips, trying to stop them from trembling. “Show ’em I’m not someone they can fuck with, right?” I looked up at my stained car ceiling, trying to keep my tears in place.