FROM:[email protected]
Dec. 25, 2017, 10:38 PM
SUBJECT:Merry Christmas, Dummy
If you’re reading this, it means that Future Me gave you this email address and password. Which means I decided I want you to know why I didn’t show up to the penthouse suite after the party and then moved to New York without saying goodbye in person.
Maybe I’ll never see or speak to you again—who knows?
I keep looking at the text you sent me that night, asking where I disappeared to. Reminding me of the room number. Telling me you’ll be staying there all night.
You were so sweet.
And my response, telling you I had decided to go home to pack. Telling you I had decided to move to New York, asking you not to call me.
Please know that it was hard for me to write that and there is so much I wanted to say to you, but it just didn’tseem right for me to contact you. It still doesn’t. It’s not my place. It would have just made things more complicated for both of us, and while we are different in almost every way imaginable, the one thing we have always agreed on is this: complicated stories suck.
Unless it’sInception. OrThe Prestige. Or the plot of basically any Christopher Nolan film.
But our story will always be simple. We were film school rivals. One night, we got drunk and made out at a Christmas party. You asked me to meet you in a hotel room, I didn’t, and then I left LA without saying goodbye in person.
Right?
You’re probably mad at me. Or maybe you’re too busy to be mad at me. I hope you’re happy. I mean it. I really do.
By now you have probably found out that your beautiful friend Alyssa is pregnant with your baby.
By “now” I mean as of December 25, 2017. By the time you’re reading this email you will probably already be a father. Wow. What a trip! Congratulations. Really and truly. I think that even though you are terrible at being a person in so many ways, you will be a genuinely good dad. I can totally see that about you.
I know this is probably too intense a thing to say in some random email, but since there’s a good chance you’ll never even read this, I’ll just write it anyway. Here goes. Are you ready?
I think you’ll be a great dad because you’re going to give your son all the things you never got from your own father. I haven’t met your dad. I’m sure he’s a perfectly nice man. I have just picked up on some things about him from what you’ve said over the past couple of years in passing.
It’s so weird that I found out about your impending fatherhood before you did, but…I did.
It already feels like so long ago, but it has only been a week.
When you went up to the hotel room, I went to the ladies’ room in the lobby. To freshen up. Because I was planning on getting boned by you.
I was in one of the stalls when I heard two women enter, talking. I didn’t recognize their voices, but one of them had kind of a high-pitched voice and she kept saying, “Oh my God, Alyssa” and “Wow. Alyssa, this is so intense!”
I had already flushed (TMI?) and was about to open the door, but it didn’t seem like the right time. Public bathroom etiquette and all that. Maybe it was worse that I overheard them, but they could definitely see my boots and I guess my boots looked like they could keep a secret.
That one girl asked the other one named Alyssa if she was sure—did she take more than one pee-stick test, did she get a blood test? Yes, Alyssa said, all the tests. I knew what that convo was about immediately.
The girl with the high-pitched voice asked her if she wanted to have the baby, and Alyssa said yes. She said she came to this party tonight to tell Elijah she’s pregnant. “Wait,” the other girl said, “Elijah Wood, fromLord of the Rings, is the father?”
And then Alyssa very calmly said, “No. Come on. Focus. Elijah Abrams. His film class is having a party here tonight.”
To which the other girl replied, “Ohhhhh. You always call him Eli! But—girl. Nice! I thought you guys had just been friends forever… I didn’t know you started dating.”
And Alyssa told her she had hooked up with you about two months ago. She said she and her parents were out fordinner with you and your parents and Eli was drinking a lot and was really moody, but it made him seem really hot. Hotter than usual. And, well, I won’t repeat what she said verbatim, but apparently she found you very attractive and she asked you to go back to her place and she seduced you. Her words, not mine. And she said it felt very comfortable when you stayed over but that you had only texted to say you had a nice time the next day.
And apparently she had already talked to her mother and yours about being pregnant, and they told her father and yours, and they all agreed that this was what everyone wanted.
So.
