“Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb,” I mutter aloud.
It was a stupid bet I made with myself, a stupid way out from the corner we’ve backed ourselves into. The Hollywood ending. But Hollywood endings aren’t really life, aren’t anything more than what I’d type into a draft before hitting “The End.”
My dad always told me that I was too romantic.Being a writer?he’d scoff.Not exactly what we had planned for you.He’d pour himself a scotch, adjust his tie, and gaze at me in the way that I could read only as disappointment.
As if anyone’s plans for anyone else can set their path. The same lesson I learned with Leo, and the irony isn’t lost on me. I should have said that to him then; I should have known better.Do what you want, do what you love. Be happy.
Instead, I lived to whittle down my young romanticism to prove my dad wrong. To show him that I had mettle, that grit wasn’t lost on me, even if I wanted to spend my days concocting fictional characters who allowed me to lose myself in other places, other worlds.
The wind kicks up, blowing the salty air over me, and I inhale deeply enough that my chest puffs up, and then I squeeze my eyes shut and remember why I came here this morning. I came here not just in hopes of seeing her, but to rememberhimtoo. How much he loved the ocean. How he wanted to retire here and surf. I should have told him to, but how was I to know? How was any of us to know?
“I’d have done it differently, you know,” I say aloud. To him, to her, to myself too. No one answers, of course. Just the continuous beat of the waves breaking in front of me, the ever-present swirl of the wind. “If I could go back and do it all differently, I would.”
I turn and head back to the concrete path where I abandoned my flip-flops.
A figure is running down the path in the distance. My gut spins—an honest mix of elation and nerves. But then I see the red hair in a ponytail flopping back and forth. I squint because I wonder if my brain is playing a trick on me, that I’m seeing something, a mirage, that isn’t really there.
But then she’s in front of me, startled a bit herself, out of breath, sweat running behind her ears.
“Ben,” she says. “Oh my gosh, hey.”
“Hey.” I lean forward and kiss her damp cheek. “I didn’t ...”
My heart races, my brain goes to static.Amanda.Not at all whom I was expecting, not at all whom I’m ready for. I have to apologize for a million things, I’m sure. I stutter again. I was prepared to make a speech, to get down and beg for absolution, and yet, she isn’t here and Amanda is, smiling and seemingly open, and my pulse is hammering so quickly that I don’t know how I’m still standing.
Maybe this is the sign, that romantic one in the movies that the audience is clutching their seats and waiting for with their hearts in their throats. Even as I hear myself think it, I’m not sure I believe it, but what the hell?
My mind refocuses: on how good she looks, on how lovely she smells, on how something lights inside of me that feels a little feral, a little wild, like it used to whenever I saw her, even when we shouldn’t have been seeing each other at all.
“God, Amanda, it’s been forever,” I say.
She laughs. “Not forever. What, a year or two?” She smiles. “OK, I know exactly how long it’s been. Since May last year. Eighteen months.”
“That seems right.” I hesitate. “You don’t hate me?”
She smiles again, easily. “It was all a mess. So no, I don’t hate you.”
I nod, unsure of what to say next. I know what I came here for, but like so many things recently, I find that I’m willing to abandon my principles because they’re inconvenient. Write a shitty script? Sure! Leave with a different woman? Why not! I unexpectedly think of my dad again—Fuck you!I want to tell him—and how disappointed he’d be with this sliding scale.
“I just ... I remembered what today was.” Amanda’s already pink cheeks turn redder, nearly matching her hair, and I push my dad out of my thoughts. “I ... I thought you might be here. Remembered how you told me you’d do this.” She shrugs. “God, that sounds like a stalker thing to do. Really, I run down here most mornings. I just ... I thought you might be here today.”
My brain is playing catch-up, assessing this unforeseen turn. Amanda showed. Tatum did not. I determine that this has to mean something, even if it’s not what I wanted it to mean when I woke this morning and resolved to win back my wife.
Finally I say: “Amazing how you knew. Of course I’d be here ... I’m glad you found me.”
2
TATUM
OCTOBER 1999
I made a bet with Daisy that I could get at least three numbers by midnight.
It’s not something I’d do normally, this bet, these numbers, but she is pushing me outside of my comfort zone, part of an acting exercise assigned to us by Professor Sherman—Move past your comfort zone into that sticky territory of inhabiting someone else—and so I agree. Besides, it’s better than deflecting the cheesy pickup lines that come with being a bartender, the lecherous looks of patrons who somehow think you’re up for grabs, the self-criticism that would otherwise clang around my easily infected brain. By playing the part, slipping into a role, it’s easier to step outside myself. That’s half the reason I want to be an actor in the first place. I can be anyone I want to be.
So of course I said yes to the bet.
“They can’t be trolls, guys you’d never go out with to begin with,” Daisy said, pouring a shot of whiskey down her throat, untying her black apron and passing it to me when we swapped shifts. I knotted it around my own waist as we traded places: me behind the bar, her on a rickety stool in front of it.
