Nora Goes Off Script

by Annabel Monaghan

I’d never seen the house at six a.m. I didn’t even know we were facing east. It was like a gift with purchase, a reward for loving this broken place.

People in Hollywood have tamed hair, or if it’s wild, it’s been professionally disorganized.

“You’re missing a dimple,” he says. “The other one’s inside,” I say.

At the corner of arrogance and cluelessness, you find the worst kind of person.

“The sun comes up here, Nora.”

There is something about the way the sun comes up right here that seems to wash the whole world clean. It touches every single leaf as it rises, leaving me both grounded and inspired. It was here that I started to find my lost self again.

“I think he’s the best kind of villain,” Leo says. “He’s the kind of villain who does something horrible but who we still love. You can see his humanity, even though he’s taking advantage of those boys. Characters like Fagin get to the core of what it means to be a human being—we are both light and dark.”

I felt a profound relief that the struggle was over, like if you stopped treading water and then found yourself effortlessly floating to the surface.

Leo in my house is fun. I like the space he takes up. It’s light and exciting, and I am slipping into a daydream that this is my new reality.

“I mean, you’re the first person I’ve ever been in love with,” he says. Just like that. It’s a Wednesday, I think, but I’m not even sure. In a meadow dotted with trees, covered in sweat with birds chirping around us, Leo Vance is in love with me. In that second, my life is like the tea house—I can see all the way through to the other side where there’s an entirely different reality.

There’s a lot of laughing, and it’s easy, and the future’s rolling out in front of us perfectly. I sometimes forget life’s not a movie.

To write is to re-create something as you’d like it to be.

Maybe there are moments where people come together and you can just seal them in their own space while you move on with your life. Maybe what we had was a secret you keep hidden in a book to take out and ponder on your birthday. I smile at the thought because I know I’ve stolen it from a movie.

Was it gallant of him to address it, to acknowledge that it was actually something? Maybe. But did that balance out the thoughtlessness of leaving it unsaid for so long? If we were as close as I remember us being, if I didn’t imagine the whole thing, he could have just said it. “I’m not coming back.” I didn’t anticipate that he’d turn out to be a coward, yet here we are.

the best things come back. Sometimes it’s right after the commercial, sometimes it takes longer. But time and sunshine bring growth, and life unfolds just the way it’s supposed to.