Nora Goes Off Script

by Annabel Monaghan

Wow

And then he just decided, meh, this isn’t for me. Like the way you stop taking milk in your coffee. And then you act like you always drank it black, like you don’t remember that creamy taste that you used to say you loved.

oh.

She is so much prettier in person that it takes my breath away. I want to see her face without all that makeup and stare into her poreless skin. She radiates beauty even though she’s obviously ready to attack me.

lacy oh lacy

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

trump

I lock up and tell my kids to go to bed. They want me to read a chapter of The Hunger Games, which is too dark and too old for them, but I agree because I want to feel fierce.

hunger games 4evr

“Have you ever felt like you’re disappearing?” he asks. “Like you’re sure one day you’re going to wake up and find that the truest parts of yourself have been replaced by someone else’s plans?” Um, I just wrote a movie about it. I believe you read the script? How many times did I wake up next to Ben and wonder, Where did I go? His face would reflect either indifference or mild distaste, and I’d try to remember back when I was a person who deserved to be loved. I didn’t know what Ben was looking at, but it wasn’t me. I was gone.

He was that kind of slightly mean guy that made you feel superior if he liked you. Since the day he picked me, I’d done everything I could not to blow it.

Newton must have been thinking of twentysomethings in long-term relationships with hard-to-secure wedding venues when he decided that objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

I think our whole marriage was about me trying to make him glad he picked me.

He’s close enough that if he took half a step forward he could kiss me. I wonder again if my imagination has gone rogue, if maybe it’s time to lay off the romance genre.

Maybe he’s just acting sincere. For what? To steal a few kisses from a lonely suburban mom? He’s really been playing the long con if that was his angle. He could kiss anyone he wanted. Maybe he really likes me, I think in my tiniest thinking voice.

“I’ll fix you,” he says, and I turn around to face him. He’s joking, but I love the idea of being on the other side of the fixing equation. I love the idea that he thinks I’m worth the trouble. I love that buried deep in that sentence is a hint of the future tense.

“This is my dad’s favorite thing to talk about—personal responsibility. If you own up to not being perfect, life gets easier.

“Well, this is new,” I say. “It is,” he says and takes my sweaty hand. “I mean, it’s a nice change from my old loop.” “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.

The basic truth of parenting fills my heart: If your kids are okay, you don’t really have any problems. I will relish this feeling.

I take it with me out onto the porch to watch the blackness of the night, and I feel uniquely powerless, as if the entirety of my happiness lies in someone else’s hands. I don’t know where I lost my power.

My parents make me believe that some people really are made for each other and that a joyful, easy marriage is possible. Two people who love each other and are looking in the same direction can build a wonderful life.

“If you’re trying to say it doesn’t sound like me, I couldn’t agree more. It’s like I suffered temporary insanity.” “Sometimes that’s what love is,” she says.

There’s one photo of the sunset that I swear he didn’t take. I don’t know how I know this, but I just know it isn’t how he would have captured it. This thought sets me back. It bothers me that I knew him so well. It bothers me that I can jump right back into his head and know what he’d think, when I actually have no idea who he is now. Maybe he did take that photo, I think. Maybe that’s how he sees things now. I vow to delete Instagram from my phone in the morning. I don’t delete Instagram.

this book is so satisfying to read. that makes no sense but i like the style- its really similar to how i write

The best antidote to old memories is new ones.

kiss as the camera pulls back. I’m light while I write it, and as I do so, I understand why I write. To write is to re-create something as you’d like it to be. I can filter my heartbreak through the giddy weightlessness of an afternoon romance movie, and suddenly it’s silly.

As long as I can keep getting men to leave me, I’ll be a huge success. Shouldn’t be a problem.

No, it was a romance. At night, when he was in the tea house and I was in my room, he’d text me Miss you and all of the cells in my body would start moving at triple speed.

i feel this

Me: Leo you’re the one who left Leo: I was coming back

HUH

My parents are the happy ending of the romance movie. My parents are what we could have been if he’d just come back.

That one thought, that we had so much to talk about, wants to drag me back to the belief that we had something, that he was something meant for me.

His leaving me to go back to her obeys all the laws of nature. Any man would have done the same. But his leaving me just to be not with me aches all over again.

“I guess I want you to know that what we had was the most important thing that’s ever happened to me. And I’m glad it happened.”

conrad fisher flashbacks to "it was worth it to me. being with you, loving you. it was all worth it."

We can figure it out. We’re going to be together, wherever we need to be. I don’t want any other life but that life.”

broooo

And second, that 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.