Chapter 4: Rain, Rides, and Old Ties

4

The show was recorded on weekends. Focusing on the concept of “weekend couples.”

On weekdays, I picked up my old job, wanting to return to my former talent agency as a manager.

“Ryan and Lauren are already divorced.” My former boss told me. “He signed a ten-year contract with Lauren’s dad’s company, and now he can finally terminate it. He’s reorganizing his studio, and I recommended you to him.”

Following the address he gave me, I saw Ryan in the studio. His profile was against the light, his features sharp and untamed, truly a face made for the screen. He was even harder to approach than I imagined.

I waited outside for a long time. Until his assistant came out and told me, “Sorry, Ms. Brooks, we probably can’t talk today.”

On the way back, my car broke down. It was eleven at night, in the wild outskirts, raining. I held an umbrella, waiting for a tow truck. Watching cars pass by, one after another like ghosts in the night. Not one was coming to pick me up.

A pair of headlights flashed before my eyes. The window of a black SUV rolled down, and Ryan’s assistant said to me: “Ms. Brooks, please get in the car first.”

Ryan was sitting in the back, baseball cap pulled low, asleep. Breathing shallowly, long legs slightly bent. The space was a bit cramped for him. There were lots of odds and ends in the car, and two suit jackets hung by the window. A fresh pine scent. The smell from when he held my hand that day.

“Ms. Brooks, I’ll get a bottle of water at the gas station ahead. Would you like one?” the assistant asked quietly.

“Just call me Natalie, I’ll go with you.”

“Hey,” he waved his hand, getting out, “I’ll go, I’ll be back soon.”

With the door closed, only Ryan and I were left in the car. No one else. No cameras.

The headlights flashed faintly, the car was dim inside. Even though there was a row of seats between us, his breathing felt close to my ear.

I stared at the gas station not far away, glowing blue, where the assistant was pacing by a shelf.

I remembered, once at the grocery store, seeing Lauren’s advertisement.

“She’s so pretty.” I said to Ethan at the time.

He reacted indifferently. “She’s okay.”

I didn’t know. That ‘okay’ made him not come home again and again. Later, I learned from others that Lauren was his first love. They broke up when he couldn’t make it. He never forgot her.

But at the time, in the store, he deftly changed the subject and asked me: “Babe, you never dated before me?”

“No.”

At least, that’s what I told others and him.

In the car, someone kicked my calf. A long leg stretched from the back seat, not accidentally. But deliberately, mischievously, childishly, rhythmically tapping.

I moved my leg out of his reach. Didn’t speak or look back. Maintained the same posture as before, as if nothing had happened.

“Natalie.”

He spoke, maybe just woke up, with a bit of youthful recklessness: “Long time no see.”

So many years. He still liked to call my name like that. Just like in that small, stuffy apartment… Again and again drowning… In his gentle but uncontrollable, unrestrained hands invading mine.