There’s something both extremely welcome and deeply uncomfortable about the way that Graham’s glance over to her made Marielle feel. With him, it was always a terribly confusing mixture of emotions - something that she found herself frustrated with at times, as she’d always been someone who, in her opinion, was able to keep a handle on herself.
“Lucky for London, I’ve not had nearly that many.” She breathes, voice still as even as she can manage it. Because old films had been their thing, and there had been nothing she’d loved more than hearing him recite lines from them and hearing him talk about where his life would take him - take them (because back then, it had always been them, two kids desperate to get out of their hometown, longing for something more). His imagination had been one of the first things that had drawn her to him, a kindred spirit, someone who could make anything sound fascinating and wonderful.
( She supposes then, that it makes sense that he’s become a fancy news anchor - why keep one person captivated when you can keep a whole country - or even more? )
“You do. Impressed you remember.” Though coming from anyone else the words could have come with a bite, from her there is, instead, a certain sort of melancholy, something that she strives to push away at all costs, usually.
“Yes.” The word is out of her mouth before she can entirely process what it is that she’s agreed to.
And then of course, she’s twelve again, or fourteen, or fifteen, or she’s telling him that the time spent over the toilet was not due to a night out but rather to the fact that they’re going to be parents and she’s pretty sure that there had been nothing until that moment that had made her feel the same unbridled sort of joy. Except of course, what comes with that memory is another set of less favorable ones, including lying to their daughter about why her father wasn’t at her birthday party, or why she didn’t see him much anymore, or why his face was all over the magazines in the supermarket.
“We can forget our obligations, if you’d like. Ramona’s out with friends - I think she doesn’t care what I am up to so long as I’m not tucked in bed by ten p.m. - she’s told me that is rather lame of me.” Marielle offered a small, nervous smile. “Or we can just drink. I wouldn’t want to keep you from your date, or anything.”
There was something in her smile that seemed a reflection of his own: in both existed the revelation that, just like their counterpart, each one remembered everything. They’d shared so much, their individual lives at first unravelling as parallel lines before inevitably knotting so thoroughly that they’d become irrevocably intertwined, until they severed completely — broken marriage vows, divorce papers, buried rings and all. His thoughts were spiraling, spinning into that interminable storm of regret and hypotheticals that he’d learned to beat back into locked-up corners of his mind through the chase of adrenaline rush and alcohol. In this moment, he existed at the two vices’ meeting point: half-drunk and on-edge, awaiting a well-deserved blow to land.
And land it did, though not in the way he would have expected — or preferred. She spoke their daughter’s name with such ease, an effortlessness that struck at the very heart of him in stark reminder of how thoroughly removed he was from parenthood altogether. And how different that was, to the boy he was twenty years earlier, giddily suggesting a list of names inspired by his favorite singers and bands, or the man he was just a year or so after, reinventing songs to suit their eventual choice and thereby serenade both mother and daughter — only to become the liar who claimed it was that very name which led him through to survival.
Each iteration of Graham Goldstein ( boy, man, and liar ) was simply a facet of the actor’s mask, as was the default for one who’d only ever wanted to be someone else. So, it came as no surprise that he slipped into that mask once more when he moved to speak. “We might need to alert the press, here,” he started with faux seriousness, leaning further into her orbit in an almost conspiratorial stance. “Do the youth really still say ‘lame’?” Graham sighed out a laugh, a meager offering in response to his own pitiful joke — pitiful only, perhaps, because it was all he could bring himself to say in regards to Ramona.
What Marielle said next, however, caught his ear with a different snare. “My date?” He repeated immediately, casting her a curious sideways glance from under the thick of his brow. Admittedly, the decision he’d made to not bring dates to events that his daughter might also attend was a private one — but he’d hoped, even after all this time, Marielle believed him a better man than what the tabloids printed. “By a strange coincidence, I was hoping you might take up that role for the rest of the night.” He took a casual sip of his drink, letting the admission sit in the space between them before reverting back to half-hearted comedy. “Come on, it’ll be a nice change of pace...seeing as your date’s apparently got you used to an evening’s excitement ending at nine-fifty-nine p.m.” Another sip, more necessary than the last but passed off as a toast to what he assumed was her new life of blissful domesticity. “Go on, tell me all about them.”
