Happy Again (This is What Happy Looks Like #1.5)(8)
As they passed a life-size cutout of Graham near the entrance to the theater, Harry handed over their tickets with a half smile. “So how’ve you been?”
“Fine,” Ellie said, glancing around nervously as they made their way into the lower lobby, which was filled with women in cocktail dresses and men in suits and silk ties. The walls were velvety red and trimmed with gold, and there were huge crystal chandeliers hanging overhead; the whole place had an elegance that made Ellie feel even more out of place.
“He’ll be excited to see you,” Harry said as they stepped onto the escalator. The other girls were behind them, and Ellie checked to be sure they weren’t listening before shaking her head.
“No,” she said, and Harry looked surprised. “I don’t want to…I mean, it’s just that…you know, we haven’t really talked in a while, and I don’t think…”
“Look,” he said, ignoring her confused stammering as they stepped off the escalator and into another lobby, this one just as crowded. “I owe you an apology for last summer. You might’ve noticed that I wasn’t too thrilled about the two of you. But ever since you…well, ever since things ended, I think Graham’s been a little…”
Ellie held her breath, waiting for him to continue.
Graham’s been a little too preoccupied with other girls.
Graham’s been a little too out of control.
Graham’s been a little too busy.
But instead he said this: “Graham’s been a little bit lonely.”
Ellie stared at him. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck. They were standing in the middle of the upper lobby now, though Ellie couldn’t remember when they’d stopped walking. “I think you were actually a good influence on him,” Harry continued. “He’s just not himself lately, and he’s always taking off in these cars, and…I don’t know. I guess I’d just hate it if anything I did—”
“We’re gonna head in, okay?” Lauren said, appearing at Ellie’s side. Behind her, the other two girls were waiting near the entrance to the main theater.
“Hey, don’t let me keep you,” Harry said, reaching out to take Ellie’s hand and giving her a meaningful look. “But it’s really, really good to see you.”
“You too,” Ellie managed to say, her head spinning.
“And enjoy the movie.”
“We will,” Lauren said, hooking her arm through Ellie’s and leading her into the cavernous theater, where they paused for a moment at the top of the aisle, taking it all in. The seats were almost entirely filled with people, though many of them were still standing, leaning across rows to say hello to old friends or business associates. Their voices bounced around the red walls and the huge gold curtains surrounding the screen. Behind them were more seats, which rose up like bleachers toward the ceiling, but Ellie followed Lauren down the far left aisle of the mezzanine, where they found their seats, only a few rows from the back.
“I can’t believe you got us in here,” Lauren said as they scooted by a couple on the end, and then past Kara and Sprague, who had sat down nearest the aisle, leaving Ellie a seat closer to the middle. “This is just completely insane...”
“Seriously,” Kara said. “It’s beyond.”
“Beyond,” Ellie agreed absently, her eyes raking the front of the theater for Graham. She assumed there’d be a cluster of people around him, the way there’d been outside, but she couldn’t see him anywhere. Maybe the actors snuck in after the lights went down, or maybe they didn’t come at all. Or maybe it was just that the sort of people invited to an event like this were simply too cool to gawk at celebrities.
Above them, the lights blinked twice, and a hush fell over the audience as the stragglers hurried to find their seats before the theater went dark.
Ellie leaned back and let out a long breath. All she wanted to do was close her eyes and attempt to process all of this: that she was presumably in the same room as Graham, that Harry seemed to think he was lonely, that she was about to see the movie they’d filmed in her hometown, and that she was in a ritzy New York theater with three girls from school she hardly knew, who had no idea of the real reason they’d been invited inside.
“You okay?” Lauren asked, and Ellie nodded.
“Fine.”
“You just seem a little…off. Are you mad we said yes?”
“No, it’s fine,” she said again, though her voice sounded oddly tense, even to her. “Who wouldn’t have?”
She wanted to mean it. In fact, she wanted to revel in it, the fact that they were all here because of her. That after weeks of tagging along and wishing she fit in, she had turned out to be their ticket into such an exclusive event. But she was too nervous to enjoy it, too fidgety to relax.
“Really?” Lauren asked, and this time, Ellie attempted a smile.
“Really,” she said, and this seemed to satisfy Lauren, who bumped her shoulder against Ellie’s with a grin just as the lights snapped off.
For a moment, just before the screen winked to life, it felt to Ellie like they were floating in the dark. But then the image appeared, a landscape shot of the Henley harbor at sunrise, and Ellie felt such a gut punch of homesickness that she nearly lost her breath. There was scattered clapping as the first credits appeared at the edge of the screen, the shot panning to reveal the docks and the boats—including the Go Fish, which she and Graham had once stolen to sail north on an ill-fated quest—and all of it was so painfully familiar that she felt for her phone in her pocket, wanting to text her mom.