That Wasn't in the Script, page 1
THAT WASN’T IN THE SCRIPT
SARAH AINSLEE
Copyright © 2023 by Sarah Ainslee
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
The ebook edition of this book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The ebook may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share the ebook edition with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
EBook ISBN: 979-8-88716-016-0
Trade Paperback ISBN: 979-8-88716-014-6
Hardcover ISBN: 979-8-88716-015-3
Cover artwork and design by Amber Liu
Published by Bow’s Bookshelf, Inc.
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CONTENTS
1. Josie
2. Rowan
3. Josie
4. Rowan
5. Josie
6. Rowan
7. Josie
8. Josie
9. Rowan
10. Josie
11. Rowan
12. Rowan
13. Josie
14. Josie
15. Rowan
16. Josie
17. Rowan
18. Josie
19. Josie
20. Rowan
21. Josie
22. Rowan
23. Josie
24. Josie
25. Rowan
26. Josie
27. Josie
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To everyone who still believes in happily ever afters. Regardless of the plot twists.
“The best thing I know is to do exactly what you wish for a while.”
* * *
—Roman Holiday (1953)
CHAPTER 1
JOSIE
I knew I wanted to become a screenwriter the day I realized romance is dead. At least the version of romance I’d always envisioned in my head. The kind you would see in old movies that would leave you with that fuzzy, swooning, clutch your pearls, why can’t a guy kiss me the way he’s kissing Audrey Hepburn feeling.
Picture it: A thirteen-year-old, underdeveloped Josie, spending a lazy, rainy Sunday afternoon with her family watching Dirty Dancing for the seven-zillionth time. I arise from my cocoon of decorative throw pillows and proudly declare my objective career path to my father and then seven-year-old sister, Prudence.
“Is this because everyone in this movie is unrealistic and perfect?” Pru asks.
“No, but that is an astute observation.”
“What’s an astute?”
“It means ‘that’s true’ in Josephine,” my dad would laugh. “Besides, Johnny Castle is far from perfect.”
“Are you talking about Dirty Dancing?” My mother, the embodiment of unrealistic and perfect, would ask as she bounded across the living room holding a basket of freshly folded laundry. “I love this movie! I had the biggest crush on Patrick Swayze as a kid!”
“Told you!” Pru boasted with annoying matter-of-fact arrogance.
I tossed myself back onto the spray of pillows behind me and sunk down deep with a groan. “Not the point, guys! Don’t you just wish movies about romance were more... romantic? Like Johnny and Baby? Or how they all used to be?”
Pru would roll her eyes in disgust, tossing a handful of cold, cardboard popcorn at my face. “You’re such a grandma, Josie. Real love doesn’t work like that.”
“You’re seven. You don’t know anything about real love.”
She’d proudly push her dark-rimmed glasses up her broad nose. “At least I know Johnny and Baby aren’t real.”
“Neither is Santa Claus.” I’d crudely stick out my tongue as her freckled smug grin melted into unadulterated horror.
“Santa’s not real?! Daddy, is she lying?!”
I definitely got grounded for that, but it hardly mattered. From that point on, my future was set. Most girls my age possessed normal aspirations, dreaming of becoming doctors or teachers. I wanted to create stories that gave people hope of finding their own happy endings someday. A story identical to my parents. They had the meet-cute nineties movies were made about. How was I expected not to have high standards?
The scene was set: My mother had been living in Manhattan for all of seventeen hours when she was catching a Q-train to a modeling audition and nearly fell off the platform in her four-inch heels. Enter, my father, standing beside her with his face in a textbook, pulling her into his arms as the oncoming train came to a screeching halt. Dad gave her his number and asked her to call him later to make sure she was alright. A year later, they were married, they got pregnant six seconds after that, and the rest was happily ever after at its finest.
Almost.
“Hey Josie!” Mom calls to me from the bedroom. “Can you come help me with something?”
I toss my half-finished homework onto the floor and swing my legs off the side of my bed. The inconspicuous hissing noise coming from a zipper being pulled open and shut already tells me exactly what my mother needs. I heave a defeated sigh.
Every great story arc has this thing called negative value, a climactic moment of either success or failure that changes the main character’s life forever. For our family, it came in stages. The first being when Dad walked in the door from work one night and proudly announced: “We’re moving back to New York!”
Dad was a lawyer for a massive immigration firm right outside of Cincinnati. One of his old superiors had recommended him as the head of a new office over in Manhattan. For a man who adored his job more than anyone else on the planet did, it was a massive honor.
He and Mom had gone back and forth on the offer for months and eventually agreed that while the transition would take time, it would be the best decision for all of us. Dad would get to further pursue his passion of helping others, Pru and I would be exposed to culture outside of our three local museums (and the remodeled Taco Bell), and our mother would finally be back in the environment that first ignited her love of art.
“We know this won’t be easy,” he’d reassure us, “especially for you girls, but I think Brooklyn is going to grow on you. I spent the first twenty-five years of my life there, and I know you’ll love it just as much as I did.”
Spoiler: I don’t.
If you’re wondering why I keep referring to my father in the past tense, allow me to introduce you to the second negative value: pancreatic cancer. Stage four, to be exact.
We’d been living in the city for a couple of weeks when Dad wakes up one morning and mentions he’s not feeling like himself. It didn’t come as a surprise. He’d been acting off for the last month, complaining of random body aches and bouts of nausea. He chalked it up to the stress of moving and sported his famous mega-watt smile despite the very obvious warning signs. Dad left for work as usual, only to abruptly collapse in his office later that afternoon. He was rushed to the nearest hospital, where an army of tests revealed a tumor that had spread rampantly.
Oh yeah, and there was little that could be done to save him outside of some Hail Mary chemo and a few thousand major miracles.
That was in August. He barely made it past Thanksgiving. Every day since he died felt less and less like a fairy tale and more like a B-list horror movie. Only this was way worse than some low-budget jump scare. He’d been gone for eleven months, and I was starting to believe my heart would never beat the same again.
It’s because of the aforementioned career path I’ve chosen that I’m currently greeted by my dad’s contagious smile, welcoming me in the form of a picture sitting on Mom’s nightstand. It lies directly next to a stack of unread self-help books and a half-empty bottle of water. His dark eyes meet mine and cause my whole body to ache. And apparently, also my finger?
“Sorry!” Mom cries as I yelp in pain. “Can you move your hand, Jojo?”
I break my focus on the picture and set my throbbing thumb onto my lap. I’m sitting atop a small black suitcase with Mom grunting forcefully as she props one of her bare feet onto the edge of her bed. She yanks at the zipper until it meets the other end of the bag. Her pale fingers slip off the silver D-ring, knocking her backward onto her dresser with a thud and toppling over several bottles of lotion and perfume.
“SHIT!”
“Swear jar! One dollar!” Pru cries from the kitchen, where she’s quietly reading an overdue library book on bracelet making.
“Sorry!” Mom flops forward onto the suitcase with a pitiful bleat, running both hands through her mess of golden curls. “I swear, this suitcase was made for people who wear the same two outfits while traveling. I can barely fit three pairs of jeans in this!”
I scrunch my face and nervously itch the nape of my neck, earning my mother’s famous Tess Bradford Look of Contempt. She knows how much I hate what she’s about to go and do, even if I know that if she doesn’t do it, college is out of the question for the foreseeable future.
Remember my mom and dad’s great love story? They encountered a few antagonists along the way. Specifically, my mom’s parents.
As Pru and I got older and began asking questions about her mysterious side of the family, Mom always made sure to downplay their wealth to keep us from feeling resentful of our modest upbringing. We’d come to find out she had grown up the only child of a plastic surgeon power couple in Washington, DC. She spent every free moment not being educated by her legion of private tutors vacationing abroad in Europe.
Yes, they were that wealthy white family.
You can imagine my grandparents’ absolute horror when my mom moved to New York straight out of college and announced she was dating Greg Bradford—a liberal immigration advocate drowning in student debt. They gave her an ultimatum: end the relationship or never see another cent of financial support.
Spoiler: I exist.
For close to two decades, Mom and Dad were entirely on their own, and that’s how they liked it. Dad moved us to Ohio shortly after I was born to pursue a job opportunity, and being untethered from her parents’ overbearing perfectionism gave Mom the freedom to finally pursue her own desires for once.
Enter negative value strike three: Lawyers make money, artists don’t, and after Dad died and left us with a sea of medical bills, Mom was suddenly thrown into the workforce for the first time in her adult life. Between her working three jobs and my income at King Kone on weekends, we’d been getting by, but just barely. If we were lucky, everything would be paid off by the time my hypothetical grandkids were dead.
I run my fingers along the worn stitching of Dad’s old suitcase, my mom’s words from dinner a few nights ago buzzing in my head with all the stillness of an active beehive.
“Girls,” she thoughtfully breathed out as I was mid pizza chew, “I’ve decided to go see my parents next weekend. I’m going to ask them to set their feelings about your dad and I aside and help support you both financially. It’s the least they could do after being absent from your lives for the last eighteen years.”
Let’s just say once I swallowed that bite, I ended up putting fourteen uncharacteristic dollars into the swear jar. After my rage-fueled, expletive-laden tirade ended, Mom leaned over the dinner table and gently rubbed my hand with a wrinkled half-smile. Her bright eyes hung low, accompanied by sleepless bags.
“Josie, I can’t ask you to put your dreams aside because of our situation.”
I tossed my cold pizza crust onto our dinky old China covered with chipped flowers, reaching back to pick off a burnt corner.
“I hate this, Mom.”
“Me too,” she’d sigh, sounding exhausted, “but your future is worth it. And don’t forget, they reached out first.”
By ‘reached out,’ she means how they included a phone number in the condolence card they sent right after Dad died. It had a cheesy, pre-written poem on grief and a short-handwritten sentiment underneath: Call if you need us.
After all this time, having her turn to my grandparents felt like life cruelly reminding me that Dad was gone, forever, and nothing was going to be the same again.
“Grandma tells me that it snowed yesterday!” Mom attempts to lighten the mood in the bedroom as she pulls another dress from inside the suitcase. It’s long and raven-colored with delicate lotus patterns. I remembered her wearing it on date nights with Dad. They’d come in late and I’d hear them giggling like teenagers as they’d march upstairs, Dad telling Mom to keep it down before the kids woke up. Seeing it lying crumpled on the bed stung like a fresh paper cut.
I push myself off the suitcase and move towards a pile of rejected clothing. I mindlessly fold a mountain of shirts, placing them neatly into the dresser to make myself feel useful.
“It’s not even November,” I state. “That sounds miserable.”
It takes Mom swapping out two more pairs of pants in exchange for a casual jumper to finally get the suitcase to zip shut without a struggle. She offers me a celebratory high five and slowly wraps me into her thin arms for a hug. She delicately strokes my mess of curls and breathes in deeply.
“This is for you and Pru, you know.” Her raspy reminder rattles my bones. “You girls deserve so much more than this.”
A lump rises into my throat, my eyes instantly pooling up as I look around at a still half-unpacked bedroom. Tall, brown boxes of Dad’s stuff sat in the corner, collecting chalky layers of dust. I blink the tears back tightly as I smoosh my face into her t-shirt and inhale her oppressively sweet vanilla body soap.
“I know.”
“Oh god, who’s dying now?” Pru’s footsteps squeak up to the bedroom door. She tosses her bracelet-making book onto the edge of the bed, her wide eyes looking like saucers behind the lenses of her glasses.
Mom unlocks her arms from around my waist and chuckles. “Nobody, but I am going to miss my flight if I’m not out of here in the next twenty minutes.”
Pru places her hand on her hips and cocks her head to the side, her long, kinky waves bouncing against her shoulders.
“I was the one telling you to pack after work last night, but noooo,” she sings. “You just had to help me with my math homework instead.”
“It got finished, didn’t it?”
“Accomplished and finished are two different things, Mom.”
I nearly urge my sister to give Mom a break, but instead, I bite my tongue. Dad was always the homework parent, the one we turned to when our math assignments became impossible. It was a miracle if Mom could manage bills on time, let alone help my sister with where to properly put a decimal.
Mom stuffs the remainder of her things into her tiny handbag. Wallet, lipstick, sunglasses. She rolls the suitcase into the dark, narrow hallway, inspecting her mess of hair in the living room mirror as she passes.
“You have my list of phone numbers, correct?”
Pru and I shoot one another an annoyed glance as we sluggishly follow along, propping ourselves onto the sliver of distressed wood we called a dining room table.
“Yes.” I motion to the manifesto lying flat on our refrigerator. “311 for non-emergencies, Mr. Chung upstairs, Grandma Meryl’s cell number—barf—”
“Josie,” Mom warns with a disapproving look.
I raise an enthusiastic hand in defense. “Kidding!”
“I printed off all my flight info behind it, too.” She points. “I get in after nine, but I’ll have my ringer on if you need me for any reason. My flight home comes in at—”
“7:02 AM on Thursday,” Pru mocks her stern, maternal tone, scrunching her forehead into a hard crease for the full effect. It was scary how much she could emulate our mother.
“Mom.” I hold back a laugh. “We’re going to be okay. Seriously. It’s less than a week.”
She nods understandingly. “When do you get off tonight?”
I rack my brain, the details of my weekly shifts at King Kone blurring together. “At nine. I’m closing. Same tomorrow night.”
Pru reaches into the cupboard for a bag of potato chips and sneers. “It is bad enough Mom won’t be here, now I won’t have anyone to trick-or-treat with? It should be a law that nobody works on Halloween.”
Mom’s face scrunches into that same signature hard crease as she hails an Uber to the airport. “It’s not a national holiday, Prudence. Plus, I thought you were going to that block party thing with your friend Destiny and her family tomorrow night.”
“I was until they decided to go to Coney Island instead.” Pru rolls her eyes. “Who passes up a block party on Halloween for overpriced theme park hot dogs they’re inevitably going to throw up?”
“Who wouldn’t?” I tease.
“Not everyone plans to be in bed by eight on Halloween,” Pru hisses.
“I just said I was working until nine,” I correct her, ripping the bag of chips from her hand and sneaking one for myself with a salty crunch.
