because you made a mistake. He knows you, Chloe. He knows everything about you, and he loves you. He wants to deal with this.” She mimics my gesture.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask. “We’re supposed to be in a fight.”
Annie laughs. “We’re not very good at fighting.”
I sigh. “No. We’re not. I’m sorry I got so upset about the movie.”
Annie shakes her head, her curls bobbing. “No, I’m sorry that I didn’t even consider how you felt about the movie. Honestly, it was kind of screwed up to write a movie about your life.”
“But this was your big break,” I say, reaching down to pet Leia’s head as she sniffs my feet. “I wasn’t going to tell you not to do it.”
“Yeah, but.” Annie bites her lip. “I wish we could’ve talked about it. You didn’t have to pretend like everything was fine to make me happy.”
“Well.” I shrug. “That’s kind of my thing.”
“I know what you need to do,” Annie says with sudden confidence.
I eye her skeptically.
“A grand gesture,” she says, and all of a sudden I remember us sitting in her old room, our roles reversed, as I tried to help her get Drew back after they had a fight and he jetted off to New York. She wanted to live out her rom-com dream, and I encouraged her to follow him to the airport and then to New York City to declare her love for him in what turned out to be an on-air segment of a morning show.
I could kick Past Chloe for how naïve she was.
“No, no, no.” I shake my head exaggeratedly, like Annie is a small child and I’m explaining why she shouldn’t stick her finger in an electrical socket. “Grand gestures are great for you, Annie. But those things only happen in movies, and they’re clichés. Tropes. Not real life.”
“All I’m saying is, there was a grand gesture in my real life, and it worked out pretty great for me.”
I scowl. “Yeah, but you wanted your life to be a romantic comedy. That’s the difference: I don’t.”
Annie tilts her head and looks at me. “Maybe you need to accept that your life is a rom-com, whether you want it to be or not.”
“No thanks,” I mutter. “But maybe you’re right about the whole ‘letting people help me’ thing. Thanks for helping me with these poms.”
Annie smiles, then looks at the floor and groans. “Leia pooped on the floor again.”
Finally, we’ve found one thing I actually don’t want to help with.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The next day, I stop by Dad’s to pick him up for a follow-up appointment at the doctor’s. Since I’ve been so busy with wedding prep, I haven’t been by his place as often as usual, and of course I’m feeling guilty.
As I lift my hand to knock on Dad’s door, I hear voices on the other side and frown. Dad doesn’t have a lot of other visitors, although he does pal around with some of the other residents here (not the ones he accuses of breaking his TV). But this voice sounds young. It sounds like . . .
I open the door. “Milo?”
He waves and offers up a smile. “Hey. Dad and I were watching . . . uh, what were we watching?”
Dad snorts. “We’re watching the best television show ever made, M*A*S*H.”
“We’re watching M*A*S*H,” Milo says, giving me a wide-eyed look. “I don’t know what’s happening and everyone has a weird name, but the theme song is tight.”
“This is an American classic,” my dad grumbles, and I squeeze in beside Milo on the love seat, thinking about how Nick and I sat here together not too long ago. The three of us sit in almost-silence, and I’m grateful once again for the healing balm of television. Sure, we may have our differences, and my dad may have his bad days, but classic television is a surefire way to spend a little bit of bonding time without talking to one another.
We don’t have long before we have to leave, so I make sure he has plenty of reading material (I don’t know how much he retains, but every week he picks up a few paperbacks from the library truck) and crossword puzzles, then check to see that his fridge is fully stocked.
“I’m just gonna go talk to Milo for a minute in the hallway, but I’ll be right back to take you to your appointment,” I tell him as another episode of M*A*S*H starts.
He stands up and