October 3, 2014

The happiest I’ve ever been in my life was when I was talking with you. This can’t be it.

Being reminded of this message on one of the worst night’s of my life is the definition of a silver lining. I’d been truly blocked on what to write for my next screenplay, but now I’m eager to plot out a romance born of online messages and flirty glances shared with my best friend’s older brother, Graham. I’m on fire to write about millennial messaging angst and give these characters the happily ever after that Graham and I never got.

Will it be good enough for a theatrical release? I hope so. But the writing is a struggle almost as soon as I start, and it only gets harder when Graham texts to say he’ll be in Los Angeles for three weeks.

He wants me to tour him around LA and though we’ve formed a loose friendship over the years at his family Christmases and backyard BBQs, our resurrected message threads bring everything up for me. It’s infuriating because he has no idea.

Graham is as calm, cool, and cocky as I remember from those summer trips to Old Orchard, and it has me wondering if any of it had been real. If it could be again. Or if like many things, the question of us is better left in the past.