Originally from 2020

I’ve always wanted to act in a movie. The idea of playing the role of a person I could never be always seemed exciting. A trained assassin out on a mission to murder a rival druglord, a princess trying to escape captivity during a war, the daughter of a billionaire father who kills him and steals his money. 

Late summer 2018, I landed a role as the hopeless romantic girl in a rom-com who finally meets her soulmate after years of searching. Not in Hollywood, though. In Naperville, Illinois. I’d met my co-star on Tinder, and the first scene opened up with me getting out of my car at the local McAlister’s Deli to see him attempt to open a locked side door instead of the front door. His name was Ivo, and the night before the date, my friend and I debated on whether it was pronounced “ee-vo” or “i-vo.” We couldn’t decide, so I avoided saying his name the entire date.

The photos of him on his profile were okay, but when I saw him in person, I knew that we would eventually create the most beautiful children the world had ever seen. He looked like the typical hipster you’d find reading a Teju Cole book in an overpriced coffee shop downtown. Tall and skinny, brown hair with a beard to match, and glasses, you know the frames. And for some reason, I was a sucker for it. Not to mention how much I loved his hazel eyes. I know it’s cliche, but I guess the color of green tea entices something in me.

The situation became dangerous the second he looked me in the eyes from a whole foot above me and told me that I was “so pretty.” Up until that point, I’d never genuinely been called pretty by any man, boy, bro, or dude, and something about hearing it come from the mouth of one of the most attractive men I’d ever seen sewed the first stitch of what would become a thick, heavy blanket of attachment. He then proceeded to compare my outfit to the common condiments of a hot dog, as I was wearing a velvet red skirt under a yellow button down shirt. It was cuter than it sounds. 

Ivo was so good at talking. He was a great storyteller, a great conversationalist, and had a great voice. It didn’t matter what the hell he was talking about. I just loved hearing his voice, looking across the table at those green tea eyes. During our 4 hour dinner date that consisted of 30 minutes of eating and 3 and a half hours of fruitful dialogue, he told me a story about how he and his friends climbed the roof of his high school and as a result had to hide from the police and drive their friend to the hospital after she fell off the roof and broke her back. He told it like he was reading from a novel, every detail thoroughly explained and every character given their own voice. It only makes sense why I was so engrossed. 

At the time, my life was beyond boring. It was fucking terrible. It had gotten to the point where when Ivo asked me if I wanted to “drive around” with him after dinner, I said yes, hoping that maybe he’d try and murder me so I’d finally have something interesting to tell people about my life. Being in someone’s car for the first time is like seeing them naked for the first time. This guy’s car honestly smelled so bad, his AC was broken, and one half of his speakers was broken, so when he gave me the aux cord, “The Less I Know the Better” blew out his ears but sounded like a whisper to me. The car, he told me, was sold to him by his old neighbor a year or so before. He paid for the car by mowing his neighbor’s lawn and doing other odd jobs for him for awhile, and when you’re a teenager, I suppose you’ll do anything for a car, no matter how shitty it is. At least it still moved. 

When we started driving, I asked him where we were going, and he said, 

“Nowhere!”

Oh, God, he’s gonna murder me. I hoped. I looked pretty and I’d had a good cup of mac and cheese that night, so I was content with going out if I couldn’t escape and live to tell the tale. My mom would be mad, though, because I had told her I was headed for the library when I’d left my house for the date. My mom had tried to convince me that everyone on Tinder was a murderer and I didn’t want to believe her, but my act of rebellion would have proved her right. 

Ivo explained to me something I will never understand. The basics were this: his friend, for some reason, had collected lots of foam boat insulation squares that were meant to stick to the floor of a boat. His friend did not have a boat. Therefore, they turned the squares into a geocaching-esque game in which they would stick them in random indiscrete places around Naperville for people to find. I later discovered a square inside of my high school that had been there for about a year. 

“Do you wanna go put a square somewhere?” he asked me, pulling up to a stoplight. 

Of course I said yes. I was considerably intrigued by the process of putting up squares. He told me that he’s always wanted to put a square on a sign at McDonald’s. I didn’t quite understand what he’d meant until we drove past a McDonald’s on Rt. 59 with a sign 50 feet off of the ground and he said, “There! There is perfect.” He quickly came to the realization that there was absolutely no way the two of us could get up there, so we settled on the side of the building. 

Until that night, I had never stood on someone’s shoulders. I kept insisting to him that I was going to hurt him, but he was adamant about me doing it. It made me ask myself, If the police see this, are they going to arrest us for vandalism? But I did it, anyway. I was beyond hesitant to put my dirty 3 year old white (now beige) Adidas Superstars that had traveled across continents and hiked across many different terrains onto the fabric of his business casual white and blue button down shirt that he looked so fucking good in. I had to brace myself for the possibility of having to tell my mom that I broke my Tinder date’s shoulders and I’d have to use my tuition money to pay for his surgery. 

Up on his shoulders, he mentioned in a nice way that I was very heavy, but we still made it up there, a whopping 11 feet and 8 inches off the ground on the side of a McDonald’s. I slapped that blue square up there in a very hasty and sloppy manner because I wanted to get down before A.) Some McDonald’s employee came outside of the door beside us for a smoke break and was left speechless in confusion, B.) One or both of his shoulders break and I have to drive his 17 year old car to the hospital, or C.) He remembered that I was indeed wearing a skirt and looked up at my polka dot boyshorts. 

Once I jumped off of him, shoulders allegedly unharmed, we walked back to his car and stood outside, admiring the work we had done: A light blue 3 inch by 3 inch adhesive square against the brick of a McDonald’s right next to the drive thru entrance. 

He drove me back to the parking lot of my high school, right across the street from the McAlister’s where my car was parked. I asked him what kind of music he liked, since I was the one playing the music for the whole night. He told me he listened to “everything,” which I later discovered was code for some really weird shit. The later drives we went on that summer, he played me things that ranged from Happy Together by The Turtles, to experimental electronica that sounded like a glitching computer, to Spanish spoken word poetry behind a weak beat. I cannot make this shit up. 

I told him I had to be home by 11 and it was about 10:54. He drove us back across the street to McAlister’s. I didn’t want to get out of his car, I just wanted to sit there and talk to him for another three hours, or even another three days. But the moment I motioned to open the car door, he called for me to wait. He started to say something but interrupted himself with a, “Nevermind,” but I begged him to keep going on.

“I was gonna ask…do you wanna kiss?” He sounded more nervous than he should’ve been because of course I wanted to kiss him. What reason did I have to say no? I’d just spent 6 lovely hours with him and in those 6 hours I was already in the process of planning who I would have as my bridesmaids at our wedding. I told him sure, and he proceeded to pull me by my neck into the most awkward kiss of my short life. Our noses smashed together and the rims of our glasses tapped each other as I was forced to taste what was left of that tomato bisque soup he’d eaten earlier. It was clear to me that he had no idea what he was doing, but neither did I, so it made it romantic somehow. 

When he pulled away from me, we both broke out into a fit of laughter from a combination of what I assumed was happiness, awkwardness, and butterflies, and I added, “This is kind of like a movie.”

He replied, “Yeah, a real shitty movie.”

The movie had an even shittier ending, if I must be so bitter. We’d hung out almost every day for the following week and a half, and we had just as much fun every time. I loved being around him and listening to him tell me all the stories he had. The last time we saw each other that summer was the Saturday before I left home for Beloit College and he left home to learn how to fill cavities in Ohio. We had driven around Naperville again, routine at this point, and ended up on the street next to my friend’s house. I was still keeping him a secret from my mom, so I’d had to tell him to pick me up and drop me off at my friends’ houses. This night, I told my mom I was out watching Mission Impossible III with my best friend, and I wouldn’t be home until late. 

He and I were sitting in his car, not wanting to leave each other for the last time. To break the silence, I suggested, “Can I play my favorite song for you?”

Endearingly, he looked at me, a soft smile on his face, so subtly lit by the fluorescent streetlight across the street from us and nodded at me. I plugged my phone back into his aux cord and played No. 1 Party Anthem by the Arctic Monkeys, and somehow created what was the most romantic moment of my life then. Sitting there with my soulmate, just the two of us, holding each other (as best as we could with the armrest in between us), listening to a lovely song. Right then and there I knew that the bond we had created would last us a lifetime, and this was the first of countless romantic moments together. 

We agreed to be penpals, and I wrote him the first letter a few weeks after I’d gotten to school. We still texted and all, though, as the days we were apart began to pass, he would take longer and longer to reply to my texts, and say less and less with each message. Long nights of talking about Mothman and how the moon landing was faked turned into, 

Harper (10:09am): hey!! I just heard a song that reminded me of you. how are you doing? 🙂

Him (6:37pm): Good

but I pretended like I couldn’t tell. I sent him a letter in late October 2018 and am still awaiting a response. The last letter he sent to me was a promise to me that he’d regularly listen to my WBCR radio show and that we’d see each other during winter break and go get our tarot cards read together by a psychic we saw while driving through Bolingbrook. 

It tore me apart. I felt like we were going to last a long time, and when I realized we weren’t, I had to search for different roles. I felt that whoever directed this movie was a complete asshole, and those who watched the movie would agree that it deserves nothing more than a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes.