Page 149 of The Build-a-Boyfriend Project

The boxes bring back loads of memories from Eli’s time in high school and college, his yearbooks, his deadname scratched out of the first few because he hadn’t yet decided on Eli, signed by people he hasn’t spoken to in over ten years. People that he’d once thought of as friends he’d want to keep for his entire life, but the simple decision to go to different schools had led them down drastically different paths that had never intersected again. There’s even a small locked box labeled eli pre-t photos. His mother had locked them away after Eli voiced his discomfort at seeing some of the old photos of himself around the house. She’d taken them down without a second thought.

He reaches the last box, surprised to find a collection of used DVDs and VHS tapes. His father’s collection, that much is obvious to him. He recognizes all the titles as ones that his father showed him. The animated movies that he tried to get Eli to watch instead of the more mature PG-13 films that he thought it was too early to show Eli. There are the original Star Wars VHS tapes and Kill Bill: Volume 1, which his father had showed Eli far too early in his preteen life but which he’d loved nonetheless. There’s the DVD of Who Framed Roger Rabbit that his father bought when he was scared Eli would wear out the VHS. There’s the 2005 Pride & Prejudice, the movie that instilled a love of romances in Eli, and even convinced him to give the book a chance, leaving Jane Austen as the only author of fiction that Eli ever willingly gave his time to. There are also folded and rolled posters, movie magazines, old Oscar- or Golden Globe–themed issues that Eli had pored over despite the ceremonies having long passed by the time he was reading them.

Then, at the bottom, there’s one last box. A cigar box, which is odd because Eli knows that his father never smoked a day in his life.

He grabs it, flipping open the cardboard lid with ease to stare at the pile of paper slips. Thicker than expected, yellowed because of their age, with ink that’s nearly completely worn off in some places. But he can still read the information on the first ticket he picks up: The Exorcist, 9:30 p.m., Victoria Theater.

“Movie tickets?” Eli mutters to himself.

He finds the tickets with text that’s still legible, which is more than he’d expect. Perhaps sitting in a dark box for decades helped preserve them?

There are titles that Eli recognizes: American Graffiti, Paper Moon, Magnum Force, the first two Godfather movies, Young Frankenstein, Rocky, The Shining, The Empire Strikes Back, Tim Burton’s Batman. It’s a tour through the decades of his father’s trips to the movies, some of the films having multiple tickets from different days because his father just had to see them again.

“Eli? You in here?” A soft knock on the door pulls Eli’s attention, and over his shoulder, he sees his mother standing there having long since changed into her sweatpants now that the holiday dinner has been cleaned up. “Whatcha got?”

“I was just going through some things,” he tells her. “Found these movie tickets.”

“Oh, your father’s things.” She smiles softly, sitting next to Eli on the floor. “The tickets.” She smiles. “God, he always annoyed me with how he saved these things. I didn’t understand him.”

“Why did he?”

“He wanted the memory,” she tells him. “He always said, ‘Chances are one day my memory might fade, but at least I’ll always have these. Even the crappiest movies are worth remembering!’” She laughs as Eli hands her a stack, letting her flip through it. It’s strange watching how the tickets change, the thicker paper turning thinner and cheaper as the decades stretch on.

“There are more somewhere,” she tells him. “These are maybe a quarter of the collection.”

“At least I know where I get my hoarder tendencies from.”

“Oh.” Rue puts her hand over her mouth.

“What?”

She shows him a worn-out ticket with the title Monty Python and the Holy Grail printed in large block letters. “This was the movie he took me to for our first date.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. Lord, I hated it so much, nearly walked out. And then we had an argument about it afterward. I told him I just didn’t think it was funny, and he acted like I’d spit on your grandmother or something.”

“I’ve never heard that story before,” Eli tells her. He’s heard about other date nights, how they’d nearly driven all the way to Oregon to spend time in a cabin for their fifth anniversary, and how his father had proposed—he’d gotten chemical burns in a hot tub after a malfunction with the chlorine system and he proposed in the ER because he couldn’t wait.

“I think he was embarrassed. The next day he came to my parents’ place with his tail tucked between his legs, apologizing. I didn’t even make him admit the movie wasn’t really funny.”

“You gave him a second chance?” Eli asks.

Rue nods, her mouth a firm line.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” She continues to stare at the ticket. “I just . . . I had a feeling, in my gut. And I trusted it.”

“You could’ve been wrong,” Eli says.

And she turns to him. “But I wasn’t. If we always focused on the what-ifs, we’d get nowhere in life, Eli.”

He stares at the floor. “I really fucked up, Mom.”

“Yeah,” she tells him calmly. “You did.”

“A little sympathy might be appreciated, you know.”