First Draft: Part Three

Tim spends most of the morning reading, re-reading, until his speech is memorized. Dave from three cubicles away stops by around 12:30, just as Tim is cycling into the “Where Do We Go From Here” section of the script.

For now I think we should take some time apart. Maybe in a couple of weeks–

“Holloway, I'm picking up Drive-Thru. You want in?”

“No. Thanks, Dave. I'm good.”

–once things have settled a little, we can go to a movie, or grab something to eat at The Vantage. Just as friends. I think we'll be good friends. And on and on like that, the words float by. They hum in him like Muzak in a department store – each interruption no more than a call for assistance in menswear, a blip between two tinny notes.

He's never broken up with anyone before. In eighth grade Jenny Silverson asked Marsha Handey to ask Hal Underwood to ask Tim if he'd go to the end of the year dance with her. Tim told Hal he had to think about it overnight. He wanted to say, “No,” because Jenny Silverson had this thing where her gums were too big for her teeth, so, “No.” But she was a girl. And Tim had never been asked on a date before. And maybe her gums weren't too big after all, so he would think about it before he said, “No.” But after dinner that night, Hal called to say that he'd asked Marsha to the dance and she'd said, “Yes,” and that she'd told him that Kyle Sanders had asked Jenny Silverson out on the bus ride home, so now she was going with him instead. Instead of Tim. And that's the closest Tim's come: an almost “No.” Twenty-five and he's never gotten closer than that. So he wants to practice. He wants to make sure he does it right.

He spent a long time on the beginning. He knows, from the public speaking class that he took in senior year, that it's what you say at the very start that sets the tone. Even the very first word is pivotal. The first word of Tim's speech is, “Kara.”

“Kara,” he'll say. “I think you're great.”

Tim stares at a spreadsheet on his monitor and thinks about how important it is for her to hear that before anything else. He wants her to understand that he's breaking up with her, not because she's not great, but because they are not great. And that line was in there, too. “It's not that you're not great, it's that we're not great.” He put it in as close to the middle as he could. He thought she would need to be reminded by then.