Unwrapped

(When Carey, a tall man with thick, brown hair loses his wife in a plane crash, he is devastated. However, he carries on life because he must. He also tries to put on a smile for his two young children, who he must now father on his own. He has a boy, Andrew, 14, and a girl who is 12. About twelve years later, his hair now graying, Carey is talking with his son, just before his son's wedding. Given the significance of the event, Carey sits his son down for a last moment of advice. Carey has never remarried, and has dated very little since his wife's death.)

CAREY: So, this thing is really happening.

ANDREW: I know. I can't really believe it myself. (He gives a light laugh.)

CAREY: Well, that makes sense. It's a big thing, you know?

ANDREW: So I've heard.

CAREY: I just want you to know that… well… you’re a good kid. I’ve always thought that, and it’s not just because of, you know, the whole dad thing… but, you know, really. I do.

ANDREW: (Laughs.) Well, sure, as far as you know.

CAREY: Well, you know, every once in a while I’d have to give you the odd slap on the wrist. I’d actually be kind of disappointed if I didn’t have to… I mean, you were a kid.

ANDREW: We had fun dad.

CAREY: Yea. (There’s a long pause.)

ANDREW: I’m not even gonna bother sayin’ it, ‘cause I know we’re both thinkin’ it.

CAREY: I know. Hey… (He punches Andrew on the shoulder) don’t get like that. She’s happy for ya. I know it.

ANDREW: I didn’t want to get like this.

CAREY: Like what?

ANDREW: (gestures toward the tuxedo hanging on the doorknob of his closet) Like this.

CAREY: What, you didn’t want to get married?

ANDREW: No… I didn’t.

CAREY: But… you do now, right?
ANDREW: I can’t help it.

CAREY: Andrew… Andrew, Andrew, Andrew… don’t be rushing yourself.

ANDREW: No! No, that’s not what I mean.

CAREY: Look, Andy, stop giving me riddles and just say what you want to say.

ANDREW: I mean, I was always terrified of what happened to you and mom. I didn’t want to love someone this much… ‘cause I know that I couldn’t handle losing her.

CAREY: (sits back and takes in a deep breath.) What happened to us… as a family… was not easy for anyone. When I stood in that airport and watched the news… about mom’s flight crashing… I felt like I’d crashed with it. It would only make sense that that’s the way that it should have been. But then I realized that if that were the case, then you and your sister would have been orphaned. From that moment on, you were my mission and I wasn’t going to slow down for a minute. You kept me alive.

ANDREW: So that’s it. Kids… well, us. Didn’t you ever regret the whole thing, so then at least maybe, you could have had something like what you had with mom, but with someone else? Someone who didn’t die in such an unnatural way?

CAREY: I’m not going to lie. I thought about it, but not once did I regret it. I’ll never forget the first time I took your mother on a date. I knew here a little bit before we started to go out, but I never felt like it was love at first sight. No… I would call it, love unwrapped.

ANDREW: Unwrapped? That doesn’t sound like a good thing.

CAREY: Just… listen for a second. It was love unwrapped, like a gift just unwrapped at Christmas. Anyways, I took her on that first date. She was nice, and so was I, but it was just a first date. We went on a few more, and we started to unwrap the gift. We knew that there was something there, but neither one of us was really sure what kind of something it was. Anyways, I had to go to New York for business during the summer, and she’d never been there. So I said, ‘Hey, well, you want to come along?’ She said yes, and so began our first vacation together. On our second night there, I had a big dinner to go to… biggest event of the year for the company. I never showed. Instead, I took your mother for a walk through Central Park. When the two of us were walking along, talking about the city, what was going on back home, what was going to happen to me for skipping the dinner, and thousands of other things, I just stopped. I looked over at her, and I swear, she’d never looked prettier. And then she smiled… God, that smile. It was like every thought that I had ever had just flew out of my head. Words are such a pathetic attempt at describing what we feel. You hear people say that what they have is like destiny, magic, romantic, or whatever. There’s a reason that when you look up love in the dictionary, it has the most vague definition of any word ever invented. The reason, Andy, is that love is a language of its own, indecipherable. At that moment it was love unwrapped. I looked at her straight in the eyes and I didn’t care about anything else. All that mattered was her. I never realized it until that moment, but she was my world. She was my life. And I could tell as she was looking back into my eyes that she was thinking the same thing. And that’s when we both knew that we were in love. Love unwrapped.

ANDREW: Just like a gift.

CASEY: A gift that can’t possibly be taken away. It’s a gift that’ll stay with me until I die, without a doubt. How can you ever regret such a thing? I still love her, and I can still feel her loving me. Don’t be afraid, Andy. Don’t you ever, ever be afraid of love. It’s the only thing in this world that’s immortal.