Cliff House: Sweet Bitter Love

Wednesday, July 7, 1993

The next scene is The Scene: ROGER and HOLLY make love. The entire scene is cut to Aretha Franklin’s rendition of “Sweet Bitter Love,” and there is no dialogue. They are tender, passionate, and poignant, but ROGER and HOLLY experience the moment differently. HOLLY enjoys him and herself—ROGER loses himself in loving her.

Sweet, sweet bitter love
The taste still lingers
Though through my helpless fingers
You slipped away

Sweet, sweet bitter love
What joy you taught me
What pain you brought me
In so short a stay

My magic dreams
Have lost their spell
Where there was hope
There's just an empty shell

Oh sweet, my bitter love
Why have you awakened

And then forsaken
A trusting heart like mine?

LATER ...

ROGER and HOLLY lie in bed together, with ROGER kissing HOLLY’S face. He has one hand in her hair and another gently touching her arm. HOLLY seems content. As ROGER kisses her, she makes a throaty sound, a little like a “purr.”

Suddenly, ROGER gives HOLLY the words that he couldn’t give JENNA. It’s as though they spill out of him, beyond his control:

ROGER: I love you . . . I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. Don’t let me be dreaming.

ROGER buries his face in HOLLY’S hair and, sighing, nuzzles her. But, as HOLLY, confused, turns her head from him, ROGER looks up.

ROGER: Holly?

HOLLY looks again at ROGER and kisses him lightly on the lips.

HOLLY: I’m all right.

HOLLY gets up from the bed and goes outside, leaving ROGER looking pained.

ROGER joins HOLLY outside. In the background, we hear the Guiding Light theme, “Hold On to Love,” playing “solo piano.”

HOLLY stares out into the ravine. She looks dazed. ROGER doesn’t know how to approach her, but knows that he doesn’t want to lose her.

ROGER: Whew! It’s cold out here. . . Guess this is the hour they call the dead of night.

HOLLY nods, but doesn’t look at ROGER.

ROGER: I don’t presume to know what you’re thinking, Holly . . . but if it’s . . . please, please, don’t be sorry about this.

HOLLY glances at him for a second.

HOLLY: I don’t remember a time in my life anymore when I wasn’t sorry. It was just like falling and falling and falling.

ROGER [compassionately, tenderly]: Sweetie, you may think right now that maybe you made a mistake, but if you let me I swear I’ll devote the rest of my life to proving you didn’t.

HOLLY looks ROGER fully in the face.

What HOLLY says next is not hostile.

HOLLY: I don’t need you to prove anything to me.

ROGER: What does it matter if I say it? “The rest of my life”—it’s no great prize, but it was always yours. We knew that.

HOLLY: Oh, Roger, I don’t—

HOLLY turns her back to him, but ROGER simply puts his arms around her from behind and kisses her hair and talks softly to her.

ROGER: Don’t say anything. Why do you think you always have to “say something”?

HOLLY [anxious, frazzled]: I don’t know what this is. I ... I can’t have it. I can’t not know.

ROGER: It’s all right.

HOLLY: Oh, God help me!

ROGER: Honey, it’s all right, it’s all right. You’re just cold. You’re cold, that’s all.

ROGER gives HOLLY’S shoulders a little squeeze as he says this. And, indeed, the wind is howling around CLIFF HOUSE. It sounds cold.

HOLLY [hesitantly, as if considering the statement metaphorically]: I am . . .I am cold.

ROGER turns HOLLY to look at him. He kisses her forehead, and then, with all the tenderness in the world, picks her up and carries her back into the CLIFF HOUSE.

Next Episode:
The Mourning After