“Have you read my emails before?” I ask.
I try to keep my voice casual but I can hear the anxiety in it. The What the fuck in it. You have the security code for my phone, just like I have yours. It never occurred to me to go snooping through your emails or texts.
I try to tell myself it’s fine, we have no secrets. But it’s no use—this feels wrong. Really wrong. See, Gav, I should have listened to my intuition right here. I should have remembered that the women in my family know stuff before it happens, like how my great-gram would know who was calling her before the phone even rang. I should have known that you doing this means you’re a snake in the grass.
“No.” You hold up your hands when I glare at you. “I swear! My curiosity just got the better of me.”
“Because you don’t trust me.”
“I do.” I shake my head and angrily stab at my pancakes. “Grace, I swear I do. I just … couldn’t resist. I was only in there to look for Beth’s address. Promise.” You raise your eyebrows. “It’s not like you have anything to hide, right?”
“What the hell, Gav?”
“I’m kidding!”
“I don’t believe you.”
You lean forward and kiss the tip of my nose. “I love you to the moon and back. Okay? Now eat your pancakes.”
I love you to the moon and back—you read that in one of the picture books you brought to my house when I was sick. It’s become this thing with us. I melt. And you knew I would. You’ve got all these aces up your sleeve—a real card sharp.
“You owe me a song,” I say, pointing my fork at you. “Something romantic about how much you trust me.”
You grin. “I’ll start working on it tonight.”
When you’re a stupid girl in love, it’s almost impossible to see the red flags. It’s so easy to pretend they’re not there, to pretend that everything is perfect.
Beautiful rock gods who can kiss you until you’re dizzy always get away with murder.
*
IT’S CLOSING NIGHT of The Crucible and we get a standing ovation. The cast makes Miss B and me come onstage and they present both of us with huge bouquets of roses. We take a little bow and I catch your eye in the front row. You yell the loudest and raise your hands over your head when you clap.
Tomorrow I’ll be back to help strike the set and get everything out of the theater the school is renting, but tonight my mom is letting me stay out until midnight because we have our cast party. I’m wearing a cute little black dress from the sixties with red tights and my Doc Martens. Since it’s Halloween, I’ve added cat ears and used thick black eyeliner to give myself cat eyes. I’ve been too busy to think of a costume, and, besides, you think dressing up is dumb. It’s been getting pretty chilly at night, so I go backstage and throw on a leather jacket I found at Goodwill for five bucks, then grab my purse to meet you out front.
“We’re gonna head over to Peter’s place now—you want to drive with us?” Nat asks.
She and Lys are both in the cast. Nat’s dressed as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and she sticks the long cigarette holder Audrey rocked between her teeth. Lys is dressed as an existential dilemma, wearing a black unitard with questions like Is there a God? and What’s the point of life? stuck all over her. Of course, she’s also wearing knee-high sequined boots and a blond wig because she’s Lys.
I shake my head. “I’ll see you there. Gav’s here, so he’ll take me.” Nat frowns and I roll my eyes. “I told you guys, he feels really bad about what happened with Beth.”
It’s been over a month since that night we all went bowling, but Nat and Lys still haven’t gotten over it.
Lys mimes locking her lips and throwing away the key. I stick out my tongue and they both blow me a kiss, then head out with the rest of the cast.
I meet you in the lobby and when you see me you grab me in a bear hug and spin me around.
“I missed you so much,” you say, keeping an arm around my shoulders as we head out to the parking lot.
“I missed you, too.”
We haven’t seen each other in over a week. My senior year and your freshman year are kicking our asses. It seems like every time I’m free, you’re not. And when you’re free it’s past my curfew.
Your eyes travel upward as you take in my outfit. “Do you always dress like this when I’m not around?”
“What do you mean?”
You run your hand down the length of the dress. “This is pretty … short.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Yeah…”
You pull me closer. “Only wear this for me, okay? I don’t want the guys at your school getting any ideas.”
“What? Baby. Are you serious?” When you don’t say anything I just laugh because you’re being silly, but you frown. “Anyway. What did you think of the show?”
“It was cool,” you say.
I deflate a little.
“Just cool? I was hoping for something more along the lines of brilliant, life-changing, phenomenal…”
You laugh. “Well, you are all those things. But, you know, it’s just a high school show, right? It is what it is. I mean, Peter as Proctor? Come on.”
I stop walking and your arm falls off my shoulder. We’re outside the theater, standing on the wide steps leading to its entrance. You’re a few steps below me. I stare at you and you look back, confused.
“What?” you say.
“Just a high school show?” I repeat. “That’s kind of a dick thing to say.”
Now you get it.
“Oh, hey, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, you know, not really my thing anymore.”
“You’ve been in college for, like, two months, Gav. Suddenly theatre isn’t your thing?”
You’ve pretty much given up acting to focus on the band, which is fine, but I didn’t know that meant you didn’t care about theatre at all. Or at least about my theatre stuff.
“I love you,” you say with a sigh. “And I’m sorry. That came out all wrong. I’m really proud of you.” You kneel down and clasp your hands together, extra dramatic. “Forgive me?”
My lip twitches. “Get up, you idiot.”
“I’m taking that as a yes.” You stand and adjust my cat ears. “How about we go somewhere, and you take everything off but these?”
“Alas, we have a cast party to get to.” I smile. “But I’ll give you a rain check.”
We get into the car and you tap your key against the steering wheel. I can tell there’s something you want to say and that it’s maybe serious. My stomach turns. The past few times we’ve hung out we’ve been on the verge of a fight, but at the last minute one of us caves and it’s okay. I wonder if that will happen tonight. If we can keep pretending nothing’s changed.
“I don’t want to go to the cast party,” you say.
“Why?”
You sigh. “Because I’m in college, Grace. Because I don’t want to go to some lame-ass party with a bunch of drama nerds who don’t know how to party.”
“You mean you don’t like that it’s not a kegger.”