It didn’t help that at end of every rehearsal I went home to find Dad dozing on the fold-out couch at 5 P.M. while Nana and Pop-Pop watched Jeopardy! in the kitchen, with the volume so loud I could already hear it by the time I got off the elevator. They’d mute it just to ask how my day was, and I’d shrug and mumble something about hating it, before grabbing a snack from the fridge and storming off to the geriatric “man-cave” that had become my bedroom. I was basically playing the part of the tortured, brooding teenage son in any TV drama; too bad no one was filming or I could have added it to my reel.
They were putting us up indefinitely until Dad found a job, but based on his tendency to fill his days going to yoga and/or drinking scotch while reading books with titles like Daily Meditations for Codependents, that seemed unlikely to happen anytime soon. And it was easier to tune them out than to try to explain everything. About Mom and how weirdly cheerful she was being. About how much it stung every time she emailed one of her updates full of exclamation points and smiley faces and casually dropped names of promising up-and-comers she was working on signing. About how it took my supposed friends back in L.A. days to return my texts, which had been getting increasingly pathetic. And, speaking of pathetic, about how I was developing a serious crush on my costar in the school play, who had everything I’d ever wanted in a girl, except for the one thing I didn’t, which was a boyfriend.
Or, pseudo-boyfriend—it was really fucking hard to tell—but either way he was my director and so I was confirmedly, completely screwed. Which meant that nothing had changed, really, which might have been the worst thing of all.
? ? ?
“On a night like this, you can see the whole city,” I said. We were sitting next to each other on the edge of the stage, our legs dangling into the empty orchestra pit. You were wearing a thin, fuzzy sweater that rubbed gently against my bare forearm whenever you moved, raising my body temperature by a good three degrees. The top of your head was just about in line with my nose, which is how I knew that your hair smelled like lavender and honey. It made it hard to focus, and really, really hard not to hate Ethan.
It had taken me exactly one read-through to realize that Boroughed Trouble (pun most definitely intended) was an extremely thinly veiled wish-fulfillment fantasy about you. Sure, it was technically about an Italian immigrant building the Queensboro Bridge in 1905, and the two characters were strangers, which threw me off initially, but the way the beautiful and enigmatic Viola fell for the lonely, underappreciated Rodolpho (who wrote plays when he wasn’t building bridges all by himself in the middle of the night) started to imitate life a little too closely. Especially after you guys started . . . doing whatever you were doing. I didn’t bother asking. I didn’t want to know.
“Sometimes,” you sighed, “I wish I couldn’t see it at all. I long for the mountains back home.” You leaned into my shoulder, dropping your hand into my lap, where you found my fingers and curled yours around them, massaging my palm. I gulped, which wasn’t in the script. You were turning me into a method actor.
“How can you say that?” I asked, my heart beating furiously in anticipation of what I knew was about to happen. “It’s so much better here. There’s so much opportunity.”
“Sewing underclothing in a stifling factory until my fingers bleed doesn’t seem much like opportunity,” you said. “The conditions were better traveling steerage.”
“That can’t be true,” I said, drawing away from you despite my body’s vehement objection. Rodolpho was not supposed to make the first move on Viola. It was crucial, Ethan argued, that she be the one to seduce him. I tried not to think about whether he’d added that part before or after the party.
I still hadn’t recovered from the moment you’d come out of the coatroom and pounced on him. The night had gotten weird, for sure, but I’d thought we’d had a pretty promising start. You’d been so cool and unassuming at the auditions, the only person who didn’t seem to care who I was, or was supposed to be. And then, at your house, you’d somehow sensed that if left to my own devices I’d retreat into the corner to play chess on my phone for hours. “This is going to suck no matter how you do it,” you’d said, handing me a beer and giving me a reassuring smile. “So let me introduce you to everyone now and then you can come back Monday morning not feeling like the new guy.” It was like you’d instantly understood, without knowing me yet, exactly what I needed. Until you’d started making out with someone else.
“Your line,” you whispered, without moving your lips, which I noticed because I’d been staring at them. You rubbed your thumb against my palm and I almost bolted upright.