“We can run lines any time,” I said. “So, if you need to—”
“Nah, I’d rather be here.” You curled your legs underneath you and shot me a smile that made me forget everything else. I needed something to do, fast, to distract me from the fact that I wanted to kiss you so badly my head felt like it might explode.
I flipped open my script to a random page and started reading. “The stars are like diamonds in the dark,” I said, substituting volume for any kind of emotion. “They’re the only things in this city that are free.”
“Oh! Um, ok . . .” You flipped through until you found the right page. “Catch one for me, and we’ll be rich.”
“We?” I asked, making tentative eye contact with you. “A moment ago you called me a stranger.”
“That was a moment ago,” you said, looking up at me with a coy half-smile. I wasn’t sure if it belonged to you or to Viola. “In this moment I feel differently.”
“How can so much change in one moment?” I asked. “The world is the same. I am the same. You are the same. Nothing has changed except the time.”
“Time changes everything,” you said solemnly. Then you threw your head back and laughed, breaking character. “Oh, God. How did we get ourselves into this?” you groaned.
“I know, right?” I smiled. “Maybe we can ditch Ethan and just rewrite the script.”
“I wish,” you said, not looking at me.
“Should we keep going, then?”
“Why don’t we just improvise?” You chucked your pages on the rug and raised your eyebrows, and I’ll admit for a second I thought you might be thinking what I was thinking.
“What do you mean?” I asked, half expecting my voice to crack like I was twelve.
“Let’s pretend we’re on a bridge,” you said. “What would you say to me?”
I looked at you cautiously; it felt like a dare. “As Viola?”
“No,” you laughed. “Just as me. Or even better, a stranger. If you met a stranger and you were the only one around for miles, what would you tell them?”
“Wow, I don’t know.” I leaned back against the wall, feeling the mattress wheeze under my weight, knowing that every second it was getting closer to the floor but not caring. “Everything, I guess.”
“So tell me everything,” you said, leaning forward until your elbows were balancing on your knees. “Start at the beginning.”
So I did. Just like I’m doing now. I started at the beginning and told you everything. About getting famous too early and letting it go to my head. About treating girls like shit and my friends only marginally better. About the divorce and the career flameout and how it caught up with me in Toluca Hills, ending in a school suspension after I got wasted during lunch and thought it would be a good idea to sneak into the gym and throw empty beer cans into the lap pool. I confessed it all, and you listened without judgment.
But there’s something else I need to say that I didn’t know yet on that Sunday afternoon:
Forgive me.
Chapter Twelve
February 24
78 days left
A FEW WEEKS LATER, I did something even scarier than letting my guard down with you: I went to Staten Island. When I said OK (the third time he asked) Ethan reacted like no one had ever gone to his house before . . . because apparently, no one had ever gone to his house before.
“Hell no,” Diego said when I asked about it during our second, slightly less humiliating scrimmage. “If the subway won’t go there, neither will I. It’s a practical rule, not a prejudice.”
You were less diplomatic. “There’s a borough hierarchy,” you explained at the end of rehearsal on Friday, as I was gathering my stuff to go with Ethan to the ferry. “You should only travel to the ones that rank above yours.”
“So we can never leave Manhattan?”
“Brooklyn and Manhattan are basically even now,” you said, your brows knit together adorably like you were crunching actual numbers for a Buzzfeed quiz on the sexiest borough. “Parts of Queens are catching up. The Bronx is far, but at least you don’t have to take an orange boat.”
“Hey, great poems have been written about that boat,” Ethan said. “Also Method Man grew up there, and my house could fit three of your apartments, so.” He was in a great mood, not only because I was going to be the first friend to come over since middle school (it was going to be a sleepover, because Ethan didn’t trust that I would actually make it unless he personally escorted me) but because rehearsals had been going especially well ever since your surprise appearance at my apartment. Not that he knew about that. He just knew that we had a different rhythm. Like two people who had been texting pretty heavily for the better part of two weeks.