They didn’t bother giving us a wine menu, so we ordered Cokes—one regular, one diet—and sat on opposite sides of a round booth, examining the thick, leather-bound menus. I kept trying to catch your eye, but you hardly looked up. I could feel your boot tapping incessantly against the table leg, making my silverware jiggle on the maroon silk napkin. It made me nervous.
“I, uh, got you something,” I said, taking the little vial with the rice grain out of my shirt pocket. It felt so stupid and insignificant as I pushed it across the table, like giving someone a paper clip or a stray button, but you actually looked touched when you saw what it was.
“I used to want one of these so bad!” you cried. “Well, that and getting shells braided into my hair.” You examined the gift in the palm of your hand and looked at me guiltily. “I didn’t get you anything.”
“You didn’t go anywhere,” I said. “Plus, your presence is present enough.” I tried to soften the corny line—which I’d basically stolen from my mom, who always told me not to get her anything for Mother’s Day because I was the gift—with a wink. You opened your mouth and then closed it again.
“You look like you got . . . some color,” you finally said, squinting.
A waiter came to take our order. I asked for a porterhouse, you asked for a mixed-green salad. You insisted you weren’t hungry, which was kind of inconvenient considering we were out to dinner.
“Don’t be the starving actress, that’s such a cliché!” I joked, but you got quiet for a while after that, so I guess I hit a nerve. At the table next to us, one elderly man was telling another elderly man about his nephew’s prostate cancer.
“So,” I finally said, “when are we going to talk about the elephant in the room?”
“Huh?” Your eyes flitted up, widening briefly, before returning to your lap. “What do you mean?”
“The play. I didn’t hear anything from you or Roth over break. So did you make it work, or am I going to have to redo the whole thing as a black-box monologue?”
The truth was, even though I wanted badly for it not to suck, I had the least at stake of all of us when it came to Showcase. I’d already gotten into the dramatic writing program at Tisch, anyway, so all I really needed at that point was the credit. The fact that you and Roth had been acting like it was a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? since the beginning of March was bizarre and disappointing, but I’d made my peace with it. That night I was more interested in what your motivations were in real life. And big surprise, even when you were right in front of me, I still wasn’t sure. What had you been doing for the past two weeks? I wondered. You looked flushed but drawn, your eyes bright and bloodshot. Only you could manage to fade and glow at the same time.
“We rehearsed,” you said vaguely.
“What,” I pressed, “like . . . once?”
You shrugged, but your boot kept tapping, and my silverware kept jiggling. “Once was enough,” you said. “We fixed it.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“We just . . .” You weren’t looking at your lap, I realized. You were looking at something under the table, next to your leg. Your phone, probably. “. . . worked out the kinks,” you finished.
She’d rather be anywhere but here. You thought you could buy her attention with an expensive dinner? LOL, buddy. J fucking K.
“Oh, well . . . good!” I said cheerfully, trying to change my approach. “I can’t wait to see it.”
Your eyes darted up from wherever they’d been, and I saw what looked like a flash of pity.
“What were you doing, if you weren’t rehearsing?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Hanging with Joy, mostly.” You reached into your bag and I heard the telltale sound of Tic Tacs rattling. “When she wasn’t with Diego, anyway.” You popped one into your mouth and raised your eyebrows. “They finally hooked up.”
“Good for them.” My voice was dry ice; it was hard to work up much enthusiasm for someone like Diego Ortega, hardly an antihero with his curls and dimples and muscles, who had girls swooning left and right without even trying. And besides, I doubted Diego and Joy were spending their night having a wooden, awkward conversation over a stuffy early-bird dinner. They were probably alone somewhere, all over each other, the way you’re supposed to be when you finally hook up with the person you’ve always wanted.
Only she’s never wanted you. An important difference.
“Here we are.” The waiter reappeared with our food, making a big show of setting down the plates and grinding fresh pepper onto your architectural pile of $16 lettuce.
“Are you sure you don’t want some steak?” I asked. You looked like you could use some, but I couldn’t think of a way to say it that wouldn’t sound insulting or like I was trying to hit on you.
“Nope.” You poked at your salad, your eyes still dropping down to some unseen distraction every thirty seconds. Your right hand disappeared under the tablecloth.
“Hey, are you—um, I mean, do you need to make a call or something?”