You in Five Acts(23)

“I just want to feel something,” you said, looking down at the “water.” “I want to feel something other than homesickness. I want to know something other than sadness. I want to see something besides my mother’s face as she lay dying. I want to touch something other than a sewing needle.” You looked up at me, raising a hand to my face and tracing a line from my temple to my Adam’s apple. I swallowed thickly, working hard to look confused and reluctant instead of crazy with pent-up lust. “I want to feel something . . .” you said again, starting to pull me in by the back of the neck. I started to close my eyes, ready to feel what I’d been waiting to feel since the first day we met, what I’d been imagining while lying in the dark on my slowly deflating air mattress every night for weeks, when—

“Cut!” Ethan yelled from the back of the auditorium. Fucking Ethan. I’d almost forgotten he was there.

You dropped your hands to the lip of the stage and turned away, letting out a slow, shaky exhale. I thought for a second you might be relieved, but then you glared out at Ethan with an expression of unmistakable contempt.

“What the hell?” you said. “I was in the zone. You couldn’t just let me finish my f*cking lines?”

“It’s not your delivery, babe,” Ethan said, bounding down the aisle steps two at a time. He had taken to calling you exclusively babe or baby. “I just don’t think we need to rehearse the, um . . .” He frowned down at the script he had bound in a leather binder with a leather strap that tied around the front like something out of the nineteenth century. I was frankly pretty surprised he hadn’t written the thing out with a quill.

“The what?” you demanded, crossing your arms defiantly. “The climax of the whole play?”

“Climax is a strong word,” Ethan said, frowning. “If anything, the climax is when Rodolpho jumps off the bridge after Viola leaves.” Boroughed Trouble ended with a tragic suicide twist, which lent the whole art-imitating-life aspect a pretty creepy vibe.

“But that’s the end,” you said. “The climax can’t be at the end.”

“That’s what she said.” Ethan grinned. It made my skin crawl to think about his hands on you.

“Oh my God,” you groaned.

“That’s also what she said.”

“Please, seriously, stop.” You grimaced and covered your face with your palms. Ethan’s smile disappeared, and I had to admit, when I repressed the mental image of the two of you sucking face by the pretzel bowl, I felt kind of sorry for the guy. Any time he touched you, you wriggled away, and all you did during rehearsal was challenge him. Don’t get me wrong, I agreed with you—Ethan could be pretty pretentious, and the script sometimes read like a fanboy mash-up of his favorite scenes from classic plays. But that didn’t change the fact that he was the director, or that he was directing me playing some imaginary version of him meeting you, playing . . . well, basically just you. All while I fell for you in the process of rehearsing the play about you falling for him. It all would have been weird enough without the kiss Ethan had written into the script, but it was extremely weird with the kiss. I didn’t know how much longer I could stand it.

“I just think,” you said, your fingers—topped with bitten-down, gold-painted nails—migrating into prayer position in front of your lips, “That the kiss is a pretty important part. I mean, she ran onto the bridge to kill herself because her mom died of consumption and she’s stuck in some old-timey sweatshop making Prohibition panties—”

“Prohibition was actually 1920, so—” Ethan interrupted, but you shot him a look that shut him right up.

“Regardless, she’s ending it all because everything sucks,” you said. “But then she meets this guy who manages to show her that all is not lost, and there’s love out there for her—” you glanced at me and I could swear the corners of your lips turned up ever so slightly “—and that kiss is the moment that she takes life into her own hands for the first time, and takes what she wants instead of what’s been forced on or expected of her. So the way I see it, the kiss is her making the choice to live. Which I’d say is a pretty f*cking important moment. Wouldn’t you?” You raised your eyebrows expectantly, and Ethan just stared at you with the exact same dumbfounded admiration I was trying so hard to repress.

“That’s exactly it, babe,” he said excitedly. “But it’s a spur-of-the moment choice, one that she doesn’t see coming, and I want it to feel urgent and sudden. That’s why I don’t think it should be rehearsed.” He turned to me with a smug smile, and it was all I could do to keep from throttling him. Still, I nodded, slowly, like I totally understood.

“Yeah, we probably shouldn’t practice it,” I said. And as it came out of my mouth, I realized that I meant it.

I didn’t want our first kiss to be on a stage, in front of Ethan, or in front of anyone. I didn’t want it to be public and I didn’t want it to be planned.

When I kissed you for the first time, I wanted it to matter. And I wanted you to know it.





Chapter Nine


    February 2

100 days left


I WAS HOPING we would walk to the train together. We’d taken to splitting off while Ethan stayed behind to type up his notes for the next rehearsal, and those two blocks from campus to the 66th Street subway station had become the best part of my day. It was a perfect distance, not long enough to get into a real conversation that might lead to uncomfortable questions—like Hey, have you seen Ethan naked? or Do you live in your grandparents’ rent-controlled apartment? Because you smell a lot like Ben-Gay and a Golden Sands Yankee Candle—but just long enough for little jokes and sidelong glances, long enough for me to grab your sleeve as the traffic whizzed past on Broadway. Long enough for you to smile and push the hair out of your face and say, “Relax, I grew up here. I’m not about to get flattened into a New York Post headline.” Long enough to get me through to the next time I saw you.