You in Five Acts(29)

“Hey, Roth, you coming or what?” Ethan called.

I hadn’t noticed that everyone had started walking without me and were almost at the exit. Diego, who had put on Joy’s earmuffs, seemed to be doing some kind of impression of her, and she was snatching at them while Ethan laughed.

I felt you next to me before you said anything—as you pulled your hood up, the fur brushed my cheek, soft and prickly at the same time. I almost jumped.

“Think they’ll ever do it?” you asked, looking up at me with eyes that seemed anime-wide all of a sudden.

My cheeks lit up with heat. “What?” I sputtered.

“Joy and Diego,” you said. “I mean, it’s so obvious.”

“I don’t know,” I said, pulling my hat on. “He’s taking his time, I think. Waiting for the right moment.”

“Waiting is overrated,” you said with a smile.

“Jesus Christ, come on, you need a formal invitation?” Ethan yelled. He was already holding the door, and a gust of frigid February air snaked into the lobby. We started down the carpet.

“For future reference,” you whispered, “if you’re ever planning a jailbreak, you could at least take me with you.”

“Yeah well . . .” I shrugged apologetically. “Every man for himself, I guess.”

You scrunched up your nose in playful indignation as we reached Ethan and he cut in, taking your arm as you stepped gingerly out onto the ice of West Houston Street in your high-heeled boots. I felt my spirits lift in a way that felt like both a relief and a warning.

I couldn’t make the feelings I had for you disappear, but I could leash them temporarily. At least until the play was over, I told myself.

It’s hard to think back to when it all felt like such a game. I didn’t realize then that you were right—that waiting wasn’t always a virtue.

Sometimes, waiting is just the difference between being able to save someone, and being too late.





Chapter Eleven


    February 12

90 days left


“LAST-SECOND CLUB SWITCH there by Mickelson . . . he’s got the ball below his feet, an awkward stance in this fairway bunker . . .”

We were in the living room the next morning, Dad, Pop-Pop, and me, watching golf on ESPN despite the fact that I would literally have preferred to do anything else, including my art history homework or bringing dirty boxer shorts to the building’s basement laundry room, which could have been used as a location for one of the Saw movies with zero set decoration.

But I was too lazy to do either of those things, and my coffee—despite being served in a truly humiliating mug emblazoned with my seventh-grade portrait—was still hot. And if I was honest with myself it was actually a little bit nice to be sitting on the couch with my dad, both of us bed-headed and bleary-eyed, with our tube-socked feet propped up on the coffee table. It felt almost normal, until I turned to look out the window and saw the snowy cityscape instead of Mom’s lilac bushes.

I felt for my phone on the cushion beside me as the golfer stared intently at the tiny hole onscreen, adjusting the belt on his bright orange pants. Riveting entertainment. I knew Mom had sent a bunch of texts the night before, around 10:30 L.A. time, when I was already passed out; I saw them lined up on my lock screen when I woke up, to check if there was anything from you. (The night before, at dinner, you’d casually asked for my number “in case you want to run lines sometime,” which had made my entire night. I’d chosen not to tell you that I already had your number programmed into my phone, and that I’d even given you your own ringtone.)

“You know, it is possible to live without that thing attached to your hand,” Dad said. He had a thing about phones, a recent and incredibly annoying thing he had picked up on a meditation retreat. Apparently being too “plugged-in” interrupted the mind’s ability to be silent, which was the key to true knowledge. Or something.

“I’m not even doing anything,” I said. “I’m just holding it.”

“But holding it means you’re waiting for it to do something, and if your attention is focused on that, it can’t be focused on this.” He gestured to the cluttered living room.

“What, like golf and Nana’s vitamin collection?” I asked. Dad gave me a withering look.

“Well if you’re going to ‘just hold’ it, would you do me a favor and text your mother back?” he asked. “She’s getting on me now.”

“Jesus, it’s been like twelve hours. Tell her to chill.” I wished I hadn’t called her from the movie theater. I never actually called her, let alone left her a message, so she probably assumed I was out on a ledge somewhere.

Dad held up his hands—or one hand, anyway; his other had his coffee mug in a death grip. “I’m staying out of it,” he said. I turned off the phone and tossed it onto the coffee table, on top of a stack of New Yorker magazines.

“Happy now?” I grumbled.

“Would you look at that, a double bogey,” Pop-Pop said. “He’s off his game today.” I looked at the TV but all I saw was a big, green nothing. I couldn’t even guess where the ball was supposed to be.

? ? ?


Nana got bacon and bagels from Zabar’s like she did every Sunday, and by one o’clock the table was set with a spread that could have fed a reality show family with three sets of triplet farmhands. Golf was off and the radio was on, tuned to some jazz station. It wasn’t exactly the stuff crazy weekends were made of, but at least it was dependably uneventful. I was on my second plate—and second hour of phoneless daydreaming—when the doorbell rang.