You in Five Acts(64)

“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 f*cking 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?”

You froze for a second but then flashed a quick, apologetic smile. “Just texting Joy. She’s new to this, so . . . you know.”

Actually, I didn’t, and I think you knew that, too. “Well,” I said, “Maybe it could wait until after.” I could hear my own voice, whiny and high-pitched, like I was one of those sixteenth-century Italian singers who got their nuts cut off so their voices wouldn’t change. No wonder you weren’t jumping my bones. But then again, I’d always looked and sounded like me, and you’d kissed me anyway. So—what, then? I couldn’t ask you why you’d done it without sounding like a complete idiot, but it was all I could think about. Your lips on my neck, your tongue in my mouth, like I was having some surreal, waking wet dream in front of the whole school. The only reason I hadn’t given up yet was the chance it might happen again.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” you announced.

“Have fun,” I said. Like an *.

You’d only been gone for about ten seconds when I realized I could look at your phone. I had a sudden, paranoid need to know if you’d really been texting Joy about Diego, or about how stupid and lame I was. If you’d really been texting Joy at all. Luckily I could scoot around the booth without drawing too much attention to myself. I moved a foot closer to your side and then reached my arm around. Your bag was so big, it was easy to grab one of the handles and pull it closer to me.