Always Never Yours(22)

“I am not going to regret this,” I say, and withdraw my hand.

He narrows his eyes. “You . . . Don’t you mean I’m not going to regret this?”

“Yeah, that too. But I know I’m not going to regret it,” I reply, and Owen grins, a bit bashful. “What can I do?” I ask, ready to get down to business. “Do you want to start with my first boyfriend? My post-breakup ritual, what?”

He drops his Romeo and Juliet script in my lap. “You can read for Friar John. Jody’s going to kick me out if I don’t have something memorized by the end of the day.”





EIGHT




ROMEO: . . . all these woes shall serve





For sweet discourses in our times to come.


III.v.52–3


OWEN LIVES ONLY TEN MINUTES FROM ME. Unlike my street, his is hemmed in by trees, and I think I see a trailhead down the block when I get out of the car. His house is a single story, and there’s no car in the driveway. The lawn is brown, the leaves in dry piles by the sidewalk.

I knock on the door, and Owen opens it almost immediately. “Hey,” he says with a smile.

“Wow.” I peer past him into the living room. “Your house is clean.” I hardly remember what a clean house looks like. I found some dried macaroni on my bag the other day.

“Is it?” He shrugs, but he looks a little pleased. “It’s because my family’s out right now.”

He leads me down the hallway. The walls are sparsely decorated, only a couple of framed pictures of Owen and what must be his younger brother. Next to them hangs an enormous black-and-white photograph of a boyishly handsome Asian man in a seventies-style suit. I pause in front of it. “Is this your dad?” I ask.

Owen glances over his shoulder, puzzlement momentarily written in his brows. His eyes find the photograph, and his mouth twitches with contained laughter. “My mom wishes that were my dad. That’s Y?jir? Ishihara,” he says. “My mom grew up in Kyoto, and when she was a teenager, he was pretty much the biggest star in Japan. She was obsessed. Is obsessed,” he adds, “even though he died thirty years ago.”

“Damn. Your mom’s a legit fangirl.” I take a closer look, considering Y?jir?’s eyebrows and jawline. “I get it, though.”

“Great,” Owen grumbles, pushing open the door to his room. “Not you, too.” I follow him, grinning to his back.

The first thing I notice about Owen’s room is the movie posters that line the walls. But they’re not movies I know—half the titles are in French, and most of them feature surreal imagery I can’t begin to decipher. “Whoa,” I say, and look back at Owen, who’s noticed my survey of the room.

“I have a bit of a thing for French cinema,” he says casually.

“Oh? I hadn’t noticed,” I deadpan. “But seriously, how do these fit in with Shakespeare and Eugene O’Neill?”

He gives me a crooked grin and brushes his hand through his hair. “I’m a complicated man, Megan.”

I step farther into the room. “English theater, French movies, Italian girlfriend . . .” I search for photos of Cosima on his cluttered dresser, his conspicuously clean desk, and his windowsill storing a set of encyclopedias. “She’s not going to interrupt us on FaceTime, is she?”

“No, she already went to bed,” he says, his voice neutral.

“Of course she did,” I tease. I walk over to his desk and start opening drawers, finding only impressive stacks of notebooks in each.

“Excuse me,” I hear behind me. “What exactly are you doing with my personal possessions?”

I glance over my shoulder to find Owen leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. He pushes himself off the wall waist-first and crosses the room to shut the drawer I’m perusing.

“Looking for a picture of Cosima,” I answer like it’s obvious. “She doesn’t think being photographed is frivolous, too, does she?”

“No,” Owen replies coolly. “I just don’t have any pictures of her, is all.”

“Where did you guys meet?” I ask, undeterred. I turn to the bookshelves by his bed. A small framed photo of Owen and Jordan from middle school sits between a beautiful hardcover of The Great Gatsby and a collection of Emily Dickinson poems.

“It was a summer theater program in New York.” He sounds a little defensive. I can’t see his face because I’ve walked behind him, but I’m certain he’s blushing.

“Well, what’s she like?” I press him.

“She’s from a little outside Bologna. She writes dark, experimental suburban stuff. Like David Mamet from Italy. Her parents are local politicians.”

“You totally didn’t answer my question.”

He turns to face me, tilting his head and looking confused. “Yes, I did.”

“No, what’s she like?” I repeat. “You told me what she writes and where she lives, not who she is. If you’re going to invent a girlfriend, you should flesh her out a little more.” It’s not that I definitely believe he made her up, it’s just that I enjoy getting a rise out of him. “For someone who writes plays, Owen, you really should have a better command of character.”