Always Never Yours(71)

I cry. Really cry, not the couple stray tears and sniffles that follow fights or breakups. I press my forehead to the steering wheel, and my shoulders shake for everything I’m worth.





TWENTY-ONE




BENVOLIO: . . . one fire burns out another’s burning;





One pain is lessened by another’s anguish.


    Turn giddy, and be helped by backward turning.


   One desperate grief cures with another’s languish.


I.ii.47–50


I POINT TO JEREMY HANDLER, BRINGING REHEARSAL to a halt. “Jeremy,” I call out from the front row of the auditorium. He pauses on stage, in front of three girls from the cast sitting on a bench. “You’re telling those noblewomen that if they don’t dance with you, it’s because you think they have blisters on their feet. But because you want them to dance with you, you shouldn’t stand that far from them. You could even try taking one of their hands.”

“Okay.” Jeremy nervously steps closer to Cate Dawson and gently grabs her hand. “Like this?”

“Perfect.” I notice the way Cate’s face has lit up, and she’s sitting a little straighter. “If Lord Capulet is going to be a creepy old man to his guests, he might as well go the extra mile,” I finish.

In the two weeks since my fight with Owen, I’ve had nothing but a small, stilted Thanksgiving with Dad and Rose—and Erin, who threw her cranberry sauce on the floor gleefully—and rehearsal to keep me busy. I didn’t think it possible, but I hate Juliet more than ever before. It’s not getting in the way of my performance. I’m good, to be honest, better than I ever thought I’d be. I never thought I’d say it, but I feel lucky to have Tyler. His loving gazes and passionate delivery smooth over my rougher lines. Which is fortunate, because the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is in a week. We’re driving to Ashland two days early and checking into a cheap hotel—Jody wanted time to rehearse in the performance space.

But none of that has me feeling relieved or excited. I just feel empty.

What keeps me going is the thirty minutes a day Jody allows me to direct Romeo and Juliet. I guess she noticed my mood lately, or maybe she took pity on my general lack of enthusiasm and wanted to give me something to look forward to.

The only scene I passed up directing was one of Friar Lawrence’s. I haven’t talked to Owen since I left his house. Nor Will, not that I would have wanted to if he’d tried. But where Will’s and my breakup feels distant, like someone else’s life, what I lost with Owen—and what I never had—hurts like the day it happened.

It’s a sign of my desperation that I spend a lot of time outside of school at Verona. Verona is Will-and Owen-free, and better, I know it’s where I’ll find Anthony. He and I are both heartbroken, and we spend afternoons and evenings in between his shifts commiserating over old, free pizza. While Madeleine drops by sometimes and tries to join in, it’s not like she has a lot of experience with heartbreak. Or any. And Anthony and I have more to do than mope. With his Juilliard audition coming up, I’ve been helping him narrow down his monologue choices.

I’ve probably watched him deliver a thousand recitations of a dozen different monologues to the men’s bathroom mirror by the time I convince him to choose based on the feedback of a live audience at an open-mic night.

I’m grateful for the distraction. As long as I’m focused on getting Anthony to pick the perfect monologue, I don’t have to replay Owen’s words in my head or remember the way it felt to be in his arms for one crushing moment. He should be easy to move on from. We were only together for minutes. But those minutes were more than months with Tyler and weeks with Will. I don’t know how to move on from something I thought was real.

So I don’t. I stay exactly where I am.



* * *





I walk into Luna’s Coffee Company Thursday evening, and I’m not surprised to find the rest of the drama class already there. Even though he’s not as flashy as Tyler, Anthony is looked up to as the undisputed best actor in school. Everyone’s tightly packed into the front room, sitting on wooden tables, burgundy leather couches and the rugs on the floor—every inch of space is taken.

“This seat’s open,” someone says to my left. I spin and find Wyatt Rhodes smirking up at me from one of the built-in benches under the windows. I’m stunned for a moment. I would not have taken Wyatt for an open-mic-night kind of guy. He’s not wearing his golf polo—instead, he has on a millennial-pink button-down, the top three buttons undone. It’s completely over the top and exactly the kind of outfit that would have had me drooling months ago.

Wyatt nods toward the seat beside him. It’s hardly big enough for two, but judging from the look in his eyes, that’s probably the point.

“What are you here for?” I ask. He blinks, obviously thrown by the total lack of flirtatiousness in my response.

“Open-mic night. Reading poems has been known to impress the ladies.” I notice the Neruda collection on his lap and remember Owen telling me about trying to channel Neruda in his lyric writing.

I flinch, pushing the memory away. This is the point where I say something suggestive, ask Wyatt who he’s planning to impress tonight. He’s as gorgeous as ever, and he’s materialized out of thin air right when I’m in need of someone new.