Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
With the number of hours Renee and I put into prepping for the Philharmonic interview, I’m not surprised to hear it was a rousing success.
She calls me the moment she steps out of the office, and I can hear in her voice how wide she’s smiling.
There’s no offer on the table yet, but the hiring team adored her.
They all but told her she had the job. That alone is cause for a celebratory dinner.
It’s a Friday night in late July, and Renee sits on the edge of my kitchen counter, swinging her feet and filling me in on interview details while I slice red peppers for fajitas. I planned the meal around her favorite color, complete with bright-red fruit punch and a cherry pie for dessert.
“The Philharmonic said I’ll hear back early next week,” Renee says, but there’s mischief in the slant of her smile. She reaches for her phone, and something flashes behind her eyes. “But there’s also a job at a theater in the suburbs, and I’m extremely qualified.”
The peppers hiss and sizzle as I slide them into the cast iron, and I adjust the heat while Renee reads the job listing aloud. I’ve almost forgotten what it was like to cook without Renee keeping me company like this. Moments like these feel so natural, so correct.
Renee doesn’t linger on the details of the administrative job; instead, she skips ahead to what really interests her: the theater’s lineup of shows for the season.
“We’ve got Come from Away, White Christmas…” She gasps through her nose. “They’re doing Grease this fall! That’s certainly a sign.”
“A sign of what?”
“That I’m meant to have this job,” she says plainly. Like it’s obvious.
I don’t do the woo-woo stuff, but the certainty in Renee’s voice, the hope turned tangible by the appearance of a very common musical in this theater’s season, almost makes me believe it, too. I nudge the peppers around the pan and ask, “So what’s the deal with Grease?”
“Grease was the show that got me hooked on theater,” she explains. “Dad showed me the movie as a kid, and I just never let it go.”
“Is your dad a theater guy?”
“He’s a welding engineer for a heavy-machinery company back in Iowa,” Renee says. “So…no. But I was hooked, so Dad pulled out the park district catalog and let me pick out all the dance classes and theater camps I wanted to take.”
“I’m not sure that I’ve seen Grease,” I admit, and when Renee insists we watch it tonight, my groan of dissent is no match for the persuasive powers of her smile.
“You owe me.” I shake my kitchen spoon at her. “We’re watching The Princess Diaries next time.”
“Only if you promise not to say all the lines.”
Both times we’ve tried to watch it, Renee devolved into a twitchy mess when I said every line several seconds before the actor did.
“If I’m not allowed to say the lines, then you’re not allowed to sing along to Grease.”
“Fine.” Renee folds her arms. “Say the lines. But don’t get mad if I don’t laugh at every joke when you’ve already spoiled it.”
“You’re a tyrant,” I tell her.
“You’re a menace,” she fires back, but the way she says it—the way we bicker now compared to the start of the summer—is wholly different. It feels less like a fight and more like we’re building to something.
“I think you’ll like Rizzo,” Renee decides as we settle into the couch, each of us cross-legged with a plate of fajitas in our lap. “You kind of remind me of Rizzo, actually,” she says.
“And who is Rizzo?”
“My bi awakening.”
Heat swells in my chest, but I tamp it down and grab the remote. For the first time in my life, I am willingly searching for where to stream a movie musical. “Okay, but who is Rizzo in the movie?”
“One of the Pink Ladies.”
I blink at her. “O…kay?”
“The girls with the matching pink jackets? You have to know the jackets.”
My apology comes in the form of willingly paying $3.99 to rent this movie.
“I obsessed over those jackets as a kid,” Renee goes on, digging into her fajitas just as the opening credits begin.
“Dad had a red bomber jacket that was kind of similar. It was enormous on me, but I’d wear it around the house.
And then he got me a real Pink Ladies jacket for my birthday, just like theirs, but I cried, because I wanted a red one. Just like Dad’s.”
Grief rises in my throat, sharp and hot, but I gulp it down. “So you just stuck with red from then on, huh?”
Renee lifts a shoulder, nodding until she’s swallowed her first bite.
“Red goes well with blue. It makes my eyes pop.” She opens her hand on the word pop, making a firework with her fingers that bursts inside me, too, sparkling in my chest as Renee rambles on.
Now that she’s talking about theater, she can’t stop.
Her face glows as she reminisces on productions past and the hyperintense professors in her BFA program.
I pause the movie—not because I don’t want to miss anything, but because I’d rather watch this: The undiluted excitement that shines like a spotlight behind Renee’s eyes.
She stops only when our phones both buzz on the coffee table at once—a text from Chrissy about tomorrow’s bridal shower.
“I assume I’m driving you to that?”
Renee bats her eyelashes and rests her chin on the backs of her hands, framing her face in a look of sheer innocence. “Sorry to always be that friend,” she says.
There’s a kick in my stomach. Right. Because we’re friends.
I roll my eyes just to pull myself away from the adorable face she’s making. “I really don’t know how you live here without a car.”
“Here?” Renee points toward the floor. “We are talking about Chicago, Illinois, right? The city with arguably the best public transportation in the country?”
“Sounds like maybe you’d prefer to take the train.”
“Never mind.” Renee straightens. “I take it back. Chicago is a driving city. Thank God I have you, Alice.” Every word drips with sarcasm, but my body can’t take a joke.
I swallow the hot pulse in my throat and hit play on a movie that I would detest under any other circumstances, but it’s different with Renee.
Everything is. She works up a sweat dancing in her seat, and when she lifts her hair up off her shoulders, I catch a flash of the sun tattoo between her shoulder blades.
“You never finished telling me about your tattoos,” I point out.
“I didn’t, did I?” This time, she’s the one to pause the movie, freezing Danny Zuko in the middle of “Greased Lightnin’.” She turns her wrist over, showing off the phases of the moon.
“This one.” Her finger lands on the waxing gibbous. “Is a reminder that if the moon is meant to change, so are we.”
“Beautiful.”
“And the sun.” She motions to her back, then pauses, scrunches her face up tight, and shuts her eyes so she doesn’t have to look at me when she says, “So I was in a production of Annie.”
My eyes go wide. All I can whisper is “No.”
“I saw the sun on this tattoo flash sheet and thought—”
“Please. I hate where this is going.”
“…Oh, the sun will come out tomorrow.”
“No,” I repeat. “Take it back.”
Renee shakes her head, and when her eyes open, they’re filled with not a small amount of glee. “I can’t take it back. It’s tattooed on my body forever.”
“I wish I’d never asked.”
“Too late.” A coy smile tugs her lips into a perfect open parenthesis. “At least now I don’t have to carry my most embarrassing secret alone.”
“Is that really your most embarrassing secret?” I challenge. “That you have an Annie tattoo?”
Renee rakes her teeth over her bottom lip as she thinks. “I think my most embarrassing secret is that I love my Annie tattoo.” She rests her elbow on the back of the couch, chin in her hand as she turns the question back on me. “What about you? What’s your most embarrassing secret?”
“What is this, an eighth-grade slumber party?”
But Renee looks at me expectantly, so I lie.
I pick some drunken story from my early twenties, something innocuous that barely earns a reaction.
I’m breaking my promise to be honest, but I can’t tell her the truth: My most embarrassing secret by a landslide is that I have a raging crush on my fellow bridesmaid.
Gin’s I Do Crew
Chrissy Amato
Hey girlie pops! It’s almost bridal shower time!
!!!! Not to brag, but Rishi’s mom and I are practically BFFs now.
My girl Asha and I have patio setup totally under control, so all you lovely ladies need to do is show up and shower our girl Gin with all the love and attention she obviously deserves!
Oh, and presents too. Duh. Lots of presents.
Gin Bennett
You’re the best Chriss. <3 And omg, of course you and my future mother-in-law are friends now, ha ha.
Chrissy Amato
ALSO…you’re gonna laugh. But. Waiter Boy is allegedly working the day of the shower.
Gin Bennett
OMG
Chrissy Amato
But we’re gonna be busy as fuuuuuck. So can you guys keep an eye out for him for me? Sending you a pic so you know which hottie we’re looking for.
Renee Roberts
CHRISSY WHY
Gin Bennett
OMG NO CHRISS
Renee Roberts
OF ALL PICTURES TO SEND
Gin Bennett
I’m SCREAMING
Alice Pierce
What the hell is going on why did I just open my phone to a full nude of Waiter Boy
Chrissy Amato
It’s the only full body pic I have!!!!
Alice Pierce
You’re unhinged
Gin Bennett
I’m crying this is so funny
Renee Roberts
He is pretty hot though…
Chrissy Amato
Right?!?!?!?! The abs?! THE BICEPS?!?! BYE.