Chapter Seventeen #2
Gin meanwhile has gone pale as a bedsheet, and I feel terrible—she must think I’m being callous with my planning, not prioritizing her wedding.
I’m stammering for the right thing to say, which I’m famously horrible at; I’ve put my foot in my mouth so many times that my toes should be permanently pruny.
Gin speaks up first, voice baked in dismay.
“I can’t believe I booked my wedding two days after the anniversary of your dad’s death.”
My breath halts. “What? I mean…Gin, it’s fine.”
Her eyes are shiny, the tears ready to spill over.
“Seriously, Gin. Don’t worry about that. It’s…I’m just glad that I’ll be able to go to both.”
“Right.” Her face pinches just a decimal of a fraction. “But like…are we invited to the concert?”
This I didn’t expect at all. “Do…do you want to come or—”
“Of course I want to come.” Her voice is wrapped in hurt.
“I’m sorry, I figured you couldn’t go. You did hear me say…it’s two days before your wedding.”
“So?”
“So won’t you need to be setting up and, I don’t know, getting your nails done? Greeting your out-of-town guests?”
“Rishi’s brother is our only out-of-town guest,” Gin reminds me. “And if it’s important to you, I’ll be there. And I’d love to bring Rishi, too.”
“Could we carpool?” Renee chimes in. “Sorry to always be that person.”
Surprise bursts in Gin’s eyes, and I watch her gaze track from Renee to me.
“If you’re all going, then I’m going.” Chrissy slings an arm around the bride and cracks a smile. “Concert with the girlies, then we get Gin married. Best weekend ever, right? How lucky are we?”
It’s corny, but it really feels true. I feel so lucky to be a part of a group that would only form under one very specific set of circumstances: Virginia Bennett falling in love.
But that circumstance, as it is, will be coming to a close before we know it, and I’m suddenly sad.
After the vows are said and done, what will we have in common?
We’ll see Gin individually, I’m sure, and maybe reunite for a baby shower or a karaoke costume party down the line.
It’ll be fine, but it’ll never be quite like this again.
Not with Gin and Chrissy. Certainly not with Renee.
Without the wedding in common, will we even see each other?
My poor little heart soars and stings all at once, knowing all things ever do is change.
At the first break in the rain, we say our goodbyes, scattering to our respective cars and sexy waiters.
“Nicely done finding Waiter Boy.” Renee buckles her seat belt, then in a lower voice adds, “Forgetting to tell the bride about the memorial show, however?”
I clack my tongue and reverse out of my parking spot, one arm thrown lazily around the passenger seat headrest. It’s an honest accident that my fingertips brush through Renee’s hair, but it’s so impossibly soft that I have to stop myself from doing it again on purpose.
Renee’s softness is an infinite surprise.
She plays DJ for the whole drive home, leading with the first few tracks off The Handful’s platinum record, Songs for Alice. My heart squeezes in my chest as she sings along, not missing so much as a word.
“Have you been studying?” I tease, and Renee shrugs and purses her lips, but she can’t hide the smile in her eyes. When the chorus comes in, she lets a high note rip, and I whistle. “Damn! Ricky Pierce, who?!”
We make it through most of the record this way, both of us singing along—but Renee is performing, and it’s a fight to keep my eyes on the road. Every song sounds that much better with her harmonies.
And then, when I least expect it, a betrayal. She switches to a song from Rent.
I snatch the phone out of her hand. “This truck is a no-musical-theater zone.”
“Oh, come on. Just this one song,” Renee pleads. “It’s a duet.”
“No way, Broadway.” I keep one eye on the road while queuing up something listenable.
“Pleeeease. I want you to hear it,” she begs. “Listen to the words. I’ve been thinking maybe you could sing the lower part and—”
I make a big show of flipping on my turn signal and shifting one lane closer to the shoulder. “I’m pulling over. You’re walking home.”
Renee only grins, her brow arching in a silent challenge. She’s calling my bluff. I flip the turn signal off, trying not to feel the way her smug smile leaves me dizzy.
“What is it with you and musicals?” she asks. “What tragic theatrical backstory are you hiding?”
It’s a perfect opening. “I’ll tell you if you tell me what the so-called work stuff on your phone was earlier.”
My eyes are fixed ahead, but I can feel Renee’s energy slip in the silence, the musical theater thankfully paused. “Fine,” she says, voice clipped. “It was a rejection email. From the Philharmonic.” She sighs, and something withers inside me. “I really, really thought I was gonna get that job.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.” I’m not sure what else to say.
“It’s okay,” Renee says, but neither of us are convinced.
“It’s…well, it’s not super okay. But I’m being optimistic.
I’m waiting to hear back from that theater in the suburbs, and one of my former coworkers is on the hiring committee, so…
” She sighs again, fully resetting as she stares down at her hands.
“Okay. Sorry. Let’s move on. Your turn.”
I swallow hard. “You’re not gonna like it.”
“So? You have to. That’s the deal. What’s your problem with musicals?”
I clear my throat. “I, uh. I dated a girl for four years whose alarm clock was ‘The Wizard and I.’ ”
“That’s seriously it?”
“Yes.”
“You hate musical theater because of Gin’s alarm clock.” Renee’s tone demands a better explanation. But there isn’t one.
“You would hate it, too, if you woke up to that song every day.”
“It’s a very good song,” Renee says.
“Not for an alarm!” I throw a hand up, exasperated.
“Not for four years! I’m traumatized! And it’s not all songs from musicals.
It’s this one specific type of song that I really hate.
It’s hard to describe. It’s those songs where the character is like…
” I look longingly into the distance, eyes wide and mouth agape in the phoniest, most theatrical face I can muster.
Renee reaches over and softly swats my cheek, forcing my eyes back on the road.
“I think I know what you mean,” she says. “When we get that inner look at the desires of the main character. They’re called ‘I want’ songs.”
“Well, I do not want the ‘I want’ songs,” I say plainly. “They suck.”
“You heard it here first, folks. Alice Pierce hates songs about following your dreams.”
“I am pro-dream and pro-song,” I insist. “I am anti–corny bullshit. Like, why am I listening to this and feeling embarrassed?”
Renee doesn’t answer right away, and I let my eyes wander to the passenger seat in search of evidence that I’ve offended her. Cautiously, she steps into a thought.
“I think chasing your dreams is kind of embarrassing,” she says.
“You have to be vulnerable enough to put yourself out there, and you’re probably going to fail a lot before you get what you want.
And it’s embarrassing to even be the type of person who thinks they can do something or be somebody.
It’s embarrassing to go on auditions and get rejected, to put in all this work for nothing over and over again with the delusion that eventually it’ll be something. ”
“Huh.” I lick my lips, considering. “I disagree.”
“Oh?”
“Because I think the most embarrassing thing would be to love something and not go after it.”
A small sigh dies in Renee’s throat. “A little easier for you to say.”
“Financially? Sure. But so many people don’t feel that sort of passion about anything in the first place.
And then there are people like you.” My gaze slices sideways, a prickle of heat in my throat.
“People who have this remarkable talent and a love for it and instead of pursuing it, you go and get an office job. And that’s fine.
It’s important. It’s wonderful, even—to be comfortable, and we have to survive.
But if you never even tried to sing or act or perform again…
that’s the most embarrassing shit I can think of. That’s a waste.”
The silence cuts sharper with each passing second. As I turn down Renee’s block, I pull back from the gas, buying us a little more time.
“You’ve got a lot to say about my talent for someone who fell asleep while I was onstage,” she finally says.
“Now that.” I slap the steering wheel and shift the truck into park.
“That is embarrassing. Don’t tell me that it’s embarrassing to chase after what you want when there are people out there, people like me, who are snoring in the audience while someone is on stage actually doing what they set out to do. ”
The flash of surprise on Renee’s face fades into something more gracious.
She considers me for a moment, then lays her hand over mine on the gear shift.
Electricity zips up my fingers and stalls in my chest, the best and most remarkable feeling.
I’m frozen in her cool blue stare but sweating beneath the heat of her palm.
Opposites. Multitudes. If I could trap this feeling in a bottle, if I could take it like a pill, I’d be hooked on Renee Roberts till the bitter end.
“Thank you,” she says, her voice thick and sweet as honey. “And for what it’s worth, you work really hard. You’re not snoring in the audience anymore.”
“Not until you’re in a show again.”
I wink, then immediately worry I shouldn’t have, but Renee squeezes my hand, and I am one giant, beating heart beneath her touch, one breath away from closing the space between us.
Renee’s voice plays on a loop in my head.
I like you. A lot. You’ve become such a good friend.
But knowing it and feeling it are two different things entirely, and what I feel toward Renee isn’t friendly.
It’s fierce and fiery and increasingly difficult to ignore, especially in moments like this, when it’s just us and she touches me like that.
In a way that likely means nothing to her. It means everything to me.
Hey Dad,
I didn’t realize it until this weekend, but it’s been over a month since the K*rt incident, and I still haven’t spoken to Mom.
Or you! Sorry! Hi! Be proud that I’ve been too wrapped up in the wedding and Renee to talk to my dead dad!
(NOT wrapped up in Renee like that, you sicko! Don’t make it weird!)
Anyway, Mom has texted me a lot, but I don’t know what to say.
Figuring it out would mean thinking about her and Kurt, and I would rather think about almost anything else.
There’s so much going on that I haven’t had the time to sort through my feelings anyway, but I know I’m still…
mad. Mad at Mom. Mad at Kurt. And mad at you.
Because none of this would be happening if you were still around.
If you had figured out a way to feel the hard shit without liquor, then this particular hard shit never would’ve happened to me! So actually, this is your fault! Ha!
I don’t want to feel angry, Dad, and I guess that’s why I’m choosing to ignore it and just feel what I’m feeling with Renee instead.
I’ve never felt this way about anyone. It’s like discovering a new color.
I can hardly wrap my brain around it or the fact that I went without it for so long.
She said that we’re friends, and maybe that’s true for her, but not for me.
You’re the only person I’ve admitted that to.
I’ve barely admitted it to myself, and I may never admit it to Renee.
I’m just so happy to have friends again, no matter how temporary.
I’m scared to ruin it. I’m worried I’ll break it and—well, you and I both know that fixing things isn’t all that simple.
What would you do? I wish you were here to tell me.
Love,
Your Dallas Alice