Chapter 13
A Dry Piece of Toast
There were several reasons I rarely allowed myself more than half of a drink, and I remembered every single one of them when I woke up the morning after the donor dinner, my head pounding, my face puffy, my brain overflowing with a slew of questions about what exactly I’d said and how hard I might have leaned on Rebecca within the small four walls of that Chevy Spark.
I did my best to look social media presentable by the time I arrived at rehearsal, though since that seemed a losing battle, I settled on running early. And hardly because when I ran early I tended to run into Rebecca, but—well, I did. She walked up to the theatre as my car service dropped me off.
“Oh god,” Rebecca said when she saw me, and I worried I looked even worse than I thought. To be fair, she was wearing giant sunglasses and balancing three beverages in her hands. “Morning came fast today, huh.”
“At least you have enough caffeine to get you through,” I said, and she laughed. I worried it would feel awkward after our drunken evening, but it felt the same. Our new normal.
“I thought I’d be nice and get you an herbal tea,” she said. “But last night you kept saying, I don’t drink, I never do this, and I thought maybe just this once you might like some real caffeine.”
She gestured, and so I took both cups from her, the cardboard cup of tea, and the plastic cup, wet with condensation, full of ice and espresso.
“Why me?” I asked, maybe still just—well, not drunk, but something enough that the question popped out of me. “Everyone else must be hungover too.”
“Steph always shows up with her own coffee, and Neil’s rarely here in the morning,” she said. “You, on the other hand …”
“What about me?” I asked as we walked to the building elevator, and even though she was still wearing those huge sunglasses, I saw something in her face shift.
“I was going to say that you seem like you need to be taken care of,” Rebecca said. “But that’s not exactly it.”
We were silent as we rode the elevator up, even as I wanted to scream Well then, Rebecca, what exactly is it?
She joined Kevin once we got into the room, so I sat down alone and pulled out my phone. Aisha had texted, which was fairly unusual in the morning, and when I pulled up our conversation I saw why: apparently last night after I’d gotten home, I’d sent a mess of messages.
REBECCA IS SO CONFUSING
Not confusing MYSTIFYING
Sorry you’re probably sleeping we had a donor dinner and wine LOL
I’m sorry I wouldn’t tell you anything about Rebecca before it’s just embarrassing and makes me look horrible and it’s also so gay and ???
Rebecca is probably fucking tide to go right now and I haven’t had sex IN YEARS if I’m being honest
Aisha I love you will you delete these later goodnight
“Oh my god,” I murmured, as Michael sat down next to me.
“Got enough to drink there?” he asked, as I’d also taken out my water bottle. He was using his regular-slash-theatrical voice but, god, it was loud today.
“It was a late night,” I said feebly.
“Yeah, looks like it,” he said, and I actually laughed as I scrolled to see how Aisha had replied.
Tess, are you OK??
I tapped out an affirmative and an apology and stared at my screen, waiting to see the three dots.
All I’d wanted was to keep everything the same with Aisha, yet I was the one who kept messing that up.
I’d read that coming out could make things easier, lighten one’s emotional load, but nothing felt easier right now.
Glad you’re still alive this morning. I know you never drink, so I hope you’re hydrating. Question - are you free tonight? Would love to talk to you in person if possible.
I didn’t like the sound of talk to you in person if possible, which read very differently than something like catch up with you, but of course I would have cleared all the calendars in the world for Aisha either way.
By the time I’d managed to get through rehearsal, my head still ached and my stomach protested at the thought of any food that wasn’t a dry piece of toast, so I was glad I’d told Aisha just to come over and not to meet me at a restaurant that would be loud and likely not list dry pieces of toast under entrées.
Andy, who’d watched Rosie overnight for me, was waiting at my place, and I thought about asking him to stay so Aisha couldn’t bring up my humiliating drunken texts.
“You OK?” he asked, making his way to the door as Rosie bounced around me in unending loops. “You kind of look …”
“Like crap?”
“I was gonna say sick, but, sure.”
I groaned. “See, this is why I never drink.”
Andy laughed. “No comment. Dodgers this weekend?”
“Always,” I said, nodding.
“Text me if Rosie needs anything. You hydrating?”
“You can’t fix everything with water,” I said, though I’d tried.
Maybe if I hadn’t been so figuratively thirsty I wouldn’t have also sucked down Rebecca’s iced espresso, because while it had definitely woken me up, I still pulsed with an unwelcome faint jittery energy.
It was like she’d gotten into my system.
Aisha was there before long, and I opened up my usual food delivery app and handed it to her in lieu of a greeting.
“Whatever you want,” I said. “I might just have toast though. So I guess pick a place that has toast. And, yes, I know about hydrating, see, I have water.”
Aisha sat down on my sofa, so me and my water took a seat next to her. She clicked off my phone and set it on the coffee table. “Are you OK?”
“Yeah, I’m so sorry about last night. This is why I don’t drink drink, you know.”
“You’re allowed to drunk-text me whenever you want,” she said.
“I don’t want!” I said. “Neil was like, we have to drink all of this sponsored wine, and we just did. And I never get to do anything like that, I have to be so good.”
“Well,” Aisha said gently, “you have to be so controlled, right?”
“If you’re saying I don’t drink because I’m gay,” I said, “just say it.”
I hoped she didn’t notice that the other week I couldn’t even give her a word and now I’d just said the word.
“I’m definitely not saying that.” Aisha studied me. “Can we actually talk? I know you change the subject whenever I ask about Rebecca—”
“If I were obsessing over some man you wouldn’t care,” I said, and she burst into laughter.
“Tess, the only reason I haven’t been pushier until now is that it’s over a woman. If all of this were over some man? I would have swooped in way sooner.”
“She’ll be gone soon,” I said. “The show opens, and I never have to think about her again.”
“Is that what you want?” Aisha asked.
“I don’t get what I want.” I didn’t want to actually name it, the big thing floating into my peripheral vision I refused to focus on. “And it’s not as if Rebecca would—so, yes, within reality, the best outcome is that I never see Rebecca again and I stop acting like a lunatic.”
“Just a thought,” Aisha said, as Rosie hopped up on the sofa between us. “What if you told Rebecca how you felt?”
“Because—because I don’t even know how I feel,” I said while Rosie licked my face. “Besides attracted to her, which is embarrassing.”
“Tess, I’m like a Kinsey 1 and I’m at least a little attracted to Rebecca Frisch.”
“No, obviously, that’s what I mean. She’s the hottest person I’ve ever known and I’m—”
Aisha shrieked with laughter so loudly that Rosie bounced off the couch and hid under the coffee table. “Girl. You are a literal movie star. No one’s punching above her weight here.”
“I like being around her,” I admitted. “She’s so tall and competent and knowledgeable but—you know, there’s that other thing underneath.”
Aisha raised an eyebrow. “What other thing?”
“Like she’s soft too,” I said. “And maybe kind of a nerd sometimes. I mean, she’s scared of raccoons.”
Aisha laughed. “You watched the video!”
“Of course I watched the video!” I admitted. “Anyway. All of that. And sometimes she’ll say something so—I don’t know. Funny like she’s always been. It makes me remember all of it. Not just what I did, but everything before that too.”
“Yeah, do you want to talk about that?” Aisha asked.
“I obviously don’t,” I snapped. When Rosie barked back at me I could feel how I wasn’t on my best behavior. And maybe it was time.
So I told Aisha the whole story. The friendship, the walk back to our room, the way our first night together turned into an entire summer and the unfair promise of an entire life together, and of course the way I broke that promise.
“Hey,” Aisha said, touching my shoulder as I cried softly. “Tess, it’s OK.”
“It’s not,” I said. “I’m a literal villain.”
“Oh my god, do you know how annoyed I’ve been with you, and now instead of getting to yell at you about that, I have to comfort you?” Aisha leaned over and wrapped her arms around me. “It was a long time ago.”
“You can’t let me off the hook for it,” I said, squirming out of her arms. “It was monstrous.”
“You were a kid,” she said. “If I went on trial for everything I did in my early twenties …”
I shook my head. “Please don’t say things to make me feel nice. I’m a bad person at my core—I must be, to have done that to her—and I wouldn’t deserve her even if … you know! Even if my career would allow it. So can we let it go? Villains shouldn’t get happy endings anyway.”
“Tess …” Aisha sighed. “I know that calling yourself a villain lets you off the hook for actually doing shitty things, but the truth is that you’re a non-villain who could stand to remember that sometimes.
Do you know why I’m annoyed with you? It’s nothing to do with your drunk texts, which I loved.
I wish you’d text me more often about hot women you want to bang—”
“I never said bang!”
“—but no, it’s because I got a call from your fucking publicist’s assistant that you want to come by and pose with scholarship kids—”
I hadn’t thought it was heads-up I’d needed to give. “I never said scholarship kids—”
“—for some piece in the Times. So when I asked you to do something with the kids, it was bad for your image—”
“You wanted me to run around acting like Princess Platinum,” I said. “Which is a thing I’ve been trying to do less of. None of, ideally! I thought you understood that.”
“Fine!” she said. “I’d stopped asking! So why do you think that meant it was OK to use me and my kids as some sort of prop for your PR team? I know you’re desperate for your career to change. And I know that things are—to put it mildly—complicated with your ex. And your sexuality. But—”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “They told me I had to do something charitable and that I couldn’t do another thing with Hugs for Pugs. I promise you that I would have never—”
“No, I know,” she said, nodding. “It’s only your PR team that’s made up of assholes. You do pay them to do your bidding though.”
“You know how the business is.”
“Yeah, it’s why I got out of it.” She shook her head and stood up.
“Look. You had a night, and I don’t think anything good can come from continuing this talk now.
If you need to stop by a class and have some photos taken with the kids—as long as it’s a paying group of rich kids with rich parents, it’s fine with me. Next time, just ask me directly, OK?”
I jumped up to walk her out, and resisted throwing my arms around her at the door. This wasn’t a fight, it wasn’t a goodbye, it wasn’t the end to one of my only solid relationships. We’d be fine, because we always were. We had to be! I couldn’t handle it if my world got any smaller.
“Can I ask you something?” Aisha paused in the doorway, and I held my breath. “Did you actually literally think you couldn’t medically have an orgasm?”
I shrieked and pretended to shove her outside, as she cracked up. “If you tell anyone, I’ll have you murdered. But, also, yes.”
“Oh, god, Tess,” she said with a smile. “Do you have toast or do you need me to run to Albertsons for you?”
“Do you mind?” I asked, and she shook her head.
“No, but you’re treating me to the dinner I pick up from All Time for myself.” She hugged me tightly. “Take care of yourself. You’re not a villain. You’re a regular human who could stand to remember that more often.”