Chapter Eighteen
Back at Jazz’s, Dylan began making a tomato, watermelon, and feta salad while Lola, Vicky, and Annie assembled the backyard for guests, ferrying bottles of wine and cans of seltzer and stringing up little white lights.
Jazz phoned in an order for pizza, bustling around with joyful anticipation, declaring things like, “Mini-mingles offer maximum chances for fun!”
Dylan was alone in the kitchen slicing tomatoes when Vicky came in, bending over to dig for cloth napkins in a bottom drawer. She’d changed into a summery red satin slip dress that slid over her curves. Not something she’d worn before.
Dylan didn’t bother hiding their open ogling, wolf whistling low.
Vicky smirked over her shoulder. “Like what you see, Rogers?”
“Always. Can I follow you? Do you have a Substack?”
Vicky started folding the napkins. “Only for paid subscribers.”
“Sign me up.” Dylan slid the tomatoes into a bowl. “Founding member.”
“Fair warning: I post daily.”
“Make it hourly. I’m begging you.”
Vicky giggled as Jazz and Lola passed through, debating if they had enough wine.
Vicky moved next to Dylan, reaching to a high shelf for a serving platter. “I love seeing you beg,” she whispered. The curve of her breast brushed Dylan’s upper arm.
Dylan almost groaned. It took all their strength not to position Vicky against the counter and kiss that sticky gloss off her cheeky mouth. Heat boiled beneath their legs. “Jesus, Fang. You should come with a health warning.”
Vicky grabbed the platter without putting any distance between them. Their mouths were only inches apart. “Buyer beware. Think you can handle me?”
“I do.” Dylan inched even closer, their hips now flush. “I’m going to devour you like Thanksgiving dinner, Vicky.” Dylan was so horny, they’d officially lost control of their mouth. “When I’m done, you’ll never be able to look at a turkey again.”
Vicky half laughed, half whimpered. “What about cranberry sauce?”
“Cranberry sauce?” Panting, Dylan ran their fingers through Vicky’s luxuriously thick hair, tangling a decadent fistful and tugging. “You won’t even remember what it is—”
“Hello?” Their neighborhood grocer’s voice sounded down the hall.
Startled, Dylan and Vicky went to jerk apart, but Dylan’s hand was still twisted in Vicky’s hair. “Ow!” Vicky yelped.
“There you are!” Clyde beamed in the kitchen doorway, looking surprisingly put together in a button-down.
“Oh, I see,” Dylan desperately improvised, pretending to peer at Vicky’s ear while extracting their fingers from her hair, “yes, yes—you’re right. Incredible.”
“What’s that?” Clyde asked, setting a bottle of red wine and some flowers on the counter.
“Well, Vicky was just showing me…” Dylan gestured at Vicky’s ear, looking to Vicky like help me.
“How one of my earlobes…” Vicky continued uncertainly.
“Is bigger. Than the other,” Dylan finished.
“That’s right,” Vicky said, folding her arms. “It’s a family thing. Same for both my sisters. We all have one earlobe that’s bigger than the other.”
Clyde looked fascinated. “Really?”
“That must make shopping for earrings hard,” Dylan offered, trying to keep a straight face.
“Oh.” Vicky lifted her gaze skyward. “You have no idea.”
Clyde leaned closer, examining Vicky’s ears. “They look the same to me.”
“Bless your heart!” Vicky wailed. “Where were you during middle school? The teasing was relentless.” She hooked her arm into his. “Backyard’s this way. Almost done with that salad, Rogers?” she added over one shoulder, winking at Dylan as she hustled Clyde out.
Deborah, Mikki, Jamie, and all four teens arrived, walking wide-eyed into the eccentric home. The house filled with lively chatter, punctuated with bursts of laughter.
Dylan had just finished up in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. “Must be the pizza,” they said to Deborah, handing her a glass of the zinfandel she’d brought. “ ’Scuse me.”
Dylan headed for the front door, just in time to hear the long-haired pizza guy tell Jazz, “Sorry, ma’am—your card’s been declined.”
Ten white pizza boxes were stacked on the porch behind him. Jazz sounded tense. “Try it again.”
The delivery guy ran the card, prompting a low, decisive beep from the handheld card reader.
“Damn,” Jazz muttered. “What’s the total?”
“Two hundred and sixty-eight dollars,” he said.
Jazz gaped. “For pizza?”
“I got it.” Dylan stepped in, extracting a credit card from the slim wallet in their back pocket.
“Absolutely not,” Jazz said, trying to bat Dylan’s hand away. “This is my treat. I can take care of my own cast!”
With a maxed-out credit card? Was Jazz proud or delusional?
“Course you can,” Dylan said, pushing the card into the pizza guy’s hand. “This is a thank-you for doing just that.”
“I don’t need charity,” Jazz insisted. “I think I have some emergency cash in a shoebox upstairs—”
Thankfully, the card reader began spitting out a receipt. “Save it for a rainy day,” Dylan said, moving to collect the boxes.
They’d forgotten that the play was important not just emotionally but practically.
Jazz was broke. The theater was on the brink. The play had to work.
· · ·
The cast ate around the long wooden table in the backyard, passing pizza boxes and serving one another salad.
Despite the fact that Dylan hadn’t snagged a seat next to Vicky, they were having fun.
In no other world would they be breaking bread with this eclectic group of humans.
Community theater wasn’t just about putting on a show.
It was about strengthening a town. It gave folks from all walks of life a chance to step into a different role for themselves: expand the definition of their own identity and more clearly understand the identities of others.
Love thy neighbor had never meant that much to Dylan, especially living in a city where people didn’t know who lived next door.
But now, watching all these lovable oddballs chat and laugh, the phrase glimmered anew in their mind.
Especially as Dylan’s gaze landed—once again—on Vicky, who was indulging Clyde’s theory that Gertrude was actually a spy sent by a rival kingdom to gather intelligence on Denmark.
“Interesting,” Vicky allowed.
Dylan smiled and tuned into the conversation at the other end of the table, where the talk had turned to the play. “It seems to me,” Annie was saying, “that the characters are aware they have no free will, but they don’t really try to fight it. Rosencrantz is quite passive, even about death.”
“Maybe because it’s such a hard thing to get your head around,” Deborah said. “I always laugh at that line about eternity being a terrible thought and where’s it going to end because it is sort of impossible to comprehend. The longest thing I usually have to get through is tax season.”
All the adults chuckled, except Annie, who looked a little pensive. “I guess Rosencrantz’s passivity makes me think about my own, in some way.”
“What do you mean?” Deborah asked.
“Well, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern waste a lot of their time questioning and philosophizing instead of deciding and doing,” Annie said. “Questioning things can be easier than doing something.” Her gaze slipped to Lola, who ducked her eyes and blushed.
Now, that was interesting.
“And isn’t Stoppard saying questioning things is pointless?
” Mikki asked, swiping her long blond bangs out of her eyes.
“Because people can never truly understand the world and their place in it? The Player literally says, You can’t go through life questioning your situation at every turn.
” The entire table was tuned into the discussion now, all looking at Mikki.
She licked her lips, seeming to summon some courage.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I spent weeks—months—just asking why me? How had this happened? What if I’d just said, Sorry, pal, no glove, no love?
Then, one day, I caught sight of my bump in the bathroom mirror and realized all that questioning was totally pointless.
I was having a baby. That was the day I called my mom and asked if I could come home.
I didn’t have time for questions. I had to act. ”
The table nodded thoughtfully. A sweep of country-bright stars twinkled overhead. The air smelled faintly like the citronella candles keeping the mosquitoes at bay.
“I felt that way when my husband died,” Deborah said. “At first, there were so many questions—why, why, why? But then, after the funeral, I got a mortgage bill. I realized, Oh shit. I need a job. That’s when I started working part-time at You Nailed It. Now I own it. Funny how things work out.”
Jamie nodded, leaning forward on the table.
“I definitely felt the existential dread when Sara—that’s my ex—broke off our engagement.
In my case, I think I was too focused on doing, and not enough on questioning.
I was doing what was expected of me—grow up, get married—but after it all fell apart, I realized there were signs.
I just ignored them. Too busy living the life I thought I should lead. ”
“Mmm.” Across the table, Lola nodded intently. This, evidently, resonated.
“What else?” Jazz looked to the teenagers. “Let’s hear from someone who hasn’t spoken yet.”
“I have a question.” Emery looked at Lola. “When the Player says, We’re actors. We’re the opposite of people, does that, like, offend you?”
This invoked a titter of laughter, including from Lola.
“Does it offend me?” she asked with a smile.
“No. It’s a very funny line, especially as it’s given by an actor: an example of meta-theater.
To me, this line can be interpreted several ways.
Actors play roles and adopt personas that aren’t real.
People experience real emotions, real events.
Actors create illusions. Real life is not an illusion.
Actors are bound by the script. People can say anything they like. ”
Annie reached for her glass, taking a big sip of wine.
Lola went on. “There’s a point in the play when the Player gets angry that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern left when the Tragedians were performing, leaving the actors with no one to watch them.
He—or I guess she,” Lola amended, acknowledging Vicky, “has a line about the humiliation of being tricked out of the single assumption that makes their existence viable—that somebody is watching. To me, that raises questions about whether we have a fixed identity or are we shaped by the ways that others view us? Are our words and actions still meaningful if no one is there to be affected by them?”
The table lapsed into thoughtful silence.
Zoe was the first to speak, half teasing, half earnest. “I feel so lucky to be here.” She lifted her glass of seltzer, splashed with the parent-approved half cup of wine. “To Lola and Jazz. Our fearless leaders.”
“To Lola and Jazz.” The table chorused, glasses raised.
Dylan held Vicky’s gaze as they all sipped. She smiled at Dylan, tugging her left earlobe.
Dylan grinned back, tugging their own in response, their chest billowing with a needy, greedy sort of warmth.
Across the table, Jazz, Clyde, and Deb began discussing the town’s approval of a new rainbow crosswalk. Jamie refilled Mikki’s drink, their fingers brushing. The teens hunched over a phone, debating which songs “slapped” and which were “cringe” for the cast party playlist: Hamlet, but Make It Hot.
Dylan leaned back in their chair, soaking it all in.
Love thy neighbor. This was the kind of love they trusted. Big, messy, collective. Built through shared time and effort. The kind that wasn’t likely to fizzle out for no good reason at all.
They could build a business. Build a play. Even build a moment like this—light-strung, wine-soaked.
But build a life with someone? That felt like trying to balance glassware on a trampoline. One wrong move and everything shattered.
Wait, why were they even thinking about this? Dylan blanched, shooing off the thoughts like an errant mosquito.
This glorious night, full of weirdos and warmth, was what they wanted to be paying attention to.
This, and the curve of Vicky Fang’s neck.