Chapter 37
Week two, Opening Night
Our second week’s opening is much more subdued than the first. Now we are tired, we are a little pleased with ourselves that the show is going so well, and we are cocky. There are always mishaps at this point; the first show is like a rehearsal as we settle back in and let live theater humble us.
I’m leaving in a week. That’s the plan, anyway.
I have no job. There’s still the offer of Listings .
. . I haven’t officially rejected it yet.
Jay keeps calling and I keep ignoring him.
But the longer I am removed from that world, the less I want to return.
The city holds less for me now. I’ve been thinking about trying to move back from TV to theater.
There is an amazing theater scene in the city, so much good work happening.
Theo even told me he has a director friend coming from Stratford this weekend.
I could talk to her. And the glaring option that I barely know what to do with: Stay.
Stay here in North Lake. Be with Will and .
. . what? Live with my parents? Live with him?
Do community theater for the rest of my life, after everything I have achieved? Pour cider?
I avoid the topic, but two days before we close, Will brings it up after breakfast.
“So, what’s next for you?” he asks as casually as if he’s asking what I want for dinner. I am quiet. I knew it was coming. He’s not wrong to bring it up. “Not to sound all needy, I just noticed the show was closing this week.”
“You just noticed, huh?”
“Yeah.” His tone is casual, but he catches my eye and everything is there. “I’m just going to say it: On my end, nothing needs to change, whether you go back to the city or not. Distance doesn’t bother me.”
I have compartmentalized this relationship so much that it barely exists outside the context of the play. Maybe that’s why I have allowed myself to let go as much as I have. But any mention of the future and I slam shut.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I haven’t really thought about it.”
His eyes go blank. “You haven’t thought about it.” He turns away.
“I mean, I really enjoy you.”
“You enjoy me.”
“Stop repeating what I’m saying.” I take his hand. “It makes me nervous.”
He pulls his hand back. “Well, good,” he says.
“I mean, Jesus, Mira, I’m not saying we should get married.
” My eyes widen. “I’m just saying this is a good thing, there’s something here that feels very real.
” He looks straight into my eyes. I look away.
“And I’d like to have you in my life. If you want that.
And I think I’m asking very little of you.
I’m leaving things as open and easy as I can, but come on, it’s not unreasonable to wonder where this is going. ”
I say nothing. “I don’t know.” Finally I say, “I . . . yes, I really like you too.” He looks so young, standing in front of me. He is still so much that sweet seventeen-year-old who drove me home. “It’s just complicated.”
“No.” His voice is short. “You have been living in a bubble; you don’t know ‘complicated.’ You have no idea what ‘complicated’ is.
You don’t see that you have total freedom.
You have opportunity and options, and I am telling you I’m here for all of it.
And you’re playing head games.” He stares at me hard and, when I still say nothing, turns away.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I don’t . . . I don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?”
I sigh. “Can’t we just enjoy right now and figure the rest out after the show?”
“The show’s done in two days.”
“Can we just . . . put a pin in this? For now? I just . . . I need to figure things out.”
I hate this expression on his face. I know I’m the unreasonable one. “Please.”
He turns away and starts loading the dishwasher. “Sure, Mira. Whatever works for you.” I stand there for a minute, but it’s clear the conversation is over. I can let myself out.
“I’ll see you at the theater,” I say.
It’s the first time in days we haven’t spent the whole day together, that we haven’t arrived together.
I go to my parents’ house and sit in my room.
It has become home again over the summer—my clothes are slung over furniture, my makeup covers the dresser.
There’s a stack of books by the bed I meant to read and never got to.
But having spent so many nights away from it makes it feel foreign again.
I go over my lines for something to do, but I know them inside out.
I’m good that way. How can I know my way around a stage, a script, a character with such confidence, but I don’t know how to talk to a man?
I don’t know how to have a relationship, if that’s even what this is.
Onstage, I am really able to lean into Helena’s I’m-an-unlovable-piece-of-shit-ness.
In our last real scene, before the lovers wake up and get married and live happily ever after, we each enter individually, lost and delirious in the woods, each collapsing on the forest floor.
It’s a tiny scene—six lines—but tonight the lines nearly break me:
“O weary night, abate thy hours . . . steal me awhile from my own company.” I am supposed to fall asleep onstage next to Will, not knowing he’s there.
Most nights, he runs a finger down my spine, invisible to the audience.
In the blackout, we are supposed to move closer so as to wake up entwined; Lysander and Hermia, the same.
Tonight, he doesn’t touch me. From the audience, we would indeed look entwined, but we are most definitely not.
He doesn’t hug me after the show, and doesn’t come out for drinks, claiming a headache. He is friendly and congenial as ever to everyone and makes no show of frustration toward me. But if you were looking, and I am, you would notice a subtle shift between us.
“Dude,” says Theo at the pub. “What the hell is going on with you two?”
“What are you talking about?” I feign surprise, but Theo, like everyone else these days, apparently, sees right through me.
“Trouble in paradise,” he says. Not a question. “What happened?”
I tell him everything. I tell him my confusion, my theory that I don’t know how to love. “Bullshit,” he says.
“No, but actually, Theo, look at my life. I have these weird parents who barely notice me, unless I can fill a spot on their stage. And, like, their marriage isn’t exactly a perfect example.
I have never had a relationship longer than six months, despite my best efforts.
Honestly, these days, you are my best relationship . . .”
“And you ghosted me for the better part of ten years,” he says.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that.” Theo gives me a look. “I really am.”
“Why was that, Mirabel?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
He stares at me for a long moment. “We were best friends.”
“I was in love with you.” Why is he doing this? “You broke my heart.”
“Yeah, I’m gay,” he says a little sharply. “You need to forgive me for that.”
“Whoa, Theo.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t love you too.” He softens a little. “Don’t still love you.”
I’m quiet for a long moment. “For a long time I wondered if you were the love of my life.”
He leans back and sighs. “Ah, buddy. What love? What life?”
“What do you mean?”
“What version of love? What version of life? Can’t we be the loves of each other’s lives in this beautiful friendship? Why does the meaning end at romance? Why this idea that there is only one? Don’t be so finite. It’s very boring.”
I take this in. “I didn’t think it mattered. I didn’t think I mattered,” I say. “You got so successful, and I . . . and I was embarrassed.”
“I don’t care about that. Like, at all.”
“I do, Theo. I felt like a failure. And then when I got successful, it felt weird to reach out. Like too much time had passed.”
“You didn’t think you mattered.” He shakes his head. I shrug. I finish my drink. “Mirabel. You matter a lot. You broke my heart too.” I look up at him, surprised. “You did. I missed you so much. I thought you just didn’t like me anymore.”
I grab his hands. “Oh, no! That’s so sad!”
“Well, yeah.” He shrugs. He means it. I really hurt him.
I get up and slip into his side of the booth.
I pull him toward me. “I’m so sorry, Theo.
” He mock-resists me, but I pull him closer.
“You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met, and it just never made sense to me that you actually wanted to be my friend.
” I pull away. “I thought I was just your North Lake friend, and when you got out in the world, you would realize I am just . . . whatever. I don’t know. ”
“So you pulled out first,” he says, before realizing what he’s just said. We look at each other and burst out laughing.
“Oh, God.” I laugh, wiping tears away. “Why am I so fucked up?”
“Maybe because the first person you ever really loved couldn’t love you back the way you needed me to?” He nudges me gently.
I brush it off. “That’s giving yourself a lot of credit,” I say, still laughing a little, but it stings in exactly the right place for me to know he could be right. “That definitely might have been true in the past, but . . . I feel like it’s not an excuse.”
He pulls me in close. “You are loved, Mirabel. And lovable.” He kisses the top of my head. “But it’s up to you to accept that.” I know he’s right. I just don’t know how to begin to do that. Especially this time, with Will, when the stakes are climbing sky high.