Chapter 22
ALEX
One day until the dress rehearsal.
Two days until the holiday show and Winter Festival party.
And then twenty-one glorious days of winter break.
For the past seven years, I have dreaded the holidays because it meant weeks of shopping and wrapping and hiding presents and driving my kid to and from holiday parties and figuring out who would look after Ryder so Nova and I could go to the events that we had to go to, plus traveling across the country to spend time with both sets of Ryder’s grandparents, but this year…
Fuck yeah, winter break. Nova’s in Asia, her parents can go fuck themselves, my parents will be looking after Ryder whenever possible, and I’m going to break the bed fucking Miss Stiles all the way into next year.
It’s around eight thirty on a school night, and I’m finally alone with Emilia here in the Silver Lake Elementary School auditorium.
Franklin just left after helping us bring the scenery he designed and painted from his garage.
This guy could have a great career as a theatre set designer if he ever decides he wants to make less money.
The canvas he painted of a snow-covered Victorian-era London street scene for a backdrop is stunning.
Beautiful but simple enough to be appropriate for a kids’ show.
This may be a step down from the Bernard B.
Jacobs Theatre on Broadway by other people’s standards, but I’m really fucking proud of this production and what these kids have accomplished in just over a month.
And as much as I can’t wait for all of this to be over so I can get to the good stuff with Emilia, I can’t wait to see them perform it in front of an audience.
We decided to let the students use English accents, because little American kids with fake English accents are almost as awesome as Muppets with fake English accents.
For the past couple of weeks, Ryder has been strolling around the house in his Storyteller costume, saying things like, “Oi! So this ol’ chap Marley was already dead, right?
Dead as a doornail, eh. Deader than a doornail, even.
How dead is a doornail, you wanna know? Bloody dead.
So what I’m sayin’ ’ere is—this Marley bloke was really, bloody dead. All right?”
I need to start turning down the volume when I watch Peaky Blinders.
He’s at my parents’ house, and I’ve called to say good night to him and told him I’ll pick him up later, when he’s asleep.
Emilia is wearing her black-rimmed glasses, a Baby Yoda T-shirt, and baggy overalls.
Her hair is up in a messy bun, and even though I’m quite certain that she’s trying to look as unsexy as possible, I know for a fact that it will only take me two seconds tops to unhook those overalls. And I plan to.
We’ve arranged the desk and the dining table and the canopy bed on stage.
Now, Emilia and I are alone together in the building and taking our sweet time hanging the painted canvas from the curtain rod above the back of the small stage.
She’s holding the very steady A-frame step ladder steady for me and fretting about my safety.
I have never fallen off a ladder in my life, and I don’t intend to start now.
But she’s got that nervous energy. And I can’t tap into it in the way that I want to just yet.
So I try to take her mind off the possibility that I might fall by asking her about something that I’ve been dying to ask for a while.
“So what’s the deal with your dick of an ex?”
She wrinkles her nose, still looking up at me. “What do you mean?”
“I’m assuming he lives in Paso Robles? You still in touch with him?”
“No. He sends me random texts every now and then. Occasionally I’ll send him a very brief, polite response. But mostly I try to ignore him.”
“How long were you together for? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Um. Years. I met him in college. We broke up a few months before I moved here. I mean, we were off and on for a while before that.”
“So it was serious?”
“I mean. We lived together.”
“Ah. So you were in love with him.”
She looks down, pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and then immediately puts her hand back on the ladder frame.
She is silent and reflective for a moment, and I like that.
“I felt that I should be in love with him. I did love him. I was attracted to him. I know that’s true.
But I think what I’ve learned from that whole experience is that at least half of what makes a relationship last is your decision to commit to it.
And at least half of that decision to stay committed to it is a stubborn need to be right about your life choices. That was true for me with him, anyway.”
I finish hanging the center of the canvas and climb down so I can move the ladder a few feet to the right.
“I think you’re on to something,” I tell her and then climb up the ladder again. “How did it end?”
“You mean why did it end?”
“If you want to tell me, sure.”
“Well, nobody cheated. And we didn’t have a lot of fights or anything.
A former professor of mine, who knew that I had originally planned to move to LA to teach, sent me an email about a job that was going to be available the next semester.
Not this job—it was at a private school in Hollywood.
I looked into it and the neighborhood. And I thought about it for ages.
I finally brought it up to Brent—that’s his name.
And long story short, he wouldn’t even consider moving to LA if I got a job here.
Even though he knew how much I’d wanted to, back when we first met.
But he had gotten a really good job in Paso Robles when I was still in college, and it was just expected that I would stay there with him…
Anyway. I was mad. And I emailed about the job anyway, but it was too late by then.
And then I was really mad. More at myself, really.
And it just gave me this whole new perspective on things and I finally realized what a rut I’d been in with him.
And I told him I was going to move to LA.
He said he wouldn’t do long-distance with me and he definitely wouldn’t move, so that was it.
And almost as soon as we’d decided to break up, that same prof told me about this job. And I got it, and here I am.”
“I’m really glad you’re here, Emilia.”
Whatever residual anger she had toward Brent—what a dickhead name—whatever it was that got stirred up by those memories seems to dissipate. She smiles up at me. “Me too.”
It’s quiet. Even on this small stage, even in the auditorium of an elementary school, there’s something so sexy about being alone with someone in a theater.
Maybe because for me, theatre has always represented infinite possibilities within specific restraints.
Transforming the silence of an empty space into something moving, something that resonates on a visceral level—that always gets me going.
Being in this space with someone who resonates with me in a visceral way, that gets me off on a whole other level.
“What’s the deal with your ex-wife?” she finally asks.
“You sure you want me to talk about her?”
“Hey, I showed you mine; now you have to show me yours.” She shakes her head, laughing and blushing. “So to speak.”
“Well…her name’s Nova Tully. She was a dancer in New York.
I had seen her in a show and I’d seen her around, and I had a crush on her when I was in college.
She was a few years older than me and wouldn’t date me when I was a student.
But I kept chasing her anyway. She’s electric.
Y’know? I mean, I was twenty when I met her, and she was stunning.
It felt like I was being struck by lightning every time she looked at me.
If I met her for the first time now, at thirty-two, I doubt that I’d have the same reaction. ”
When you look at me, I want to say, it’s like the sun shining through the clouds or the way you catch your breath when you look up at the night sky in LA and actually see it painted with stars.
I finish securing the backdrop and climb down the ladder, holding her gaze the whole time.
When I’m on the bottom step, she moves away from me.
As if holding my gaze and exchanging this information while being this close to me is somehow dangerous.
I hop down and rest my forearms on one of the ladder steps and wait for her to get comfortable with this.
“She went on a couple of world tours with a dance company, so I didn’t see her for a few years.
The senior-year theatre production that I directed moved to off-Broadway, and I worked my ass off to get taken seriously as a young director in New York.
And I’m not saying I was doing it for her—I was ambitious long before I met her—but in the back of my mind I was always thinking, well, I wonder if Nova Tully would date me now?
Emilia slowly makes her way to the other side of the A-frame ladder and rests her forearms on a rung, opposite me. Our hands are inches away from each other, and I can see that hers are trembling just a little.
“By the time I came back to town, I was the youngest Tony nominee for Best Direction in history. And we had this whirlwind romance that resulted in us getting married in Vegas when I was twenty-four. The next year, Ryder was born, and…she did want to have him. But she was really worried that she wouldn’t have a dance career after she had a baby.
And I mean, she didn’t, for a while.” I take a step away from the ladder and slowly walk around it.
Emilia walks around the other way, to where I was standing and grips one of the steps. The whites of her wide blue eyes are so bright and her pupils are huge. I assume the same stance on the other side of the ladder where she once was and continue the story.