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I’m buying my own shoes, and they won’t look anything like hers.
24
IAN
“The course of true love never did run smooth.”Act I, Scene II
It’s hard to watch rehearsals for a romantic play when your own love life is more like a tragedy.A Midsummer Night’s Dreamisn’t the height of romance, but it involves just enough to make me regret coming to rehearsal tonight. Unfortunately, lighting design stops for no man. I wanted to run through my light cues one more time before I programmed them, and a full rehearsal was the way to do it.
Tucked up in the top row of the theater, I try to focus only on the thing I’m supposed to be focusing on—the lights and the cues—but it’s hard when I keep hearing snippets from the show like, “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.”
It’s also hard to focus when I keep looking for deep auburn hair shaped into space buns. Jade never appears. And by the time the cast gets to intermission, I haven’t done enough with my light cues to make it worth staying. I’ve got a two-and-a-half-hour drive home anyway, so I’m going to call it a night on this.
I sneak out of the audience, trying to avoid anyone who might want to chat. It’s been a week since I last saw Jade, but every time I’m in the theater building, someone asks me where she is. They don’t know we aren’t talking, and they don’t know that question makes me feel like I’m being stabbed, so I want to avoid it altogether tonight if I can.
I’m almost in the clear, the front doors in sight, but someone familiar is sitting on the benches in the lobby. Unfortunately, that person is dating Jade’s best friend.
“Ian, hey!” Mac says, standing and giving me one of those bro hugs that’s something between a high-five, a handshake, and a one-armed hug.
“Hey, Mac. What are you doing here?” It’s the Saturday before Thanksgiving and a lot of the student body is already gone for the week off. I don’t even comment on how late it is, because there’s no such thing in the theater. People are in this building at all hours of the day. I’ve been known to focus a full grid of lights at midnight because it was the only time I had in my schedule.
“Got a rehearsal for my acting class. The final is next month, and neither my scene partner nor I are leaving to go home ’til tomorrow, so we thought ‘What the hell.’ Figured the theater would be quiet. Wasn’t expecting there to be aMidsummerrehearsal.”
He’s beaming talking about rehearsing. His excitement for it all—the rehearsals, the energy—I get it. I feel the same about lights and designing shows. As for performing? I was never excited about rehearsal, just about seeing Jade.
And just like that, I’m thinking about Jade again. Standing here with Mac, I’m itching to mention her. Her name is right on the tip of my tongue.
Mac has surely seen her since last week. They live in the same apartment. Maybe he knows how she is. Maybe she’s talked about me or?—
“So do we talk about the elephant in the room?” Mac asks, and I can’t decide if I should laugh, cry, sigh deeply, or just thank him for saving me from myself.
“We don’t have to,” I say, even though I desperately want to. Mac is cool, though, and I need to play it cool. “I don’t want to put you in a weird position.”
He just shrugs. “She is my friend, but mostly she’s my girlfriend’s friend.”
It’s all the permission I need.
“How is she?” I ask, words spilling out of me.
He pulls his lips kind of tight and tips his head from side to side. “Okay, I guess? You know, it’s weird, because she went through a breakup a few months ago. Earlier this year. She was with . . . Oh, what were their names?”
“Greg and Anna,” I say.
“Yes. Greg and Anna. She was with them, and Jessie told me they were saying ‘I love you’ to each other.”
“All three of them?” Jade didn’t mention they were exchanging “I love yous.”
“No, no—Greg and Anna said it to each other. Or maybe it was just one of them who said it first. I don’t know. All I know is that after they said it, and Jade didn’t say it back, Jade just, like . . . left.”
I don’t know how much he knows and the shame of whatever Jade told Mac and Jessie burns my cheeks and my neck. I bet those splotches have appeared.
“Yeah . . . that’s pretty familiar . . .” I say, shifting my weight from one foot to the other.
“After that breakup, she was sad for, like . . . I don’t know, maybe a week? And then she was over it. Literally just wasn’t sad one day. Jessie says she’ll do that—she’ll be, like, sad about a breakup and then just decide she’s over it one day, and she just . . . is.”
I’m not sure what he’s getting at, because it’s been eight days since Jade and I stopped talking or “broke up”—whatever we’re calling it—and now I’m wondering if he’s trying to tell me that the expiration date on her sadness is approaching. Why would Mac be standing here telling me this? He’s looking at me like I should be picking up what he’s putting down, but I’m not.
“I guess I’m not really following what you’re saying,” I say.
