“Like what?”
“Like ‘Your family’s really screwed up’?”
He laughs, shaking his head. “You’re a trip, Rosaline, you know that?”
I shrug. “That’s something.”
“Your uncle’s kind of a misogynist. And at one point your parents had a hard decision to make. But so what? My parents got divorced when I was five, and now my mom lives with a guy who’s been to jail twice, and this morning my twelve-year-old sister broke her arm on the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle. Just because a newspaper doesn’t write articles about us doesn’t mean we aren’t totally fucked.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”
“This is life,” he says. “We have to take it as it comes, because even though some things are really shitty, there’s a lotof really great stuff too.” For a moment his eyebrows cinch in tight. But it’s not a frown. It’s that intense look he gets. The look I saw when he was playing the piano. The one he gets when he really cares about something. And right now he’s looking at me.
Scene Six
I’ve just stubbed my toe,hard, and I’m trying not to scream, but the effort is causing me to sweat up in the wings. Juliet and the Belgian are flitting around stage. I think they’ve gotten better, but it’s hard to tell. The Belgian is still mispronouncing things, and we’re only a week away from opening night.
“Can you hand me the script?” Len whispers.
I’ve been sitting on it, and when I pluck it off the bottom of my chair, the first page sticks stubbornly to my leg. I arch back and try to yank it off, and when I do, I see Len staring at me, this twinkle of laughter in his eye.
“Pretty attached to this performance, huh?”
“Very funny.”
Mrs. Barch calls an intermission break, and Juliet collapsesinto a seat and picks up a water bottle, like she’s a sidelined athlete.
Len is fiddling with some fixture, but the words are out before I even have a chance to filter myself. “About that date,” I blurt out, all at once. Len squints down at me but doesn’t say anything. “You know, how you said Friday night, at the piano.”
Len straightens up. “I haven’t forgotten,” he whispers, “but remember what I said about patience being a virtue?” He’s smiling, the corners of his mouth turned up quirkily at the sides.
“I think it’s overrated.”
“Oh yeah?” Len asks, raising his eyebrows. “What’s made you change your mind?”
I have to think hard before I speak, about constructing coherent, sensible sentences, because being this close to him is making all the words rush out of my head like water back into the ocean in one big, sweepingwhoosh.
“You’re wearing a T-shirt,” I sort of explain.
“It’s my biceps,” he says. “I can’t let them out too often. Too many people want tickets to the gun show.” He sweeps the curl out of his eyes and looks at me. “So,” he says, “does this mean I can take you out tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“You said it: Patience is overrated.”
He puts his hand on mine, and instantly I feel it again, that electric shock. Except this time it doesn’t make me pull away. Itmakes me move closer. His hand is still on mine, and it’s sending a current through my arm and up into my chest. “You do not hold strongly to your beliefs,” I say.
“Not the ones that need changing.” He looks at me, dead-on. It makes my breath catch in my throat, and I have to kind of blow it out and start all over again.
“Okay,” I say. “Pick me up at six?”
“I’ll be there,” he says. He lifts up my hand and touches it to his cheek. “I’ll be right back. I have to grab something from Cooper House.”
I watch him go, with a gigantic smile plastered on my face. Like I’m wearing a set of those wax lips Rob and I used to have when we were younger. And there’s nothing I can do about it. There’s nothing Iwantto do about it. In fact, I’m so caught up in Len that it takes me another minute to realize someone is screaming.
Rob has lobbed himself onto the stage like a tennis ball, and he’s standing in front of Juliet, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. The Belgian has disappeared and so has Mrs. Barch. Besides a few cast members hanging around the sides of the auditorium, they’re the only ones in sight.
“Did you know about this?” he asks. Screams.
