Oliver shakes his head in disbelief after he catches up. “Your life is some kind of warped Disney movie.”
“I imagine yours is like living inside a call sheet.”
Oliver sighs.
By some miracle we make it to the wrap party with the cakes unscathed. Less miraculously, they don’t let us actually see any of the actors or the set, so Oliver has to half drag me out of there before I can go snooping by falling back on my go-to: pretending to need to use the bathroom.
“I’ve seen you chug an entire Hydro Flask of water and not pee once through the entirety of Jersey Boys,” he says. “Nice try.”
So instead of breaking in to set and getting a sneaky pic of a famous person to show off to Heather later, we’re right back on a packed 1 train car, the two of us clutching the same pole but doing a very good job of not making eye contact. Or at least trying not to. It’s hard to find anywhere else for my eyes to settle, so they keep snagging on things they shouldn’t. Things like the curve of Oliver’s bicep, or that slight sheen of sweat on his brow, or—
The train jerks to a stop so suddenly that my hand slips off the pole, and then the second-most embarrassing thing that can happen to a New Yorker (aside from getting caught ordering Domino’s pizza) happens to me: I fall on the subway.
Or at least, I start to. My feet physically leave the ground and I pinch my eyes shut, already bracing myself for the ten thousand apologies at whoever’s lap I fall into, when instead I fall backward into a firm chest and feel the very same bicep I was just staring at wrap around my waist and hold me there.
A beat passes, and everyone else around us starts grumbling and righting themselves. But Oliver and I are completely still, his grip still tight around me, my hands reflexively clinging to his forearm.
“You okay?”
I swallow thickly. “Yeah.” He eases me up to my feet, looking me up and down like he’s accounting for me. Weirdly, I can’t seem to look at him at all. “Thanks.”
The train starts back up again and I reach out and grab the pole before we get too much momentum, but Oliver still hovers. Or maybe I’m the one hovering. We’re definitely close, close enough that I can feel the heat of his chest against my bare arm, but I can’t tell if it’s an accident or yet another unspoken competition where one of us is waiting for the other to move first.
Well. I’m not one to lose a challenge, no matter how silent, potentially nonexistent, or patently absurd. I lean in closer. Oliver doesn’t back away.
“You two make a cute couple,” says the older woman sitting in front of us.
I’m so distracted by the smell of Oliver’s shampoo that I don’t react fast enough. Instead Oliver says, “Thanks. If only I could get her to stop cheating on me.”
I splutter indignantly as the woman’s jaw drops in shock.
“Oh, look, our stop,” says Oliver, pulling me out by the arm.
“Hey!” I protest, following him out. I lean back at the woman. “I didn’t cheat on him!”
The doors are already closing, but now half of the Fifty-Seventh Street station is staring at me like I’ve grown an extra hand. I pull my arm loose from Oliver’s.
“What was that for?”
“Karma for Steph’s landlord.”
He’s actually smiling, and it’s this cheeky, full-throttle kind of smile. It makes me think he must have been a really cute little kid.
“Fine,” I say, tossing my hair back. “But for the record, I cheated on you with Tom Holland.”
“I’ll shed one single tear every time I see a Spider-Man billboard.”
And then, within the next few minutes, we’re someplace I wasn’t planning to be in at least five years, four if I was lucky: backstage at Carnegie freaking Hall. After security clears us, we walk in through a side door that leads to a narrow hallway running parallel to the theater, all the way back and back until we’re in a holding room backstage.
I can see Oliver’s head turning to stare at all the stagehands and crew members rushing by in organized, choreographed chaos, his eyes following the equipment and the highlighted clipboards and PAs muttering things into headset mics. My eyes are fixed on the door that leads out to the stage wings.
We both stand still for a moment, suspended in this world of things we know we are and things we aren’t quite yet, and breathe out the word Wow.
Our eyes snap onto each other’s in surprise, and I wonder if he also feels himself yanked back just as fast—back to three years ago. Almost to the day.
I’d just finished junior high, just gotten my braces taken off, and, most importantly, just convinced my dad to let me dye my hair. It had taken a solid year of wearing him down in the post–“Little Jo” aftermath, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect: that summer they were letting the incoming freshmen come in waves for an orientation day based on whatever their primary interests were. Now when I showed up for the theater one, no prospective new classmates would recognize me from the viral video that was getting me laughed out of every audition in town.
I remember exactly what I was wearing, because I was midway through the hippie phase of my Millie transformations and Heather had just gotten me a fringe vest as an early birthday present. I was wearing it over a loud tie-dye dress I’d paired with a thick headband and Heather’s boots and I felt unstoppable. Brand-new. Brave, even.
Brave enough to walk up to the cluster of nervous-looking freshmen waiting for our guide outside the school’s theater and take charge.
“Let’s go around and all say our names. I’ll start. I’m Millie.”
I turned to the girl next to me, who introduced herself. So did the kid after that, and the kid after that, but the next kid didn’t. Instead he was staring at me.
“Do we know each other from somewhere?” he asked.
Coming out of another boy’s mouth this might have seemed like a line, but even in a group of mismatched theater kids in various degrees of puberty, he had a self-possession that set him apart. It was something in the unselfconscious way his eyes met mine, the assured posture of him, even the way he was crossing his arms. Like he’d already figured himself out and was so fully confident in it that it had never once occurred to him to be any other way.
It’s what I wanted, too. What every Millie transformation was attempting to achieve. And unfortunately, it was clear from the way he was frowning at me that I had not transformed nearly enough.
“Nope,” I said quickly. “You are?”
“Oliver.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Huh.”
I gritted my teeth. “Nice to meet you,” I said firmly before turning my attention to the next kid in the group.
By the time the guide showed up I had one eye on her and the other on this Oliver kid like he was some kind of time bomb. I wasn’t egotistic enough to assume he recognized me from the video, but I was paranoid enough. Until I knew for sure, I had to keep as much distance between the two of us as possible.
But once they let us into the theater all bets were off.
The other kids started following the guide to see the dressing rooms and the prop closet, but I lingered to get a better look, and so did Oliver. For a few moments we stood there on the stage, me looking out at the audience, Oliver staring up at the rigging above us, and both breathed out the word Wow.