The crew member dealing with Oliver looks just exasperated enough by this response that I know it’s not a joke.
“Sing what?” I ask, pulling my hair out from under the body mic wire. Honestly, they could tell me to start freestyle rapping my own Social Security number and I wouldn’t flinch.
“‘Lay All Your Love on Me,’” says the tech micing me.
I gasp. Oliver lets out a sharp laugh.
The crew guy blows out a frustrated breath. “It’s a tech rehearsal. We need to be able to gauge the sound, or—”
“This is not happening. Nope.”
The tech guy sighs. “Look, we’re on a tight schedule, kid. We don’t need you to win a Tony Award here. Just sing.”
“This isn’t our job!” Oliver protests. “Find someone else.”
“There is no one else.”
“I’ll do it.”
Four pairs of eyes flit over to Baron Levait, who is, as usual, so handsome that even the piano accompanist pauses her hands on the keys to turn and stare. He walks onto the stage from seemingly out of nowhere, like the heavens opened and dropped him into our laps.
“Hey, Millie,” he says, nodding at me. “What do you say? We closed the show last night, but I think I can still remember the words.”
He punctuates it with a wink, and I’m dead. I hit my head on that subway fall and died and this is the place you go after you bite it in plain view of the noon commuters on the 1 train.
“She’s in,” Oliver answers for me.
The stagehand gives me a quick rundown of the blocking so the light tech can follow our paths. “Doesn’t have to be anything fancy,” says the crew member who mic’d me, but Baron shoots me a smirk over her head as someone mics him back up.
Then the pianist starts playing, and within a second, we’re not Baron and Millie anymore—we’re Sky and Sophie, playful and cheeky, darting up and down the stage like a game of cat and mouse. It’s Baron’s verse first, and he sets the tone, circling me on the stage and then taking a quick run to slide on his knees at me for “And all I’ve learned has overturned, I beg of you…”
I don’t miss a beat, extending my boot out and pretending to push him back. He bends to my imaginary force just in time for me to flip my hair and walk away for the beginning of the chorus, and by then we’re on such a roll that I don’t feel like I’m playing a character at all. I’ve never worked in a theater with such a pure sound, or with a scene partner so experienced and quick on their feet. I’m just in it, fully in it, the way I don’t usually get to be until we’re so close to the show that it’s more of a relief than anything else.
It’s like if you ate oatmeal for breakfast your whole life, and then someone gave you your first egg-and-cheese bagel. Like that moment you get off the Q train in Coney Island after being surrounded by buildings for months and are gobsmacked by the open space of the water. It’s understanding that the things I’ve been doing are good, but there’s a whole other world out there with the potential to be great.
We finish the song facing each other in the middle of the stage. The piano fades out, and there’s no applause, no fanfare—it’s just a tech rehearsal—but I don’t need any. Because Baron Levait grins at me, raises his hand for a high five, and says, “Damn, kid. You’re about to take this scene by storm.”
I have zero memory of how I got off the stage, if I walked or I floated or got shoved by a PA. I’m still living in the haze of it, like someone blew dream dust into my eyes and now the real world is something that doesn’t apply to me anymore. The first moment I blink myself back into it is when I catch Oliver’s eyes and see something in them that almost stops me in place.
It’s not admiration or surprise or anything you hope for when you get off a stage. But it’s something better than that. It’s familiarity. Amusement, even. Like it’s nothing he didn’t already expect.
“Holy shit,” I whisper. My skin is tingling. “I can’t believe I just did that.”
Oliver lets out a laugh. “I can.”
I’m rushing up to him mostly because my whole body is flooded with adrenaline, but then he takes a few steps forward to meet me and for a fleeting second I almost think I’m going to hug him. Then a crew member walks in between us and we both come to an awkward stop, me beaming like I swallowed the sun, Oliver smiling a quiet smile.
“I just wish…”
My dad had seen, I almost say. I don’t need a video to remember that feeling, but I wish I had one to send him. I glance at my phone, thinking to text him at least when I get a chance, and notice two missed calls from a number I don’t recognize.
Then Oliver’s phone buzzes in his hand. “Georgie says to take lunch.”
“Oh.” I’m suddenly so hungry I could have taken one of those sheet cakes we delivered to the face. “Wanna go to Big League Burger?”
Oliver tilts his head at me and I almost laugh it off and pretend it was a joke. But then he shrugs. “Yeah, all right.”
A few minutes later we’re both sitting at the window of a BLB, me switching between grilled cheese and a mountain of fries and Oliver opting for a cheeseburger and a side salad. We could make small talk, I guess, but that seems too boring after the kind of day we’ve already had. So instead I do what Oliver and I do best: cut straight to the chase.
“So why are you so scared of the spotlight?”
Oliver scoffs. “I’m not scared.”
He says it more dismissively than defensively, so I decide to believe him.
“Then what? I mean, you’re fine with big crowds of people and you’re hot.”
Oliver nearly chokes on a piece of lettuce.
“What?”
He keeps his face neutral, but I don’t miss the pointed blink. “You just called me hot.”
I scowl. “It’s an objective fact. So what is it?”
He clears his throat, still recovering. “I’m just … I don’t like singing, and I’m a bad actor,” he explains. “I never saw the point in doing stuff I’m bad at.”
I glance at our reflections in the window so I don’t get caught staring directly at him. It’s weird, having something in common with Oliver. But I guess that’s one thing we always will—we both hold ourselves to a high standard and won’t settle for anything less.
“How does a person not ‘like’ singing?” I scrunch my nose. “That’s like … saying you don’t like eating, or breathing.”
He snorts. “To you, maybe.”
“Plus you’ve got brothers in a band,” I say, switching over to the second half of my grilled cheese. “How does that add up?”
Oliver groans. “I knew you weren’t going to let that go.”
“Obviously not. And if you don’t just tell me their name, I can text my friend Teddy right now and he’ll probably find it in less than thirty seconds.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
I pivot on my chair to face him. “Because then I wouldn’t have the pleasure of annoying the hell out of you.”
“Ha ha,” Oliver deadpans. But I can tell I’ve worn him down when he braces himself and says quietly, “They’re called the Four Suns.”