I reach out and tweak him on the arm. “I’d save you a seat at my debut, but you’ll be too busy touring Europe with the Four Suns.”
He touches the place on his arm where my hand just was, lingering on it. “Yeah, well. Fingers crossed.”
“They haven’t made a call yet?” I ask.
He glances at his phone like he’s glancing at his brothers through it. “They’re giving me until the end of the summer before we’ll decide as a family. Hopefully by then some of Georgie’s energy will have rubbed off on me, and I’ll be able to make my case.”
It’s still a bit of a surprise, seeing Oliver look uneasy. Fortunately, between the two of us, there will always be plenty of confidence to go around.
“Eh, you’ve got plenty of Oliver energy already,” I remind him. “She’ll just teach you how to use it.”
A cluster of people start moving toward the entrance, calling out for friends to join them. Oliver motions toward the door and we head in together. Except instead of checking our tickets Oliver flashes his at one of the ushers, who nods at us to go through.
I crane my head around to look at him. “Okay, I know we look good, but we don’t look that good,” I whisper to Oliver. “Who does he think we are?”
“Oh, I’ve already been inside,” says Oliver. He pulls two programs out of his back pocket and hands me one, leading us down the aisle of the mezzanine. “I got our seats moved.”
“How exactly did you manage that?” I say, gaping in disbelief at how close we’re walking to the stage.
“Well, uh. For tonight at least, if anyone asks, my name is Georgie and yours is Steph.”
“Oliver!” I swat playfully at him with my program. “Did you break a rule?”
“For good reason.”
“I never thought I’d live to see the day.”
Oliver stops then and gestures for me to make my way into the row. “That seat’s yours,” he says, pointing at one of them.
I’ve never been madder to have only two eyes, because they don’t know for the life of them where to look. On one side of the room is the massive, gleaming stage with its thick royal green curtain pulled back just enough to see a projection of the back of Baron’s head. On one side of me I am 89 percent certain I just saw Darren Criss, and on the other side of me I’m pretty sure I just saw a not-small chunk of the original cast of Hamilton.
Then I finally sit, and it hits me.
“Holy crap, Oliver,” I say, grabbing his arm. “We’re in the third row. We’re close enough for Baron to accidentally spit on us from the stage.”
“Fingers crossed,” he says wryly.
Jennifer Damiano just walked past us in a pair of cowboy boots. I may not make it through the night. “For the record, this is not a ‘good’ reason to break a rule, it’s a great one.”
“Well,” says Oliver, his voice close to my ear as he settles into his seat, “you haven’t even seen the real reason yet.”
Just then a very stressed-out-looking twentysomething with her nose buried deep in her phone screen starts apologizing her way down the row, her bag strap getting tangled in people’s feet and her bangs blowing into her face. I can tell from her eyeline that she’s aiming herself toward the seat next to me, so I pull my feet in with Oliver’s to let her pass.
She trips into her seat, but with the relative nonchalance of someone who does that often.
“Hi. Sorry,” she says, without tearing her eyes off her text message thread. “I promise I won’t be on my phone the whole—Hey wait, do I know you?”
I clench my jaw, waiting for that all-too-familiar “Little Jo”–shaped pit to form in my stomach, but it doesn’t. I don’t even have to bite the urge to melodramatically sigh. Maybe there really is an expiration date on mortal humiliation. Could it be after all these years I’ve finally reached mine?
Then the girl snaps her fingers. “You were the intern who did the mic check for Saundra last week!”
Plot twist. “You were there?”
“Physically, yes. Emotionally? Probably asleep,” she says, looking between me and the screen of her phone in rapid succession. Finally her eyes fully snap onto mine, with enough energy in them to power a stage light. “Until you got up to sing. Who the heck even are you?”
“Millie Price.”
Wow, it feels nice to get recognized and actually asked my name. Usually people would just call me “Little Jo” and that’s that. Unless, of course, they were leaning in to pat me on the head like an overeager puppy.
“I’m Samantha, I’m Gloria Dearheart’s assistant,” she says. “You’re phenomenal.”
Thank Patti LuPone I have practiced enough breathing techniques for vocal support from YouTube or I’d genuinely forget how to do it now. “I’m— Wow. Thanks.”
“You’re still in high school, right?” says Samantha, seamlessly texting someone back and continuing our conversation at the same time.
That entirely depends on whether or not I’m going to the precollege, but Oliver nudges me lightly in the back. “Yeah,” I say, before I can overthink it.
“Have you applied to Gloria’s workshop?”
“She’s doing a workshop?”
“It’s like, a little on the DL, since she’s been scouting from high school productions, but you’d be great for it,” she says casually, as if she didn’t just say something that has the power to capsize my entire world. “It starts in the fall.”
I should probably ask for more details, but really, the words Gloria Dearheart and workshop are all I need. She could have us walking a tightrope across the Brooklyn Bridge blindfolded and I’d elbow people out of the way to be a part of it.
Before I can say anything, Samantha shoots back up from her chair like a rocket.
“Crap. I gotta take care of something real quick—just give me your number at intermission, would you? I’ll text you deets and an email to submit.”
Then she’s gone, like some kind of very stressed-out, highly competent, dream-bearing apparition. It’s just me and the beat of my ridiculous heart and the very smug smile I can feel from the boy sitting next to me before I even turn to look.
When I do, I lean in so close to Oliver that we’re shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, pressed so seamlessly that it doesn’t even occur to me to hesitate. “How on earth did you make that happen?”
“A good manager never reveals their secrets,” he says, a glint in his eyes. “But this one wasn’t so hard. She’s the one who let me in to give Gloria the contract our first day at the internship. I recognized her helping out at Carnegie Hall. She really did just like, drop what she was doing to watch.”
I can tell he’s expecting me to crow about this, and I most certainly will at some point before the evening’s out. But for right now I can’t see past much of anything that isn’t this boy I’ve known for all this time, who still manages to surprise me every day.
“I can’t believe you did this,” I say quietly.
Oliver shrugs, adorably self-conscious. “Yeah, well. Coffee seemed like a bad birthday present. Thought I’d give it another go.”