Thursday, July 9
Pretty sure my phone’s just mocking me at this point. As if my gaping void of a text thread with Ben wasn’t enough, now there’s a fresh round of radio silence from Mikey. I wonder how many times you can swipe your lock screen before your thumb starts to blister.
I should go completely off the grid. I should move to a farmhouse in a postapocalyptic version of New Hampshire where almost everyone’s dead and there’s no cell service or electricity, because when it comes to the absence of text messages? Turns out, I’m a full fucking expert.
But it’s cool. I’ll just sit here rereading every line of this program like I’m Bubbe and her shul friends rolling in early from New Haven for a Sunday matinee. Because tonight has nothing to do with my phone, or boys, or the absence of boys. It’s about the fact that I’m here in the Shumaker Blackbox Theater, one row back from my favorite director. It’s about getting to see my new favorite play in its near-final form, and knowing I helped get it here.
Jacob murmurs something into his headset that makes the house lights flicker.
Then: a sweep of movement, the soft scoot of a chair. Ben sliding into the seat beside me with dumbfounding nonchalance, just before the house lights cut out.
I’m pretty sure my heart just leapt a full octave.
I squint into the darkness, my stomach in knots. Am I even awake? Is this actually happening? Ben shoots me a quick sideways smile, but it’s cool, because who even needs lungs? Why are we all so obsessed with breathing?
It’s completely surreal. The fact that he’s here. Does he know I would have been singing dayenu over a text message? A single GIF would have been enough.
How am I supposed to act normal when my heart’s pounding out eighth notes?
Time keeps tumbling forward—every time I blink, another scene goes by. Act One is apparently ten seconds long. Either someone’s messing with the universe’s speed-control dial, or my brain’s short-circuiting.
When the show ends, Emmett and Amelia plop down onto the stage like high school kids. I turn dazedly to Ben. “Did you like it?”
“For sure. It was great.” He nods quickly.
I glance back at the stage, where Jacob and Miles, the stage manager, have scooted in next to Emmett and Amelia. “They’re just giving the actors notes,” I explain. “Shouldn’t take too long, and then I can introduce you to Emmett.”
“I’m not here to see Emmett.” Ben’s voice is unexpectedly intense. “Is there—can we go somewhere? Just for a second?”
“Yeah. Yes. Definitely. Let me just—here, come with me.”
I lead him backstage, behind our black curtain backdrop and outside the back door. Be cool, okay, be cool be cool be cool be cool. But there’s no cool. No such thing. Not for me.
I think my brain’s tilting sideways. I feel like the sky before sunrise, the pause between two, one, and liftoff.
I look up at him. “Is this okay? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I don’t know.” He lets out a slightly hysterical laugh.
“Ben, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t blame you at all. You know that, right? Not even close. You’re so—God, I can’t believe you came to the show. I’m so glad I get to be your friend. That’s not—”
“You really never stop talking, do you?” Ben says, smiling so affectionately, my breath hitches.
“Never.”
He laughs a little. “Okay, well, my turn. I’m just—I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Tuesday. Everything you said. Arthur, I had no idea. None.”
“I know. I shouldn’t have—”
“Nope.” Ben shakes his head fiercely. “Listen. As soon as you left, I went back to my room, and I’m sitting there, staring at those fucking boxes, thinking—oh my God, California. Like, it’s supposed to be this big reset button, right? I’m supposed to do my whole life over, twenty-five hundred miles from everything and everyone. Except you—Arthur, you’re like this stowaway in my head. I don’t know how to not bring you with me. Every time I think something weird, I’m like, Arthur would get this. Do you realize that every time, every single time anyone’s smiled at me for the past two years, I’ve compared it to your smile? For two years. As if anyone else could win that game.” He presses a hand to his forehead. “And the thing about being a writer is that it’s not only about telling stories to other people, right? It’s also about the stories I tell myself. Anything and everything I can say that’ll make me believe I’m happy. But I’m done rewriting how I feel because I’m scared of getting hurt again. All that’s going to do is break my heart later when I don’t get my perfect ending. And the perfect ending to my story is with you.”
“You’re—” I press my fist to my mouth. “I’m going to cry.”
“You’re already crying. Literally right now.” He lets out a choked laugh, grabbing my hands to pull me closer. Then he presses his lips to my forehead, leaving them there just long enough to turn me to liquid. “I love you. Te amo. I’m not moving. I ended things with Mario. Can I kiss you?” His eyes are wet. “Please?”
My hands are cupping his face before he even finishes talking.
I thought I remembered this feeling, but I must have remembered through glass. Because I wouldn’t have survived the full force of not having this. Ben wraps me in and pulls me closer, hands pressed flat on my back and all I can think is Oh. Right. This.
This. The way he has to lean down to kiss me, how I have to tilt my head up like I’m looking at stars. I thread my hands through his hair, all these strands I haven’t met before. Two years of haircuts, new skin cells, new freckles. So many updates to download.
He kisses my temple. “Remind me why this took us so long.”
“Because we’re dumbasses who can’t see what’s right in front of us?”
Our lips are so close, I can feel the warmth of his breath when he laughs. “This doesn’t even feel real. It’s like I’m watching myself in a movie.”
“You mean Arthur and Ben Reloaded?” I ask. “The Revenge of Arthur and Ben. Ben and Arthur—”
“That one actually exists,” Ben says.
“Yeah, but what about Ben and Arthur, All Night Long?”
“Sounds like an amateur porn spin-off—”
I kiss him again and he kisses me back, and suddenly I can’t tell whose tongue is where, whose mouth is what. I step back, leaning against the building’s back wall, pulling him along with me until there’s no space between us. His lips find mine again without missing a beat, and I think, Yup, this.
“I love you,” I say. “Did I say that yet? I love you, too. Te amo very much.”
“Te amo mucho.” The look on his face is so earnestly smitten, it leaves me short-winded.
“Te amo mucho,” I say, wishing I still knew Hebrew, wishing I could say it in every language on earth. The words tumble out so easily when it comes to him, like being in love with Ben is just part of my infrastructure.
“What’s wild is that you knew,” he says suddenly. “From day one.”
“I knew we’d make out behind my place of employment?”
“You knew the universe wasn’t an asshole.”
“Oh, no kidding. You know what day it is, right?”
“Thursday? July—” He stops short. “Holy shit.”
“To the day. You can’t tell me that’s not the universe.”
“The fucking universe. Wow.” He lets out a laugh, short and breathless.
I smile up at him smugly. “Guess we saw how it played out.”
“We were a basic-bitch love story all along.” He ruffles my hair, and I laugh, but I’m also sort of buzzing.
And then we both speak at once.
“Okay, you know what—”
“Do you want to, like—” He cuts himself off, grabs my hands, threads our fingers together. “You first.”
“No, sorry, it’s fine. I was just wondering if you want to go somewhere. Like. Not behind a theater.” I look up at him. “What were you going to say?”
“Literally that.” He laughs. “Want to come over? My parents are out. Or, you know, they better be. If I tell them I’m bringing you home, I bet they’d clear out for us.”
Us. I’ll never, ever get tired of hearing that word on Ben’s lips.