Adrian doesn’t expect Zara to show up at the door to his private dressing room, looking determined. “I’m coming in,” she says, sliding past him on an angle and then closing the door with a bang.
Good thing Adrian’s already changed. Getting stuck in a small space with his costar and none of his clothes would not be his idea of fun. He’s done with the whole naked-in-front-of-Zara thing.
“What’s up?” he asks, throwing on his coat. The last week of December has gone furiously cold.
“What I said to you onstage isn’t true. It still matters. All of it.” It looks like she’s about to add something, but she veers in a new direction. “I need you to do me a favor.” Zara pulls an envelope out of her pocket. “Can you hold on to this? Give it to Eli. If anything happens.”
“What kind of anything?” Adrian asks.
Zara’s got the wide, unblinking look that she wears during the last scenes of the play, when the soldiers are on their way and nothing can change what’s coming. “You’ll know.”
Adrian lets the envelope hang in the air between them, dangling from Zara’s fingers. Before he takes any sort of job, he wants to make sure he can get it right. “I’m supposed to hold on to this note, and maybe give it to your lesbian lover?”
“Don’t use that word,” she says.
“Lesbian?” Now Adrian’s really confused. He didn’t see the whole two-girl scenario coming, but now that it’s here, he’s trying to roll with the punches.
Zara winces so hard that she actually closes her eyes. “She’s not my lover. Anymore.”
“Yeah, I kinda got that.”
Zara looks up at Adrian, and it feels like they’ve cleared away layers of smoke and they’re seeing each other for the first time. No Leopold to push them together, no earlobe kissing to get in the way. “I’m sorry about the other night,” he says.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth,” Zara says.
Adrian wishes they could just skip this part. Thinking about how he tried to kiss her on the landing has become a hot poker of embarrassment. “I mean, it would have made things easier, you know?”
“If you thought I could only fall for a girl?” Zara asks.
“Yes,” Adrian admits.
Zara sighs, like she’s weighing something — deciding between an easy lie and a hard truth. “I don’t think that’s how it works for me. I’ve dated guys before. I’ve thought girls were pretty.”
“Girls are pretty,” Adrian confirms.
“This is the wrong time to talk about it,” Zara says.
“Is there a better time?” Adrian asks. “Because this whole play has been a hot mess.”
Zara sits down, tucking her hands between her knees. “I don’t know how to say this.”
“Don’t worry,” he says with his very best smile. (The real one.) “I can help you with your lines.”
She doesn’t really say it to Adrian — she says it to the ceiling. “I’m bisexual.”
Adrian feels like something just went right between the two of them. Finally. “Did that feel good?”
“It made me so nervous,” Zara says. She mutters, “There are bigger things to be nervous about right now.”
“You mean the play.”
“Yeah.” There’s a weird and sudden hollowness to her voice. “The play.”
Adrian feels like he’s missing something. He slides to sit on the counter, making the brushes rattle and a few of the little makeup pots fall to the floor. “Well, the media will be shitty about it, especially since we just kissed. And my fans can get . . . intense. But I’ll do a press release about how that kiss at the gala was just for fun, you know, since we’re such good friends. I’ll say that I’m still looking for my perfect girl. They love that sort of thing.”
Zara gets out half a smile. “Thank you.”
“Bisexual,” Adrian says, fiddling with a makeup brush. He knows he should stop talking, but he wants to help. “That’s good news, right? You have more people who can help you get over Eli.”
Zara looks at him like it’s the stupidest thing he ever said. Adrian wants to find some crawl space in the theater and hide for a while. “First of all, no. That’s not what it means.” Her voice softens, and she goes to some other place, somewhere that isn’t the Aurelia at all. Some place in her head where all the best memories are locked up tight. “And second of all, I’m in love with her. Even if she’s gone. I love her.”
Those words hit Adrian squarely in the chest. His mind goes back to the night when he packed a single suitcase and left his entire life in LA. There was the hug in the driveway. The stupid, stilted good-bye. The days and weeks he spent dismissing every thought of Kerry.
He already found his perfect girl. And he lost her.
“Hey, Zara Evans,” he says, giving her a pained smile. “I think we have something in common.”
Zara looks at him in pure confusion. He’ll have to give her more than that.
“Her name is Kerry,” Adrian says. “She’s back in LA.”
Zara nods like she understands that perfectly.
Maybe that’s the real reason Adrian came to New York. Why he signed on for this play, picked it out from all the projects in the world. Ariston’s heartbreak is the same one he went through, the same that Zara is living right now. Adrian gets that, in a sudden and not very pleasant way. Tragedy is the glue. It connects every smashed-up person on the planet.
“So why aren’t you trying to get her back, if you love her so much?” Adrian asks.
“Just . . . take this,” Zara says, holding the envelope out, arm shaking. “Please. You said you were sorry, and this is how you can help.” She puts the letter in Adrian’s hand, and their fingers do that sliding thing. But it doesn’t make Adrian want to kiss Zara. For the first time in months he lets himself think about Kerry, her long fingers. Kissing them. Her skin always smelled amazing, like ginger and grass and some third thing that he could never quite name.
Zara walks out of his dressing room, and Adrian immediately opens the envelope. She must have known that would happen — right?
First of all, there are two tickets to Hamilton in there. That’s a really good idea. Maybe he should send some to Kerry. And then he sees the other paper, the one folded on itself so many times it can’t fold anymore. He picks it open, carefully.
On one side is Echo and Ariston.
The gods have not given me leave to speak
And yet I will
For to leave this unsaid would be a violence
Against all things.
It’s one of the best monologues in the play. (It’s also when Zara and Adrian do the sexy lantern dance. But he’s not going to think about that right now.) He turns the page to the side where Zara’s plain block handwriting stands out against the white, the words of the play showing through where the light hits.
Eli,
There are so many things I want to tell you.
(Everything). But first . . . I was trying to tell you
on preview night, and I never got the chance.
It was Leopold. It was always Leopold.
Adrian doesn’t know what that means. Maybe Leopold was the one who kept them apart? Adrian can’t imagine letting someone else come between him and the person he wants to be with.
Only that’s what he already did. He chose his fans over Kerry.
The letter goes on, cramped with memories, so many that the margins are almost black. Adrian stops reading, because some of this is way personal. What would happen if he wrote a letter like this and sent it to Kerry? Would she read it on her little balcony with the Spanish tiles, the sunshine hot on her shoulders? Would she take him back? The right words matter, but they’re not a guarantee.
Maybe he and Zara are both dead in the water.