“I get you flowers!”

  “I know, dear. At the same place you get your cereal and your beer.”

  Ryan can’t entirely tell if they’re joking with each other or not. He senses Avery’s dad might not know, either.

  “Turn left,” Avery’s mom says, guiding them to a parking spot in front of a flower shop.

  “I’ll be right back,” Ryan says.

  “Would you like me to go in with you?” Avery’s mom offers.

  “No, thank you.”

  The inside of the shop is fancier than he’s expecting…but he’s not sure why he was expecting anything because he’s not sure he’s ever been in a flower shop before. A woman in a dress that’s practically triangular comes out from behind the counter and asks him if he needs any help.

  “I need flowers,” he answers. Then, realizing this isn’t quite enough, he adds, “It’s for someone in the high school play. It’s their last show.”

  The woman smiles. “Is this someone a someone special?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lucky girl!”

  For a second, Ryan thinks about letting it slide. Life will be much easier if he lets it slide, if he just goes along with her assumption. Flowers are flowers, and whatever she suggests for the “lucky girl” is bound to be okay for Avery, too.

  But…it’s also wrong. And it feels wrong to let this woman picture one thing when something else is true. If he doesn’t say something now, the flowers will be pointless, because even if Avery never knows, Ryan will know he let them both down because it was easier to do so.

  “Lucky boy,” he corrects.

  The woman’s smile falters for a second, and Ryan can’t tell if it’s from surprise or disapproval. He isn’t sure whether or not she’ll politely chase him out of the store, not until she says, “Well, do you know what kind of flowers he likes? You can’t go wrong with roses.”

  Ryan thinks for a second, then says, “His hair is pink. What’s the pinkest flower you’ve got?”

  * * *

  —

  Gearing up for the final performance is strangely emotional for Avery. He’s gotten used to being Laurent LeFevre, and he’s not ready to stop being him for a couple of hours each day. But more than that, he’s gotten used to this new supporting cast in his life. It’s hard to imagine not seeing them after school every day.

  He’s certainly not the only one feeling this way—there’s some hugging, a few tears. The only one not succumbing to the fits of prenostalgia is Dennis, who has locked himself into a stall in the boys’ bathroom so he can “fully find” his character and “block out the childish distractions” backstage.

  Before the curtain goes up, Mr. Horslen gathers everyone together and tells them to have fun out there—and, with the predictable exception, they do. The lines zing and the body language zags, garnering more laughs than ever before. Avery’s having a blast…except when he has to share a scene with Dennis, who has all the lightness of a tank and all the humor of a sinkhole.

  Avery tells himself to not let it get to him. And it doesn’t, not really. Not until the confrontation scene. Perhaps mindful of his fall during the previous performance, Dennis comes on strong, spitting out his lines and acting like Laurent’s theft of Lucius’s beloved is the most egregious betrayal since Judas puckered up.

  “How can you just stand there as my love flashes before my eyes?!?” he wails. Then he pushes forward, getting in Avery’s face. “How.” Pointing accusingly. “Dare.” Thrusting the finger forward. “You!” Jabbing Avery in the chest.

  This sends Avery reeling. He is sick of Dennis and his raging bullshit. He is not going to stand in front of an audience including his boyfriend and parents and let some asshole poke him in the chest. If Dennis wants to improvise, so be it.

  “You need to calm the fuck down,” Avery spits back. “You need to stay away from this family because we all hate you. Betty Lou was never going to marry you. You exhaust her.”

  There is some laughter, and a few of the less gentle people in the theater applaud. Dennis looks for a moment like he’s going to deck Avery, right there in front of the audience. But instead he stomps off before his final lines.

  “Betty Lou!” Avery calls out. “The coast is clear!”

  Kim Elias comes onstage, and she and Avery pick up the scene.

  He hopes no one can see how much he’s shaking.

  * * *

  —

  Ryan wants to cheer—as far as he’s concerned, Avery’s just stolen the show. The second Dennis poked Avery so offensively, Ryan could feel himself tense, and could see Avery’s mom and dad tensing in the seats next to him. Only when Avery pulled back could they let out their collective breath. And then Avery cut Dennis down to size with a few sentences. Suddenly Ryan’s enjoying himself…until he realizes that Avery’s parents aren’t laughing or applauding, and that the collective feeling before has now unraveled, and what they’re feeling isn’t the same as what he’s feeling. He’s proud of Avery, but they don’t seem to be.

  Luckily, Dennis’s character isn’t in the final scene. Ryan wouldn’t particularly want to see this play ever again, but at the same time he feels almost nostalgic about the fact that this is it, the end of the run. Everyone onstage seems to feel it, too, delivering their lines with more feeling than they deserve. When they get to the last line—Baby Winston taking his first steps and waddling offstage, with Lavinia Stranglehold calling after him, “Don’t forget…your shoes!”—half the cast members are grinning and half have tears in their eyes. The standing ovation begins even before the curtain falls. When it’s time for the proper curtain calls, Dennis and Avery are as far apart as can be, Avery delighting when he gets a raucous chorus of whoops for his bow, and Dennis acting completely unfazed by the cheers that greet him, too. The ensemble bows once, twice, three times, and then, when the curtain falls for the last time, the audience can see them turn to each other for hugs and congratulations and the throwing of wigs as if they were graduation caps.

  The drama teacher makes an announcement that to avoid too much congestion in the hallways, friends and family will be asked to stay in their seats to wait for cast members to emerge from backstage.

  “Well, that was…something,” Avery’s dad says to Avery’s mom.

  “A little too improvisational on all fronts,” Avery’s mom comments. She looks around the theater for a moment. “I don’t see Dennis’s mom. Otherwise, I feel I’d have to go over and apologize.”

  “Yeah, I hope she missed this performance,” Avery’s dad says.

  Ryan wants to defend Avery—after everything that’s happened in all the performances, what Avery did was practically self-defense. But the notion that Dennis’s mom could have been in the audience keeps his mouth shut. It’s not like he wants to pick an argument with Avery’s parents, anyway.

  The seats between Ryan and the aisle have been vacated, and now a girl his age is shuffling sideways toward him.

  “You’re Ryan, right?” she says when she arrives.

  Ryan wants to ask, Do I know you? But he also doesn’t want to be rude, so he just says, “Yes.”

  “I was told to look for blue hair, and you were the only candidate,” she says. “I’m Hannah. Liz’s girlfriend? She’s the one who played the aunt? I came alone, and Liz and Avery texted me to say to look for you, because we’d all be going to the cast party together. Maybe they didn’t tell you?”

  “No, but that’s awesome. I don’t know anyone else here besides Avery’s parents. Do you know Avery’s parents?”

  Hannah leans around Ryan and says, “Hi, Avery’s parents!”

  Ryan is about to attempt further introductions, but there’s a commotion as a few of the performers come out onto the stage in their street clothes, jumping down into the audience to entertain their admirers. Avery and Liz come out together and head straight over. Hannah practically jumps into Liz’s arms; Ryan, meanwhile, reaches under his seat and holds his odd pink bouquet out to Avery.

  “What are these?” Avery asks.

  “Snapdragons!” Ryan replies. “An applause of snapdragons.”

  He shakes the bouquet a little and it indeed looks like the flowers are clapping.

  “I love them,” Avery says, then kisses Ryan sweetly.

  “That was quite a performance,” Avery’s mom says.

  “Yeah,” Avery replies, taking the snapdragons from Ryan and looking down at them. “That probably shouldn’t have happened.”

  “What do you mean?” Ryan asks. “You were awesome. He deserved it.”

  “Thanks for saying that,” Avery tells him. “But I kinda became the amateur he accused me of being.”

  “He’ll live,” Avery’s dad says.

  Avery’s mom changes the subject to the cast party, and Avery explains they’ll all be going over to Anna Anderson’s house, and that her parents will be there to “curtail any untoward shenanigans.” (This is a quote from the play.)

  “Okay,” Avery’s mom says. “Just be home by eight. Ryan needs to drive back tonight, and I don’t want him getting home too late.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Avery assures her as the phrase “home too late” reverberates within Ryan like a game-show buzzer signaling that time is up.

  Fortuitously, Hannah and Liz lean in then to send some Sapphic let’s get going vibes. Avery gives his snapdragons to his mother for safekeeping, and Liz, Hannah, Avery, and Ryan decide to pile into Hannah’s improbable choice of vehicle—a red 1990 Miata she tells Avery and Ryan she won in a bet. (She actually bought it used with a year’s worth of carefully saved babysitting money.) The backseat only has enough legroom for a small toddler or a medium-sized dachshund, so Ryan and Avery end up lying atop one another like they’ve been stacked in some romantic cargo ship. Avery assures Ryan their destination isn’t that far away.

  Ryan expected Avery to be either exuberant or exhausted once the show was done, but instead he seems preoccupied. Ryan knows him enough now to have a suspicion why, but not enough to make an assumption. So it’s a question he asks—

  “Are you still thinking about what happened with Dennis?”

  “Yes.”

  When you start dating, you feel like emotions are the roll of a six-sided die, and you read for the basics, react to the elemental. But the more you talk, the more time you share, the more sides the die takes on, and while you know you’ll never master the response to every momentary roll, you do start to understand what the numbers mean. Ryan has never seen Avery like this, caught in the hinge of regret. He is sorry Avery is feeling this way, and at the same time, it helps him understand Avery a little bit more.

  From the front seat, Liz says, “Don’t worry about it. He totally deserved it.”

  Another roll, and the thirty-sided die becomes a forty-sided die. Avery doesn’t dig in, but he also doesn’t let Liz pull him out.

  “In some ways, he did deserve it,” he says. “But in other ways, he didn’t.”

  “He won’t be at the party, will he?” Hannah asks.

  “I doubt it,” Liz replies. “I don’t think he liked any of us very much.”

  And now he knows what you all thought of him, Ryan thinks, but doesn’t say out loud, because he knows it’s the last thing Avery wants to hear.

  * * *

  —

  Pope has decided to keep Lavinia Stranglehold’s makeup and wig on for the cast party; the disconcerting part is that they are not wearing their costume, but instead have found a muumuu covered in pictures of dancing cats. They welcome Ryan, Avery, Liz, and Hannah as if it were their own home, which it is not.

  “Make yourselves comfortable…but not so comfortable that they’d need to dry-clean the cushions after,” Pope says. Then, somewhat to Avery’s horror, they wink at Ryan.

  Ryan knew the cast party wasn’t going to be a rager, but he’s still amused by the scene he discovers inside: The refreshments and Congratulations banner would be at home at a fifth grader’s graduation party. There’s a “chip bar,” where Tostitos and Lay’s appear in their seemingly infinite varieties of dusting and shape. There is plenty of unjacked Coke and unscrewdrivered OJ. Pizza boxes wait like flattened lapdogs with eager mouths. A coffeemaker burbles at the edge of the beverage table, like the bad kid at the back of the bus.

  Despite the lack of intoxicants, there’s a certain kind of intoxication in the air. Casting, rehearsals, performance—it has been a very small era, but it’s still the end of one.

  Ryan still feels like part of the audience here. He might as well pull a chair to the corner of the living room and watch what unfolds. He expects Avery to jump into the fray and leave him behind—he would totally understand this course of action, because he is a guest, maybe even an interloper. The girl who played the baby is calling out to Avery from the sofa, patting the cushion beside her. The permission is sitting on Ryan’s lips. Just go ahead. I’ll stay here. Have fun.

  But Avery doesn’t leave him, doesn’t step away even when he’s beckoned. Instead he leads Ryan over to the pizza, which is exactly where Ryan wants to go. They load slices onto paper plates that offer them congratulations in balloon lettering. Liz and Hannah follow, and when the four of them have gotten sodas as well, they leave the living room for an adjacent, quieter den, where two couches sit catty-corner to one another. Avery and Ryan take one and Liz and Hannah take the other.

  It’s Hannah who says, “It’s like we’re on a double date!”

  To which Liz adds, “Yeah—in someone else’s house.”

  Avery leans over and dangles his pizza slice in front of Ryan. Ryan realizes he is supposed to take a bite. Lovingly.

  “It’s very romantic,” Avery says. Ryan feeds him some pizza in return, which Avery responds to with exaggerated ecstasy. Liz and Hannah both crack up.

  “How long have you two been together?” Avery asks them.

  Hannah and Liz look at each other for a few seconds. Then Hannah says, “Four months, three days, and…two hours.”

  Liz pulls back and stares at her. “Really?!?”

  Hannah feigns hurt. “How could you not know that?”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “Are you so sure?”

  Avery laughs, but Ryan is stressed out that this is a real fight. He only calms down when he realizes that Liz and Hannah don’t seem too concerned about it. Hannah starts talking about how they met, her disbelief when an unrealistic crush suddenly became a realistic crush on a long bus ride home from a soccer match. Ryan is jealous at how easily they’ve dispensed with the moment of tension, how he seems to be the only person in the room still wondering if Hannah was making up the four months, three days, and two hours. Is it possible to be in love and to have forgotten the day it all started? Is it different when it’s someone you’ve known all along, instead of someone you just met?

  Avery leans into Ryan a little, and Ryan’s thoughts come back to the room, to what’s being said. Hannah gets to the end of her story just as Pope bounds into the room, proclaiming, “There you are!”

  The party follows them into the room, as if they found the bookcase that was really a door all along. As other people come in, Pope sits down between Ryan and Avery, practically on their laps.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Pope says. “It makes me so happy to see you together at long last!”

  Pope says this as if Avery has spent the past week toiling at school while Ryan fought a war in Austro-Hungary.

  Ryan thinks it’s a bit much, but Avery takes it to heart. Because it’s only now that he realizes—the whole time they’ve been dating, he’s been going to play practice. Now that it’s over, he will get so much of his time back. Which means that Ryan will get more of it, too.

  “Brave new world,” Avery says, maneuvering around Pope to hold Ryan’s hand.

  Pope extends their arms and pats both Avery and Ryan at the same time. Then they stand and proclaim to all who will hear, “This dowager wants some dancing!”

  With that, Lavinia Stranglehold exits the room.

  Less than a minute later, a disco mix of “Defying Gravity” thumps against the walls.

  The dancing begins.

  * * *

  —

  It is always a challenge to a couple when one has the natural inclination to dance and the other does not. In the case of the couples on the couches, the preferences are evenly divided. Hannah jumps up immediately as more people follow Pope out. Liz groans a little, but lets Hannah pull her to her feet.

  Avery can see Ryan settle farther back in the cushions even as the music and the excitement amplify. At a fundamental level, he gets it: This isn’t a dark club or even the rec hall they first met in. This is someone’s house and the sun isn’t all the way down yet. The people who are dancing are doing it to continue the camaraderie they built over months of rehearsal and performance. Ryan isn’t a part of that, and it will be hard to make him feel a part of that.

  Still, Avery wants to try. No pressure, but still.

  * * *

  —

  Ryan tries. Even though he would much, much rather stay on the couch, he sees that part of Avery is already in the other room, and the remaining part is asking Ryan to accompany him. Ryan gets up from the cushions, then holds his hand out for Avery to take. Even though Avery can certainly stand up on his own, he takes the hand, then keeps it that way as they emerge into the living room. Ryan has no idea what song is playing—a disco version of something about losing one’s mind—but the music is almost beside the point. This isn’t a dance floor like at the gay prom, with colored lights and a way to be able to hide yourself in the shadows. No, this is a living room with the lights on, and a bunch of friends dancing as unanonymously as possible. Everyone’s eyes are wide open as they sing to each other and sway to each other and celebrate the moment they’re within. Ryan tries to dance along to that as Avery tries to face him and face everyone else at the same time. But it’s not really working. Ryan still feels like the audience member who’s stumbled onto the stage during the curtain call.