It Must Be Nice To Be You

You call A’s mom outside Bakersfield. She says he’s not ready to see you yet. Still, you end up at her door. A’s Civic is out front. The light is on in the kitchen, the kitchen that was the setting of your teenagehood, but now you feel like a trespasser.

It’s unlike you to call in sick at the last moment, but a blackness roils inside and you have to leave the city. You’re eating take-out, thumbing through your Instagram followers, when you see that B unfollowed you. You quickly return the favor. You notice that C and D turncoated too. Or maybe they never followed you in the first place? No, you’re sure they had. A vice tightens around your ribcage. Talentless. Ugly.

It must be because of what you say during intermission. Your castmates hear everything from across the green room when you confront B, reciting the monologue about two-way streets that you’d practiced with your therapist. B, all wide-eyed, says he thought you were just having fun—he can drive whichever way he wants.

Maybe it’s poor timing. The preceding weeks whittle away at your composure. B stops chatting with you between scenes, gravitating toward C and D instead. Your director pulls you aside and asks if you’ll have your lines down in time for preview night. You show up to rehearsals smelling like antiseptic, your brain tinny from five hours of sleep and two cans of Celsius. Without A hogging the TV, you stay up far too late watching shows.

Of course, tumbles only come from heights. With A scrubbed from your life, you become the person you imagined. Instead of watching the Lakers at A’s cousin’s, you go to rooftop happy hours. Never-ending FaceTimes with A’s mom are replaced with calls from your new commercial agent. And rather than folding A’s laundry, you’re picking up B’s clothes off the floor.

“I hope you don’t look at me as a home wrecker,” B says when you’re laying in bed, passing his vape back and forth. “You really seem happier now.”

And you are. Your HIIT classes start having a visible effect now that the apartment has been cleared of A’s junk food. You subscribe to a high-protein meal delivery service. After anxious deliberation, you post a swimsuit picture and spend the rest of the day glowing from all the likes and comments you receive.

Still, there are moments, soon after A leaves, when you worry it was a mistake. Artifacts of him appear in improbable places: a swim cap under the car seat, a sock in the crack of the sofa. You buy a weighted body pillow to hold at night. On A’s mom’s birthday, you’re not sure if you should call. You settle on a simple text.

The day A moves out is less theatrical than you expect. You help A load his car in silence. A part of you hopes A will blubber, beg for you, promise you he’ll change. Once his car putters around the corner, you shuffle back inside, the half-emptiness of the apartment settling upon you.

The tears are already exhausted the weekend before. As you creep into your apartment, you’re conscious of B’s almondy smell on your collar. A is still awake on the couch, puffy-eyed, playing some RPG. This isn’t working anymore, you and A decide.

As A claims, your new LA friends show zero interest in him because he’s not an artist. He follows you stiffly into the dim bar, wearing the cargo pants you dressed him up in, like a dog in costume. You try to engage him, mentioning to D that he’s also a Marvel fan, but A doesn’t seem in a talkative mood. So he sits on the far corner of the booth, watching the Dodgers game while you and B discuss the merits and shortfalls of the Stanislavski system. The next time you look over, both A’s pint and his seat are empty. You’re not sure if it’s the heavy pour or vengeance for A’s Irish goodbye that leads you to the back seat of B’s car.

When you get the invite from your castmates, you’re nervous to ask for a plus-one but they’re all eager to meet your boyfriend. It’s the first real social invitation you’ve received since the move, and you feel on the precipice of something great. Sure, you have your coworkers at the hospital you talk shit with and A’s cousin who’s always around, but you struggle to make friends. In a city of four million, where are the aspiring, the unabashed, the people who moved here to become new people, your people? You pass fashionable-looking dogwalkers on your morning jogs and synthesize alternate realities in which you invite each other to opening nights and run lines over iced coffees.

But in this reality, A is your only friend. A, who clamps your head between his palms to kiss you goodnight. Who buys you Ben & Jerry’s and gives you foot rubs after long shifts. Who calls everyone in your hometown when you land a supporting role at a community theater. Who says there’s nobody else in the world for him.

A, who plays video games for six hours a day. Who only starts coaching middle school swimming after you demand he contribute to the rent. Who gets four parking tickets your first month in the city. Who wears sweatpants and underwear with holes in them and has no idea who Humphrey Bogart is.

Who agrees to move to Los Angeles so you can realize your dreams. Who knows more about you than anyone else. Who, on your first date, his hair still wet after high school swim practice, arranges his McDonald’s fries into a tic-tac-toe board and lets you win every time.