By the time the tryouts ended, the moon was high in the sky, the campus eerily quiet. As the theater majors wandered off in pairs and groups, Lucy reached for her phone, figuring she’d text Britt. I did it! she typed. Are you proud of me? She followed it up with a smiley face.
When a reply didn’t come right away, she fired off a message to Shane: Hey! Guess what? I tried out for Rent.
His reply was immediate. You’re an actress? That’s very hot! How did it go?
Good, I think, she replied.
That’s fantastic, he wrote. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Maybe we’ll have something to celebrate on Saturday night.
Thanks. I hope so! she wrote.
Cheered by Shane’s message, Lucy started back toward her dorm. She’d made it only a few steps farther when her phone buzzed in her pocket. Surprise! There, at the top of her in-box, was a message from Jesse Palladino. Perfect timing, she told herself just before she opened it.
To: Lucy Sommersworth
From: Jesse Palladino
Hello again. How are things? I’m writing to you from Nello’s hometown, where we’ve been for a couple of days. Torre Annunziata is a rough-around-the-edges seaport town—lots of graffiti, crumbling concrete, and unemployment. Not exactly a place tourists are itching to see.
But it’s not all bad. Everyone I bump into is friendly and helpful; they hardly ever meet Americans. I’m some kind of novelty. Nello’s mother and sisters have been fussing over me, and his tiny white-haired grandmother likes to shout Mangia! Mangia! even while I’m stuffing my face with ravioli. They’re like I always imagined an Italian family to be—yelling at each other half the time and hugging each other the other half. Only one of Nello’s sisters speaks English, so I’m getting all kinds of practice speaking Italian.
Money has been tight. Since this isn’t a tourist town, busking’s not an option and jobs are hard to find. But the good news is that Nello’s twin sister, Angelina, thinks she can find work for both of us. There’s been some turnover at the hotel in Naples where she’s a receptionist. I’ve got an interview in a couple of hours, so wish me luck!
Ciao,
Jesse
In the light of a campus shuttle stop, Lucy lingered over the message, feeling a little worse with each rereading. For one thing, it bothered her that though she’d signed her message with love, Jesse hadn’t responded in kind. For another, there was Nello’s sister, Angelina, whose name conjured a vision in Lucy’s head of the kind of girl she could never compete with: Raven-haired. Bosomy. Exotic.
You’re being ridiculous, she told herself. Then she typed a reply, trying to sound breezy and optimistic.
To: Jesse Palladino
From: Lucy Sommersworth
Wow: Naples! I’m excited for you. That’s too bad about the busking. Anyway, good luck finding work.
Things have been interesting here. First of all, I tried out for the college production of Rent tonight. I doubt I’ll get a part, but I had to give it a shot, and I’m proud to say I didn’t trip over my own tongue or blank out on my lines. In fact, it felt really good. I know you’ll understand what a huge, incredible deal this was for me, so I wanted to let you know. Please keep your fingers crossed!
Nello has a twin sister? I’m trying to imagine him as a girl, and failing.
Lucy reread the message. Should I mention Shane? she wondered, but there seemed no casual way to work him in. And, now that she’d already signed off with love once, wouldn’t it seem weird if this time she didn’t? She wouldn’t want Jesse to guess she was jealous, or to let on how much he’d hurt her by signing his message ciao. So, before she could change her mind, she typed those last two tricky words—Love, Lucy—and hit send.
XIV
On Friday at noon, Lucy skipped lunch, hurrying straight from her eleven o’clock class to the Theater Arts building. By the time she reached the lobby, a crowd had gathered in front of the bulletin board where the cast list for Rent had just been posted. Heart pounding, she positioned herself on the fringes. Waiting for a space to open up so she could get closer, she was startled to hear her own name.
“Lucy Sommersworth? Who is that?” a girl’s voice asked.
“Never heard of her,” someone replied.
Lucy gasped, but luckily nobody seemed to hear. They were all too busy looking for their own names on the list—then rejoicing or complaining. “I’ve had speaking roles in the last three plays, and now I get cast in the chorus?” one girl wailed. “How is that fair?”
“It’s a total mistake,” her friend replied. “You deserve better.”
Wishing she were three inches taller, Lucy craned her neck, trying to see past the heads gathered in front of her. Just then, the complaining girl and her friend stepped away, and Lucy slipped forward to take a look at the list. When she saw her name near the top, her heart skipped a beat. She’d been cast as Maureen, the performance artist-slash-diva. The role of her dreams.
The whole rest of that day, Lucy couldn’t concentrate on classes or homework, no matter how hard she tried. At dinner, she couldn’t even pay attention to the conversation at her table. Instead of eating, she pushed the food on her plate into little hills and tore a dinner roll into crumbs.
“Lucy, you haven’t said a word this whole time. What do you think?” Glory had demanded.
“I’m sorry. I zoned out,” Lucy had to admit. “What do I think about what?”
“I was talking about Armand,” Glory said. “How I never see him anymore because he’s so caught up in a bromance with his lacrosse buddies.”
“She could have guessed that,” Brittany said. “You’re always talking about Armand.”
“Where is your mind, Lucy?” Glory asked. “It’s like you’re off in outer space.”
“She’s thinking about her boyfriend,” Sarah guessed. “Has he called you back yet?” Her baby-blue eyes took on that faraway look they got whenever she mentioned Shane.
“No,” Lucy said. “I mean, yes. We’re going out tomorrow night.”
“Damn,” Sarah said wistfully.
“But that’s not what I was thinking about.”
Her three friends waited.
Lucy took a deep breath and told them about her part in Rent.
“That’s amazing,” Brittany said.
“Whoa,” Sarah said. “This girl I know in Huddleston Hall tried out. She only got a role in the chorus—and she’s really talented.”
“You’re going to take the part, right?” Brittany asked.
“Of course she isn’t,” Glory said with her usual confidence.
“But why would she have auditioned in the first place if she wasn’t going to do it?” Sarah asked.
Lucy’s friends fell silent, waiting for her to weigh in. Instead, she reached for another roll, picking it into bits while she remembered how happy she’d been on her walk from the Theater Arts building, buoyed by her audition. Then she pictured herself onstage, in a line of her castmates, singing “Seasons of Love” (one of her all-time favorite songs!) before a rapt audience. Even now, sitting in the dining hall with her friends, she could shut her eyes and see herself stalking the stage in Maureen’s high-heeled boots and leather pants.
“Lucy?” Britt was surveying the wreckage on Lucy’s plate with a concerned expression.
Lucy brushed the crumbs from her lap and looked from face to face. “Sarah’s right,” she said brightly. “I’m doing the play.” Saying the words made it official, and now that she couldn’t back down, she knew for sure she didn’t really want to.
Later that night, after Brittany had dozed off, Lucy still couldn’t sleep, so she checked her phone. She was surprised to find a message from Jesse in her in-box.
To: Lucy Sommersworth
From: Jesse Palladino
You tried out for Rent? That’s amazing, Lucy. I bet you knocked it out of the park.
Luckily, Angelina is Nello’s fraternal twin, so she gets to be much prettier than he is!
I’m at a
n Internet café, and my time’s almost up, so I’ve got to run. Keep me posted!
Ciao,
Jesse
Disappointed, Lucy stared at the screen. She could hardly believe Jesse’s message was so short. Could he really not have found the time or the euros to type more than a few sentences? Even worse, the comment about Rent was overshadowed by the bit about how pretty Angelina was. A vision popped into her mind: Angelina, who looked a little like her brother but much, much prettier, in skintight jeans and a peasant blouse that bared a perfect shoulder, sliding a plate of pasta in front of Jesse with an enticing smile.
Teeth gritted, Lucy typed a hasty reply.
To: Jesse Palladino
From: Lucy Sommersworth
Thanks for the support. I guess you’ll be happy to hear that I got cast in the role of Maureen—the role I really wanted. Bizarre, right? Considering I’d given up acting, that is.
Anyway, I’m glad you’ve moved on and are making new friends. I’m especially glad to hear how pretty Angelina is. Maybe you two will hit it off?
Oh, speaking of which, I’m happy to report that I’ve started seeing someone. He’s taking me out to dinner in Center City tomorrow night, to someplace trendy and fun. I wasn’t lying when I told you that I don’t always need to have fancy things and go to fancy places. But every now and then, it’s pretty freaking great.
Ciao,
Lucy
As soon as she hit send, Lucy knew she had made a terrible mistake. She groaned, forgetting that Britt was asleep just yards away.
“Who’s there?” Britt bolted upright in bed and felt around, probably for the pepper spray she kept in the drawer of her bedside table. Her fingers found something, and she waved it in the air, squinting into the semi-darkness in search of the enemy.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry, Britt,” Lucy said. “Don’t spray. It’s just me.” She slapped herself in the forehead, hard enough to hurt. “I’m such an idiot.”
“What did you do now?” Britt asked, setting down the pepper spray.
Lucy explained how she’d just fired off the most embarrassing e-mail of all time.
“How bad can it be?” Britt threw her covers aside and padded over to Lucy’s bed.
“Pretty bad,” Lucy told her.
“Let me see.” Britt wrested the phone from Lucy’s hand and read the message. “It isn’t great,” she said finally. “Parts are okay.”
“Parts?” Lucy hid her face in her hands.
“What does it matter, anyway?” Britt asked. “It’s not like you’re ever going to see him again.”
“I don’t know why it matters,” Lucy told her. “It just does.” She held out her hand for the phone, but Britt got up and set it out of reach on Lucy’s desk. She moved with exaggerated care, as though it were a gun that might go off.
“Shouldn’t I send another e-mail?” Lucy asked. “I could say I was kidding. Or that my psycho roommate wrote that message as a practical joke.”
“Oh, Lucy, no.” Britt sat back down on the bed beside her. “The damage is done. You should just let it go. You never know—maybe he’ll think you were kidding?”
“Doubtful,” Lucy said.
Brittany yawned without bothering to cover her mouth. “Aren’t you going out with Shane tomorrow night?”
Lucy looked over at her alarm clock; its red digits read 1:47. “Tonight, actually,” she said.
“So that’s a good thing.”
“I know,” Lucy said. “He’s great, right?”
“Great.” Britt yawned again, louder this time.
“I’m keeping you awake,” Lucy said. “I’m the world’s worst roommate.”
But Britt was too tired to speak in full sentences anymore. “Need sleep. Morning soon.” And with that, she slipped back into her own bed and turned to face the wall.
Britt was right, of course. Lucy needed sleep, too; she had to look her best for that night’s date. So she tried to make herself think of happier things—where Shane might take her and what she should wear. In the moonlight, she could make out the photo that hung on the wall above her desk—the one taken on the Spanish Steps. In it, she looked up at Jesse, and he grinned down at her, arms crossed over his chest. But his smile, which once had seemed so warm, now looked mocking.
I’ll take that photo down tomorrow, Lucy promised herself. And I’ll never think about Jesse Palladino again.
XV
Lucy’s date with Shane was everything she could have hoped for and more. He showed up on time, wearing a crisp button-down shirt that played up his silver-gray eyes. “You look amazing,” he told Lucy, who had decided on her black-and-white polka-dotted dress, her best flats, and a cashmere sweater in case the night got cold.
“So I was thinking we’d have an all-Italy extravaganza,” he told her as he pulled onto Main Street, driving away from campus. “Dinner downtown at Ernesto’s. And it turns out there’s an Italian film playing at the Ritz.”
“The Ritz!” Lucy gave a little bounce in her seat. “I’ve always wanted to go there. My high school friends never understood why I’d want to trek all the way into the city just to see a movie.”
Shane deftly changed lanes. “Then, if you’re up for it, maybe a cappuccino after?”
Ernesto’s was sleek and modern, all glass and gleaming wood. Their waiter even had a real Italian accent. When he took Lucy’s order, he called her la bella signorina, the beautiful young lady. She thanked him in Italian, and he replied with a rush of even more Italian, of which she understood about every fifth word.
“I’m impressed,” Shane said when the waiter had moved on. “Will you teach me?”
“I don’t know much, really.” Lucy took a delicate sip of sparkling water. “Just enough to order in a restaurant. You’d be better off taking a class.”
“But what fun would that be?”
“We could practice together.” She imagined the two of them in the future, at a corner table in New York’s Little Italy, whispering romantic nothings to each other in Italian. Over tortellini with prosciutto, she told him about getting the part of Maureen in Rent, and he was every bit as excited as she could have hoped.
“I guessed you were an actor,” he said. “I’m always drawn to creative types—actors and painters and poets.”
“What about you?” Lucy asked. “Wait. I know. You’re a photographer. No… a sculptor.”
Shane looked amused. “Keep going.”
“A writer,” Lucy tried. “A journalist. Or a novelist.”
He held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I don’t have a lick of talent. It’s tragic.”
“I don’t believe you,” Lucy said. “Of course you have talent.”
Shane reached across the table to lightly touch her hand. “Well, I’m good at picking interesting friends. You should meet this guy I know—he lives in a loft in Northern Liberties, a few blocks from my apartment. He’s an actual hipster, with, you know, the facial hair and the attitude, but he’s the real thing. He paints these big, splashy canvases—cityscapes of Philly—and he’s made contact with a gallery. He and his roommates throw amazing parties, too. You’d like him.”
Lucy dabbed at her lips with her linen napkin to hide her smile; she couldn’t help being pleased that he was already making plans for the two of them. “But what about you? What do you do?”
“What do I do?”
“I mean… what’s your major?” Lucy felt her cheeks getting hotter. “I know that’s, like, a classic campus pickup line, but…”
“Business,” Shane said.
“Me, too!” Lucy exclaimed. “But why? If you’re so into the arts, I mean.”
“I could ask you the same question.” He pointed his fork at her.
“You first,” she said.
“My parents.” He speared the last of his tortellini and popped it into his mouth. “It’s not a very interesting story.” His hand brushed hers again, for the briefest of moments.
“It is.” Lucy leaned
in a bit closer. “To me it is.”
Shane’s smile was wry. “My dad has this company he built from the ground up, selling imports from China. He wants me to work for him after I graduate. I figure he’s going to pay me decent money and teach me the business, so why not go for it?”
Lucy nodded. “That sounds great.”
“Besides, I’m not one of those guys who has to rebel against his father just to prove a point,” Shane said. “I saw how that worked for my brothers. Ryan opened his own mixed martial arts studio, and he’s up to his ears in debt. And Randall is in construction, but jobs are scarce.” He shook his head. “What about you?”
“Pretty much the same story,” Lucy said. On the walk over to the Ritz, through Center City’s charming redbrick streets, she told him about the bargain she’d made with her dad, about giving up her Broadway dreams and majoring in business.
“Whoa,” Shane said, taking her hand in his. “We’ve got a lot in common.”
A lot in common, Lucy thought, a bit dazed.
Shane interlaced his fingers with hers. Despite the heat, his hand was cool and dry. They held hands through much of the film, a quirky romantic comedy set in Naples. From time to time, when she got tired of reading subtitles, Lucy stole a glance at Shane. Something about his profile, illuminated by the flickering colors of the screen, brought back a memory of Michelangelo’s David in the Piazza della Signoria—his chiseled face, his swagger. A lot in common! she thought again, savoring the words. But then a memory popped into her head: Jesse standing at her side, looking up at Donatello’s David, his arm brushing hers. Lucy gave her head a shake. You’re here with Shane, she told herself. Enjoy the moment.
She squeezed his hand and forced her attention back to the screen, where the male and female leads were deep in a passionate embrace. This isn’t some vacation flirtation, she reminded herself. This is your life.
Back at the dorm, Lucy’s suitemates were waiting up for her in their pajamas.
“Was it fun?” Britt asked.