Our server arrived with our food then, an enormous prosciutto-and-mozzarella sandwich for me and a big kale salad for Touchstone, who was worried, accurately, that we were not getting enough greens at the Lily Pad. Especially in Ros’s absence, we were struggling with the contract’s stipulation that we were expected to learn how to cook beyond gluten-free macaroni and cheese. We ate a lot of cereal for dinner, eggs if we were feeling fancy.

“Here’s a question,” Touchstone said, spearing a wedge of mandarin orange with his fork. “Is there ever a time in the future when you can stop being jealous of their relationship?”

“I’m not jealous,” I said.

“So what are you, then?”

This, I didn’t quite know how to answer. What I was experiencing wasn’t jealousy. That was a word that felt so flat, and so villainous. Like the wicked stepmother who was jealous of her daughter’s beauty. What I was feeling was much more complicated than that, so complicated there didn’t seem to be a single word for it. I wanted them, yes, but I also wanted them to be happy, but I didn’t like the way that they’d chosen to be happy, and I didn’t like that I didn’t like it. I decided, instead of answering Touchstone’s question, to ask him one of my own.

“What did you mean, that you were kind of upset when I left Lovers’ Lagoon the other day?”

“I meant I was upset you left. First of all, you were our ride, and second of all, I wanted to hang out with you, too.” Touchstone sighed again, this time heavily, which felt oddly foreboding. I thought fleetingly of the night we’d broken up. It had been relatively painless—an “I think we’re better as friends” speech delivered by yours truly—and then we’d had a quick hug goodbye, and a week of awkwardness before things went back to normal. Now, though, the positions felt reversed, like I was waiting for Touchstone to deliver bad news. If we had been dating, I’d have been the one being broken up with.

“Look,” he said. “We’re talking a lot in the workshop about the character’s story. Each character, in any play, has an arc, has a story. And sometimes it seems like the story you’ve been telling yourself, Celia, is that you’re the wronged party. I wonder what it would be like to see things from Ros’s perspective. They’re in love for the first time in their life. They’re obviously going to forget us a little bit. They’re not going to text us back. They’re going to bumble through it. We’re not the thing they’re focusing on.”

“Okay,” I said, but my heart was hammering in my chest.