“If nothing exciting happens for the rest of my life, I will be totally satisfied,” I said.

“Liar,” said Touch.

“There’s a difference between lying and hyperbole,” I said.

“Don’t worry about Oliver Teller,” said Ros. “I’m sure he’s already forgotten about you.”

Which, as everyone knows, is exactly the sort of thing you hope to hear from the object of your affection: that you are, at your core, forgettable.

The party was at Audrey’s house, a sweet little bungalow on the other side of the woods with a chicken coop in the backyard and a tree house with a fraying rope ladder that Audrey told us we were welcome to go up in and a pen holding three square-eyed goats. In the backyard, Touchstone was immediately welcomed by a small pocket of Young Company people—I recognized some costumers, but not the actors that Touch worked with—and I gritted my teeth through my Oliver Teller PTSD flashbacks so I could meet everyone.

Audrey had leading-lady energy, with big, curly blond hair that she held back with a crocheted handkerchief and a copy of a Pinter play tucked into the back pocket of her jeans—our first interaction was brief, but she seemed smart and passionate about theater, just the sort of person that might be a good fit for Touchstone; then there was Sil, who had a tattoo of a cow skull on his arm and, from what I could tell, a terrible crush on Phoebe, who was in attendance as well—she and Audrey were friends from school, it turned out. I was happy to see her, especially because she offered me a LaCroix from her own personal case, which she had labeled PHOEBE’S—U DRINK, U DIE. We all stood around and partook in the ritualistic consumption of poison, also known as beer (pamplemousse seltzer, in my case), and it was kind of fun, kind of awkward, but it was a thing to do, so we did it.

Throughout all of this, I watched Ros. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say: I watched other people watch Ros and watched Ros fail to notice them watching. I watched Phoebe steal glances while she sipped on her seltzer; I watched Sil make a joke and check to see if Ros laughed. I watched Audrey explain something about theatrical clowning to Ros, making sure that they were looped in on all the lingo everyone was using. None of this was surprising to me. In fact, it was the opposite of surprising—sort of like watching order being restored to the universe. Of course people watched Ros. They had a snowbrow, and have you seen how they looked in that cropped sweater vest?