The upward movement of her perfect eyebrows suggests that I’ve surprised her, and I gird myself for her rejection. I rush to continue, “I guess you might have a party to go to tonight.” There’s probably some correlation between performances and parties. I don’t know how these things work.

“I’m not going to the cast party tomorrow,” she says. “My friends are doing a thing for my birthday. There’s a party tonight, too, but . . .” She hesitates, frowning a little. “Honestly, I wasn’t really looking forward to it. It still feels kind of weird, not being in the show.” She tilts her head at me and then smiles. “Let’s do it.”

Before I can say anything, the lights go down again. I’m relieved, even though it seems unlikely that the cover of darkness can obscure the warm glow in my heart.

When the play is over and Zoe has to run backstage to make sure things get safely put away, I go outside and wait by the exit doors. I shiver, but it’s more from anticipation than from the cold. I take out my phone to compose a message to her about the possibility of Humphrey losing his genitals to frostbite, but there’s a notification from Mom.

My heart drops into my shoes when I see what she wrote.

We should talk. I’m sorry we fought. Please come home?

Guilt weighs on me like ten tons of rock. I pushed her too hard. I was too mean. But the hurt is still there, too — the hurt I never gave voice to until tonight. I can’t deal with this yet.

I write back: Going to Taco Bell with Zoe. Will be home by 11. I’m sorry, too.

Zoe finally emerges from the building, just in time to save me from writing more.

“Thanks for waiting — sorry it took a while,” she says. Her breath mists in the air.

“It’s okay,” I say. The cold means nothing with her so near me. All I see is a milky moonlit cheek, the flutter of night-dark eyelashes — pieces of her that I want to snatch out of the dark and capture and commit to a blank page with colors too vivid to be real.

“The show was incredible,” I say as we walk to the car.

She smiles. “I’m glad you liked it.”

We get in and buckle up, and as I pull out, I proceed to embarrass myself by blathering at warp speed about everything I loved and how much her work helped the play come to life, about the intersection of setting and story. It’s so much easier now that we’re alone.