I held out my Dorito bag once again to Stevie and Teri, and Stevie reached for a chip, then froze. I figured she was just choosing carefully like always, until I looked up and saw why.

Beckett Hughes was walking through the lobby.

He had a two-by-four over his shoulder and was walking toward the shop, big over-ear headphones on. He nodded at all of us, but then locked eyes with Stevie and gave her a half smile. “Hey,” he said as he pulled his headphones off, draping them over the back of his neck. “Can we talk for a second?”

Stevie just blinked at him, looking stunned, and I jumped in. “We have class,” I said, my tone cool.

“Yeah,” Beckett said flatly as he looked around at everyone lounging in the lobby. “Clearly.”

I narrowed my eyes, about to say something when Stevie got up. “It’s fine,” she said, looking from me to Beckett, and I wasn’t sure which one of us she was talking to. “Just for a second.” Beckett smiled at her as they walked toward the shop hallway, her long hair swishing behind her, before they disappeared from view.

“I thought they broke up,” Erik said, frowning, also looking in their direction.

I exchanged a glance with Teri, who knew this saga all too well. “They did.”

Stevie and Beckett had dated almost all of last year—her junior year, his sophomore. They’d been flirting and circling each other all throughout Noises Off rehearsals, and they finally got together at the cast party. Beckett had been part of the theater department since his freshman year—not surprising, considering that his parents were award-winning Broadway playwrights. But he’d always been on the tech side of things. He had absolutely no fear of heights, and Mr. Ruiz, who ran the technical theater program, quickly realized this and Beckett became an expert at running the tension grid, the lighting floor at the very top of the theater.

I’d had a handful of boyfriends: Glenn, the cause of my breakup bangs; Eric; and Beau, who’d graduated last year and who’d played opposite me in City of Angels. Stevie had had a few short-lived relationships, but her relationship with Beckett, right from the outset, had been different. This wasn’t us exchanging phones to analyze text messages and figure out what some guy we were crushing on could possibly be thinking. This was real.