We all flipped through the program and found a picture of Ethan and Harrison rehearsing a scene where Cosmo Brown is leaving a party and Harrison helps him put on his coat. They had to rehearse that scene a lot without an actual coat, and in this picture, they’re laughing about it. The caption read: There’s a reason I did the musical: Ethan Anderson.

My eyes shot to Ethan. A blush crept across his face as he stared at the photo, and his mouth turned up in a slow smile. Then he looked up and the smile grew exponentially. I swiveled and saw Harrison standing in the wings. Ethan stood up, and the cast scooted away, making room for him.

“Oh my God,” Jude said, scrambling around in his pockets for something. “It’s a love declaration!” He pulled out his phone and ran to get a good angle. As Ethan and Harrison kissed, Jude snapped a picture, and the cast exploded into “Wooooooooos!”

Everyone gave them space but buzzed around, squealing and jumping up and down. Mrs. Sorenson and Ms. Langford had given up on the notes and were smiling at Ethan and Harrison with maternal pride.

Laney sighed contentedly.

“You knew about this?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said dreamily. “All my Love Realism observations of Harrison clued me in to the fact that he had a major crush on Ethan. And then we became friends, and he told me about it. I guess he’d seen Ethan in 42nd Street last year and was kind of infatuated, so he auditioned to see if what he felt was real. And then he tried all these subtle ways to show Ethan he was interested, but then he was like, screw it, I’ll just be obvious.”

“Uh, I’ll say,” Margot said. “Damn, Harrison’s kind of a badass.”

My stomach dipped nervously. As happy as I was for Ethan and Harrison, I was worried about my own love declaration. I could never do it as perfectly as that, and what if it ended badly?

Deep down, I knew it didn’t matter. I had to try.

“I can’t get over how amazing that was,” Jude said, still buzzing over Harrison’s love declaration as we drove down the nearly empty roads of our town at 11:15 on a weeknight. “Musical theater is magical. You have to admit it now!”

I laughed nervously. “Did you know Harrison was going to do that? Did Ethan know?”

“Not really.” Jude beamed. “I mean, Ethan started liking Harrison a while back, but he wasn’t sure if Harrison felt the same way. Guess he did.”