Soon, I felt like Harrison was ready to practice on his own. “Thanks,” he said, shrugging on his plaid jacket and smiling at us as he turned to leave. “You guys saved my dignity.”

Laney stared after him with a dreamy expression. “Thanks,” she echoed when he was gone.

“I expect to be invited to the wedding.” I picked up my jacket from where I’d draped it over my backpack.

“We’re keeping it small, but that can be arranged,” Laney said.

“Um…” I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

Ada snorted. “I’m just going to tell her. We play this game called Love Realism. We pick someone in the cast who we have a crush on, and we go through how our lives together would pan out from now until death. Laney picked Harrison.”

“Ah.” I smiled. “What’s happened so far?”

“Well,” Laney said, “we both went to Penn State. He spent a lot of time with his frat brothers, which was whatever. But now we’ve graduated, and I want to get married, but he wants to wait until we’re more financially secure. So it’s a little tense.”

I laughed. “Who’s yours?” I asked Ada.

“Laurel Adams. I have a long-distance boyfriend, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to play this year, but it’s not like I’m actually pursuing her. Right now we’re backpacking through Eastern Europe together. Want to play? Have anyone in mind?”

Jude’s face floated into my brain. His hazel eyes. His smile. “No,” I said quickly. “Nope.”

For the whole drive home, “Beautiful Girl” was stuck in my head. Which was okay, because it distracted me from thinking about Jude’s face again.

When I walked in the front door, the warm, delicious smell of shoyu chicken enveloped me. It was my favorite food in the world. “Hey, sweetie,” Dad called from the kitchen as I shut the door.

“Hey.” I dropped my backpack on the foyer floor and walked over to the stairs, leaning my hand against the banister as I looked into the kitchen, breathing in the magical mixture of shoyu, ginger, garlic, and brown sugar.

Mom waved at me from the counter, where she was shaping rice balls. “Did you have fun at rehearsal?” she asked.

I thought about it for a second. I’d expected rehearsals without Margot to be painful, but they hadn’t been that bad. Laney and Ada were kind of entertaining. And helping Harrison had felt kind of good.

“I didn’t… not have fun.”

Dad paused as he lifted a stack of plates from the cupboard. “Well, I’m not not glad to hear it.”

“I am also un-unhappy about it,” Mom chimed in.

I rolled my eyes as my parents laughed way too hard at their dumb joke. “Bye,” I said, going upstairs.

“Dinner in ten!” Mom called after me.