Brooke brightens up, and she moves to the center of the stage with the only man in the cast. There’s a stirring of jealousy in my gut that I shove down.
It’s a sweet scene. A little awkward, as it should be with where the characters are. But you can also feel the joy and excitement leaking out of them. And when the actor gets down on one knee and proposes, there are tears in Brooke’s eyes.
He stands and sweeps her into his arms before he dips her back and kisses her.
I feel like a knife has been shoved into my gut. Pain that’s never completely healed. I’m not standing in a theater anymore—I’m standing in a doorway, watching who I thought was the love of my life tangled with someone else. It feels like fire.
He’s still kissing Brooke, and I want to kill him. The way she’s melting into him—I know exactly how it feels to have her do that. I can’t look at it. Can’t see it. Watching it is like being electrocuted, and if I keep seeing it, I’m going to put my hands on that man. Through the red haze over my eyes, I know that I need to leave.
I’m on my feet, letting the seat slam up and back. From somewhere I hear gasps, but all I focus on are the doors to the lobby. Beyond those doors is air that I need to breathe. I can’t be here.
The doors snap open under my hands.
“Malcolm.” Her voice is a faint echo. I keep walking. “Malcolm.”
“I need to go.”
“Wait a second. What’s going on?” Brooke looks confused and concerned.
“The director let you come after me?”
She crosses her arms. “The angel investor in the play suddenly and loudly gets up and storms out? Yeah, he wants to know what’s going on.”
That red tint comes back to my vision. “I don’t want to watch you kiss someone else. That’s what’s going on.”
Brooke goes entirely still. “What?”
“You heard me. I didn’t come to watch you make out with another man.”
“That’s not fair,” she says, eyes hard. “You know that it’s not real. Malcolm, I kissed you not even ten minutes before that. It’s not even a scene in the actual play. What’s really going on here?”
I snap. “If I’d known that’s what I would see, then I wouldn’t have come in the first place.”
Anger fills her face. Her entire stance. “You encouraged this. You wanted me to get the part. And now you don’t want me to do what’s necessary for it? This is my dream, and it means everything to me. And one kiss doesn’t mean anything. What’s really going on?”
“Maybe I didn’t understand what it really meant. And I’ve seen relationships dissolve over less.”
“So that means that ours has to? I lo—” she cuts herself off. “I don’t want to give up what we have. And I don’t want to give this up. Why can’t we have both?”
“Because I don’t want to share you.” My voice fills the lobby. I don’t want it to be so harsh and so loud, but I can’t stop what’s coming out of me. “I don’t want to be at home wondering if you’re doing more improv when you’re not on the stage.”
Brooke takes a step back like I’ve hit her. “You really think that I would do that?”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. And I hear her footsteps as she walks away. When I look up, she’s gone. I push open the door to the lobby and charge down the sidewalk towards my car. I can’t stay here. Can’t look at her, at the theater, or think about what it means.
But the farther I walk away, the worse I feel. I can’t stop the pull backward and toward Brooke. Because she’s not Ella.
God, I’m a fucking idiot.
Of course Brooke isn’t Ella. And of course that one kiss doesn’t mean that she’s cheating or that she will cheat on me. But all I could think about when I saw her was Ella and the way everything ended.
I thought that I’d moved on from that. I knew that it still hurt, but…fuck.
Turning around, I walk back to the theater at double my pace. I can fix this. I want to fix it. Brooke is worth everything, including owning up to the fact that I still haven’t recovered from the damage that Ella did, no matter how hard I try to hide it.
The lobby is still empty when I go in, and the whole cast is milling around, not rehearsing, when I enter the auditorium. Amy storms toward me. “What the hell did you do?”
“I’m Malcolm.”
She looks me up and down. “I know who you are. What the hell did you do?”
“It was…a small misunderstanding. I came back to fix it. Where’s Brooke?”
“She quit. After running after you, she came back in here practically in tears and said she couldn’t do the play. And she left. She’s not answering her phone, and I have no idea where she is. So whatever kind of misunderstanding it is, it isn’t so small to her.”