Off Book

9. Ian

9

IAN

“So is mine eye enthrallèd to thy shape.” Act III, Scene I

I may not be experienced, but I am a quick learner. So this time when I show up at Jade’s apartment, I don’t bring flowers.

“You brought baked goods,” Jade says as she opens the door.

With a grin, I peel back the aluminum foil to reveal letters I penned myself with neon-pink icing. “Congrats, It’s a Girl!” is written on the brownie in messy iced handwriting.

Jade tosses half her body back in a wild laugh. She opens the door wide enough to let me in, then closes and locks it behind me, still laughing.

“Shit, that is hilarious, Ian. Thank you.”

I follow her to the kitchen, where she’s got an unopened Diet Coke sitting on the counter. I set the brownies down, and she hands me a fork.

“Not to be upper-class about it, but . . . no plate?” I ask.

“You’re lucky I’m not just digging in with my fingers,” she says and removes the foil from the brownies, sticking her fork right into the pan.

At first bite, she closes her eyes and makes a noise suspiciously similar to moaning.

Under any other circumstances, this wouldn’t even faze me. People make weirdly sexual noises all the time when they eat. But somewhere between all the hours Jade and I have spent running lines and being together at the bowling alley last week, something’s . . . happened.

At first, the something was just that I started to see Jade as a friend—a feat in itself considering our slightly rocky start. And then we spent hours every day volleying lines back and forth and hanging out, and I watched her drink a million Diet Cokes and throw herself around in fits of laughter, and I started looking forward to seeing her every day, wishing we could hang out for longer and longer each time.

And then she showed up at the bowling alley.

Immediately, something was different for me. She looked so cute in her jeans and bowling shoes, and when the opportunity to touch her presented itself, I jumped at the chance.

It wasn’t until I was describing it all to Seth the next day that I even realized what I was saying. And I didn’t even realize it—Seth did.

“ Dude, you have a crush on her .”

I knew he was right as he said it.

So while normally, when Jade makes pleasure sounds at her food, I barely even notice it . . . tonight, I am noticing. And it’s . . . doing things to me. Mentally. Physically. And that’s just not great.

I redirect my thoughts to safer territory: gel colors.

Rosco 39, Skelton Exotic Sangria.

Rosco 318, Mayan Sun.

I try to picture the lights onstage, but all I conjure is an image of a scantily clad Jade on stage in Cabaret with those lights and colors on her. And that is NOT what I was going for.

Ugly colors, Ian.

R388, Gaslight Green.

R12, Straw.

R41, Salmon.

R397, Pale Grey.

R50, Mauve.

R34, Flesh Pink.

“Ian?”

I snap my head up in her direction.

“Did you hear what I said?” she asks.

“No, I’m sorry. I was lost in my own world there for a second. Sorry. What did you say?” My neck heats, and I know those splotches I always get when I’m nervous or embarrassed have shown up.

“I was just saying I have a proposal for you.”

“Oh?” I hope my voice is as nonchalant as I’ve tried to make it sound. Like maybe I wasn’t just reciting gel colors to keep my imagination from running away with the noises she made eating a brownie.

“Well . . . I don’t know if you know this, but I like to do makeup.”

“Yeah, you do the shows and the . . .” I gesture to my face. “The shows for the makeup and the . . . yeah.”

Why am I so fucking awkward?

“And I actually have kind of a big following on my social media accounts for my makeup . . .”

She doesn’t seem to have noticed how awkward I’m being. Or she’s used to it. Either way, her nonresponse helps me relax a little.

“Like how many?”

“Hmm . . . like, twenty thousand?” she says and opens her Diet Coke, taking a sip with a shrug.

My jaw practically unhinges as it drops open.

Jade rolls her eyes and slaps my arm playfully. “Oh, stop. It’s not a big deal.”

“Jade, that’s a huge following. I don’t even have social media and I know that’s huge.”

“Yeah, well, I need to actually post every once in a while, and I had this idea for a makeup design for a character, but it’s harder to do on myself . . . and I was wondering if maybe you’d let me do the design on you?”

Before I can say anything, she holds up her hands as if to ask me to wait.

“Now, before you say anything . . . I’m willing to do something for you in return,” she says, raising her eyebrows at me.

“Go on,” I say, dragging out the vowels. I can play her game.

“I saw the look on your face when Anastasia told you to try a New York accent at rehearsal last week,” she says, and I roll my eyes.

“Oh my god, the accent.”

“And I saw how you struggled,” Jade says with a meaningful look.

“I’m listening.” The corners of my mouth tick up into a smile.

“I’ll get Anastasia to drop the accents if you let me do the makeup on you,” Jade says, and I hold my hand out to shake. She takes it with a big smile.

“Deal.”

“Thank you so much.” Her whole face brightens, her megawatt smile lighting up not just her face but all the space around her too. The energy in the room shifts with her joy.

“I would have done it for free, but I appreciate the bribe,” I say, and she feigns shock and indignation, reaching out to playfully swat me again. I catch her wrist. The temptation to pull her close and just brush my lips against hers startles me, and I drop her hand.

It’s too soon for that. Right?

Ever since Jade mentioned the word “demisexual” to me, I’ve been mildly obsessing over it. I’m not on social media, but I made an account just to see what other people’s experiences are with the word. I read through threads in online forums of people talking about how they knew they were demi, and every time I read something, all I could think was “me too, me too, me too.”

I’ve been reconciling all my experiences with relationships and sex through the lens of this new identity, and it feels like I’ve put on a piece of clothing tailored to me.

But now I’ve got to make sense of this experience. I’ve known Jade for six weeks. It’s the earliest I’ve ever developed a crush, but I’ve seen her every day for the past three weeks, even if it was just for a half-hour run-through of the script, so it feels like I’ve known her longer.

I want the internet forums to make sense of this situation for me, but the only thing I can consistently find is “it’s different for everyone.” Which means if it took me six weeks from meeting Jade to having a crush on her, my experience is valid.

A freeing and terrifying thought.

“Okay, let’s get started!” Jade claps her hands excitedly, and I follow her to her room.

For a college apartment, it’s quite a setup. There’s a ring light set in front of a blank wall, a chair facing the ring light, and a stool next to that. It’s a lot for a small room, given that there’s still a bed and a dresser in here, but the real setup is the entire desk covered in makeup supplies. Tons of brushes and pencil-looking items, and small and large compacts with colors that I could try to match to all the gels in the light lab and I’d still come up short. I’m familiar with a number of these tools, having sisters, but not to this extent.

“How long does this usually take?” I ask, taking a seat in the chair against the wall as she wedges the phone into the ring-light holder.

“You got somewhere to be?” Jade asks as she sorts through her supplies, opening various containers and plucking brushes out of random pouches.

“Yep. Hot date,” I say.

“Hotter than me?”

The heat in my cheeks and neck comes back again. “Oh yeah,” I lie.

She sucks in air through her teeth. “You sure about that?” She spins on me, pointing a brush at my face, the pointy end dangerously close to my eye.

“I take it back.” I hold my hands up in surrender.

“Good.” She smirks and it’s contagious, because I’m smiling now too.

Before she turns around, I catch the tiniest dimple on the left side of her face. It’s unreasonably adorable, and I don’t know how I never noticed it until now. I want her to turn back around and smile at me again so I can see it fully.

“So what’s the character you’ve got in mind?” I ask.

“The dance department is doing Alice in Wonderland in the spring, and I wanted to try a Mad Hatter look. The idea came to me last night.”

“Wow. So you’re doing the makeup for the show?”

“I’m designing and consulting.”

“I didn’t know you did that. I knew you did makeup for the theater department, but not the dance department too.”

She shrugs, turning back around, holding a small sponge with a bit of skin-tone-colored goo on it. “I take the opportunities that come my way. Ready?”

“Do your worst.”

She smirks, and inwardly, I count it as a victory. I really like making Jade smile.

Before she begins, she hits record on her phone and perches on the edge of the stool. She’s not rough with me as she applies makeup all over my face. Her intense focus on me, but not really on me, is both familiar and odd.

“You’re doing a great job of being still. This must be weird for you.”

“Sisters, remember?” I try to move my mouth as little as possible as she blends the makeup into my hair and jawline. “I was the youngest by eight years, so they really saw me as more of a baby doll than a human.”

Some of my earliest memories with my sisters are of them bribing me to play Princess Dress Up by telling me they’d clean up the playroom, which was always covered in Legos, and which I was always getting in trouble for not tidying up. I always said yes. It seemed like a fair trade. The first rule of Princess Dress Up Makeup Time was “no wiggling,” so I got really good at sitting still while having my makeup done. An almost useless skill as an adult.

“You don’t have siblings, right?” I ask.

“I have a half-brother, apparently. He’s my dad’s son, but I don’t really consider him family. We don’t spend time together or anything.”

I make a noise of acknowledgment, but once again, I have trouble putting myself in Jade’s shoes.

“Are you close with them?” she asks. “Close your eyes.”

“Despite our age difference, yes.”

Even during the years my dad was separated from my mom, my sisters and I kept in touch. Dad got me a phone and a texting plan just so I could talk to them. Sometimes they’d hang out with me when Dad had to go to work or took Mom out on dates. I was old enough that I didn’t need to be babysat, but Dad preferred that I wasn’t alone. My sisters and I would play board games or get ice cream or dinner.

Thinking of them now reminds me I should text them soon. Maybe one of them can help me figure out why I have a crush on someone so different from me . . .

Jade moves the stool forward, close enough now that one of her legs slides in between mine. Her proximity is dizzying. Her breath is warm against my face and smells sweet from the Diet Coke. Her earthy scent—jasmine and musk—envelops me like some kind of invisible hug the longer she stands this close. My hands, which were casually in my lap, take on a mind of their own. My fingertips skim the denim of her jeans along her thigh in some kind of forbidden movement. If she notices the touch, she doesn’t say anything. She’s zeroed in on the makeup, and I’m zeroed in on her.

Against my will, the memory of her body against mine comes to me, the soft curve of her hips at the bowling alley, the . . .

Jesus Christ.

R388, Gaslight Green.

R12, Straw.

R41, Salmon.

R397, Pale Grey.

“Should we run lines?” I ask, desperate for a distraction. I need to be my character, Ben, right now—not me. I make the slightest adjustment to my jeans, hoping she can’t tell they got a little tighter.

“Yes! God, I totally forgot,” Jade says. She dives right into our lines, not hesitating, and I thank whatever god is listening.

I have no sense of time, but we run through the whole scene, Jade occasionally adjusting the angle of my face, her fingers warm on my skin and then gone too soon.

“You’ve gotten pretty good with your lines,” she says.

“Pretty good, huh? High praise considering last week you said I was ‘adequate.’”

“I don’t give out compliments often, so treasure this moment.”

“I’ve already tucked it away in a mental box of my most precious memories. Top ten of my life,” I say.

“Should I be flattered or worried about your life that a compliment from me is a highlight?”

“Flattered for sure. My life is just a series of incredible things, one after the other. I’m positively drowning in memorable moments.”

“Well,” she says, “I hope you aren’t too bored here. I’d hate to keep you from something monumental, but I’m not quite done, so you’ll just have to sit still for a little while longer.”

She starts to move away, maybe to get a new tool, but I take her wrist in my hand, stopping her.

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be than right here with you.”

“You’re hilarious,” Jade says, the sarcasm implying I’m joking or that I don’t mean it. Her gaze slides away from mine easily, but I don’t let her escape the moment yet.

“I’m serious, Jade. I really like spending time with you.”

Her lips part and her eyelids flutter a few times.

I let my thumb graze the inside of her wrist—an indulgence she’ll probably find annoying, but she doesn’t say anything.

She clears her throat, and the spell breaks. I release her wrist, and she riffles through her makeup. When she turns back to me, whatever moment we just shared has passed.

“Yes, well, that’s just too bad, because you may not have a hot date, but I do.”

Her tone is teasing, and the vibe in the room shifts back to playful.

“Really?” I try to sound like I’m playing along and not like her saying this, even in a joking way, made my stomach do anxiety flips.

“No.” She giggles, and I laugh, hoping it sounds like I liked her little joke and not like I might throw up from relief. “Close your eyes,” she says and tilts my chin up. She’s not standing directly between my legs, but she’s close.

I sit on my hands again to keep from reaching out to touch her.

“I’m not dating right now, actually,” she says.

“Really?” I try to hide my surprise that she volunteered this information.

There’s a beat of silence while I wait to see if she’ll say more or if I should ask another question.

Having deeper conversations with Jade is often what I imagine bird-watching is like. Lots of waiting and being patient and waiting some more for the right moment, hoping you don’t have to sneeze or make any sudden movements and startle the wildlife.

“Nah. I just got out of a relationship.”

The metaphorical bird is still on the branch, so I try to get a little closer.

“How long did you two date?”

“There were actually three of us. Me, another girl, and a guy. We stayed together, like . . . eight months, I guess? Greg and Anna are still together, but I left.”

“Why did you leave?”

“They wanted something a little . . . deeper. Emotionally. And I . . . didn’t.”

I try to listen for the sadness in her words or another emotion besides apathy, but she really seems detached from the whole thing.

“I thought you believed in love,” I say, referencing our conversation from a couple weeks ago.

“What we had wasn’t love. At least, I wasn’t feeling it.”

“Have you been in love before?” I ask.

She pauses, tilting my head to the other side. “Have you?” she asks, avoiding my question.

“I thought I was a couple times, but in retrospect I don’t think it was the real thing.”

“How do you know what the real thing is like? Your parents?”

I start to answer, but she uses her finger to smooth something on my face, so I wait until she’s done. When she steps back, I open my eyes and watch her riffle through her stash.

“Yeah. My parents are the standard in my mind.”

“That seems like a lot to live up to, but I guess, in a way, my parents are the standard for me too. Which is to say, the standard is in hell,” Jade says with a cynical chuckle.

I’m not sure what to say, so I opt to not say anything.

“What happened? With your parents. Like, tell me why their love story is so great,” she asks after a second of silence that feels like a year. She leans against her desk, crossing her arms.

I resist the urge to itch my face, which feels heavy with makeup. “I didn’t really think anything of their relationship for a long time. They never fought, or if they did, it wasn’t in front of us. They didn’t seem unhappy, but I guess they weren’t that happy either. Or maybe my mom wasn’t that happy. She said she fell out of love with my dad. She said there was no spark, no chemistry left. She saw my dad as a roommate more than a romantic partner. So Dad moved out and gave my mom her space.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I think he felt confident he could win her back. He used to say that a lot. He said if it was meant to be, they’d end up together. It took almost two years, but my dad won her back over. We moved back into the house eventually, and they’ve been wildly and madly in love ever since.”

“And that’s the story you want for yourself?” Jade asks as she picks up a compact and a fresh brush.

I close my eyes again as she dabs the makeup brush across my face. “Not that exact story, but I want a love like that. The kind that can withstand anything.”

I’m tempted to prompt her to admit she wants that too, but she’s made it clear she doesn’t really believe in love.

Which is totally fine, because having a crush on someone doesn’t mean anything. People have crushes that go away all the time. It’s not important if she believes in love or not. Liking Jade doesn’t mean I’ll eventually love her.

“Well, now I know your secret,” Jade says.

Every muscle in my body tenses. My secret? Does she know I like her? Was I that obvious? I run through every word I said tonight, every movement, every touch. Either Jade is a CIA-level expert in reading body language or she has telepathic powers she hasn’t revealed yet.

Or she means something else.

“What’s my secret?” I ask, but my voice comes out strained and scratchy. So much for playing it cool.

“You are a hopeless romantic.”

A wave of relaxation rolls through me, literally from my ears down to my toes.

“If you thought that was a secret, you haven’t been paying attention,” I say with a chuckle.

“Maybe I haven’t,” she says, introspective and offhand, like she’s either thinking a lot about that statement or not at all. I crack open an eye and she’s studying my face—or, rather, her makeup job.

“Close your eyes,” she instructs, and I follow orders. “I bet you have a line of ex-girlfriends wishing they could get back together with you. Girls love a hopeless romantic.”

“Um, not really,” I mutter.

“You’re being modest, as always.”

“I’m not being modest,” I say, an emotionless laugh behind my words. “Not only have I been dumped every time I’ve had a girlfriend, but I’ve also been cheated on twice.”

It’s Jade’s turn to freeze this time. She stops mid-brushstroke, and I open my eyes to watch as she slowly pulls the brush away from my face.

“Shit. I’m sorry, Ian.” She leans against the desk, creating space and silence for me if I want to talk, the same way I have for her, without pressure or expectation.

It’s not like I’ve never talked about this before, but as I’m about to recount these stories, it occurs to me they both make more sense and make me sadder with the new lens through which I have to view them.

“I’ve always asked to take things kind of slow with anyone I’ve dated. I didn’t have the word at the time, but being demisexual, I wanted to build an emotional connection before I did anything physical with anyone.”

I read Jade’s face as I use the word “demisexual” for the first time, out loud, as a way to describe myself. There’s a slight uptick at the corners of her lips, but otherwise she’s just listening. Waiting for me to open myself up to her.

“The girls always said they were okay with that, and we’d go on a bunch of dates. I put a lot of effort into dates for being fifteen, seventeen, and nineteen. We’d kiss and, ya know, eventually we’d start to do some other stuff. And then, like clockwork, they’d start to drop hints that they were ready to have sex. And I . . . never was. I don’t know if it’s because the right level of emotional connection wasn’t there or because I really want my first time to be with someone I care deeply about, but I would always push it off. And two of the three girlfriends I’ve had ended up cheating on me. The last girl had the decency to break up with me before sleeping with someone else.”

“What a bunch of bitches. Seriously, those girls are trash.”

“You wanna know the worst part?” I look down at my hands, where I pick at a hangnail on my thumb. I can’t even bear to look at her when I say this. “Those two girls who cheated on me? I stayed in a relationship with them for at least another month or two. I didn’t sleep with them then, but I thought we could repair things, and so I’d stay with them and give them another chance.”

“What!” Jade’s voice is about an octave higher than usual and much louder, like I’m hard of hearing.

“I know . . .”

“Ian!” she says, exasperated. “Why did you— Why didn’t you just . . . leave? What those girls did was wrong. You deserved better. You had every reason and every right to leave.”

“But . . . but my dad didn’t leave . . . and?—”

“Oh my god.”

“And look how it turned out for him!”

“I can’t figure out if you’re the softest cinnamon roll to ever exist or the biggest dumbass.”

“Both?” I shrug.

She sighs, all her features softening against the pained look on her face. It’s not pity, and I’m grateful for that, because I don’t want to be pitied. Those breakups were all painful experiences, but I’m on the other side of them now, with a better understanding of myself and the kind of partner I need.

And now that I have a vocabulary for my lived experience—thanks to Jade—I hope it’ll be easier to find someone who gets me.

“This is a good moment for a hug, but I don’t want that all over my face.” She gestures to my makeup.

“Is it done?”

She narrows her eyes, studying her work. “I think so. Let me just . . .”

She grabs a brush, and I close my eyes again while she works her magic.

“All right, that should do it,” she says and directs me to the bathroom across the hall.

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I looked in the mirror, but it sure wasn’t to look as epic as I do.

“Holy shit.”

My fingers hover over my face, but I don’t want to touch it and even dare to smudge a single thing. I look exactly like the Mad Hatter might look. Not quite like the Tim Burton character, and nothing like the Disney one. The character Jade has made is entirely her own creation. It’s straight from her imagination, and it’s magnificent. My face is white base, but not bright white; more of a subtle, skin-toned white. Like maybe I’m just really pale. There are sharp, red contour lines that go from my temples to my chin, blending out to give my face a pointy look. The eyeshadow is the most striking part: a gem-toned rainbow of color across both eyes. My lips are a bright pink, with orange highlights at the edges. I hover my fingers over my face, tempted to touch it and afraid to mess it up.

“Jade, this is . . .”

I see her reflection in the mirror. She’s leaning against the bathroom doorframe, admiring her work as much as I am. She’s beaming, and the pride on her face could warm an ice sculpture to melting. I feel lighter and taller knowing I got to help her do something she loves.

“Seriously, this is so fucking cool. You can do this anytime you want.”

“Be careful what you wish for.”

But I’d wish for another evening exactly like this.

Before I leave, Jade takes a few photos of the makeup and sends me back to my apartment with makeup wipes and instructions for removal.

My phone dings halfway through cleaning my face.

Jade: Thanks again for being my guinea pig. I’ll send you the video once it’s completed. I can tag you if you have social media.

She’s attached the photos she took, and somehow the makeup looks even cooler.

Me: The makeup is amazing, you’re crazy talented. No socials remember? I hate people.

Jade: I’m people

Me: You don’t count :P

Jade: Thank you?

Me: See you at rehearsal tomorrow.

Jade: It’ll be smashing, dahhhling *Anastasia accent*

It hits me as I dry my face off later that evening that I really am looking forward to rehearsal, or maybe I’m just excited to be spending more time with Jade. It feels like every time we see each other, something shifts between us.

A month ago, my anticipation was all anxiety, but now it’s the same kind of anticipation I get right before the lights go up for the first time during a show, when the whole theater is dark and the only people talking are those in your ears on the headset. It feels like the last moment of darkness before the beginning of something exciting, the held breath of waiting for whatever inevitable end approaches.