My Life After Now - By Jessica Verdi Page 0,5

don’t know how it happened, but at some point it changed from a stage kiss to a…real kiss.”

You have got to be kidding me, was all I could think. I knew the difference between stage kisses and real kisses. “So you’re telling me there was tongue.”

“Yes.”

“And…emotions.”

“Yes.”

“Was it just kissing, or was there anything else? I’m just trying to get the full picture here.”

Ty hesitated again. “There may have been some…touching. Over the clothes only,” he added, like that made it somehow better.

“Is it still going on?”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“When were you going to tell me?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady, despite the tears that were silently running down my face.

“I don’t know. I guess I was waiting for the right moment.”

I hung up without another word.

3

Send in the Clowns

One of the best conversations of my life, one year earlier:

Ty: (floating on an inner-tube in his pool) My sister’s getting married.

Me: (sitting on the pool’s edge, dangling my feet in the water) Really?

Ty: Yeah. She announced it last night. The wedding’s gonna be on New Year’s Eve, in the city.

Me: That’s amazing!

Ty: Wanna go?

Me: (blinking in surprise) With you? To your sister’s wedding?

Ty: Yeah.

Me: (giddy with excitement) Yes! Yes yes yes! But…are you sure you won’t change your mind? New Year’s is over five months away…

Ty: (pulling me into the water, close to him) Of course I’m sure. I love you, Lucy.

Me: *Gasp!*

Ty: (kisses me passionately)

Me: (grinning like a crazy person) I love you too.

End scene.

There were a lot of awful things about breaking up with Ty, but one of the worst was having to tell people. Because you can’t just tell them that you and your boyfriend of a year and half with whom you were never anything but happy are suddenly not together anymore and leave it at that. They want to know why. And it’s really embarrassing to admit to your parents and friends that you were cheated on.

Word spread fast. I told Max and Courtney what happened, and they immediately told everyone else. They weren’t gossiping—they just wanted to make sure everyone was fully informed, so everyone would take my side. It did seem to work—I noticed people giving Elyse a wide berth and throwing her dirty looks during all nonperforming moments. But it was hard to feel victorious when I was being pitied. If one more person asked me how I was doing or told me what a d-bag they thought Ty was, I was going to scream.

To make matters worse, Ty would not stop apologizing. But there was a caveat: he was only apologizing for the way I found out, not for having cheated. The distinction was not lost on me.

I tried to believe Max and Courtney’s words of support—that I was better off without him, that I deserved better—but I couldn’t help holding out hope that he would realize his mistake and want me back.

But then I saw them kiss.

We were all gathering up on the stage at the start of rehearsal, and it was impossible to miss the way Ty’s face lit up when Elyse entered the room. They ran over to each other like they hadn’t seen each other in years, and I watched, powerless, as he cupped her face in his hands and leaned down to kiss her, the way he always used to do with me. The sting I felt at witnessing that was a hundred times worse than the hypothetical mental image of the two of them in her room that had been on a constant loop in the back of my head.

After that, all hope was gone. I ran home and threw away every single memento of our time together. Pictures still in the frames, the favors from his sister’s wedding, the dried corsage from his junior prom. I deleted every photo of him from my phone and blocked him on Facebook.

But I couldn’t delete him from my mind. Especially since I had to watch him and her being all Romeo and Juliet-y in rehearsals every single day. It was torture.

Elyse herself never said a thing to me. But the smugness was seeping out of her pores. I’d never wanted to punch anyone as badly as I wanted to punch her right in her perfect little surgically-altered nose.

• • •

I came home after rehearsal Friday and went directly to the kitchen on a quest for comfort food. I deserved to overdo it on the calories—pressing pause on the actor diet was my reward for making