chapter 46

With the phonecall to Bella out of the way, Izzy lay down on the stage and stared at the ceiling. Why had she bought the theater? Why did she have to be a so-called community leader? Why couldn’t she have stuck with amateur burlesque? Then she’d never have gone on The Great American Talent Show. She wouldn’t have met Lillian. And she wouldn’t be so miserable.

To make the whole thing so much worse, Lillian had looked devastated. In a few weeks, Lillian would realize Izzy was right. Izzy wasn’t worth Lillian giving up her career. Lillian was a shooting star, and no matter how much Lillian thought, in the moment, she wanted to be with Izzy, she wouldn’t stay. And Izzy couldn’t ask that of her. But Lillian didn’t know that yet, and the thought that she’d hurt Lillian. So. Much… She couldn’t bear it.

Izzy had held her tears in. Now she wept.

Izzy didn’t know how long she’d lain on the stage when she heard the theater door rattle. Then voices. Laughter. Someone was singing.

“Let’s get a ton of work done.” That was Axel’s voice.

Izzy staggered to her feet.

A crowd of Velveteen Crush members poured into the theater, led by Sarah, Tock, Axel, and Arabella.

Someone said, “Dang it, she’s here. We can’t surprise her.”

One of the new performers, a title insurance agent who’d said burlesque was the first time she’d had excitement in her life, waved up at her.

“Work party.” The woman spread her arms to encompass the crowd. “We were going to surprise you with how much we got done.” Her voice trailed off as she took in Izzy’s face.

They were all wearing tool belts. Axel and a trio of men Izzy didn’t recognize, each holding a clipboard, looked ready to organize everyone.

“Wait,” Izzy said.

She couldn’t let them spend all day working on the theater only for her to tell them it was going into foreclosure. She’d wanted to tell them in an email, not like this, with Lillian’s departure burning a hole in her heart. But there was nothing for it.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” She wiped her eyes. “Your dedication…” Everyone was staring at her, waiting for the speech. She searched for the words. “Go home.” It came out flat and harsh.

No one moved. They were waiting for the punch line. For Blue to turn that rejection into a rally cry.

“The theater is in foreclosure. I’m sorry. It’s over.” She stood alone on the stage. This was her starring role, and she’d forgotten her lines. Everyone stared. No one could save her.

She closed her eyes. The sound of feet on the stage steps pounded in her ears.

“Go.” She didn’t need their pity.

Then Sarah’s arms were around her. Then Axel and Tock wrapped them in a group hug. Even Arabella patted her on the back.

“Can you tell them to go?” Izzy mumbled into Sarah’s sweater.

Behind them someone said, “This is our community space.”

“Where are we going to stage our art exhibits?”

“And hold the queer youth group?”

Izzy pulled away from her friends and turned to the crowd.

“Be your own heroes.”

Through the blur of tears she saw the crowd staring up at her.

“How much do you owe?” someone called out.

Someone said, “We’ll do a fundraiser.”

“We believe in you, Blue.”

The crowd echoed with heck yeah and always.

“It’s not Blue. It’s Izzy. Izzy Wells from shit-up-a-creek Oregon. Except there’s no creek. It’s just desert and…” Why was she talking about the topography of Broken Bush? “And I failed.”

“You know what Axel always says,” Arabella said. “Failure is the cross street of opportunity and proper nutrition.”

“I do not say that,” Axel protested.

Suddenly Izzy was surrounded. Everyone was onstage, like a laying on of hands at a revival. Finally they released her and she sat down on an overturned crate.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sarah asked. “You don’t have to.”

But she wanted to. Her troupe sat around her on the moldy stage and listened. She told them about the mortgage and the double mortgage and the problems the building inspector missed and how she knew that winning The Great American Talent Show was too long a long shot, but she didn’t know what else to do. And when she was done, everyone started talking at once.

Tock pulled out his phone. “I’m calling consumer protection. Then we’re getting you a real estate lawyer.”

One of the men with clipboards was a contractor. Another woman worked in corporate fundraising. An older man was part of the historical society. Arabella offered to hack the bank, which Izzy refused as quickly as she could.

“You don’t have to do this alone.” Sarah sat by her side, patting her back.

“And we’re still doing the work party,” one of the stage kittens said, waving a paint brush like a wand, “because we’re not losing the theater.”

The crowd agreed with a cheer.

“Come on,” Sarah said. “Let’s go backstage. Someone brought a case of Montucky Cold Snack and a pizza. You look like you could use both of those.”

Izzy felt like the footage you saw of disaster victims after they’d been rescued. Sarah sat her on an old couch and actually put a blanket around her, then sat beside her. Axel sat on her other side, holding a plate with pizza for her. Actually holding the plate like she might be too weak to hold it herself. Arabella and Tock pulled up some old crates and settled at her feet.

“We know Lillian left,” Axel said. “I mean, we don’t know know.”

“But we know you,” Sarah said. “It’s not just the theater, is it?”

“I’m so sorry,” Axel said. “We’ll find her, and we’ll tell her she left the most amazing woman in the world and she’s a total fool.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that and the theater stuff too,” Tock added. “But there is a legal remedy to this.”

“There is no legal remedy to a broken heart,” Axel said.

Arabella nodded approvingly. “That one works.”

Izzy tried to swallow a bite of pizza, but her mouth had gone dry. She took a sip of beer and choked it down.

“She didn’t leave. I told her to go.”

Now that she’d started talking, the whole story poured out.

“She’d never stay,” Izzy finally finished miserably. “And I know it’s true, but she doesn’t know it.” Izzy dropped her head. “I hurt her so much. That’s the worst part. But I don’t want her to give up something that she’s worked her whole life for. I saw her dance. Not for the show but really dance. It was like physics changed because she asked it to. It was like she made the world whole because she’d worked so hard to make something exquisite. I don’t know. She was… is… the most beautiful… woman, person, being. And she was upset about losing on the show and worried about her dancers, that’s the only reason she wanted to stay.”

“It’s really important to honor your feelings,” Sarah said, “but you can’t go in other people’s minds. Their feelings belong to them.”

“You have to listen to their words and their actions,” Axel said. “What did she say? How did she treat you?”

That she wanted to be together.

Like she loved me.

Izzy put her face in her hands.

“She’s in this documentary by Ashlyn Stewart. The Ashlyn Stewart. And she didn’t want to do it because she felt like she had to say all this stuff about how great ballet is and not talk about how she could never be her full self, how hard it was, what she gave up. She felt like she had to just act happy about it. Now the documentary is premiering at this film festival. And I can’t be there with her.”

“Why not?” Sarah asked.

“It’s not fair to send her mixed messages. I can’t be with you. I want to be with you.”

“Would it be a mixed message if you said you cared about her?” Sarah asked, sounding dreadfully logical.

“I couldn’t see her and not beg her to take me back. She’s probably moving on already. She was always clear: No second nights. No cuddling in the morning. No relationships.”

“How well did she hold to that?” Axel asked.

“Not at all.” Izzy gave a watery laugh. “We don’t take our own advice.”

“Do you want to be with her at the premiere?” Sarah asked.

“Of course I do. But the premiere is tonight.” Izzy glanced at her phone. “Near LA. I could never make it.”

“Why don’t you text her and ask her if there’s anything you can do to support her?” Sarah asked.

“Or call,” Axel added. “Be the listening ear on her shoulder.”

“No, Ax,” Arabella said. “The visual’s too weird on that one.”

Izzy took her phone out of her pocket carefully. What if she had an out-of-body experience and wrote everything she felt and thought, and begged Lillian to come back because she was so desperately in love? She opened her texts.

“Oh.”

“What is it?” Tock asked.

“She texted that she’d still go to the wedding with me if I needed her.”

Arabella scooted her overturned crate closer and took Izzy’s hands, which obviously meant Izzy was dying. Arabella never took people’s hands, never looked at them with the look of concern and affection Izzy saw there now.

“Blue.” Arabella corrected herself. “Izzy, they love you—” She gestured toward Sarah, Axel, and Tock. “But they’re going to talk this to death. Axel’s going to say that the hawk shouldn’t land on the dove, and it’s going to take us an hour to figure out what that means. You only have six hours. So I’m gonna lay it out. Izzy, I love you, and you massively fucked up.”

“Ari!” Axel said. “Babe, no.”

Ari?Izzy stepped out of the pit of despair for a second. Were Axel and Arabella…? The strangest couple ever?

“Don’t worry about it,” Arabella said, glaring at Izzy. “We’re talking about you right now. You and Lillian like each other, love each other. You messed up. People do. It’s not the end of the world. You just have to get to the premiere and make it right.”

“Is there any way I could make it on time?”

“I know people,” Arabella said. “I’ll get you a flight.”

Izzy was scared of the people Arabella knew. But losing Lillian was scarier.

“Do I still text her?” Izzy sniffed.

Arabella rolled her eyes. “Damn. You do need to read Sarah’s books. Yes, you still text her. Text her from the car. We’ll drive you to the airport.”

Soon, Izzy was wedged in the last row of a perfectly normal-seeming—although it had probably been purchased on the dark web—Delta flight to LAX. When the captain authorized Wi-Fi use, Izzy checked her phone to see if Lillian had responded. She hadn’t. Izzy took a deep breath. Even if Lillian realized she didn’t want to be together, she wouldn’t ignore Izzy. She wasn’t cruel like that. Lillian was just getting ready for the premiere, staying focused. Maybe she’d left her phone in the car so it wouldn’t go off during the film.

Or maybe… Izzy began rereading the single-spaced paragraph—more like an essay—of unpunctuated text she’d written while Arabella broke as many traffic laws as possible on the way to the airport. Maybe Lillian was still trying to figure out what Izzy had meant. What exactly had Izzy typed that autocorrect had interpreted as your are the most postage Evenfall I messed up. And, perhaps the worst declaration of love ever, I’ve want more then just and then a GIF of a cat vomiting Froot Loops. And then a long explanation of how she’d meant to select a dog-in-sunglasses meme, but she’d touched the wrong one. And she desperately wanted Lillian to know that’s what happened after they were voted off. She’d been overwhelmed and rushing, and she’d made the wrong choice, but she’d never meant to hurt Lillian, and if Lillian believed they had a chance, Izzy would take it a hundred times over. Or, as her phone understood it, Izzy would say yes a herded tines.