Page 113 of Everything's Coming Up Rosie

In the wake of my nonanswer, the three women turn to one another, looking hurt, and walk off.

The message I just sent them? That I’m ashamed and embarrassed by what we’re doing here—that all their hard work isn’t good enough. I sigh. I feel awful.

I turn and find Booker watching me. His eyes are kind, but I feel like I’ve even let him down.

“I’ll invite them, I swear,” I say, sounding like a cheating husband promising it was just one time and it’ll never happen again.

He squints at me. “Where do your friends think you are?”

“Where I told them. The Sunset Playhouse.” I slump to the floor, back against the wall. “I just didn’t correct that when I found out where I would actually be working this summer.”

“Areyou embarrassed?” he asks.

I don’t look at him. I can’t.

I feel ashamed. Ashamed that Idofeel embarrassed. When I shouldn’t. Which makes me feel even more ashamed.

As much as these people and this place are winning me over, I’ve still chosen to keep them a secret.

He sits against the opposite wall, facing me. “Rosie, if they’re really your friends, they won’t care what you do or where you do it. You could be unemployed living in your parents’ basement or a Broadway star. Real friends don’t care.”

I want to ask if he’d stick around if I was unemployed and living in my parents’ basement, but he goes on.

“So are they real friends or not?”

“Yes,” I say without hesitating. “They are the best friends.” I’ve never doubted that for a second. The problem is not with them. It’s with me. It’s always been me.

“Then you should tell them the truth,” he says. “All of it.”

All of it.

He has no clue how difficult that is for me. I don’t look at it as lying either. Not really. Just withholding some parts that aren’t as pretty as others.

This is what’s holding you back, Rosie.

And Booker wants me to tell them all of it? Even the part about being a failure? Even the part about not knowing if I want to go back to New York? Even the part about worrying I’ve wasted all this time pursuing a dream that simply does not want to come true?

I thought I’d made so much progress in being honest and sharing my feelings, but now I’m not so sure.

Booker must sense that my defenses have gone up.

“Hey,” he says, a bit softer. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do.”

I feel stupid for feeling this way. I know the right thing to do—I even know all of reasons to do it. It’s just that when I come up to that point of admitting my failures, I have an overwhelming desire to hide.

I know it’s not a huge deal, and I also know that my cast is full of very dramatic senior citizens who act a whole lot like very dramatic teenagers. Still, the thought that I might’ve hurt them in any way stings.

“I know,” I say. “Iamworking on it.”

“Oh, I know,” he says, smirking. “Every Friday.” And then, because he’s kind, he adds, “I think you’re ready.”

I look up at him just as I hear something crash.

A metalliccrunchfollowed by another woodyboom.

“What the—?” Booker jumps to attention, and we both race toward the noise.

There are voices, frantic voices, getting louder and more frantic as we get closer, and then—an alarm starts blaring.

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