I roll up a yellow-striped polo shirt I stole from a box of my dad’s high school heirlooms and shove it into my New York bag—a giant camp duffel bag, already bulging with shirts, jeans, and books. Dragging everything onto the train tomorrow is going to be An Experience, but at this point I’m just hoping I actually make it to New York. Which won’t happen until I clear my thirty metric tons of shit out of this dorm room.
I nudge a cardboard box aside with my foot, hands in my hair. “What am I forgetting? Chargers, shirts, jeans—”
“Underwear?” Mikey says.
“Underwear.”
“Work clothes? Suit and tie?”
“Suit and tie? So I can look like Chad from corporate?” I shake my head. “Michael McCowan, this is queer off-Broadway theater! I’ll be laughed off the stage.”
“Off the stage?” Mikey squints. “You’re an intern to an assistant.”
“Intern to the director’s assistant. Do you even know how many people interviewed for this job?”
“Sixty-four.”
“Exactly. Sixty-four,” I say, feeling just a little sheepish. So maybe I’ve talked Mikey’s ear off about my internship once or twice or possibly a few hundred times. But can you blame me? It’s my ultimate top-tier pie-in-the-sky dream job. I don’t think I’ve even fully processed it yet. Starting in less than a week, I’ll be working for Jacob freaking Demsky, Lambda Award–winning playwright and two-time New York Innovative Theatre Award–winning director. How could I not jump for joy, at least a little?
I was kind of hoping Mikey would do a little joy jumping, too. Or just, you know, try not to look like Eeyore whenever I mention it.
I mean, I get it. Of course I get it. We had our whole summer mapped out perfectly: living in Boston, staying in Mikey’s sister’s guest room, working at a day camp. Not exactly a résumé game changer, but I wasn’t in it for my résumé. I was in it for Emack & Bolio’s ice cream, Union Square Donuts, and day trips to Salem and Cape Cod on the weekends. I was in it for Mikey.
But then Jacob Demsky announced his internship, and I couldn’t get it out of my head.
Yeah, the stipend was less than half of what I’d be making as a camp counselor. But I could always save money living in Uncle Milton’s apartment. Missing that time with Mikey would suck, but it’s not like I’d be moving to the moon. And it was just for the summer. Also, there was no point even worrying about the logistics, because Jacob was never going to pick me. Every queer Broadway nerd in the country would be vying for this, and some of them probably had more impressive theater credits than Beauregard and Belvedere in Ethan’s basement.
Still. I poured every bit of my heart into that email and pressed send.
Then I mostly tried to put the whole thing out of my mind. I focused on Boston and Mikey and frantically teaching myself how to make yarn looms, because, wow, I was not born with camp-counselor skills. But I was going to be a camp counselor. In Boston. Because Boston was real, and New York was a pointless secret email sent into the abyss.
Until two weeks ago.
I’ll never forget the way Mikey froze when I told him I’d been offered a Zoom interview.
I study him now for a moment. Mikey Phillip McCowan, my pale-shouldered nervous wreck of a boyfriend. He’s sitting with his knees tucked up, hugging them, not looking at me.
“Mikey Mouse,” I say quickly. “Put on ‘Don’t Lose Ur Head.’”
If any album can pull a smile out of Mikey, it’s the original cast recording of Six.
He grabs my phone off the charger, tapping in my password to unlock it. But then his face sort of . . . stalls out. He stares wordlessly at my phone screen.
He’s definitely not smiling.
My heart kicks into high gear. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Yes.” He taps the screen a few times, and Anne Boleyn’s voice jumps to my wireless speaker. Normally Mikey sings along under his breath, but now his mouth’s a sullen straight line.
It’s like the air pressure changed.
I run my hand down the edge of one of the cardboard boxes marked for storage at my bubbe’s house. “I should probably bring this down to the car.”
“What if you just . . . don’t go?”
“To the car?”
“To New York.”
I stare at him, and he stares back through his glasses, his eyes plainly serious.
“Mikey.” I shake my head. “I have a job—”