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“Seriously?” He looked over at me with an expression of surprise. “Sorry—I forget you’ve seen, like, one musical.”
“Three! At least. Probably. So you’re saying that’s wrong? There’s lots of breakup musicals out there, winning the… musical award?”
“The Tony,” Russell said, his voice patient. “And there definitely are some. The Last Five Years is all about a relationship falling apart. Six, certainly. And Merrily We Roll Along. Passion. Most of Sondheim, now that I think about it. And even going back further, Show Boat, Carousel…”
“Okay, you have to make me a playlist. And then I’ll understand all these references.”
“But you’re definitely right about most musicals centering around love, with usually a happy ending. For the most part, things work out. I’m sure it also gave me a skewed perception of things.…”
His voice trailed off, and I realized I could tell that there was something he was thinking about, but not quite able to say yet. And I knew that if I just gave him a little bit of space, he’d tell me when he was ready.
So I looked out the window, taking in the scenery. There were starting to be fewer signs and billboards, and it was becoming clear we were really in the desert. This shouldn’t have been a shock—I was well aware where Las Vegas was located. But it was one thing to know it—it was another thing to be taking in the vastness of what that actually meant. And it meant desert, on both sides of the car and all we could see in front of us.
“That’s actually kind of the problem with my musical,” Russell finally said. “It started out as a love story. Kind of, um, autobiographical. But then the love story I’d thought I was a part of collapsed. And so the story changed—it turned into a whole mess. I should have started over, most likely. Instead, I tried to kind of Frankenstein it.”
“You mean Frankenstein’s monster it?”
“No, because in this case I’m the mad scientist putting things together that don’t belong and trying to breathe life into a corpse. So for once, Frankenstein is accurate.”
“A Frankenstein musical would be a good idea, though.”
“There is one. It was only ever on the West End in London, though. I liked some of the songs.”
“Please tell me one of them is called ‘Nuts and Bolts.’ ”
“I wish. Where were you when it was being written?”
“Well, I’ll add Frankenstein—the musical!—to my list.”
Russell smiled, but it didn’t last long. I watched as it faded slowly from his face. “I probably shouldn’t have submitted it for my applications. I knew there were issues with it. I had other samples I could have sent in, things that were more polished. And I was too close to have any perspective…”
“This relationship the musical was based on,” I said, pulling my legs underneath me so that I was sitting cross-legged—I was really becoming a fan of this bench-seat thing. “Was it with—Olivia?”
Russell glanced at me, looking surprised. “What?”
“Montana, um, mentioned something.”
“My siblings like to gossip.”
“She didn’t tell me any specifics,” I said quickly. “Just that there was some… drama.”
“Yeah.” He sighed, his hands tightening on the wheel again.
“Sorry—you don’t have to—”
“No. It’s… it’s okay.” He took a breath and let it out. “Just—give me a second.”
I nodded, looked out the window again, and four billboards later, I heard Russell draw in a sharp breath—the kind you take just before plunging underwater or getting a shot. “So her name was Olivia—which you know. We were together seven months.”
“Oh.” I hesitated—there was a question I really wanted to ask, but I was suddenly dreading the answer. Because what if they’d broken up last week? What if this whole thing had just been a giant rebound? My stomach plunged at the thought of it—but I took a breath and made myself ask it. “How long… I mean, when did you guys break up?”
“Back in October,” Russell said, and relief flooded through me. “It, um… ended kind of badly.”
I nodded. Montana had said something to this effect, and now, looking at the tense set of Russell’s shoulders, the way his brow was furrowed, I wished I would have asked for more specifics.
“I had thought that things were good with us. But… then I found out she’d been giving out information about my dad to DitesMoi.”
“She… what?”
