Is something wrong with my face? Do I have a "kick me" note taped to my back? It feels like the first school day after I came out. Everyone is glancing at me wrong and looking away when I face them. The caterers usually smile and sometimes wave, but today they're all abnormally engrossed in their work. There are hushed conversations everywhere just outside my earshot. Am I imagining this? I haven't felt this self-conscious in years.

I grab my food quickly and take a seat next to Val, who's carefully avoiding the lima beans in her undressed travesty of a salad. "What do you want to do when you expire?" she asks, impaling a cucumber.

"Expire? Like, die?"

"Expire, like stop getting roles. Women in Hollywood expire by 35. I've got ten or fifteen years left, tops, before I have to find some other career." What's my expiration date? Will I even last until then, or will I wear myself out first?

"Maybe I'll make music again?" My voice has actually improved a bit since I left Pentatonix. It's recovering from overuse. I'm falling out of practice, though, and I'm getting older. "Maybe I'll have some singing left in me. When that's not enough, I guess I'll write music." There's a lot I want to write. It will never have the potency or clarity I want, though. Scott writes one simple, angry, passionate message at a time, but it's never that easy for me. I have mixed feelings about everything. "Maybe I'll just retire early and travel. I still haven't been to Iceland." Scott convinced me to cancel when the civil war broke out, and there might not be an Iceland anymore after it ends, if I even live to see that day. It's funny how something so peaceful and perfect and beautiful and whole can fall apart for no reason.

I look around and notice people turning away again. "Am I crazy," I ask, "or did something happen that I don't know about?"

"It's no big deal. Ignore it for now."

Well, at least I'm not crazy. "If it's no big deal, why not tell me?"

"After work?"

"You sure? Is it bad news? Is something wrong?"

"It's nothing to worry about, just distracting, that's all. Later." It's gonna be another eight or nine hours before we leave today, but she probably knows best. It doesn't mean I'm not dying of curiosity, though. She laughs at my anguished face and introduces a replacement topic for conversation to distract me from how distracting it is not knowing what's not supposed to be distracting me. "How did you get this role? Did they call you up and beg you to star in it?"

"Ha, I wish! Four auditions."

"Even after Sundance? That's brutal."

"Oh, the indie film wasn't out yet at the time, much less winning awards. They only knew me from Pitch Perfect 3. It may have been a complete flop in the box office, but it set me up. The critics really seemed to like me in it, in spite of the script." Perhaps "like" is a bit of an understatement. One of them went so far as to propose to me in a published review.

"Maybe because you added a whole subplot just with your facial expressions. Seriously, teach me your ways, senpai."

"People say things with their faces that might take them years to put into words." Everything Scott sang in his last two albums, I had already seen in his expressions. "It's their voices too, though, and their body language." I had to learn to read all those things when my best friend stopped speaking to me. "There's the face your character is trying to show, and then there's what she's actually feeling. The secret is to stop trying to make them match. Tell the story the character wants people to see with your mouth and your eyebrows, but tell the real story with everything else."

"Easier said than done."

"The real secret, though, is much simpler. You must never tell anyone. It's far too powerful..." She leans in with wide eyes. "The real secret," I whisper, "is practice." I giggle as she punches me and starts chasing me around and throwing the lima beans at my dark wavy romantic chick flick hetero hair. It's a good thing I'm fast, because Genevieve might just have to kill us otherwise.

I miss my wild purple/silver/pink/bleach blond/whatever color I felt like pop star hair, but undercuts are out now anyway. Maybe I'll shave it all off after this. Maybe I'll grow it out long. I wonder if Alex has a preference. I've been working out with him lately, and I really should have started ages ago. We get to spend a lot more time together this way. You'd think it would be demoralizing to exercise with someone twice your size, but it's actually kind of encouraging to see that he has to work for it just like the rest of us. He's not quite the same, though. He's doing it for himself, not for others, to push himself and not just to look good. He's really encouraging and motivating to be around, and it's nice spending time with him in what I'm quickly realizing is his natural habitat.

When I return at last to my dressing room to clean off my makeup and change, I see a text from him waiting, just one. He knows I can't read them during the day. "Are you okay?" He sent it just a couple hours after dropping me off this morning. Of course I'm okay. Is he okay? What's this about?

Val knocks on my open door and lets herself in. "Have you seen?"

"Seen what?"

"He dropped it this morning, totally randomly, at 10:38. Leaked it, really, totally impulsively as far as anyone can tell. It's been taken down, but I have it." She offers me a tablet and some cheap earbuds, but I pull my own headphones out of my bag before taking the device with trembling hands. Scott's staring at me in black and white. I shouldn't do this to myself, but I hold my breath and start the video. It starts out muted at first, restrained, and it builds relentlessly.

What were you thinking,
Letting me go?
Didn't you know we weren't over?

You saw me sinking,
Drinking alone,
And drowning while I was still sober.

Forever, whatever
Honesty, lies
Always, then never
I love you, goodbye.

He punctuates the last words with his hands, jabbing his finger at his chest, pounding his fists against himself in the symbol for "love," and then pointing at me accusingly before fading to the next shot. He signs it again with every chorus until the last repetition. At the very end, he's silent. The music continues, but he doesn't sing the last line. He signs it differently, the way I did when I left. He holds up one hand with his thumb, index finger, and little finger out and his middle and ring fingers touching his palm. The pinkie is for I, the forefinger and thumb for Love, and the thumb and little finger for You.

He waves this time. Goodbye.