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By the time the dressing room clock reaches seven o'clock, Gina has already checked her reflection at least ten times.
Not because anything is wrong with her costume. As far as she can tell, everything looks exactly the way it's supposed to. Her hair is where it should be, her makeup survived the last hour, and the dress she's wearing still fits the same way it did when she put it on earlier that evening.
Unfortunately, none of those things are the reason she's nervous.
The dressing room buzzes with activity around her. Cast members move in and out, some still carrying pieces of costume, others rehearsing lines under their breath. Every now and then someone bursts into laughter, and for a moment Gina wonders how everybody else manages to look so calm.
Maybe they're all secretly panicking too.
She certainly hopes so.
“Oh, you’re here.”
Gina looks up from the script in her lap to see her best friend Anna making her way through the crowd, a clipboard tucked under one arm.
"I guess my hiding spot wasn't exactly impressive, then.” she smirks.
"No, but you disappeared right when everybody started looking for you."
Gina's stomach immediately drops. "Why were people looking for me?"
Anna glances down at the clipboard. "Because you're on in twenty minutes.”
For a second, Gina thinks she might have heard her wrong. Then she remembers that Anna has never once gotten a schedule wrong in her life.
“Oh… I could’ve sworn I had another hour.” She lets out a nervous laugh and presses her hands against her knees. "It just suddenly feels very real."
The words leave her mouth before she has time to think about them.
For months, the play has existed in a strange bubble made up of rehearsals and costume fittings and staying late after school. There was always another rehearsal after the current one, another chance to fix a mistake, another week before opening night arrived.
But now, opening night is here. And in twenty minutes, the curtain is going to rise whether she's ready or not.
Anna seems to realize the same thing.
The teasing expression slips from her face.
For a moment, neither of them says anything until Gina sighs out loud.
"Anna, I think I forgot how to breathe."
That earns a laugh from the other girl.
"Please don't say that."
"I'm serious."
"That's exactly why I need you to stop saying it."
Gina buries her face in her hands and groans.
Anna hesitates for a second. "Do you want me to get someone?"
The answer comes immediately. "Yeah, I need my dads… They must be out there in the audience, I guess.”
Anna nods without hesitation. "I'll go find them."
Before Gina can thank her, she's already disappearing into the crowd of actors and stage crew.
For a moment, Gina remains where she is. Then she realizes that staying in the dressing room might actually drive her insane.
Everywhere she looks, somebody is doing something. A group of cast members is gathered around a mirror, making last-minute adjustments to their costumes. Someone near the door is quietly rehearsing lines. Across the room, two stagehands are arguing over the location of a prop.
Normally, she loves this. Tonight, though, it feels impossible to sit still.
She rises from her chair and slips out of the dressing room before anyone can stop her.
The hallway outside is quieter, though not by much. Voices drift through the walls as she makes her way down the corridor. Somewhere in the distance, she can hear the auditorium filling up. The sound does absolutely nothing for her nerves.
A few moments later, she spots the stairwell door and immediately changes direction.
Perfect, she thinks to herself. Nobody ever hangs out in here.
Pushing the door open, she steps inside and lets it swing shut behind her.
The sudden quiet is almost startling.
It’s not completely silent, but close enough.
She makes it down exactly three steps before dropping onto one of them, clutching her script against her chest.
"This was a terrible idea," she mutters to herself. The words echo slightly in the empty stairwell. She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees.
Maybe she'll forget her lines.
Maybe she'll trip.
Maybe she'll somehow manage to do both at the same time and create an entirely new category of embarrassment.
The more she thinks about it, the more possibilities her brain invents.
By the time the stairwell door opens again, she's halfway through imagining herself accidentally setting a piece of the set on fire.
She looks up so fast she nearly drops her script. Mike is standing in the doorway with Will right behind him.
The second they spot her sitting on the stairs, both of them seem to understand exactly what's going on.
"There she is,” Will says softly.
Gina lets out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
Mike pulls the door shut behind him while Will makes his way down the stairs. Neither of them asks why Gina is hiding in a stairwell. The fact that she's sitting there with her script clutched to her chest probably answers most of their questions.
Will lowers himself onto the step beside her first. His husband follows a second later, sitting on her other side.
The three of them sit there for a few seconds without speaking.
Gina hadn't realized how badly she wanted to see her dads until now.
"Anna looked concerned," Mike says eventually.
"She should be." Gina replies.
"That bad?"
"I'm considering faking an illness."
Will lets out a laugh. "Fifteen minutes before the show?"
"Maybe if I commit to the performance, they'll believe me."
"You're a theater kid," Mike says. "You should know better than anyone that bad acting never works."
She groans and drops her head onto his shoulder. "I hate that you're making jokes right now."
"That's because they're helping." Mike smirks.
"They're not helping."
"Yeah, you keep lying to yourself.”
That earns a reluctant smile from her.
For a moment, nobody says anything. Somewhere beyond the stairwell door, a burst of laughter echoes through the hallway before fading away again.
Gina stares down at the script in her lap. The edges of the pages are bent from being carried around for months.
"I was fine during rehearsals," she says quietly. "I don't know what happened."
Will glances over. "You got closer to opening night."
"Apparently."
"I think that's a pretty normal reaction."
"Is it?"
"Of course it is." Mike nudges her shoulder lightly. "You care about this."
"Yeah, but I cared about it yesterday too."
"Yesterday nobody was sitting in an auditorium waiting to watch you."
Gina lets out a long sigh. "I mean… It's not like there are that many people out there I actually know. You guys are basically the only ones whose opinions matter."
The second the words leave her mouth, she notices the look that passes between her dads.
"…right, guys?”
Neither of her dads say anything.
"Oh, come on."
Mike suddenly seems very interested in examining a spot on the opposite wall.
"How many people did you invite?" she grunts.
"I didn't invite anyone."
"Dad. Just tell me the truth.”
"We might have mentioned it." To his credit, he looks slightly guilty.
Will doesn't. In fact, he's trying to hide his smile.
"You told people?" Gina asks.
"A few people."
She stares at them. "A few people?"
"Lucas and Max are here." Mike says.
Gina closes her eyes. "Okay."
"Dustin and El too."
"Of course they are."
"And your Uncle Jonathan."
Gina slowly lowers her head into her hands. "Keep going."
"Nancy came with him."
"Naturally."
"Well, it would be awkward if we didn’t invite Holly, right?”
At this point, Will is trying—and failing—not to laugh.
"Grandma Karen’s here.”
"Oh my God, Dad.”
"Also, Joyce and Hopper. I have to say, she’s thrilled about her granddaughter doing theater just like she did in high school.”
"Dad."
"What?"
"Why does it sound like the entire population of New York is sitting in that auditorium?"
Mike shrugs. "People wanted to see you as the lead role of the play. Can you blame them?”
The words are simple.
So simple, in fact, that Gina doesn't know what to do with them. She looks down at her script again.
For a moment, the stairwell grows quiet. Then, she admits the thing she's been trying not to say all evening.
"What if I embarrass myself?"
Neither of her dads answers right away.
When she finally looks up, Will is watching her with a small frown. "Sweetie," he says, "since when have you cared so much about what other people think?"
Gina lets out a small laugh. "I care sometimes."
Will smiles. "No, really. You were the kid who came home from elementary school ready to fight another student because he said it was weird to have two dads."
She groans immediately. "Oh my God, are we seriously telling this story again?”
"You were ready to punch that boy in the face with your little fists, don’t you find that cute?”
"I was eight, though. And I’m pretty sure if I did end up getting in a fight, it wouldn’t end well for me.”
"Maybe not," Mike joins the conversation, grinning. "But you certainly looked confident." His grin lingers for a moment before he nudges his daughter’s shoulder.
"Seriously, though. What happened to that confidence, huh?”
Gina's smile fades after a moment. She looks down at the script again.
"I don't know," she admits. "All this worrying…Maybe it's stupid."
"It's not stupid," Will says immediately.
"No, it is. Everybody gets nervous before performances. I know that. I just..." She exhales through her nose. "I keep thinking about all those people sitting out there."
Mike is quiet for a moment, turning the thought over in his head before he continues.
"When your dad and I were your age, we spent a lot of time worrying about what people thought of us."
Gina lifts her head slightly. Neither of her dads talks about high school all that often— at least not the difficult parts.
"Some of that was survival," Will says. "People could be cruel."
"So we stayed quiet," Mike adds. "We tried not to stand out. We tried not to give anybody another reason to make fun of us."
A faint smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "It gets exhausting after a while."
Will nods. "You can't spend your whole life making yourself smaller for other people."
Mike leans back against the railing and lets out a breath. "At some point, you have to stop giving a fuck."
"Dad." Gina says dramatically, dragging the word.
"What? It's true."
This time, Gina can't help smiling.
Mike points at her script. "Look, I'm not saying it's easy. I still get nervous about things. Your dad does too. But if we'd spent our whole lives worrying about what everybody else thought..." He shakes his head. "We wouldn't have done half the things that made us happy."
"We wouldn't have built the life we have now," Will says quietly.
Mike glances over at Will, then reaches over and takes his hand, their fingers fitting together as naturally as they always have.
Gina has seen the gesture a thousand times. Across dinner tables. On subway rides. During movies. Walking down the street. Sometimes she doesn't even notice it anymore.
Now, though, she does.
A small smile appears on Mike’s face. "If we cared about other people’s opinions, we wouldn't have moved here," he says. "We wouldn't have gotten married."
"We wouldn't have had you," Will adds.
Something warm settles in Gina's chest. Mike reaches over with his other hand and squeezes her knee. "I mean… Look at the life we ended up with."
Will's smile widens. "A pretty good one, if you ask me."
Mike glances at their daughter, a faint smile passing through his face. “More than pretty good.”
The three of them sit in silence for a moment, voices drift faintly through the walls, and every now and then footsteps echo from another floor. Yet somehow, tucked away on their little section of the staircase, they feel removed from all of it.
Gina lowers her gaze to the script in her lap. The pages are bent and covered in notes. She'd spent months carrying them around in her backpack, highlighting lines, scribbling reminders in the margins, rehearsing scenes in front of the bathroom mirror when she thought nobody was watching.
All that work.
All that worrying.
And somehow her dads had managed to make the whole thing feel a little less impossible.
A laugh escapes her. "Okay, now I'm getting emotional."
Mike immediately grins. "I knew it."
"No, you didn't."
Will's smile softens. "Come here, baby.”
Before Gina can protest, both her dads pull her into a hug, and she lets herself melt into it.
Mike’s arm wraps around her shoulders. Will presses a kiss against her hair.
"I love you guys," she mumbles into Mike’s shoulder.
"We know," he says.
"Very smooth, Dad."
"I love you too."
"There we go."
Will laughs quietly beside them. "We love you too, sweetheart."
The knot in Gina's chest loosens a little more.
The stairwell door suddenly swings open, causing the family to look up at the door. Anna stands in the doorway, slightly out of breath. "There you are!”
Gina groans. "I knew this was coming."
Anna points down the hallway. "The director is losing his mind looking for the lead actress."
Mike raises a hand. "In our defense, she was having a moment."
Anna nods. "Honestly, fair."
Will smiles. "Thank you for coming to get us, Anna.”
"No problem, Mr. Byers.” she looks at Gina. "But if we're late, I'm blaming you."
"That’s fine." she replies, laughing.
Anna glances between her friend and the two older men, then smiles. "You know you've spent the last three months panicking over a role you've completely nailed, right?"
"Anna." Heat rises to Gina’s cheeks.
"What? I'm just saying." She reaches for the door handle. "The rest of us figured that out weeks ago."
Before Gina can come up with a response, Anna is already halfway out the door. "Okay, let’s go. If I get yelled at again I’m going to crash out for real.” With that, she disappears back into the hallway.
The stairwell grows quiet again. Mike eventually pushes himself to his feet and brushes imaginary dust off his jeans. "Well."
Gina smiles and stands, gathering her script. For a moment, the three of them remain there on the staircase.
The audience, the cast and her crewmates are all waiting. The director is probably halfway through a stress-induced meltdown. And yet Gina finds herself wishing she could stay here for another few minutes.
Mike seems to notice that. "You okay?"
Gina looks at him, then at Will. The knot in her stomach is still there. Maybe it always will be— but it feels manageable now.
"Yeah," she says. "I think so."
Will's smile is warm. "Good."
Mike reaches over and straightens a piece of her costume that doesn't actually need straightening. It’s a habit he's had for as long as she can remember.
"There you go.”
"Dad, you didn't fix anything."
"I know."
"Then why—"
"Because it's tradition."
Gina rolls her eyes, but she's laughing again. The three of them head for the door.
"We should probably let you get back.” Will says.
"Yeah."
Nobody moves immediately. Then Mike nudges her shoulder. "Hey."
Gina looks up at him.
"Break a leg."
Will nods. "We'll be out there in the audience. Front row.”
"The whole party is there too,” Mike adds.
"Oh God.” Gina sighs dramatically.
"Yeah, actually, there are like twelve of us. now” Will says, smiling.
"Please don't embarrass me. And keep an eye on Uncle Lucas and Dustin especially, don’t let them scream my name when I step on that stage…”
Mike smirks. "Well, how do you know they’ll be the one screaming? It’s obviously going to be us.”
That earns exactly the reaction he'd been hoping for. Gina shakes her head, laughing.
Just before stepping into the hallway, she glances back at the staircase.
It isn't much. Just a few concrete steps. A metal railing. Scuffed walls that could use a fresh coat of paint.
By tomorrow, she probably won't think about it twice.
But she has a feeling she'll remember this exact moment for a long time.
Anna is waiting outside when they emerge. "There she is," she says. "The star of the show."
"Please stop calling me that."
"No." Anna falls into step beside her, already launching into a story about somebody nearly knocking over a prop backstage.
The familiar sound of her voice fills the hallway.
Behind them, Mike and Will follow at an easier pace.
Gina catches a glimpse of them from the corner of her eye. Their hands finding each other automatically like they always do.
Something warm settles in her chest. Maybe Anna is right.
Maybe she'd spent the last three months worrying about something she'd already proven she could do.
By the time they reach the wings, people are moving in every direction at once.
Someone calls Gina's name.
Someone else hands her a prop.
A stage manager rushes past carrying a clipboard.
And before she knows it, she's standing in her place, waiting. The audience is hidden beyond the curtain.
Somewhere out there, her dads are sitting in the front rows—probably looking impossibly proud. The thought of it makes her smile.
Then, the lights begin to dim as the chatter fades.
A hush settles over the theater.
The curtain starts to rise.
Gina takes a deep breath before stepping onto the stage.