Noah
Jonathan raps on my door with his knuckles.
“Come in,” I say, but it’s perfunctory. Of course he’s coming in. He’s the boss. He runs this talent agency. Runs it with an iron fist and a pin-striped suit and the sartorial perfection of Don Draper. Gotta give it to the guy; he looks the part of the agent shark.
“How’s it going?”
“Great,” I say, because that’s all he wants to hear, and besides, work is great. Work has always been great. Work has never been the problem in my life.
“I hear The World on Time is blowing critics’ minds,” he says, miming an explosion with his hands.
“Yep,” I say, because I’d have to be an idiot about the entertainment business not to know that. The darkly comic TV show about an ex-CIA agent gone undercover premieres this Thursday night. Word on the street is the writer-creator, David Tremaine, isn’t happy with his agents and is looking for a new ten percenter. Tremaine is a genius; I’ve been following his career since he wrote a humor column for a local paper.
“I want Tremaine,” Jonathan says, as he sinks into my leather couch and crosses his legs.
“Who doesn’t want Tremaine?” I toss back.
He points at me. “Get me Tremaine, Hayes. You’re my top man. I need you to woo him. There’s a charity shindig event this weekend at MoMA. Some art and literacy thing. He’s going. Bring a date, so you don’t seem like you’re just there to schmooze him,” he says, raising his eyebrows and pointing at me.
I wince inside, but show nothing. Finding a date isn’t hard. It’s just hard when you don’t give a crap about the woman on your arm because you’re still hung up on the one not on your arm. “Sure,” I tell him.
“Are you still dating Mica? I haven’t seen you with anyone in a while. Did you start batting for my team?”
I shake my head and laugh, glad he inadvertently let me avoid the issue of why I haven’t been seen with anyone in a long time. “I still like girls, sir. Mica and I split up a year ago. She’s a nice one though.”
He waves his hand in the air dismissively. “Whatever. I don’t care if she’s nice. I just care how it looks at the party. Make sure she’s pretty, your date. Not that you’d bring a cow.”
“No cows on my arm, sir,” I say drily.
He laughs. “Love that sense of humor, Hayes.”
Later that night, I’m thumbing through my contacts, trying to figure out who to invite to the shindig, when Kennedy’s name appears in a text. My chest goes warm. My heart thumps. This is why I don’t give a crap.
I already gave everything I have to someone else.
Listening to 42nd Street and thinking of you.
I flash back to the time I took her to see the revival. To the way she threaded her hands in my hair and kissed me in the alley outside the St. James with the marquee still lit up from the show. She loves Broadway musicals and their big, showy, over-the-top declarations of love. We had that in common. We had everything in common. It was almost too much to bear.
I run my thumb over the screen, picturing her with her earbuds in, so I cue up the soundtrack too and start playing her favorite tune.
Some other time, I’ll figure out who to bring to MoMA this weekend.
I write back: Which song?
In seconds, she replies with the name of the one I’m listening to, and I might as well be lost in that kiss outside the theater one more time.
Our Stolen Kisses
We’d just seen 42nd Street, and you were humming “Lullaby of Broadway,” and I told you you had a good voice. You laughed, and claimed you couldn’t hit a note if you tried. “I’m terrible at singing.”
I said, “You’re great at kissing though. And just in case you doubt me, let me remind you.” Then I ran my hands through your hair. God, I love your hair. How it feels in my fingers. I kissed you outside the theater, and in that moment we didn’t care if anyone saw us even in the alley. We didn’t care because the only thing that mattered was your lips on mine. The feel of your breath. The way you curled your hands on my hips, bringing me near, but keeping a distance too, in case we got too close in public. Like it mattered. Like anyone who saw us couldn’t tell how we felt.
Chapter Three
Kennedy
Technically, lacrosse is not a contact sport.
If you looked in the rule book for girls’ lacrosse, you would see all sorts of warnings to keep your hands and elbows and sticks to yourself. But that’s not how I play. In my rule book, lacrosse is a contact sport. Life is a contact sport. You’d better woman up.
I make my way downfield, determined to pummel the ball into Keeland Prep’s waiting net. Their top defender tries to slam into me and keep me from scoring. I turn my hand in and my arm out, fashioning my elbow into a weapon. She plants her feet in front of me, so I jam my right elbow hard into her side.
She loses momentum and lunges a bit, her white-blond ponytail swinging out sharply to the side. She’s fast and recovers quickly, and now she’s an angry bull and she’s chasing me down because she’s a ferocious player.
But so am I and I plow ahead, then fling the ball into the net.
The Agnes Ethel School for Girls’ crowd erupts. I raise a fist in the air and shout a loud, “Yes!”
My teammates high-five me, and I’m flying, soaring, laughing into the sky as everything good rains down.
“Woo-hoo! Go, Kennedy!”