And clearly Calvin likes it, too, because when I step out, his mouth hangs slightly open like he was about to launch into a thought and has completely lost the thread of it. I admit to being stunned stupid, too. He’s wearing his new suit with a lavender shirt he’s left unbuttoned at the collar, letting the sharp edges of his collarbone flirt with my eyeballs.
After a few seconds of scanning every inch of me, he simply says, “Right.”
“This works?”
His eyes land on my neck; I have my hair in a high, messy bun. “Christ, yes.”
We walk a few blocks to Taboon, and even though there is a line of at least ten parties waiting outside, Calvin shakes hands with a man at the door, who points us to a table in the back. I follow, noticing how heads turn slightly when the Irishman casually slips out of his tailored navy blazer and folds it over his arm.
When he pulls out my chair for me, I ask, “You knew that guy?”
“Juilliard.” Calvin makes a faintly sour face. “Brilliant cellist. He’s not had the best luck since.”
I feel the impulse claw its way up my throat; the desire to help every stray. But no matter how amazing Robert is, or how elaborate his orchestra is for the modesty of the Levin-Gladstone, he can’t hire every out-of-work musician we meet.
Still, even if I suppress it, Calvin reads the reaction in my eyes and it softens the tight line of his mouth. “He’ll land on his feet. Maybe we can help, down the road.”
We.
Down the road.
I swallow thickly, working to give a neutral shrug. In unison, we look down, scanning the menu, and butterflies land in my stomach, tensing.
A proper date.
We’ve had so many nights on the couch eating takeout. So many happy hours spent with Robert and Jeff or even Lulu before we head home together. What about tonight makes this . . . different?
Calvin looks up at me. “Want to share the cauliflower starter and the branzino?”
Holy crap, I love having a decisive eater as a husband. “Done.”
He slides his menu onto the table and reaches over, taking my hand. “Have I said thank you?”
This makes me laugh. “Once or twice.”
“Well, I’ll say it again, just in case.” His eyes take on a glassy, sincere glow. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Of course.”
After a little squeeze, he lets go of my hand and sits back to smile up at the waiter who’s materialized at the table. This married game we are playing sure does seem easy, and Calvin sure does seem sincerely dedicated, but I get these tiny pulsing flashes of awareness that remind me I don’t really know him all that well. I’ve memorized his face—the olive skin, the greenish eyes, the perfectly imperfect teeth—but his brain feels like a mystery still.
We order our shared dinner, and he turns to pull something out of the inner pocket of his blazer, producing a small pink box. “For you.”
I am the worst about accepting compliments and gifts, so as expected, Appalland makes an appearance and I stammer out a few things that vaguely translate into Oh my God, you’re so ridiculous, how dare you.
Inside the box is a delicate gold claddagh ring, and a storm erupts inside me.
“I realize it seems stereotypical to wear these,” Calvin says through my stunned silence, “but we do. Please don’t think I’m being trite. This doesn’t just represent love—with the heart—but I suppose we think of the hands as friendship, and the crown as loyalty.” He makes a self-deprecating little grimace as he slides it on my right ring finger, exposed from the cast, with the point of the heart toward the wrist. “Like this, it means you’re in a relationship.” With a smile aimed at my hand, he fusses with it a little, twisting it straight on my finger. “Normally, because we’re married, you’d wear it like that on your other hand, but you’ve got the wedding ring there.”
I’m so afraid of saying something inappropriate or flippant that I don’t say anything, I just touch it with the fingers of my left hand and smile up at him.
“Do you like it?” he asks quietly.
This is where I could so easily reveal that I’m completely infatuated with him, and that his giving me a ring has essentially Made My Life Complete, but I just nod, whispering, “It’s so pretty, Calvin.”
He leans back, but the vulnerability doesn’t entirely leave his expression. “Do you enjoy watching me in rehearsal?”
An indelicate snort escapes. “Is that a serious question?”
He gives that self-deprecating grimace again. “Well, yeah. Your opinion is the one I value most. Your advice is . . . everything.”
This leaves me momentarily stunned. “I love watching you rehearse. You’re spectacular—you have to know that.”
The waiter brings our wine, and we each take a sip to approve the bottle, thanking him. Once he’s gone, Calvin looks at me over the rim of his glass.
“I think Ramón and I sound great together, yeah.” He bites his lip thoughtfully. “But—I mean—the entire time I’ve been here, I’ve wanted this—exactly this. Did I ever tell you, once Possessed debuted, I would play the music alone and imagine being in the production?”
Something squeezes my heart in its fist. “Really?”
He nods, quickly swallowing another sip. “After I graduated, I thought something like this would come. I thought that break was only a few months off. Or I would run into someone at a party, and give them my information and hope it would change everything. A year turned into two, and two turned into four, and I wanted to be on Broadway so much I just stayed. I really screwed myself, I know I did.”
“I can completely see how that would happen, though.” It’s like me with the book, I think. I expect the idea to sprout tomorrow, next week, in a month. And here I am, two years out of graduate school with nothing written.
“So, I suppose what I mean is that this is so obviously worth it to me. Whether we are only friends or . . . you know. I want this marriage to be worth it to you,” he says gently, “and I’m not quite sure how to make that happen.”
Whether we are only friends or . . . you know.
Whether we are only friends or . . . you know?
My brain is on a loop, barricaded from working past what he’s just said in order to help assuage the guilt I can tell he’s feeling. The reply We could start having regular sex is so close to the surface. So close.
I take a few deep gulps of wine and wipe my hand indelicately across my mouth. “Please don’t worry about that.”
“I could help you think about your book?”
I get that sinking feeling in my stomach that I always get when I imagine opening my laptop and working.
We could have sex tonight.
I take another deep drink of wine.
“I’ll try to think of something,” he says quietly.
seventeen
Calvin and Ramón’s first performance is on a Friday.
When I find him tying his tie in front of my bedroom mirror, he looks calm and rested—but I know it’s a sham, because I heard him pacing most of last night.
“You ready?”
He nods with his bottom lip trapped savagely between his teeth. Smoothing the tie down his chest, he says, “What do you think? Do you think I’m ready?”
He’s said my favorite word of his—tink—twice in one sentence, as if I need to be further charmed.
“I tink you’re going to be amazing.”
He meets my eyes in the mirror. “You tink you can give me shit for my accent?”
“I tink you sort of like it.”
He turns, and for ten seconds, we stand there like this, staring at each other. We’re maybe a foot apart; I can see his hands shaking. He’s been waiting his entire life for this moment.
“Tell me something I need to remember tonight.”
He seems to need something to focus on, some advice to loop through so that he doesn’t spiral downward in nerves for the next two hours. I reach out, fidgeting with his tie. “Don’t rush through the bridge in ‘Only Once in My Life.’ Make sure to breathe in the opening solo of ‘I Didn’t Expect You,’ because you hold your breath sometimes, and I think the notes come out looser when you remember to breathe.” I think for a few seconds in his absorbed silence. “Trust your hands during ‘Lost to Me.’ Don’t be afraid to close your eyes and feel the notes. When you do that, it comes out like water easily moving over a stone.”
I slide my hands from his tie, over his chest. I can feel his heart pounding.
Calvin lets out a long, slow breath. “You should see the way you glow when you’re talking about music. You just—”
I laugh, interrupting him. “We’re talking about you right now.”
He tilts his head, bending his arms so that he can capture my hands in his. “Are we?”
I blaze over this. “You’re ready, Calvin. No question.”
He glances at my mouth, and a fire seems to start low in my belly. It feels like the kind of scene where I step forward, he steps forward, a kiss happens, something sweet and slow, born of feelings that have been building for months.
But oops, that’s just me. We’ve been fake married for just over three weeks, which means we only have eleven months left of the charade. We’ve managed to find an easy balance. No use complicating things.
Even three hours before the performance, the theater is mobbed outside, and we slip in the side entrance. I looked earlier on StubHub, and tickets to see Ramón tonight were over six hundred dollars for the far-back balcony seats. Calvin is doing a good job looking relaxed, but even his calm facade has cracks in it: he keeps fidgeting with his tie.
Backstage is all motion and bustle. Calvin looks for his new buddy, but Ramón is in for makeup and able to offer only a final smile of support before Calvin is tugged away by a stagehand.
I give him a tight hug, a kiss on his smooth cheek, and then he’s out of my sight. I won’t see him until after the show. Instead, I’ll be up front for most of the night, selling T-shirts. Sad trombone.