Roomies

  He looks up at me, eyes tight. “There’s a lot about this that is weird to me.” He pauses and then reaches for my hand. “I know I didn’t want you to do this, but I can’t pretend that having Ramón and Calvin together, playing the pieces I wrote . . . it’s a bit of a dream.”

  Calvin makes a tiny sound of agreement in the back of his throat.

  Letting go of my hand, Robert says more quietly, “But, God, I hope this works.”

  “Listen,” Jeff says, and lifts Robert’s hand to kiss it. “I might not be completely on board with how all this came together, but even I’m confident it will be fine.”

  I look between them, worried. Jeff isn’t the PDA type. He’s unflappable—yes. Calm and steady—yes. But he’s never very outwardly affectionate in front of people. So seeing him reassure Robert like this gets my antennae up. “Is something wrong?”

  The two share a quiet look before Robert squeezes Jeff’s hand and replaces his glasses. “I worry it’s going to be tight. Calvin should start officially next week, but who knows if we can swing it.”

  “We filed everything a day and a half after the wedding,” I say, glancing at Calvin, who nods.

  “I know you did, Buttercup, it isn’t you. Work permits can take months, and we’re asking for it to move through in two weeks, total. It’s unlikely, and I’m not sure once Luis is gone that I can pair Ramón with Lisa until Calvin is officially hired. Ramón won’t go for it.”

  One look at Calvin’s face—affronted, possessive—and I know Robert is right.

  Jeff turns to Calvin and me. “I talked to Sam down at immigration and he assured me they’ve got what they need for now. He can’t guarantee approval, but he can give things a little nudge and make sure those forms go through in time.”

  My shoulders drop with relief. “Oh. That’s good, at least.”

  “I know I’ve said it,” Calvin says to Robert, “but thank you for everything you’ve done. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”

  “None of that,” Robert says, shaking off the tension. “I’m just having some pre-show jitters. Always happens. Circumstances are just a little different this time.”

  The waitress stops at the edge of the table and asks if we’re ready to order appetizers. With little discussion Jeff and Robert order their usual, and during Lulu’s turn, Calvin moves closer, pointing to my menu. “If I get the eggplant, do you want to split? Or even get a few appetizers and share?”

  It’s such a coupley thing to do, it catches me off guard.

  “Holls?” Beneath his patient smile, there’s an amused glint in his eye.

  “Sure,” I say. “What else did you want?”

  He opens his mouth to answer, right as his phone vibrates in his pocket. He’s so close, I actually feel it move through the cushioned bench. “Sorry,” he says, pulling away and looking down to the screen.

  I catch the name Natalie.

  Calvin stares down at the screen in confusion for another ring, and then his smile slips as he seems to realize something. “Ah, bollocks.”

  My throat goes tight. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes. I . . .” He stops, seeming to have changed his mind, and turns to address the table. “Would you all excuse me for a minute? I need to take this.” Back to me again. “Just order us whatever.”

  Calvin stands and I twist in my seat. “You’re sure you’re fine?”

  “Of course.” With a squeeze of my shoulder, he steps away and heads out of the restaurant. Through the glass doors I watch him climb the stairs—phone already pressed to his ear—before he’s out of sight.

  I drop my keys on the counter and watch Calvin wordlessly duck in to use the bathroom before bed. I had this strange sense of a Plexiglas barrier between us the entire walk home and am trying to figure out what’s bothering him. Other than the obvious, of course: the looming pressure of his first performance, the stress over our paperwork getting filed in time. Maybe that’s all it is and he just needs some time to process it all. Keeping our sanity intact while we wait for the work authorization to come through is like watching someone hammer a nail through my hand one tiny blow at a time. It’s excruciating, and I have no control. Imagine how it feels for him.

  But Calvin finds so much joy in music, and he’s so optimistic about all this, it seems hard to believe that he’s quiet because he’s worried about that. And what was the urgent phone call tonight? Is there another opportunity he’s keeping on the back burner? Am I the only one who’s planning to be faithful?

  The prospect makes me want to vomit.

  Calvin emerges, and does a double take when he sees me standing exactly where he left me, just inside the door.

  “You feel all right?” he asks.

  I attempt a smile. “Yeah. Dinner was fun.”

  Nodding, he moves to the couch, sitting down, untucking his dress shirt, and putting his head in his hands.

  It’s so weird to live with someone I don’t know that well. He didn’t drink very much, so I know he’s not suffering any ill effects from alcohol. We just ate a half hour ago, so I doubt he’s suffering from something he ate . . .

  “Are you all right?” I ask.

  He nods, and then looks up at me, eyes red and unfocused from exhaustion. “I know it’s only been a little over a week, but seeing Robert nervous tonight made me nervous. What if we did all this for nothing? I feel like the waiting to start is killing me. I just want to perform. I just want to get in there.”

  I nod in understanding, but I get a weird twist of guilt, like I should be speeding this up somehow. And doing all this for nothing doesn’t land entirely without impact, either. I realize we aren’t actually together, but it’s been nice to be with him, even platonically. It doesn’t feel like nothing.

  The name Natalie floats into my memory, paired with the way he dashed off . . . it leaves me feeling uneasy for a different reason entirely. “I hope that the phone call wasn’t anything bad.”

  It seems to take him a few seconds to remember, and then he looks up, sheepish. “Oh.” He grimaces. “I was supposed to be on a date, and completely forgot.”

  This leaves me momentarily speechless.

  “Hold on,” he corrects, holding up a hand, “that came out wrong. It was a date I made a few days before we had that first lunch. I forgot to cancel it. I’m sorry.”

  Well, this is awkward. I sit down next to him on the couch, picking at a tiny hangnail.

  “I guess, if you wanted—but, yeah, I don’t know—we probably shouldn’t—” I trip over my words and can feel him turn to look at me. “Date. Shouldn’t. I mean, just for appearances.”

  “Bloody hell, Holland,” he finally says, incredulous. “I’m not apologizing because I’m feeling regret that I wasn’t with her tonight. I’m apologizing because another woman called me when I was out to dinner with you and your lot.”

  “Oh.”

  He bursts out laughing. “Do you think I’m an absolute gobshite?”

  “No?” I say, and can’t help smiling back at him because I have no idea what a gobshite is. The unease slowly dissolves. “But it’s true that our situation is a little unprecedented.”

  “It is, but I’m not going to be unfaithful . . . even if we’re pretending.”

  Although he’s used the word unfaithful, it’s the pretending that sends a tiny hot poker through my side. I’m not pretending—or, I am; I’m pretending that I don’t have feelings for him.

  “How did you meet her?”

  “Through a friend,” he says easily. “There wasn’t some long story building up to this. I’ve seen her once. That reminds me,” he begins, and waits for me to look up at him.

  Finally, the burn eases, and I can. “What’s that?”

  “We never discussed what to say when someone asks us how we met.”

  I nod, looking back at the coffee table. I remember the intimacy of our texts the other night, how it felt to curl up against him on the couch, the heat of his skin, the firm press of him n
ext to me, and have to remind myself that we’re pretending. “I guess we should keep it as simple as we can. We met at the subway station. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.”

  sixteen

  Every day, Calvin has three hours of rehearsal with Ramón before Luis and Lisa take over for the evening performance. And after each rehearsal, Calvin locates me backstage, and he’s smiling like he’s been plugged into a generator. The music makes him glow in a way I find hard to believe; sometimes it seems there is a candle burning just beneath his skin.

  Robert rehearses with them sometimes, but once or twice a week, he hands over the reins to the assistant musical director, Elan. Because Robert composed the music, he feels the notes physically, and directs the musicians with instinctive, fluid movements. But I notice that Elan focuses on technical precision more than artistry, and the days he is there, the music loses some instinct, some deeper emotion that hasn’t been fully transferred from Robert to Ramón and Calvin.

  I’ve seen it happen before, how Robert’s passion is slowly fed into his musicians; how he trains them to feel it, not just see the notes. The key, the rhythm, the dynamics become an action themselves: a deeply drawn breath, a sob, a triumphant fist in the air. They are no longer individual notes, but constellations of them pulled together to make something nearly otherworldly.

  Today was not an otherworldly day.

  “What didn’t work out there?” Calvin has barely exited the stage when the question is out, and he stares at me with intense expectation. He shifts his guitar in his hands, nodding to the stage behind me. “Something felt off, and I’m not sure where.”

  Normally I’d balk at the idea of advising him at all on how to more masterfully play his guitar, but I’m wrapped up in his glow and feeling emotional from the impending start of his theater run. “Lean into the deceptive cadence in ‘Lost to Me,’ to draw out the tension just a bit more. You and Ramón are both letting it resolve too soon.”

  He stares at me for a full ten seconds without speaking, and my stomach sinks. I’ve never criticized him before, not once.

  I think I’ve just done something catastrophic.

  The quiet continues over dinner. He eats quickly at the coffee table before reaching for his guitar and, bending over it, forming a private cocoon. Retreating to my bedroom, I hear him playing the section again and again until I fall asleep to the sound of it, and dream of chasing him through the woods.

  But the next day, onstage during rehearsal, he meets my gaze just as he’s playing this section, and the emphasis of the notes, the astonishing beauty of them, makes tears spring immediately to my eyes.

  I was right, and this is how he tells me.

  Trust your muse.

  Later that night, for the first time in months, I’m able to write. It’s only a paragraph, and it isn’t the fictional world I’m desperate to find—it’s about the way it felt to hear Calvin and Ramón play, the sensation of having my chest so full of emotion that I nearly felt weightless—but I typed. I put words on a page.

  Every evening, from the wings, Calvin, Ramón, and I watch Luis and Lisa perform together. I can almost hear Calvin mentally reciting the lines and cues, and—at the opening note of each show—counting down the remaining nights before he and Ramón debut.

  Months ago, Michael Asteroff released the news that Ramón would replace Luis in mid-February. But the showrunners have made no statements yet about the changes in musical direction—namely Calvin on guitar. While it’s common knowledge that the lead violinist left, the press seems to assume that Lisa will continue on in his place. I know Robert is waiting until the work permit comes through before announcing anything, but given the crew’s reaction to Calvin and the way he’s treated like a new celebrity backstage—not to mention the way Lisa is being mildly bashed on social media in the more hard-core Broadway circles—I don’t think it would hurt the production to get some buzz rolling about Calvin soon.

  Three weeks after he started rehearsals, and just under a week away from his first performance, there is an official-looking letter waiting for us when we get home. We tear into it like starving dogs.

  Our application has been accepted and, according to Jeff, that’s good enough to move forward with the paperwork Michael needs to submit to get my husband officially hired.

  Within hours, Michael’s assistant has called to schedule joint photo shoots and interviews for Calvin and Ramón, to launch during their opening week. Although the primary media focus will be on Ramón, Calvin still gets a haircut, a fancy shave, a manicure—though he politely declines a chest wax.

  We’ve opened a joint checking account, which required that we share the very basics of our finances, and they are equally bleak. Other than the three hundred dollars in our shared account, I have some money in savings that I never touch. Calvin is in much the same boat . . . minus the savings. For various interviews and appearances, he’ll have to buy a suit, some dress shirts, new shoes. Our balance dwindles, but it’s so much less stressful with someone else at my side . . . and any stress we do feel dissolves as soon as we step into the theater and frenetic energy explodes around him.

  Our last few days before the debut performance should be accompanied by a soundtrack. Ideally Chariots of Fire. More realistically, Jaws.

  There is a looming baseline thunder, and I swear it’s not just in my head. Social media is on fire speculating about the person replacing Seth—that it’s a guitarist is sparking a lot of controversy. Fans mob outside, hoping to hear any bit of music to quench their curiosity. We practically live at the Levin-Gladstone. Michael, who rarely comes by the theater, paces the aisles, listening in on every note of rehearsal. The Law brothers—who, before, were never around and trusted Robert to run the production just fine with their money—are occasionally spotted in the balconies. Brian is a maniac backstage, barking out orders, laying into the crew if they’re caught hanging around when they should be moving things. Robert is tense and bellowing at the smallest mistakes. Ramón is a perfectionist and demands to do something again, and again, and again until he’s nearly hoarse and Calvin’s fingers are practically bleeding. But Calvin still finds me backstage after every grueling rehearsal, with a giant grin. It’s as if he’s been waiting years for this, and he is Pressure Teflon, or maybe the thrill outweighs the terror.

  I see the cast and crew eyeing him, eyeing us. We look like any other married couple. Calvin touches me freely and kisses me—on the forehead. We come together and leave together, even though I’m not needed here a fraction of the time I’m around. And while I’m not completely unfortunate-looking, I know everyone is half wondering how I ended up with someone like him. I’m that girl with the freckles, the one with snagged tights who spills her coffee awkwardly on her boobs, the one who knocks into everyone with my camera. Calvin, by contrast, drifts gracefully in and out of spaces, and we’ve already established how he can eat a salad without greasing up his chin.

  It really is unfair.

  I find Calvin leaning against a wall backstage, talking to Ethan—a member of the ensemble who I’m sure would love to pull my husband even farther into the shadows for a far more private interaction. The fact that Calvin is straight seems to cause acute physical pain to many of our male coworkers.

  He immediately spots me, expression relaxing as he steps around Ethan to come to my side.

  Ethan gives me an annoyingly fake smile. “Hey, Holland.”

  I mimic the expression. “Hey, Ethan.”

  I nearly jump out of my shoes when Calvin pulls my back to his front and presses his mouth to my jaw. “I’m going to take my beautiful wife to dinner.”

  I can’t even look at him over my shoulder because he’s so close: we’d nearly be kissing.

  “Take me to dinner?” I step forward, putting a little distance between me and he who is my husband, he who smells like the woods and fresh air, he who sleeps practically naked only a room away from me every night.

  “A proper date.”
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  Imaginary Holland stands up and waves the That Means Sex! flag, but I tell her to have a seat until we obtain clarification. “ ‘Proper’?” I say faux-demurely.

  He seems to get the meaning the same time I do, and with a little cough pulls his lip balm out of his pocket, smoothing it over those lips I really, really like. “Proper.” He snaps the cap back on with a grin. “Food. Drinks. Fun.”

  Did he lean into the word fun? Did he growl it a little? I look to Ethan, wishing there was a way I could ask him to corroborate this, but in our surprising moment of flirtation, I don’t think either Calvin or I noticed that Ethan has already disappeared.

  “I’m always down for food and drinks and fun.”

  “It’s why I like you.” Calvin threads his arm through mine, and I catch a longing, droopy look from another one of the stagehands. Tugging, he leads me toward the side exit. “You need to put on a proper dress, with proper heels, and put your hair up.”

  My brain is still trying to compute all this, to decide whether I love or hate that he’s telling me what to wear, but then his hand slides around to cup the back of my neck, and his lips land on my cheek, lingering there, warm and soft. When he speaks, he speaks against my skin. “Your neck is my kryptonite,” he says, and I feel his smile curve against me. “I suppose I should text you more about that.”

  I emerge from the bedroom in the only proper dress I think I own: it’s black, hits just above my knee, and has a fitted bodice with a flowy, pleated chiffon skirt.

  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.”