After the third time Ryan texted, Jeremy replied, Lose my number.
He had enough distractions. Max’s clear distress the night before still weighed on his mind. Max had doubts about whether they could pull off a romantic relationship. Jeremy hadn’t had any; as usual, he’d just plowed forward and assumed everything would work itself out.
But what if it didn’t?
And now Max’s doubts had given Jeremy doubts.
And the whole cast was fucking up the run-through.
“Jeremy, you’re flat,” Mike Bowman said, the music director for the show. “You’re singing it here, but it’s really up here.” He sang the sentence on key. “Start with me. ‘You ever notice how each day starts at sunrise...’”
“Sorry. Was a little distracted.”
“No,” Alex said. “No distractions. We leave for Boston on Friday. This show has to be ready to go on Tuesday. None of you can have any distractions. If that means your boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands and wives and kids and friends don’t speak to you for the next two days, so be it. No interpersonal drama, no problems at home, nothing. All that exists is this show and what’s happening in this room. You go home tonight and sleep and eat, but that’s it. Am I clear?”
Everyone mumbled that he was clear. Maggie said, “Crystal.”
“From the top of ‘Every Day Is the Same.’” Alex pointed at the pianist, who plunked down the opening notes.
Mike held up his hand as if he wanted the notes Jeremy sang to reach it. “‘You ever notice how...’”
So Jeremy sang along. It was only the second song in the show, and they were already off.
But no distractions. Jeremy tried to take that to heart.
He texted Max during a break to say he’d be home late and he’d find his own dinner or eat whatever leftovers were in the fridge. Max responded with a long list of everything in the fridge, which was so very Max it made him smile.
He finally went home many hours later, so hoarse from singing he sounded like a pack-a-day smoker, so tired he could feel it in his bones. Max was up, watching TV in his pajamas. He looked up as Jeremy came in and put his bag down.
“Tea with lemon and honey,” Jeremy rasped.
“Tea and honey are in the cabinet all the way to the right. I think there’s a lemon in the drawer in the fridge, but it’s pretty old.”
“Honey and tea is probably enough.” Jeremy located the tea and honey, then put the kettle on to boil. He walked around the counter and stood near the sofa. “How was your day?”
“Good. I finally got the final design for the dragons approved. This makeup is going to be complicated. Puppets and latex prosthetics are involved.”
“Sounds fun.”
“It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also overwhelming.” Max looked over at Jeremy and their gazes met. “You sound like you’ve got eight frogs in your throat.”
Jeremy laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever sung so much in my life. We ran through the entire show twice, stopping to tweak things along the way.”
“If you had more of a Brooklyn accent and started calling me ‘doll’ you’d sound like an old mobster.”
“Whatever you say, doll.” Jeremy put on the accent.
Max giggled, which was adorable. “You feel closer to ready, at least?”
“Getting there.”
The kettle whistled, so Jeremy went about making a cup of tea with a copious amount of honey. He carried it over and sat beside Max on the couch, and set it on the coffee table to cool.
Max had been watching some HGTV show about flipping houses. The couple on the show was having an argument about whether quartz or marble counters were better for the kitchen.
Alex’s speech about distractions replayed in Jeremy’s head. He glanced at Max, who was looking at his phone.
Just when things were starting to get off the ground with Max, he had to go out of town. The timing was not great. Jeremy didn’t regret anything, but he wished this all had been timed differently. Like, maybe he and Max could have started hooking up after out-of-town previews. Maybe they could have—His phone buzzed.
Jeremy took a big sip of tea, letting it warm his throat, then he pulled out his phone. The temptation to text Ryan back with “Fuck you” was great, but he decided to ignore him instead.
“You okay?” Max asked.
“Ryan’s been texting me all day. Somehow he thinks I can find it in my heart to forgive him for the cheating and the kicking me out and most of my worldly possessions being in a storage unit. I think he’s probably just hard up and wants to get laid.”
“Oh.”
“I’m apparently still at the anger stage of grief. I’d punch him in the face, but then I’d have to see him.”
Jeremy deleted the text and put his phone back in his pocket.
“I mean, I get why he’d want you back,” Max said quietly.
“Who wouldn’t?” Jeremy drank more tea. It was helping. It no longer felt like he’d swallowed a razor blade. “I like this matcha you had.”
“There’s Throat Coat in the cabinet, too.”
Jeremy stuck out his tongue. “It tastes too much like black licorice. No, thank you.” His phone buzzed again and he opted to ignore it. “I have too much going on to let Ryan distract me right now.”
“Is he distracting you?” Max asked.
“A lot of things are distracting me. You’re distracting me, too, you know.”
Because what if this only worked because of proximity? What if they were moving too fast into something? There had been moments in their past in which Jeremy had thought about Max in a more than friendly way, and he loved Max, but did he love him like a brother or like a lover or like a friend? Jeremy wasn’t able to sort all that through, especially not with Max sitting next to him in a white tank top and old gray pajama pants that didn’t leave much to the imagination.
And thinking about all this was doing him no good at all. He was about to start previews for the first Broadway show in which he was the star. That had to be his focus.
“Holy shit,” he said aloud.
Max’s face was twisted up, as if he were in pain.
“What?” Jeremy asked.
“No, you talk first. Holy shit what?”
Jeremy took a fortifying sip of tea and let the heat of it slide down his throat. “I’m going to star in a show on Broadway. It just hit me.” And it made Jeremy dizzy. This wasn’t some obscure Off-Broadway production. It wasn’t community theater in Park Slope. It wasn’t even a Broadway show in which Jeremy just had a bit part in the ensemble and mostly blended into the background. While this was technically not his Broadway debut, he’d never done anything on this scale before. “I’m the star of a Broadway show.”
“You are.”
“I can’t quite wrap my head around that, and yet I’m getting on a bus in two days to go up to Boston to debut this show. What if...what if I fall on my face? What if I sing everything flat? What if I forget my lines? Oh, god.”
Max reached over and ran a hand over Jeremy’s arm. “You can do this, Jer. You’re a brilliant singer and actor.”
Jeremy felt nauseous suddenly. How had this not hit him before now? He’d been so happy and excited, but now it was really happening, and it terrified him.
He looked at Max, who was stroking Jeremy’s shoulder, probably trying to be reassuring.
Jeremy was incapable of sorting out his feelings. He wanted Max. He wanted to star on Broadway. He wasn’t entirely sure he could have both at the same time, not now anyway, not with so much doubt between them, not when Max was clearly pained by something.
“What, um, what’s going on with you?” Jeremy asked.
Max pressed a hand over his mouth. “It’s too much.”
“Talk to me, Maxie.”
Max’s instinct was always to paste a smile on his face and say everything was fine, but in the interest of building something real with Jeremy, he decided to be honest. “Look, here’s the whole truth. I’ve had this thing for you for a long time. Years. Before Ryan, even. And I think I built it up to this magical thing in my head. And being with you this last week has been amazing, like everything I ever wanted. And yet, I can’t shake this doubt. Because this is brand new for you, isn’t it?”
Jeremy stared at him. “You—”
“I never said anything because I thought you didn’t feel the same way.” Max had to get all this out. “Maybe I should have. I kind of regret that now.”
“I had no idea.”
“No, I know, and I... I love you, Jeremy, I do. When you’re in a room, I can’t stop looking at you. Except now, because since we started sleeping together, my stomach is in knots whenever I look at you.”
Jeremy pressed his lips together. He placed his cup on the table and looked back at Max. “Why? Is this not what you imagined?” He sounded hurt.
“No. Not at all. Better than I imagined! But there’s so much going on right now. You just broke up with Ryan. You’re working on this show, and that should be your focus. I’m doing Sword of Dawn, and this show could make such a big difference in my career, and I feel like I have to do this well. I don’t think our relationship can be the focus for either of us right now. And I can’t help but think that one of these days you’ll wake up from the spell and realize you made a mistake. And that kills me, because I love having you in my life.”
“It wasn’t a mistake, Max.” Jeremy reached over and took Max’s hand.
Max stared at their joined hands for a long moment. “Maybe not, but can you honestly tell me that if we weren’t living together right now, or if I hadn’t read lines with you that night, that we’d be in this place now? That you thought of me as a potential partner anytime recently?”
Jeremy took a deep breath. He looked away. “No. I can’t say that. You’re right, this is really new for me. And you say you love me, and it sounds like you have for a while, and I can’t even process that you felt that way, and I never knew. I love you, too, but I don’t know how to quantify it. And the fact that you’ve felt like this for me... I’m thrilled by that, but also intimidated.”
It was confirmation of exactly what Max had feared. He knew Jeremy would never intentionally hurt him, but they had to be standing on the same step if this was going to work. And Max didn’t think they were. But given the circumstances, he didn’t want to make a decision for certain just yet.
“Let’s...” Max hesitated, running a hand through his hair, unable to say what he wanted to say, because though he knew it was the right thing, it was the opposite of what he wanted. He swallowed. “Let’s press pause.”
Jeremy shifted back, like he’d been slapped. “Pause?”
“I’m going to stay in New York and work on Sword of Dawn. You’re going to Boston for a few weeks. Both of us need to focus on our respective jobs. We can’t agree on what we are or what we mean to each other, and I don’t want to push a decision right now when we each have so much else going on. I don’t want to be a distraction for you when you’re getting this show off the ground. So let’s press pause on us. We’ll resume when we get back.”
Jeremy shook his head. “You want to take a break?”
“I don’t, but maybe that’s the best thing.”
Jeremy balked. “Are you serious?”
It was like someone had reached into Max’s chest and squeezed his heart. He felt physical pain. “The last thing I want is to lose you. But I think we need some time to sort out our feelings.”
Max hoped Jeremy would protest, that he’d tell Max he wanted to be together forever, that Max’s fears and doubts were unfounded.
But Jeremy said, “That seems wise.” Jeremy reached over and took Max’s hand. “It’s not what I want, but I see the wisdom in it. My time out of town will give me a chance to think this over.”
That meant Jeremy could very well decide this had all been a terrible mistake, and Max would just have to live with that. Console himself that having a taste of what could be might be all he’d get.