The last thing Jeremy needed was a problem to mull over when his focus should have been on the show, but maybe he could channel his unease about how he’d left things with Max into the performance.
Or that was what he told himself as the whole cast and crew for See the Light piled into a chartered coach bus to take the journey up to Boston.
He put his headphones on and intended to sleep the whole drive. The cast and crew only took up about half the seats on the bus, so Jeremy had two seats on which to stretch out. He had the demos of the songs from the show queued up on his phone and was about to hit play when the last of the crew boarded the bus.
One of the stagehands, a cute ginger with freckles across his nose, took the seat across the aisle from Jeremy. “Hey, good looking. You’re Jeremy Reynolds, right?”
“Yeah, that’s me.” Jeremy held his hand across the aisle to shake.
“I’m Gus. Short for Augustus, true story.”
“Nice to meet you, Gus.”
“I’m ensemble-slash-tech. My job is mostly to sing in the background during the big numbers and move the sets around between scenes. So glamorous, right?”
“Been there,” Jeremy said.
“Oh, I’m sure. You were fantastic in the run-through yesterday, by the way. Your voice, man. How are you not more famous?”
The fawning praise was a lot to take. Jeremy’s nerves started to prickle at his skin. He wasn’t great at accepting this level of praise. So he said, “Well, this is my first big show like this.”
“Ah, gotcha. Just wait, then.”
“I don’t know. This was a really lucky break.” Jeremy had been the second choice, after all. He couldn’t help but think that this Gus guy was buttering him up for something.
Gus waved his hand. “You’ll have a recurring bit part as a priest or a judge or a cop or something on Law & Order in no time. You’re the whole package. You can sing, act, dance. And...” He winked. “You’ve got the looks.”
Jeremy thanked Gus but wondered if he was being hit on. Which made him think about Max and whatever the hell was happening there.
“You okay?” Gus asked. “You looked really sad just then.”
This guy was ballsy. It was an interesting contrast with Max. Jeremy had thought he could read Max, but clearly he was wrong, and he was still reconciling what he thought he knew about Max with the fact that Max had been sitting on his feelings for so long. But that wasn’t relevant to this conversation. Jeremy relaxed his face and said, “I’m fine.”
Gus nodded. “You’re right. No need to tell me. We just met. We don’t know each other. I apologize. But, hey, did you see...”
The bus started then, finally pulling away from where it had been parked rather conspicuously on 43rd Street. As the bus lumbered toward the Lincoln Tunnel, Gus kept up a steady stream of patter, which started to irritate Jeremy, who really just wanted to sleep. He hadn’t slept much the night before at all. After he and Max had agreed to put things on hold, Jeremy had offered to sleep on the couch again, but Max insisted he didn’t have to. They didn’t have sex, but slept side by side in their pajamas.
Although, “slept” was a bit of an exaggeration. Jeremy felt completely out of sorts. Max had tried to remove himself as a distraction for Jeremy, and in so doing had made himself a worse distraction. Jeremy had lain awake all night, trying to figure out what he wanted, and he got nowhere because Max was right there, sleeping the sleep of the dead, looking so peaceful and handsome.
Jeremy didn’t know much, but he knew he wanted Max. He did. And sex between them was good. They cared about each other, had the foundation of many long years of friendship. That seemed to be all the ingredients for a successful relationship. But was it really? Max’s words kept ringing in his head. If he hadn’t invaded Max’s space, if they’d never kissed that night, would anything between them have changed? Jeremy couldn’t say it would have. The depths of Max’s feelings had caught him off guard.
“You’re thinking again,” Gus said as the bus sped through New Jersey. They weren’t far from Jeremy and Max’s hometown, and Jeremy tried not to think about that too much.
“The show’s starting soon,” Jeremy said. “Lots on my mind.”
“Oh, of course. And I’m talking your ear off. You must think I’m the most obnoxious person. I swear, I’m not usually like this, I’m just excited. And I did sit here on purpose. I had to meet you after seeing you sing yesterday.”
“You should know, before this gets too far, that—”
“Oh, you’re not even gay, are you? Just a good actor. I’m so sorry, I—”
“No, I am gay, I just... I’m kind of seeing someone? Well, we’re kind of on a break right now. I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
“Oh, I see.” Gus laughed ruefully, the lightness of it betraying his embarrassment. “And here I am basically throwing myself at you. God, I’m embarrassed.”
“No, don’t be. It’s nice. And I don’t mind talking to you.” Although he totally did. His phone felt hot in his hand, and he wanted to turn on the music so he could drown out the rest of the world. “Just thought you should know. Especially with this show just starting and being so important for my career and all that. I’m not really looking for anything.”
Gus nodded. “No showmance for you. Got it.”
“Just saying.”
“You just say a lot, Jeremy Reynolds.”
Jeremy pressed his lips together, irritated now. “You mind if I nap for a bit? Didn’t sleep well last night and I’m pretty tired.”
“Oh. Yeah, of course. I’m sorry for talking your ear off.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Jeremy put his earbuds in and put on the first song. He’d made a playlist of all the demos, including a few that he’d recorded, and his plan had been to mentally play through the whole show, but his mind wandered instead.
There’d been a bus trip up to Boston when Jeremy and Max had been in college. Max had painted a series of watercolors that had been chosen for a collegiate art show, and Jeremy had been so enormously proud, he’d covered the costs of both their bus tickets, and they rode up to Boston together to see the show. In retrospect, it was interesting that Max had gone with Jeremy to see his art and not, say, his parents. Max’s dad likely would have driven from New Jersey and grabbed Max on the way, saving them from the crowded bus that smelled vaguely of sewage. He couldn’t remember if Max had even told his parents about the show.
Had Max loved him even then?
The bus ride had been the best part of the trip, as far as Jeremy was concerned. They’d sat beside each other both ways. Jeremy had bought a travel-size Battleship, and they’d played that for, like, an hour on the way up. Some kids’ movie had been playing on the little TVs on the bus, and Jeremy had mocked it mercilessly while Max had giggled about it.
And they’d talked about boys. At the time, Jeremy had been completely infatuated with a guy from his acting studio, a big, beefy, blond acting Adonis named Ken. Nothing had ever happened there, and Ken had moved to Hollywood and was currently on some prestige HBO show. Which made sense; he’d been a great actor even back in college, on top of being a spectacular-looking man. Jeremy had been besotted.
No wonder Max had thought Jeremy wasn’t interested in him.
Max had mentioned a passing fancy for some guy who lived in their dorm, but he was vague on details, and given that a few hundred students lived in that building, Jeremy couldn’t begin to guess who he was.
They hadn’t seen much of Boston. They’d found the gallery that was hosting the art show, spent about an hour there gawking at Max’s paintings, then they’d eaten a meal at a seafood restaurant near Boston Common, and then they’d taken the T back to South Station so that they could head back to New York, because they didn’t have the funds to pay for a hotel.
The little TVs on the bus back to New York had been showing St. Elmo’s Fire, a movie Jeremy had long loved despite how silly it was. And maybe it was the fact that he was twenty-one and graduation was coming up soon, but something about the way the characters in the movie had to transition into adulthood really spoke to Jeremy in that moment.
Max had fallen asleep, using Jeremy’s shoulder as a pillow. They didn’t often touch that way, but Jeremy had thrown his arm around Max and held him close.
The movie had ended before the bus returned to the city, so Jeremy watched the city through the window. He had that feeling he often did when returning to the city: he couldn’t believe he lived here. That this dream he’d had since he was a boy had come true. That he was now in an acting studio that had produced Marlon Brando and Warren Beatty and Elaine Stritch and Jerome Robbins and Cloris Leachman and so many others.
And now, not many years later, he was on a bus speeding to Boston again, toward his destiny in an important way, and all he could think was that he wanted Max with him.
And maybe that told him all he needed to know.
Jeremy had taken nearly all of his things with him to Boston. It was like he’d moved out, yet remnants of him remained; his leftover food was in the fridge, the last book he’d read was still on the coffee table, and Max kept finding Jeremy’s stray socks and T-shirts among his own laundry.
Max hated to be defeatist, but it seemed likely Jeremy would move out for good once he got back to New York.
On Jeremy’s opening night in Boston, Max went to Frocks. He did Anthony’s makeup before helping three of the other queens, including a baby queen who hadn’t quite gotten the knack of drawing her eyebrows on yet.
He watched the show. After Anthony did his big number—a plaintive version of the old Fanny Bryce tune “My Man”—he was done for the evening, and he sat beside Max, still in full drag.
“You look sad, sugar.”
“Jeremy left for Boston on Friday.”
“And his absence is already leading you to this level of despair?”
“I did what you told me to do. I told him everything. I told him I’ve been in love with him for a long time. And he freaked right the fuck out.”
“Oh. Oh, Max, I’m so sorry.”
Max moved to rub his eyes until he remembered he was wearing eye makeup. He’d tried a new technique on himself, a way of drawing on eyeliner right at the root of the lash line to make his eyelashes look bigger without falsies, and he’d swept a bit of purple eyeshadow on just for fun after he’d done all the queens’ makeup. He put his hands on the table.
“I know he cares about me, and I know he’s interested in something more than friendship, but I can’t help but think that this whole thing is really lopsided. And I have this fear in the pit of my belly that it’s all about to go horribly wrong, and I hate that. I think it’s my gut telling me this was the wrong move, telling him how I feel. And we just spent a wonderful week together, but I had to go and fuck it all up by confessing how I really felt, and then I said we should pause the relationship until he gets back. Take time to sort out our feelings. Except I know how I feel, and I know he’s not there yet, and it’s making me crazy.”
Anthony threw an arm around Max and gave him a hug. “I’m proud of you for finally taking that risk.”
“For all the good it did me.”
“You put yourself out there. You can do that in every other aspect of your life. You do it daily at your job, and in the way you present yourself. But you never do it for romance, and before you argue with me, I was there, remember? I coaxed you into bed. I sometimes felt like you went along with it because it was the path of least resistance.”
Max balked. “No. Really? No. I wanted to sleep with you.”
Anthony smiled. “I know, honey. But you wanted to sleep with him more.”
Max let out a breath. “I really thought there could be something between you and me, that it would finally take my mind off him, but it didn’t, and I don’t know what that says about me.”
“That you love him. That you’ve always loved him. What did he say when you confessed your feelings?” Anthony waved at one of the bartenders and mimed something. The bartender gave a thumbs up.
“He said my feelings intimidated him.”
Anthony sighed. “He’s almost a bigger fool than you are.”
“I think I have to end it before he gets home. If not sooner. I can’t take this. It’s not at all what I thought. I always pictured the two of us would realize our feelings for each other were mutual and everything would be wonderful after that, but I’ve felt miserable for days.”
Two cocktails magically appeared before them. The bartender winked at Anthony on his way back to the bar.
“This calls for a drink,” Anthony said. He held up his glass. Max lifted his own and clinked it against Anthony’s. “Why are you miserable?”
“I’m afraid he’s going to leave me.”
“But, so, wait. He kissed you, he pursued a relationship with you, you slept together a bunch of times, and he said he wanted to be with you, and yet you’re thinking of ending things.”
“It sounds stupid when you say it in that tone of voice.”
“He’ll get there, you know. He’s probably in his bed in some hotel in Boston right now, pining away for you, thinking about what an idiot he is for letting you pause things.”
“I doubt it. He’s probably focused on the show.”
“Give him a chance to surprise you. But first, drink your cocktail. Plenty of rum in there for what ails you.”