Opening night of See the Light was scheduled for June 20.
The theater was dark the night before, and Alex seemed to think one more day of rehearsals wouldn’t make any of them more brilliant, so he gave everyone the day off.
Jeremy spent a lot of that day freaking out.
He wasn’t that nervous about the show anymore. The difference between previews and shows after the official opening was ticket price, as far as Jeremy could tell. He still had to walk out on that stage every night. The sound of the orchestra tuning seemed to trigger a Pavlovian response in Jeremy for his stomach to start eating itself. So perhaps his preshow nerves would not get better anytime soon, and he was more or less resigned to the fact that he’d spend the five minutes before he sang his first note convinced his voice would no longer work.
But the fact that he’d made it through four weeks of previews without embarrassing himself was proof enough that he could do this. The critical reaction was largely positive. Sure, there had been a couple of reviews by critics who thought the fantasy sequences were too campy, or who didn’t like the music, or who thought the topical elements of the show would make it feel dated in about five minutes. But on the whole, the critics liked the show, and the first month of performances had nearly all sold out.
So that was all good.
Things were not great at home. Jeremy hadn’t had much time for apartment hunting, but since Max was avoiding him, he’d gone to see a couple of places. He’d already been turned down by two real estate brokers who thought actor incomes were too sporadic and unpredictable, and the only places he could afford were tiny or run down or both. It was a rough market. But if something didn’t change, he’d have to take one of those old, tiny places in a neighborhood far from Manhattan if only to get away from Max, who clearly wasn’t comfortable having Jeremy staying in his apartment.
It was unsustainable. Jeremy couldn’t keep tiptoeing around Max, and he was certain Max felt similarly. So because Jeremy’s greatest dream was about to come true, and he wanted to go into opening night with his head held high, he resolved on the night before opening night that he would confront Max once and for all.
Sword of Dawn had officially opened to much critical fanfare the week before, but was also dark that night. When Max came home from work that evening, Jeremy had laid out a takeout feast as a peace offering, covering the kitchen counter with all of Max’s favorite Japanese dishes.
Max glanced at the food, then looked at Jeremy with some astonishment on his face. “What’s all this?”
“Dinner.”
Max slid his bag off his shoulder and rested it in its usual spot in the hallway near the bathroom. He returned to the kitchen and surveyed the meal. “Okay. Dinner.”
“I want to talk to you, too. Not about anything bad, just... I think we should talk. We haven’t at all since I got back.”
Max nodded slowly. Without speaking further, he took a plate down from the cabinet and started filling it with noodles and shrimp tempura and sushi rolls.
Jeremy hung back while Max filled his plate and settled on the living room sofa, leaving his plate on the coffee table and waiting. Jeremy wasn’t hungry; his anxiety was so high, he’d worried his stomach inside out. But he put a few random things on his plate and grabbed a soda from the fridge, then settled next to Max on the sofa.
Max popped a tuna roll in his mouth, and then glanced at Jeremy. “I mean, I know what you want to talk about.”
“Okay, but can I tell you what I’m feeling now instead of you guessing?” Jeremy’s tone was more snippy than he’d intended. “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like a snot. I’m at, like, DEFCON 1 on the stress scale, since tomorrow is opening night and all.”
“If this isn’t the right time to—”
“No. I can’t put this off anymore. Let me just say this.” Jeremy took a deep breath and waited for Max to respond.
Max put his plate down and nodded.
“Look, here’s the deal. You, Max, are my best friend on the planet, and I care more about you than I care about any single other person on this earth. I value our friendship. I’m grateful for it. I never would have survived anything that’s happened to me this year if it hadn’t been for you. And while I admit that the more-than-friendly feelings are relatively recent for me, well, you were there. You know how good things can be between us.”
Max squirmed. “I know, but—”
“Please, can I finish?”
Max held out his hand and gestured for Jeremy to go ahead.
So he screwed on his courage. Even if he didn’t feel much of it, he tried to act like he did. He did that professionally every night, didn’t he? “I want to be with you, Max. Romantically. For the foreseeable future.” When Max ducked his head and avoided eye contact, Jeremy plowed forward. “I don’t know what happened that week before I left for Boston. I thought we were moving toward something really great, and then you just...you told me you were unhappy. And I... I mean, if you don’t want me, if being with me wasn’t what you imagined, just tell me so that I can process it and move on with my life.”
Max frowned. “Wait, is that what you think?”
“What other conclusion is there? You and I hooked up, you tell me you’ve been in love with me for a long time, then you back off, and ultimately end things. So we get together and it’s not what you expected, and you realized that you didn’t want me after all. And, well, if that’s the case, I gotta figure out how to deal with it, because we can’t just live in this limbo anymore.” Jeremy’s chest felt like everything in it was twisted. He hadn’t intended to confess everything, but forefront in his mind was the fact that he was never anybody’s first choice. He’d thought for a while that he’d been Max’s. Max was certainly his. Softly, he said, “For once, I want to be the first choice.”
“Jer, you’re not...” Max looked confused, then he held out his hands and said, “How could I not want you?” His voice was watery, so clearly what Jeremy said had registered. Max shook his head. “You’re the most talented, passionate, amazing man I know, and I’ve been wanting you with my whole body for years. Do you know why I wanted to get my own place when we were roommates? Because I couldn’t stand living in the same apartment with you and not being with you.”
That hit Jeremy like a slap. “What? Are you kidding?”
“No.” Max let out a huff of breath. “I’m dead serious. I’m always dead fucking serious.”
“Max.”
“You’re the grand prize, not the consolation. But I didn’t think I had...” Max paused and looked into the distance. “I didn’t think I could win you. You were with Ryan, and I know you loved him, so you couldn’t be with me, and it just...it broke my heart every day that we weren’t together. And I knew you moving in here now would be difficult for me, because you and Ryan just broke up, and I couldn’t...” Max looked at the ceiling, his eyes glistening a little. “If you and I were just a rebound, I...”
“We weren’t, Max. What we had was real. You have to believe that.”
Max closed his eyes for a long moment. “I know. And it was good. Being with you was so good. But I... I mean, I started to worry about our friendship, and what would happen if we got even more emotionally tangled up, and we’re both living here right now, and everything felt so complicated. When we were together, in bed or just sitting here on the couch, I felt amazing! But as soon as we were apart, I started to worry.”
“About what?”
“If I lost you... God, Jer, you’re the most important person in my life. I can’t lose you.”
He tried to process everything Max was saying. He was silent for a moment, then glanced at his plate. Food was getting pretty cold now. Max loved him, had loved him for a long time. Max loved Jeremy so much that he was willing to sacrifice the kind of relationship he really wanted to keep Jeremy.
Except...
Well, Jeremy wanted the same thing Max wanted, for one thing. And Max hadn’t been acting like someone who valued Jeremy lately.
“Max, you’ve been pulling away. You’ve been avoiding me since I got home from Boston.”
“I haven’t.”
“That’s a lie. I know you’re avoiding me. You say you want to be friends and you don’t want to lose me. You don’t think that pulling away and avoiding me is affecting our relationship? You don’t think that what’s happening right now isn’t affecting us? By ending things with me, aren’t you doing the thing you say you don’t want?”
“I never ended our friendship.”
“We’ve hardly seen each other since I got home from Boston, and that was almost a month ago. You don’t want anything to affect our friendship, but it’s too late for that, Max. It’s too late.” Jeremy’s voice broke and his eyes stung. He’d wanted so much to keep this conversation calm and rational, but how could he keep emotion out of it? He loved Max, he wanted to be with Max, and to watch Max withdraw was like a knife to the heart. He took a deep breath. “Maybe it would be possible for us to return to how things were before I got cast in See the Light, but first of all, I don’t want that, and second, we’d have to work at it. Things between us are awkward and we aren’t talking to each other or even seeing each other despite living in the same apartment. If that’s too much for you right now...”
Max let out a sigh and hunched over. He pressed a hand to his forehead. “I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know what happened even. All I know is that I’d been thinking about what it would be like to kiss you, to sleep with you, and everything we did together exceeded my expectations, but then I started... I don’t know. Freaking out. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t trust it.”
“Please, Max. Please trust in us. Have faith in us. You and I have been through so much together, and we can weather this, too, I know we can. But I’ll tell you right now, I love you. I’m in love with you. I want for us to be together in every way. I want to keep you in my life, but I don’t think I can be satisfied with us as just friends. Not after I’ve seen what we can be.”
“Jeremy...” Tears sprung to Max’s eyes.
“Do you love me?”
“God, of course I do.”
Jeremy slid a little closer to Max on the couch. “I know you’re terrified of losing me. I want to promise you that I will fight for us. Okay? I’ll fight for us to stay together, because I think we should be together. You and me, Max, I think we were always meant to be. It just took me a stupid long time to figure it out. So I won’t just walk out on you. I want to figure out how to make this work.”
Max rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “What the hell is wrong with me? I can’t figure out how to be happy. I keep getting these things that are exactly what I want. I love doing makeup and I’ve made a whole career of it. My business is doing really well. And here you are telling me you love me, which is something I’ve wanted to hear forever, and it makes me feel anxious.”
Jeremy sat with that for a moment. There was a bigger issue here, something Max was battling in himself. Maybe it was depression, something that ran deep, some kind of miswiring in his brain that made him reticent or made him not trust what was right in front of him. And there was no way for Jeremy to cure that, but he could try to reach Max, to prove himself.
Because Jeremy was committed to this now. He would do everything he could to win Max over. He wanted them to be together with everything he had.
“Please trust me, Max.”
Max looked up and met Jeremy’s gaze. “I want to, I...”
Maybe it was the wrong thing to do in that moment, but Jeremy went for it anyway. He closed the distance between them and he kissed Max.
Max seemed to collapse next to him, into him. Max put a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder and deepened the kiss. It was warm and electric and something about that connection cut right into Jeremy’s soul. Jeremy loved this man and needed him to know it, to really understand it. Max gave back as good as he got.
Jeremy pulled back and gazed into Max’s eyes. They were lined with red, and a tear had leaked out the side of his cheek. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” Jeremy whispered.
Max sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. You feel how you feel.” Jeremy let out a breath. “How do you feel now?”
“I still don’t... I want to believe in this, but I still don’t trust it, if I’m honest. It’s so complicated, everything going on right now. Our work and your breakup and all of it.”
Max had just slipped through his grasp. “What do I have to do to prove how I feel?”
“I don’t know,” Max whispered.
Jeremy was clearly disappointed, and when Max suggested they eat their now-cold Japanese feast, he just nodded.
Dinner tasted like sawdust.
But Max ate it because Jeremy had bought it for him, and they watched Jeopardy! and ate silently. Max turned over everything Jeremy had said in his head. Why couldn’t he trust them together? Jeremy seemed willing to go all in. He said he’d fight for them. So why couldn’t Max do the same? Why was he running away?
Why was he afraid of success?
What would happen if he got everything he wanted and still found himself lacking, or undeserving?
He hadn’t told Jeremy, but shortly after he’d gotten his first apartment by himself, he’d started seeing a therapist to treat his depression. It had helped for a while—as had the antidepressant Max took every day—but sometimes Max’s brain still lied to him, still told him he was a failure, that he was unworthy of love, that he was too ugly, too freaky, too feminine. The demons from his past had a tendency to show up at the worst possible times. Max just hadn’t recognized that they were here until Jeremy had said he would fight for them and something inside Max had objected.
Jeremy wanted him. Jeremy wanted them to be together. Max believed that. But he didn’t trust in them yet. He didn’t know if he deserved Jeremy’s love. He didn’t know if they could make a relationship work together.
He’d really thought he’d shaken all this off. His high school years had been plagued with taunts from his classmates, kids calling him Maxine, making fun of the more feminine features he’d had when he was a teenager. He’d worn eyeliner to school once as an experiment and had never heard the end of it. He’d felt so far away from his classmates, never connecting with anyone or feeling a part of anything, just wanting to get through high school so he could get the fuck out of New Jersey.
Except Jeremy had always been there for him. Everyone in their school had loved Jeremy, because he was conventionally handsome and outgoing and smart, a lot of the things Max never felt he was. But Jeremy had always paid attention to Max, listened to Max, made Max feel like he had talent and value, made Max feel like everything might be all right. Jeremy had loved Max for who he was, and Max had loved Jeremy right back because of it. That had always been the dynamic of their friendship. They were two peas in the same pod, and even if they were oddly shaped, they could take on the world together.
It had always been the two of them against the world, hadn’t it?
And maybe Max resented a little bit that Jeremy hadn’t seen that the way Max did for so long. And maybe that resentment was what had caused Max to torpedo their relationship, or maybe Max’s depression had, but whatever it was, Max hadn’t been ready to accept Jeremy into his life in that way.
Could he ever?
He hoped so.
But not tonight. He ate cold shrimp tempura and watched TV with Jeremy, and something about that felt like old times, but he was aware that he’d have to make a decision soon.
“I do love you,” Max said softly. “I need a little more time.”
“That’s okay,” Jeremy said. “Take the time you need. Talk to whoever you need to talk to. And then please come back to me, because you and I can be great together, Maxie. I know we can be.”
Max looked at Jeremy. When Jeremy met his gaze, Max felt seen. Jeremy had always understood Max, probably knew Max better than Max knew himself.
“Take time,” Jeremy said. “But not forever.”
Max nodded. No, he wouldn’t put this off forever. He just needed to figure out how to make the forever he wanted possible.