This was only the third time in his life that Max had ever worn a tux. He’d opted to buy this one instead of rent, and he’d had it customized with a liner that had purple paisleys. No one could really see them, but knowing they were there made Max feel better about blending in with all the other men in black tuxes. He’d opted for a bow tie and vest in the same fabric as the liner, so he had a little pop of color, at least.
“I like how your hair looks with this,” Jeremy said, fingering the edge of the vest. Max’s hair currently had pastel streaks of purple, blue, and gray, super on trend that season, and coincidentally, the shade of purple matched the fabric. Jeremy ran his hands through it now, shifting it into its proper place. “I love your hair. These colors look so cool.”
“Thanks. I wish I’d known sooner that Daphne was a hair color wizard.” Max closed his eyes and leaned into Jeremy’s touch, enjoying being groomed. “You look good, too, by the way.”
Jeremy had opted for more traditional, wearing a charcoal gray tuxedo with a light gray vest and tie. A little purple satin fabric square was tucked into his breast pocket, the one nod at this being a special night.
But it was special. As the car they’d hired pulled up to Radio City Music Hall, suddenly everything felt real. They were about to attend the Tonys as a couple, with Jeremy as a nominee.
“There’s a real red carpet and everything,” Max pointed out as they stood on the sidewalk.
“I gotta do the perp walk and get my picture taken,” Jeremy said grimly.
“I’ll go with you if it makes you feel better.”
“You hate getting your picture taken.”
“I do, but I can be supportive.”
Jeremy grimaced at Max, as if to get the last of it out of his system. Then he pasted on a smile and grabbed Max’s hand.
They really should have given a class on all this. Max had never walked a red carpet before and had no idea what to do. Someone had clearly coached Jeremy, though, because he knew where to stop and pose for photos. He had an easy smile, unbearably handsome as always, but he kept his hand in Max’s the whole time, making them unambiguously a couple.
Once they were through the press gauntlet, an usher showed them to their seats. Because Jeremy was nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical—and wasn’t that a mouthful—Jeremy was seated three rows back, on an aisle.
“This is surreal,” Max said.
“You’re telling me. I can’t even believe I’m here. Pinch me.”
Max laughed and gave Jeremy a peck on the cheek. “You deserve to be here.”
“That’s not even the issue. This year, every one of my dreams came true in the space of a short time. Well, I still don’t have the apartment on the Upper West Side, but our place is very nice.”
Max grinned. The previous August, when Max’s lease had ended, they’d moved into a larger place in Brooklyn so Jeremy could finally get his stuff out of storage. And given that Jeremy was still doing eight performances a week of See the Light, the regular paychecks had enabled them to afford a pretty nice place in a new high-rise downtown.
His run would be at an end soon. He’d committed to staying at least a few weeks past the Tonys and he still loved the show, but other offers were starting to roll in. For the last month, he’d only been doing evening shows while his understudy did the matinees. Some of the offers had been for small parts in movies and one recurring role in a sitcom, but Jeremy’s heart was on Broadway. He’d already been offered the part of Cliff in a revival of Cabaret, but he was still weighing his options.
Max was busy, too. He’d mostly passed the responsibilities for the Sword of Dawn makeup on to his staff and was currently in talks to do a few new shows. The Max Meyer Studio had gained a reputation for being one of the best in the business in the last year, and he was getting calls from movie producers now, although he wouldn’t take jobs outside of the city. Currently, he was working on an indie movie filming in Manhattan, which was fun and different. Movie makeup wasn’t nearly as caked on as theater makeup and required a subtler touch, but Max liked the challenge of it.
Sword of Dawn was nominated along with See the Light for best musical. Sword of Dawn was still open, but its future would likely depend on publicity from the Tonys so that tourists bought tickets; the show’s bloated budget meant the recent decline in box office was putting it in jeopardy.
“Are you doing the makeup for the Sword of Dawn performance?” Jeremy asked.
“Nope. I’ve been given the night off entirely. My staff says I should just enjoy it.”
“How insane is that making you?”
Max laughed. He appreciated that Jeremy knew he was a control freak. “If they’d let me, I’d be doing everyone’s makeup.”
“Wish I could sit this out. It’s one thing to do this show onstage every night. Look at all these TV cameras!” Jeremy gestured at the equipment scattered around the massive theater. “On a stage, if I make a mistake, it’s over and everyone forgets. This will be recorded. Forever.”
“Daphne’s here, right?”
“Yeah. She got a job touching up makeup for everyone backstage, so I won’t see her until I get up to go do the See the Light bit in about...” Jeremy looked at his watch. “One hour.”
“You said the dress rehearsal went well.”
“It did. Just, you know. Different theater than I’m used to. All the cameras.”
“Which song are you doing again?” Max had been to the show enough times that he knew the music pretty well.
“‘I Have to Tell You.’ A few of the stagehands carried over the school hallway set yesterday for the dress rehearsal, so I know it’s all here. That will help, but you know. I’m still nervous.”
Max wrapped his hand around Jeremy’s. “You’re brilliant. You’ll be amazing.”
Jeremy pressed his lips together.
The cast and crew for See the Light all sat near each other, so Keenan wound up sitting on Max’s other side. He hadn’t been nominated for anything, but he had been Jeremy’s enthusiastic supporter since the nominations had been announced. Keenan’s husband, Greer, was doting and adorable. When Keenan got up to use the restroom, Greer and Max bonded over the fact that their significant others kissed each other every night.
The show got underway a few minutes later with a flashy production number that singled out most of the nominees in the audience. Max remembered to smile when the camera turned toward Jeremy.
One of the awards given in the first hour was for Costume Design. Since the Tonys didn’t have a makeup category, Max was content to sit back and watch—he wasn’t even sitting with the Sword of Dawn crew, since he wanted to be with Jeremy—and thus he was somewhat surprised when Sword of Dawn won both Scenic Design of a Musical and Costume Design of a Musical. Jennifer ran up onstage to accept the Costume Design award.
After she thanked the producers, her husband, and the cast of the show, she said, “I also want to give a special shout out to makeup artist Max Meyer, whose work was as integral to the costume design as my own ideas. The dragons and goblins were all Max. I just put clothes on them. If I could cut this Tony Award in half, I’d give half of it to Max. But...well, since I can’t, this will find a nice place on my mantel.” The audience laughed as she held up the statuette. “But seriously, from the bottom of my heart, thank you!”
“Aw, see that?” Jeremy said. “You ever think you’d get a shout out like that?”
“That was very nice of her,” was all Max could say; he was surprised and touched by the gesture.
Forty-five minutes into the broadcast, Jeremy and Keenan slipped out of their seats to go backstage. “I Have to Tell You” was a song Jeremy sang by himself, but the rest of the principal cast was onstage during the sequence so that Benjamin could fantasize about telling them he was gay. It was a good choice for a teaser number, since it gave away some of the show’s premise and showcased the show’s star.
So when Ben Platt, the original Evan Hansen himself, came out onstage to introduce See the Light, Max sat up a little in his seat.
He’d seen Jeremy do this number a dozen times. Daphne had done a quickie makeup job on him, mostly just smoothing his features out and emphasizing his eyes, but this was the Tonys, not a performance night, so Max let it go. Jeremy walked out and sang his heart out. The song was Benjamin working through the decision to officially come out of the closet, including whom he intended to tell. Most of the number involved Jeremy dancing between each character, who stood in a frozen tableau onstage, and imagining how he would tell them he’s gay. Jeremy camped it up a bit; his costume in this song included the khakis he wore through most of Act 1, but a baby blue T-shirt with a rainbow and a unicorn on it.
He still sang like an angel.
Jeremy returned to his seat about twenty minutes later, in time to see the performance from Sword of Dawn. The song was a showstopper from Act 1 in which the hero—a kind of mercenary who turned out to be king by birthright, although the audience didn’t know that until near the end of the show—had to outwit a dragon. From a makeup perspective, Max couldn’t fault that choice because the dragon makeup was fairly simple; the costume did most of the work.
Then the moment of truth came. Six actors were nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical. The actress onstage had won for Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical the year before, and she read off the nominees as images of the actors in motion appeared on the big screen behind her. Then she said, “And the Tony goes to...Jeremy Reynolds!”
Max’s heart stopped. He turned to Jeremy, who looked just as shocked. Their gazes met. Jeremy leaned over and gave Max a quick kiss, then he practically ran up the stairs to the stage.
When he accepted his award and turned toward the microphone, he said, “Oh. My. God. This is...where do I even start? I didn’t even write a speech because I’m an idiot who never thought this could happen. But, man, okay. First of all, thank you to the Theatre Wing for this award, holy crap. And thank you to Mark and Mike and John who wrote this amazing show and wrote a dream role for me that I didn’t even know was my dream until I auditioned for it. And thank you to my castmates and the whole crew at the Hammerstein. We’ve really become a family in the last year, and I completely love you all. And I want to say, it is my utter joy to show a happy gay love story onstage every night, and I’ve had one of my own since I started this show, so I want to thank my partner, Max, for his support and his love, and I love you so much, Max, and thank you, everyone, thank you!” Jeremy held up the award for all to see, and then was escorted off the stage.
Max almost didn’t believe it. It was all so much: being at the Tonys, having two shows he worked on nominated, and now his boyfriend—partner, apparently—had won an award for his first star turn on Broadway. Max was beside himself with pride for Jeremy.
When Jeremy returned to his seat a few minutes later, he was all grins. “I’m so proud of you,” Max said.
“Did that just happen?”
“It did.”
“Did I just win a Tony?”
Max laughed and pointed to the trophy in Jeremy’s hands. “You did.”
“Holy shit.”
The next award announced was Best Play, which meant Best Musical was only a few minutes away.
“It’s almost like we’re competing,” Jeremy said. “You worked so hard on Sword of Dawn, I think of it as your show. I wouldn’t be mad if it won.”
“Yes, you would.”
“Okay, I would. I want to win!”
Chita Rivera walked out as the orchestra played “All That Jazz.” She repeated the nominees, then said with a bit of a shimmy, “And the Tony goes to... See the Light!”
The audience exploded, or it felt that way where Max was standing. Although as producers, Regina Morris and Jack Hampton were formally accepting the award, the whole cast and crew ran toward the stage, hooting and hollering. Jeremy tugged on Max’s hand.
“Come up there with me.”
“No, go.”
“You did the makeup design for this show. You belong up there as much as anyone else. Come on, Max.”
And that was how Max and Jeremy came to stand hand-in-hand on the grand stage of Radio City Music Hall as Regina Morris thanked half the planet in her speech.
A half hour later, Max and Jeremy sat in the back of a cab as Jeremy cradled his Tony in his hands. They were headed to an after-party across town, and there was quite a bit of traffic in the vicinity around Radio City.
“Can I ask you something?” said Max.
“Anything.”
“When you were accepting your award, you called me your partner. You’ve never done that before.”
Jeremy smiled. “‘Boyfriend’ felt insufficient. I don’t know. It sounds unserious to me. But we’re not married, so ‘partner’ was the best thing I could come up with. I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course, but...we could change that, you know.”
“What? Start calling each other partner all the time?”
“We could call each other husband.”
As soon as the words left Max’s mouth, he was startled by them, but they felt right, too. He’d been working with his therapist to embrace moments like this rather than shirk away from them, and he decided in that moment, now that he and Jeremy had been together for nearly a year, and both of them were happier than they ever had been, that maybe it was time to make it official. Max certainly wanted to be with Jeremy forever. He thought Jeremy wanted the same.
But Jeremy hesitated now. “You...you want to get married?”
Max took a deep breath; he would not allow doubt to creep in. “Don’t you?” he asked, as if daring himself.
Slowly, Jeremy smiled. “I very much do. Then next time I win a Tony, I will definitely remember to thank my husband.”
Max mirrored Jeremy’s smile. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, future husband.”
Jeremy broke into a soft rendition of “People Will Say We’re in Love” from Oklahoma! And it was perfect.
“You’re going to be insufferable now that you’ve won a Tony, aren’t you?”
Jeremy laughed. “Probably. Did we just get engaged?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I thought opening night of See the Light was the greatest night of my life, but this topped it. I won a Tony and I got engaged? God. Please pinch me.”
Max kissed him instead.
To purchase and read more books
by Kate McMurray, please visit Kate’s website at http://www.katemcmurray.com.
Turn the page for an excerpt of
Damage Control by Kate McMurray, now available at all participating e-tailers.