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That little vixen. All this time I had thought she was sick, upset over my failure as a matchmaker, and silently cursing the resulting misfortune, while she was shagging Randall. I would have a mind to be entirely cross with the both of them had I not been over the moon with the news. I can also tell you that my mirth was hardly containable even through the second act of the play where (spoilers) everybody died. I shed no tear but was quite resplendent in my ovations. One would think I had a particular friend in the production. (or that I was a sicko who cheered at sad endings) Thankfully, no one seemed to notice.
The drive home, although over an hour, was not long enough to sing along to all my favourite musicals. I was wrapped in the chorus of Some Enchanted Evening as my Fiat rounded the curve to my front door when I noticed a familiar Tesla parked in the shadows. He had returned from Vancouver and was at my house, and it was very late.
I found him in the kitchen helping himself to the contents of my pantry.
“Would you like a sandwich?” he said without preamble, spreading out the bread. He moved around my kitchen as if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if he belonged there, making sandwiches at midnight. I sat myself down on a bar stool at the island and carelessly deposited my keys and the theatre playbill.
“There’s turkey in the middle drawer.”
He smiled. “Thanks.”
“And there’s marble rye in the bread cupboard.”
“OH!” He swiftly replaced the cracked wheat in the bag and looked around for the clip.
“Just tie the bag off. I’ll get the good bread out.” I slipped off my stool and padded around the island to fetch the bread when Jaxson reached the length between us, closing his hand on mine and gathered me into an ardent embrace. He held me for a full minute, drawing me into his warm chest, running his fingers in circles over my shoulder and smelling my hair.
“I’ve missed you so very dearly,” he said, kissing the crown of my head. I didn’t know whether to weep in his arms or to lash out at him. Was I still upset about everything we never discussed?
At length, I said plainly, “If that’s the truth, why didn’t you call?”
He pulled away from me, just enough to look into my eyes. There was a tenderness in his features I’d never seen before. It was a remorseful look, with a softness I only attributed to a great inner conflict. He parted his lips and gazed mournfully in my eyes for a long moment. Then, as if deciding something, he pulled away to the refrigerator.
“Do you have any Dijon?”
That’s when I started to cry. The tears were flowing from my eyes like someone had turned on a faucet with no intention of closing the tap. They poured forth, wetting my face, dripping down my chin and neck. I didn’t know where it was coming from, but there it was. Maybe it was a delayed reaction to the end of the play.
Jaxson did not respond well to my outburst. He stood with his feet firmly in place for about five seconds with a rather blank look on his face. Then a mad terror overcame him and he fumbled all over my kitchen looking in the drawers, cabinets and counters for something to wipe my tears. He settled for a dish towel, handing it to me in a panic, apologising like a grovelling lunatic.
“I’m so sorry, Emma. Don’t cry. I don’t need mustard— ”
“Oh hang the mustard!” I cried indignantly. “I couldn’t care less about mustard!”
He paused. A bewildered frown covered his features. “What’s the matter?”
A fresh rush of tears washed over me. I couldn’t stop. It was as if all the feelings pent up from the last few weeks finally caught up to me and the floodgates were opened. I didn’t know how to put it in words, and so I said, between sobs, “They all died!”
This put Jaxson in an even greater panic. “Died? Who died?”
“Everybody!” My voice was raspy and coarse with hysteria. I leaned over the counter and tossed the playbill from Les Miserables in his direction. Emotions are so exhausting!
He gingerly picked up the playbill, examining it, looking a few times from it to my face and back again. And then he relaxed with an air of incredulity.
“A play? You’re crying over a bloody play?”
As you can imagine, those words did nothing whatsoever to bring me comfort. In fact, they brought on fresh feelings of hurt and betrayal.
“Yes. A bloody play. Funny you should mention it because I was left all alone in that blasted restaurant while you went to a bloody play!”
I wiped my nose with the dish towel and noted silently how I could not feel comfortable using it on dishes ever again, no matter how well I washed it. And so I deposited it in the garbage bin and stormed into the living room. I felt the shadow of Jaxson behind me as I reached the sofa.
He hesitated before sitting down next to me, and when he did, it was with gentle, graceful movements, like he had done at the restaurant.
“What do you mean, you were alone at the restaurant? You mean until Randall arrived?”
“Randall never came, thank you very much.” I felt my nose running again. I should have kept the dish towel. That’s why God invented sleeves, I thought wistfully. “Annie came for about ten seconds before she abandoned me, too.”
Then I proceeded to tell him the most concise version of my efforts to bring them together, how I had dearly hoped I would succeed for their sake, and how happy at last I had been at their union, even if I had little to do with it.
Jaxson listened with patient intentness, asking only a few questions for clarification, and when I had finished he smiled warmly and said, “My dear Emma. If you only knew.”
I sniffled. “What do you mean?”
“Annie first noticed Randall from that abominable dance debacle at the karaoke club. I saw her pass by a group of gaffers watching it on an iPad, and I remember her commenting on it. Let’s just say she was most impressed with the way he moved in his jeans.”
He laughed slightly at the memory.
“In the days that followed, I noticed her more and more around the studio, casually running into Randall in the hallway or in other odd places. It wasn’t long before they spent every lunch hour together and were seen leaving the lot in his car most evenings.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I sniffled.
“Why should I? What people do in their own lives are none of my concern, Emma. Perhaps you should take that to heart.”
“So you’re telling me I was successful after all?”
“Now don’t get puffed up.”
“I set the ball in motion. It was entirely my doing. You can’t deny that.”
“A lucky accident.”
“Hardly.”
“Emma.” His tone was reproachful, heavy with censure. “Promise me, no more matchmaking.”
I crossed my arms, much like a defiant child. “I will do no such thing. I am still rather cross with you.”
“Why?”
“Two words. Lived Overseen.”
He opened his mouth to counter-attack me but apparently it got stuck in his throat. He blinked once or twice, and with a dawning thought said, “Are you upset I didn’t take you with me?”
“No. I am upset you left me alone in a restaurant.”
He let out a long sigh, apparently wishing I hadn’t brought it up. “Okay. I’ll tell you.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything. What people do in their own lives is none of my concern. See? I’m already learning.”
I’d had quite enough, and I was tired. “I’m off to Bedfordshire.” I stood to go, but Jaxson’s quick hand caught my wrist.
“Emma. Listen. I want to tell you. I came here tonight with the intention of telling you everything. Please sit back down.”
I hesitated a moment before taking my seat again, careful my knee should not brush against his.
He took a deep breath and I noticed him twisting his fingers and pressing his lips under his teeth while he thought of the words he wanted to say. At last, he released the words slowly, hesitantly, as if checking for my reaction. “I have been keeping a secret from you,” he began. “I wanted so badly to tell you, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”
“Why? What were you afraid of?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer. What on earth could be so grave, he couldn't bring himself to tell me?
“I wasn’t afraid to tell you,” he said tenderly. “I couldn’t wait to tell you. That’s what was burning me up inside.”
“Go on,” I returned slowly. I was still skeptical.
“Emma,” he continued. “I signed a nondisclosure agreement. I couldn’t tell a soul. But now I can, and I want you to be the first person to hear it.”
He was brimming with excitement by this time, his olive eyes glistening with the same intensity I had seen in those young faces on stage earlier in the evening.
I crossed my arms. “Are you going to make me guess?”
“I’ve been working on a project for some time. An idea in the back of my head. A passion project if you will.”
“Okay.”
“Do you remember that book I was reading a few years ago? The one I couldn’t put down? It was about the American Civil War.”
I tried to reach back into the recesses of my memory but came up blank. “No.”
“NO? You hid it from me so I would go to the cinema with you.”
“Will you please continue?”
He shifted himself on the sofa so he could perch on the edge to animate his story with emphasis. I got the impression he would not be able to deliver his message without the excessive use of hand gestures.
“As I was reading the book, and for a long time after, I couldn’t put the story out of my mind, and I pictured it spread out in cinematic narrative whenever I thought of it. I couldn't sleep some nights imagining the shots, the storyboards, even the damn closing credits. It consumed me.”
“I don’t remember this.”
“You went to London around that time.”
“I suppose I can forgive the oversight.”
“Anyhow,” he said. “I finished the screenplay in three days.”
“Three days! Did you not sleep?”
“Not really. But then I put it in a drawer and busied myself with other projects, all the while the Civil War story lived in the back of my head. But something wasn’t right. It wasn’t the story I wanted to tell yet. And then, when you and I went to the Tonys last summer, it hit me. It’s like a light suddenly turned on and I knew how the story should be told. Through music.”
He said those last words with a flourish, waving his hand in a wide arc before my eyes. He had the biggest smile on his face, his features bright with the energy of a showman waiting for applause.
I mirrored his expression, not entirely following his train of thought. “Is this where we congratulate ourselves for saving your motion picture and sing Good Morning To You while we dance on my furniture?” I quipped, amusing myself with a Singing In The Rain reference.
“Oh, I’m way ahead of you, sweetie,” he sing-songed with a cheeky wink. “Because I’ve got my own Cosmo Brown. In fact, I’ve got two.”
So he caught the Singing In The Rain reference. I loved this man. “You hired a composer?”
“Two.”
“You hired two composers?”
“Two brilliant composers. And I think you can now guess which ones.”
I blinked at him rather blankly. But he wanted me to guess, so he gave me a hint.
“Two words. Lived Overseen.”
It did not escape me he was using my own words to make a statement. And then it all made sense. He hired the young hipster composers of Lived Overseen, the Kander and Ebb for the twenty-first century. That’s why he took those secretive trips to New York. He wasn’t trying to get away from me—he was being brilliant. And I was being a brat.
“You hired Morris Tomlinson and Elton Wardlow?”
“Well,” he shrugged, “more like entered into a collaboration with them. Hence the nondisclosure agreement.”
This was all too much. I felt a spring of excitement erupt within me—the kind of feeling you get when you are about to witness greatness. Jaxson could feel it, too. The heat of his enthusiasm was contagious. It radiated from him.
“So will it be a movie or a musical?” I asked.
Jaxson spread his palms before him as if gesturing toward an imaginary marquee. “A movie musical!”
“That’s truly amazing,” I beamed. It truly was, because I knew Jaxson, as much as he loved making films, his true love was song and dance. New tears began afresh, but this time they were rooted in joy. “I’m so happy for you.”
“I haven’t told you my favourite part.” He could hardly contain himself by this time. “I’ve decided to play the lead role, and I want you to play opposite me.”
Hold the phone. So he wasn’t kidding when he asked me what if. What if we starred in a film together? What if we had a love scene? He wasn’t joking at all.
“It’s a love story?” I asked.
“It’s a love triangle. But it’s a beautiful complex storyline between two brothers and the woman torn between them. It’s heart wrenching and passionate, and the music is brilliant.”
He took my hands in his, squeezing them firmly yet gently.
“What do you say, Emma?” He slid off the sofa and lowered himself to one knee. “Will you make me the happiest of men, and be my movie musical wife?”
I burst out with laughter. “You are so ridiculous sometimes.”
A smile spread across the whole of his features. Everything about him was one big smile. “Yes, I am ridiculous. And I’m blunt and crass and a bloody tosser. And I’m asking you. Forgive me for being such a wanker and make movie history with me.”
He gave my hands a little squeeze, running light circles over my knuckles with his thumbs. His eyes were alight with feeling, and although I knew he was acting comical, the sincerity in his manner was transparent.
“Yes,” I said with some fervour. “Yes, I will. It would be my honour.”
I was really quite overcome between the rush of tears, his wonderful news, and his silly apology. The man was on one knee. In retrospect it seems ridiculous, but in the elation of the moment, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, my lips crashed into his. It was an honest reaction, after all. What else does one do when a man fake proposes? It wouldn’t be the last kiss I’d ever give him. I imagined we’d have to practise quite a lot of kisses for our on-screen love scenes. It was nothing. Just a celebratory interaction between good friends. And it was over as quickly as it began. A brief touch. A stage kiss. Nothing more.
Until it wasn’t.
Have you ever been on a diet, and by some cruel set of circumstances ended up at a party? You content yourself with the healthy options at the buffet table for the whole night, not giving into temptation. And then you see the chocolate cake, and you deceive yourself into having one little taste. Just a crumb. It will hardly mean a thing. But that cake is the most delicious morsel that ever touched your lips, and you tell yourself “You deserve this. You’ve done your cardio today. Have a little more.” And then you end up devouring the whole cake.
That is more or less what happened. One little taste, just a crumb. But I deceived myself, and perhaps it was just the late hour, but I took his delicious lips in mine as if they were the last piece of cake on earth. And he gave them to me, softly, sweetly, slowly. Passionately. And they were lovely, so lovely for just that fleeting moment. But then I felt his body become rigid, and I realized there was an incessant buzzing from somewhere in the distance. It seemed far away.
He pulled himself from me a little embarrassed and stared at me transfixed for several seconds, rousing his composure until the buzzing ceased. Then he cleared his throat and backed away, retrieving a pile of papers held together with brass brackets. The screenplay. He took his seat on the sofa and placed his Magnus Opus reverently in my hands.
“We’ll have to workshop it before we get the green light,” he said. “And although there are plenty of rehearsal spaces in LA, it would mean a lot to me if we could use your aunt’s theatre.”
My eyes glazed over the pages without really looking at them. My thoughts were still fixed on the warmth of his touch, the softness of his lips.
“Jaxson, I . . .”
“You don’t have to say anything, Emma.”
“I don’t?”
“It was my fault. I got carried away. I’m sorry.”
He got carried away?
Again the buzzing. My phone was in the kitchen. I ignored it.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” I said with a sigh. “It was just a little joke, right? To celebrate. Some people drink champagne, some people kiss.”
“Right,” he agreed with a hard swallow. “Absolutely. To celebrate.”
The buzzing began again, but this time it was much closer — in Jaxson’s pocket. He hesitated for a moment, deciding whether to answer it.
He huffed, a little annoyed. “Who could be calling at one in the morning?”
Then it dawned on me. “What time is it in London?”
He made quick of his hands to grab the phone from his pocket. My suspicions were confirmed when I looked at the screen. I snatched it from him and answered the call.
“Hello, mum.”
She was silent for a moment, thrown off by the sound of my voice when she expected Jaxson to answer, but quickly recovered, hailing a rainstorm of questions upon me like the Spanish Inquisition.
“Why didn’t you answer your phone? I was worried.” She didn’t give me a chance to answer. “Someone tweeted you were at a secondary school. What were you doing at a school? I tried to call Jaxson to see if he knew about it and you answer his mobile. Why do you have his mobile? It’s the middle of the night there, Emma. Where are you?”
“I’m home.”
“And what on earth could you possibly be doing at this hour?”
I glanced at Jaxson who was equal parts bewildered and amused. Her voice carried from the device to his ears with very little help from the speaker and he shook his head with a smile. I winked at him devilishly before putting my mouth directly over the microphone of his iPhone and exclaimed, “SNOGGING!”
And then I satisfactorily pressed the screen to end the call.