29. Donovan
TWENTY-NINE
DONOVAN
The train to New York is crowded and the air-conditioning is broken in the car I first pick, so I move backward until I find a seat in a cooler car. My nerves are on high alert. Joan told me the casting director for the commercial gig wants to see me, but she wasn’t clear if it was an audition or something else. I don’t have any script pages to go over and I’m too nervous to read for pleasure. So I stare out the smeared plexiglass window at the ultra-green countryside as it turns into the browns and tans of the suburbs and then the brick and metal and glass buildings of New York City.
I try to keep my mind blank, but I can’t help but think about the way Beck looked when I told him I was heading to the city. He was baking—in his element—but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. I wonder if he hates me now. I haven’t had the courage to ask him, or to leave the house altogether. With Jack and Pete coming home in such a short time, it seems petty to cut out early. Not to mention I still don’t have anywhere else to go. My stuff’s in storage with a friend who’s on Long Island for her summer vacation. Practically everything I own is in the backpack on my back. I’m homeless, as itinerant as Beck was when he showed up in Rosedale. But I don’t even have a car.
I sent Joan my play yesterday, but she hasn’t read it yet, or if she has read it, she’s still figuring out how to tell me she hates it.
This possible job is the only thing I have going for me right now, which is kind of pathetic. Beck’s words hover in my mind, making me doubt everything I thought I knew. He said I could change my mind about what my life’s supposed to be. For years, I chose my career over a domestic life, telling myself I didn’t want both, but when Beck showed me door number three, I was too—what? Scared? Stubborn?—to walk through it.
I emerge from Grand Central and am hit with the unmistakable smell of the city in August—a thick wall of car fumes, damp air, and the exhaled breaths of millions of people. I’m disoriented at first, accidentally start walking in the opposite direction from my destination, which is strange. I’ve lived in New York for twelve years, and it’s one of the easiest cities to navigate. Still, I feel like a visitor in a foreign land.
I’m sweating through my shirt by the time I get to the nondescript office building Joan told me to go to. I take some steadying breaths, put on my audition armor, consisting of my professional smile and my actor’s charm. I open the door to the suite and hope for the best.
An hour later, I’m shaking hands with Phil, the producer of a series of commercials for high-end sunscreen. That’s the product I’d be hawking as the star of three commercials—just to start. They want to target gay men with this advertising campaign, and they want to build the campaign around me. It wasn’t an audition—it was a pitch. They want to pay me a mind-boggling sum of money to star in ads essentially as myself, only a slightly buffer, sunscreen-wearing version of myself, of course.
I hit it off with the creative team, and they’ve promised to send Joan the contract by the end of the day. Apparently, they have studio time booked and their first choice fell through at the last minute. I’m not offended to be a replacement, especially when they’re saying all the right things.
I leave the building and call Joan.
“You nailed it, baby,” she says when she picks up.
“You could have given me more warning,” I say lightly.
“It was short notice, and I wasn’t even sure you’d want the job, but I’m glad you liked them. Think of me when you’re on your yacht.”
I laugh. “You know I’m not a boat person. But maybe…” Beck’s blue house flashes before my eyes and I blink it away before I can get sidetracked. “Did you read the play?”
“I read it.”
“And?” I tell myself it’s okay if she doesn’t like it. I’m not a real playwright, anyway. It was just a lark. I can stick it in the proverbial drawer and never look at it again.
“It needs some work, but it’s dynamite. Julian is…he’s real, Van. And I’m not making any promises, but some day you’re going to get to play him and it’s going to be magic.”
I have to stop in the middle of Park Avenue South and scrub a hand over my face, ignoring the disgruntled pedestrians around me. She liked the play. And playing Julian…that’s a dream I can throw my weight behind.
“Thanks, Joan.” It’s completely inadequate, but I trust she can hear the emotion in my voice.
“Where are you staying at the moment? I want to send you something to celebrate.”
I look around, as if I can conjure up a place to live right there. “Ah, I’m currently between addresses. But I’ll let you know when I find something permanent.”
“Fair enough. I’ll be in touch.”
“Thanks, again. For everything.”
“You got it, baby.”
We hang up and I’m about to look up a hotel in this neighborhood when my phone announces a new call. Kingston James.
I slide to answer and realize he’s started a video call with me. The screen blurs, then resolves into Kingston’s face. I recognize the colors of his Rosedale kitchen behind him. “Kingston? What’s up?”
“What is up is what did you do? I called Beck to talk to him about the welcome back party and I thought Cleo was dead he sounded so sad.”
“What? Cleo’s okay, right?”
“She’s fine. But your boy is not. I repeat: what did you do?”
I bristle at the implication, however accurate, that I did something to Beck. I didn’t ask him to fall in love with me. I told him—explicitly—that wasn’t something I was capable of. And the fact that I can’t stop thinking about him is just an unfortunate byproduct of my bad decisions.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but we’re disentangling ourselves from our summer arrangement,” I say with as much dignity as I can muster while walking in a sea of people toward Union Square Park, sweat gathering under my backpack and soaking through my shirt again.
Kingston grumbles something unintelligible, though I can tell it’s not particularly flattering to me. “Hang on, I need reinforcements,” he says.
“Huh?” His screen grays out for a few seconds, during which I seriously contemplate hanging up and blaming it on my cell connection. By now I’m in the park, so I take myself out of the flow of traffic and snag a spot on a green New York City park bench.
Kingston returns to the screen, then a second square pops up. It’s Pete.
“Pete, where are you?”
My friend grins wide. It’s weirdly good to see his smiling, familiar face. “Amsterdam. Where are you? Is everything okay?”
“Rosedale,” Kingston answers as I say, “Uh, the city. But just for a minute. And everything is fine,” I reassure him before Kingston can start throwing me under the bus, because I have no doubt that’s why he brought Pete on the call.
“Oh cool, well, we’re mostly all packed. At least I am. Jack’s out right now getting another suitcase to take back all his treasures. Can’t wait to see you guys.”
“Same. Well, we should let you get back to packing,” I try, but Kingston interrupts.
“Pete, I wouldn’t bother you on your sex vacation, but you’ve got to back me up. Tell Van that he’s being a dumbass about Beck.”
“What about Beck? What’s going on?” Pete’s image is sort of blurry, but his voice comes through loud and clear.
“I don’t know what you think is going on, Kingston,” I say, “but again, it’s none of your?—”
“They’ve been sleeping together all summer,” Kingston says with an air of victory.
“How the hell do you know that?” I ask, more curious than upset. “Did Beck?—”
“Beck didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. Every time you two were in a room together, it was obvious by the heart eyes you were sending each other when you thought no one was looking. And then you both suddenly got way more touchy-feely, and don’t even get me started on the vibes—someone way less intelligent than me could see you two were fucking after spending two minutes with you. When Beck started making plans to stay in Rosedale and you were not part of those plans, I could tell we were in for some kind of train wreck. I could see how happy you were, and I couldn’t understand why you didn’t. I thought maybe you needed a nudge, so I told Beck?—”
“You told him to tell me how he felt about me,” I say numbly. Without Kingston’s interference, would Beck have ever said anything? Would I never have found out that he loves—loved—me?
“I told him I’ve never seen you this happy before and that if he wanted to keep you, he’d have to fight for it.”
I don’t have anything to say to that. I was happy.
“You and Beck?” Pete asks with his oh-so-carefully soft voice. “Together?”
“We were never together,” I say, desperate to explain my side. “It was a summer fling, that’s all. This is why I never get involved with roommates. You get it, don’t you, Pete? It never ends well. I thought this time we were on the same page because we had an expiration date, but then I went and fell in love with him and ruined everything.”
Two pairs of eyes stare at me, shocked, from across the miles and I replay what I just said in my head.
“No! Shit. No—he fell in love with me! That’s what I meant to say. Beck fell in love with me. Not the other way around. That was a mistake.” The longer I talk, the crazier I feel.
I didn’t fall in love with Beck. I don’t do love. I haven’t since Aidan took my heart, stomped all over it, and returned it in the form of a battered banker’s box of stuff I’d left in his dorm room over the years.
“I’m not in love with him,” I say again, sounding unhinged to my own ears. “Because—because—” Because if I’m in love with him, that would mean I’d have to face the fact that he was right, about everything. About me treating him in a very boyfriend-y way. About actually wanting the house and the dog and the partner. About wanting the kind of love that Jack and Pete so fearlessly, so gratefully, embody. About wanting a shared future with all of those things in it, and more.
But that means a future where someone could at any minute decide they don’t want me anymore and crush me under their foot.
Only I know Beck would never. He’s not Aidan. And I’m not the same person I was at twenty-two. I’m not saying I’ve matured that much, but maybe I’ve made enough mistakes that I’m able to admit when I’ve made a colossal one.
“Donovan,” Pete says, the use of my whole name getting my attention, “you were a one-man guy. Until you weren’t. But I think that’s still who you are, deep down. Remember how I said your stubbornness is a strength, but it can also keep you from trying new things? Things that might make you happy? If Beck makes you happy, do you know how stupid you’d have to be not to hang onto him with both hands?”
I look away from the screen and the concerned faces of my friends up to the trees towering over my park bench. I can only just make out the fading blue sky through the leaves. If I was in Rosedale, I could look at the trees with Beck. We could sit outside until bugs threaten to eat us alive, and then we could go in and curl up on the couch watching TV, or talking until we’re yawning more than communicating, and then shuffle off to bed, our shared bed. In our shared home. Our shared life.
I’m sick of my own stubbornness. It’s time to let go of that old hurt. Time to be honest with myself about what I want. And what I don’t want.
I don’t want to be in New York a second longer. It no longer feels like home to me. Home is where Beck is.
I tip my head down and glare at the screen. “You two are the most meddlesome busybodies I ever met. You—” I point at Pete “—I’ll deal with when you get back from Europe. And you—” I swing my finger to Kingston “—just wait until you fall in love and see how motherfucking meddlesome I can be.”
“Does that mean you’re coming home?” Kingston asks hopefully.
I’m about to promise to catch the next train, but I hesitate. I don’t have anything to offer Beck except the dubious promise that I actually want to be his boyfriend. It seems paltry in comparison to the plethora of skills and assets he’s bringing to the relationship.
“I’ll be back soon,” I say instead. “I’ve got to take care of some things first.”
“Don’t be too long,” Kingston says. “Beck’s not going to wait forever.”
“Then help me. Get me the contact info for the real estate agent—what’s her name?”
“Noelle.” Both of them answer simultaneously.
“That’s the one.”
“What are you planning?” Pete asks.
“Just a little something to prove to Beck that it’s taken me a while to get there, but I finally know exactly what I want.”