11. The First Rehearsal #2
The restaurant is one of those Loop establishments that prioritizes shadows and high-end linen over actual lighting.
It smells of expensive Chianti and the kind of perfume that costs more than my mortgage payment.
The Petersons are at a round table in the center of the room, a perfect portrait of suburban stability.
Robert is checking his watch. Carol is adjusting a centerpiece with the focus of a bomb technician.
“There they are!” Carol’s eyes light up with a predatory delight that makes me tighten my grip on Mandy’s hand.
She’s scanning us, her gaze going from my shoulders to the way I’m holding her daughter, and then it snags on Mandy’s ears and stays there half a second too long.
Mandy’s hand comes up to touch the tomato, stops halfway, and goes back down. She’s looking for the cracks.
“Evening,” Robert says, standing to shake my hand. He gives my arm a firm, appreciative pat. The universal masculine signal for I approve of this structure. “Good to see you again, Sterling. Still keeping the city from burning down? I saw the report on the North Side warehouse fire. Tight work.”
“Doing my best, sir.” I pull out Mandy’s chair with a flourish that feels entirely too natural and settle into the seat beside her, our thighs brushing under the table. I don’t move away. I want the contact.
The first twenty minutes are a tactical dance of small talk.
I handle the questions about the firehouse and the apartment repairs with practiced ease, laughing at Robert’s dry jokes, and listening to Carol’s stories about the school choir.
I’m hyper-aware of Mandy beside me. There’s nothing on her shoulders but skin, so I can watch the tension sitting in them, and the shallow careful way she’s breathing.
She’s a coiled spring and I’m the only thing keeping her from going off.
“So.” Carol leans in as the waiter pours the wine.
Her eyes glitter with the specific hunger of a woman already mentally browsing bridal registries.
“We were talking last night at the hotel about how we never really heard the full story of how you two transitioned. From friends to this. There must have been a moment. A turning point where the friendship just wasn’t enough anymore. ”
Mandy freezes. I can see it in the tendon standing out along her neck. I watch her hand hover over her calamari, her knuckles going white. This is a flashover. She’s about to bolt, or she’s about to tell them the truth.
I don’t let her. I reach out and settle my hand on her bare shoulder before sliding to her back, my thumb moving lazily at the base of her neck.
A painted corner knocks the back of my knuckle when she turns her head.
I feel the shiver go through her, a tremor of surprise that I convert into a gesture of intimacy.
I look directly at her, ignoring her parents, letting the world narrow until it’s the two of us in the candlelight.
“It was that night outside the jazz bar.” My voice drops into the low register I’ve been holding back all evening.
There’s a texture to it now that I did not practice in the loft, a resonance that feels less like a script than a confession.
“About two years ago. Do you remember, Mandy? The rain was coming down so hard we couldn’t see the streetlights across the park. ”
She nods, her eyes wide and fixed on mine. She looks like she’s seeing the memory for the first time, even though we wrote it together on a notebook page forty-eight hours ago.
“There was this sax player. He was terrible, honestly, wearing a fedora that had seen better decades, but the music didn’t matter. I think we talked for four hours about everything and nothing. And I realized I’d never actually listened to anyone the way I was listening to her.”
I pause. My fingers tighten slightly on her shoulder, pulling her a fraction of an inch closer.
I can smell her shampoo, the wine, the heat of her skin.
I’m not looking at the Petersons anymore.
I’m looking at the way her mouth has parted, the way her breath has gone shallow.
I’m lost in the story I’m telling and for the first time I’m not sure where the fiction ends.
“We tried to walk home and worked out pretty fast that the rain was too much, so we took cover under the awning of a little bakery.” A small, genuine smile pulls at the corner of my mouth.
My hand slips down along her spine, and I feel her shiver again.
“We were soaked to the bone. She was shivering, so I gave her my coat. And I remember looking at her under this flickering neon sign, and she just looked so... beautiful. Hair plastered to her face, glasses completely fogged, those gold and red cherry-bomb earrings dangling off her ears. And I realized I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
I didn’t want to walk anyone else home. Ever. ”
The table goes silent. The clink of silver on china at the surrounding tables fades to a distant, muffled roar.
I made the earrings up. She wasn’t wearing cherry bombs two years ago, because I have no idea what she was wearing two years ago.
I said it because there was a painted pumpkin swinging under her ear and my mouth needed somewhere to go so I didn't lean into it. Carol has a hand pressed to her chest, her eyes wide and damp. Robert is staring into his wine glass with a look of profound, silent contemplation. I can’t breathe.
The story was a masterpiece, the perfect blend of real detail and high-stakes emotion.
But it’s the way I said it, the way my voice cracked a fraction on the word beautiful, that has my head spinning.
It didn’t feel like a rehearsal. It felt like a testimony.
“That’s- that’s lovely,” Carol whispers, genuinely damp-eyed. “Simply lovely. Robert, wasn’t that lovely? So much better than how you asked me out at the bowling alley.”
“Good story,” Robert grunts. He reaches out and refills my glass, deliberate, and respectful. “A man who stays in the rain with you when things are broken is a man you keep, Mandy. I’ve always said that. Character shows in the downpours.”
Mandy manages a shaky laugh, her fingers twisting in the linen napkin under the table until her knuckles are white. “He’s definitely a keeper, Dad. He’s very good at navigating the rain.”
The rest of dinner passes in a blur of heavy pasta and heavier weather.
I move through the motions of eating and talking, but I’m aware of every single thing Mandy does.
When she laughs at something her mother says, her chest vibrates against my arm.
When I reach for my water, my bicep flexes against hers.
The physical proximity has stopped being a strategic choice for the benefit of an audience.
It’s a gravitational pull I can’t get out of.
I find myself leaning into her, my shoulder finding the familiar hollow of hers, taking the warmth she’s giving off in the chill of the room.
I’m supposed to be the anchor, but I feel like a dingy drifting further from shore by the minute.
When we finally stand to leave and the cool Chicago night hits us at the entrance, Mandy’s arms come up across her bare shoulders before she can stop them.
The Petersons are beaming with a satisfaction that borders on dangerous.
They look settled. They look like people who have finally checked a difficult, long-standing item off a very high-pressure list. They look at us and see a future, and I feel like a thief who has stolen something he didn’t realize he wanted to keep.
“We’ll see you for brunch Sunday before we head back?” Carol hugs Mandy tightly. She smells like lily of the valley and triumph. “Sterling, you’re coming, right?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Carol.” My voice is smooth and convincing.
And then I do it. The final flourish. I reach out grabbing Mandy by the waist to pull her firmly against my side, and press a kiss to her temple.
Her skin is soft, and her breath comes hot against my neck, and for a second the entire bustling street just stops.
It isn’t a performance kiss. It isn’t for the audience.
It’s the way I linger, the way my mouth stays against her skin a heartbeat too long, the way I breathe her in, and the cement tilts very slightly under my feet.
We walk back to the truck with her hand tucked into mine, in a heavy, charged silence.
The city noise is muffled, filtered through the blood going in my ears.
I open the door for her and watch her climb into the passenger seat.
I get in and start the engine. I turn the heat up without saying anything about it.
“You were good,” she says, small and breathless in the quiet of the cab. “I almost believed you myself.”
I don’t look at her. I can’t look at her, because if I do, the lie comes apart in my hands.
I put the truck in gear and pull away from the curb, hands steady on the wheel, eyes on the road.
I think about the bakery awning. I think about the way the rain would have looked in her hair.
I think about the way I felt when I said the word beautiful, and how it did not feel like a script at all.
“Who says I was lying, Sparkles?”
I don’t wait for an answer. I keep my eyes on the skyline, the steel and glass of a city I’m no longer sure I understand.
I catch her mother’s beaming smile in the side mirror as they pull away in their own car, and a cold, sharp thing goes through the haze of the evening.
I’m not just lying to her parents anymore.
I’m losing the ability to tell myself the truth, and I’m afraid that when the performance ends there won’t be anything left of the man who walked into that restaurant, and everything left of the man who never wanted to let go.