20. Geo #2
A man I don’t recognize slides into the seat next to us, champagne sloshing in his glass. “Haven’t seen you since the Sydney tour. Wild times.”
“Brant.”
Harrison’s voice is careful, neutral. “Good to see you.”
“And this must be…”
Brant looks at me, and his face lights with recognition, or with the look of a man about to say a thing he thinks is clever. “The wife, right? The one from the video?”
Harrison stops breathing beside me.
“Actually, I heard you two split up,” Brant continues, oblivious or uncaring. “Wasn’t there some whole thing with your sister? Or step-sister or whatever? Vivian something? I saw the footage, man, I have to say.”
“Brant.”
Harrison’s voice has dropped, cold and precise. “Stop talking.”
“I’m just saying, she seemed more your speed.”
“I said stop.”
The table has gone quiet. I can feel the other guests watching, phones probably already recording, waiting to see what happens next.
Harrison stands up. He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t make a scene. He just looks at Brant with an expression I’ve never seen before, not angry, exactly, but hard. Final.
“You’re going to apologize to my wife,” Harrison says. “And then you’re going to find another table. And if I hear you mention her name, or Vivian’s name, or anything about our family for the rest of the night, I will make sure you never work another industry event as long as you live.”
Brant blinks. “I was making conversation.”
“Apologize.”
A beat. Brant looks at me, his earlier bravado evaporating.
“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”
He leaves. The table slowly resumes conversation, the tension dissipating as the band starts up again. Harrison sits back down, his jaw still tight.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say quietly.
“Yes, I did.”
“It’ll be a story. By tomorrow it’s everywhere.”
“I don’t care.”
He turns to look at me, and his expression has gone fierce. “I spent a year letting people say whatever they wanted about you. I’m not doing that anymore.”
The band shifts into something slower. Around us, couples are making their way to the dance floor.
“Dance with me,” Harrison says.
“I don’t really dance.”
“Everyone dances. You just have to stop thinking about it.”
He holds out his hand. I stare at it, at the familiar lines of his palm, the calluses from years of guitar, the wedding ring he never stopped wearing.
I take it.
The dance floor is crowded, which means we have to stay close. His hand finds my waist, the other holding mine, and we move together the way we used to before everything fell apart. I can feel his heartbeat through his jacket. I can feel the warmth of him everywhere we touch.
“There’s a song I’ve been listening to,” he says quietly, near my ear. “An old one. From a band that played at a club in Silver Lake, the night we met.”
My breath catches. “You remember that?”
“I remember everything, Geo. I just stopped acting like it mattered.”
The band changes again, into a song I recognize instantly, the opening notes of a song I haven’t heard in years. The song that was playing when we first danced together, in a dingy club with sticky floors, before he was famous, before I gave up singing, before any of this.
“You requested this,” I say.
“I might have.”
“You remember what song was playing the first night we met?”
“I told you.”
His hand flexes once against my waist. “I remember everything.”
The music swells around us. I let myself lean into him, let myself feel the solidity of him, let myself remember what it was like before everything went wrong.
“This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you.”
“I know what it doesn’t mean,” he says. “Just dance with me anyway.”
I do.
We stay on the dance floor for three songs, and I don’t let myself think about what any of it means.
And then, during the fourth song, I see him.
Theo Ibarra, standing at the edge of the dance floor.
Not Brant, who spent the salad course being a bigot with a champagne flute. Theo. The one from the studio. The one who texts me good morning and wants to take me to dinner and looks at me like I’m uncomplicated and whole.
He sees me at the same moment I see him.
His eyes move from my face to Harrison’s arms around my waist to the way we’re standing, close enough that there’s no daylight between us.
“Excuse me,” I say to Harrison, stepping back. “I need a minute.”
“Geo?”
But I’m already walking toward Theo, toward a conversation I didn’t know I was going to have tonight, toward a choice I didn’t realize I was making until right now.
The service staircase is quiet, tucked away behind the main building, probably used by caterers who don’t want to disturb the guests. I find Harrison there later, after I’ve said what I needed to say to Theo, after I’ve watched him nod and smile and pretend he was fine with it.
Harrison is leaning against the railing, looking out at the vineyard in the fading light.
“I told Theo I’m not going to be able to give him what he’s asking for,” I say.
Harrison turns. “Because of me?”
“Because of me.”
I step closer, close enough to see the tension in his jaw, the hope he’s trying to hide. “I’ve been trying to figure out what I want. Trying to give myself options. But the truth is, there’s only one person I’m trying to figure out, and it’s not him.”
“Geo, say it plainly.”
“I’m still angry at you. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop being angry. But I’m also done pretending I’m not here.”
I stop. Take a breath. “I’m also here. Dancing with you at weddings. Listening to you talk about migratory birds. Holding jars of lavender honey like they’re precious.”
He’s staring at me like he’s afraid to touch what I just handed him.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t want options anymore. I want to stop pretending this is something it isn’t.”
The kiss happens before either of us decides to make it happen.
His back hits the wall of the staircase. My hands fist in his jacket. The sound he makes when I press against him-
A door opens somewhere above us. Footsteps on the stairs. A caterer appears around the corner, stops dead when he sees us, turns bright red, and retreats back the way he came.
We break apart, breathing hard.
“That’s going to be a story,” I say.
“Don’t care.”
He’s looking at me like I’m the only person in the world. “Dance with me again?”
“Later.”
I straighten his jacket, smooth down his lapels. “First we go back inside. First we let them see us together. Then you can dance with me as much as you want.”
We walk back into the reception together.
People notice. They were always going to. But for the first time in a year, I don’t care what they’re noticing.
I just care that he’s beside me.