Chapter 7
Jill
It has to be fate.
What else could it be when the subway doors rattle open and Patrick steps inside at the next stop after mine?
He’s so handsome I have to catch my breath. It’s like looking at a Monet; he’s beautiful in the way that only masterpieces can be. I grip the pole and I can literally feel a rush of warmth expanding from my chest all the way to my fingertips. I am fluttery being near him, and when he locks eyes with me a spark of recognition flares.
“Hey there,” he says, his eyes smiling.
“Hi,” I manage to say, hoping it doesn’t come out in a breathy whisper that reveals all the years I’ve longed for him.
“You’re in the show, aren’t you?”
“Chorus. And understudy for Ms. Carbone.”
“That’s fantastic,” he says and his smile lights up the train. “Is this your first show…?” He pauses and waits for me to say my name.
“Jill. Jill McCormick.”
“I’m Patrick Carlson.”
I laugh nervously. “I know who you are.”
“What did you think of yesterday’s rehearsal? Of Davis’ patented first day speech?”
I don’t want to talk about Davis with Patrick. I’ve filed away all thoughts of my director that are less than professional. “It was great. Like it was scripted in some intense sports movie,” I add, though there’s a part of me that feels sordid for discussing him at all with Patrick.
The train shakes as it slows into the next stop and I grab harder onto the pole otherwise I might bump into him, and if I did that, I’d probably shiver and shudder and blabber on about how he got me through many lonely nights full of self-loathing. How the possibility of him started to heal all the dark places in my heart—places where I hated myself.
Patrick tilts his head to the side. “You know, you look familiar. And I don’t mean because of rehearsal. But I feel like we’ve met before.”
I blurt out the truth. “We met when you did Guys and Dolls. We talked and sang a few lines together.”
His eyes widen, and a huge grin plays on his lips. “Holy crap. That was you? Of course that was you. That was a blast.” Seeing his gorgeous features brighten as he remembers that moment fondly makes me want to bounce on my toes and punch a fist in the air. Praise the Lord—Patrick remembers me. “We did a hell of a duet, didn’t we?”
“I’m not sure why we haven’t been offered a recording contract yet,” I say.
He laughs, and it’s such an incredible feeling to have made Patrick laugh. “We should rectify that, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely.”
He’s flirting with me. I can’t wait to tell Kat that we’re having a movie moment, that we’re connecting like the leads in a romantic comedy do. Soon, we’ll be making the audience swoon and say aw.
“Why don’t we come up with some numbers and put together a demo for the record labels? We’ll do all the great duets in musical theater history. ‘You and I’ from Chess. ‘Light my Candle’ from Rent,” he says, and I love that he’s cleverly rattling off the best love songs, and I’m about to toss in “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease when something shifts in his expression. He furrows his eyebrows together. “Wait a second. You’re the one who sent me flowers, didn’t you?”
My face flames beet red as the train crawls into the theater district. Forget our movie moment. Now he’s going to think I’m a stalker creep.
“Yes.” I look down, out the door, away from him.
“The flowers were beautiful, Jill,” he says as we reach our stop. The doors open and he guides me out, placing his hand on my back protectively, as if he’s shielding me from any rushed, frenzied New Yorkers who might bump into me. Crowds press around us, the sardine-like pack of New Yorkers in the morning racing to work.
“Thank you,” I mutter.
“Hey.” He stops walking before we reach the turnstiles, tugs me away from the crowd to make me look at him and meet his gaze. “I loved the flowers. They lit up my dressing room at the Gershwin. And I wanted to respond in kind. I wanted to say yes. But I was involved with someone and, besides, I knew you were in high school. And I didn’t want to do anything inappropriate.”
I gulp, crowds fanning out around us. He’s a gentleman, too. Now I know the reason he never responded to the flowers. He could never break my heart. He was kind then, and thoughtful, always a good guy.
I needed a good guy after all that went wrong with Aaron. After all those things he said and did and wrote when we broke up. The notes and the letters and the pleas. I’ve kept them locked up in a wooden box by my nightstand, but they seep in and out of my life at the most inopportune times.
“That’s okay. It was just a fun thing to do. I’ve admired you for so long,” I say as he holds out his arm, letting me pass through the turnstiles first.
“And now we’re acting together. Perhaps it’s fate.”
My heart skips all its beats. It’s fate he was on the subway. It’s fate we’re in the same show. It’s fate I saw him in Guys and Dolls. Because back then my life was falling apart. Back then, my heart was splintering into a thousand shards, and nobody knew why because I never told anyone. When I was seventeen everything changed, and I kept it all to myself. Rather than open my mouth and tell someone—my mother, one of my brothers, one of my friends—running became my therapy, acting my salvation, Patrick my pure, unbroken heart.
I could never be with anyone else and so I haven’t. I’ve been completely alone since Aaron. No one but me has touched me. Because no one else has given me what this man has. Love that doesn’t hurt.
I need to find the perfect way to make this real with him.
* * *
I do lunges as Kat packs. She’s heading to Mystic tomorrow to see her parents, and to be feted at their gift shop where her necklaces have been selling like crazy. She invited me to go with her and I want to be there, but rehearsal lasts until six and her party is at seven, so there’s no way I can make it. She graduated from MBA school a few weeks ago, and her Kat Harper necklaces have become amazingly popular and are now carried in boutiques and in the fancy Elizabeth’s department stores around the country. She’s running her jewelry business full-time, and planning a summer wedding in Mystic where she and Bryan first met.
Yeah, she’s kind of sickeningly happy.
She considers a purple scarf with white stars, looping it around her neck and pouting at me like a glamour queen. “What do you think?”
“Oh, darling, purple is so your color.”
“You really can’t leave rehearsal early?” She tosses the scarf on top of her other clothes. I switch legs and do more lunges. I rarely sit still.
“Have you met Davis Milo? If you’re late, he paddles you.”
She laughs. “Really? Got a BDSM director there, do you?”
I shrug, and look at the floor. Why am I even making stupid jokes about Davis? But I can’t seem to stop. “I wouldn’t be surprised. I bet he ties up all his conquests.”
“Maybe I should leave the scarf with you then,” she says, then winks.
“I didn’t say he was going to tie me up,” I say, feeling the need to draw some sort of line between Davis and me. I didn’t tell Kat he kissed me at his office. Because it was a mistake. Because it won’t happen again. Besides, I haven’t thought about it since then.
“Would you let Patrick tie you up though?”
I roll my eyes. “I’d let Patrick do anything to me. But I doubt that’s his style,” I say because surely Patrick is passionate but also loving, caring, and oh-so-sweet between the sheets. He’d never tie up a girl or talk dirty to her. Besides, he wouldn’t have to. He doesn’t need tricks or techniques like that.
“Have you ever been? You know, tied up? Or handcuffed? Or anything? Like by Stefan maybe? I could see him as the type.”
I focus intently on a framed vintage poster of Paris on Kat’s wall. “No,” I say softly, and it’s true, but it feels like a lie. Because nearly everything I told her about Stefan was a lie. She thinks I slept with him, that he’s some sort of wizard in the sack. He’s a singer and we kissed once while we were at a club checking out a new band last year, but that was all.
Look, it’s not as if I want to lie to Kat about my love life, or lack thereof. It’s not as if I don’t trust her. But I don’t want to tell anyone the real story. What would they think? That it was my fault, like Aaron said? No, it’s hard enough to bear that. Besides, I’ve kept it hidden for so long that I wouldn’t even know how to exhume it from deep down inside me. I sometimes wonder if the truth of what happened with Aaron will be buried forever, like some archaeological relic that’s never uncovered. At this point, I don’t know how to begin to dig down that far, so I craft my new story with tales that make me seem like a normal gal, like any other twenty-three-year-old in New York who’s dating and doing it.
The truth is I’ve gone six years without sex. I’m not a saint, and I’m definitely not a prude. I think about sex just as much if not more—probably way more, all things considered—than the average woman. I walk down the street and imagine epic, panty-melting, waves-crashing, out-of-this-universe sex. I dream of deep, passionate kisses that can’t be contained, that lead to bodies smashing into each other, to heated encounters, to promises of more.
But if I’m going to be with someone again, I need to know it’s not a tainted kind of love. That it’s not twisted. That it can’t be used against me. Or against someone else.
“What about you?” I layer a salacious tone in my voice, so I can shift the attention back to her and off of my fictionalized love life. “Does Bryan have ropes for you?”
She laughs and shakes her head, then places her hand on her chest. “Jill, let me introduce you to your vanilla friend Kat. But even so, it’s better than anything I’ve ever read in a romance novel. Speaking of, I downloaded this hot new rock star erotica. It’s scorching. I’ll gift it to you. Maybe you can use it tomorrow when I’m out of town.”
I hold up my hand and waggle my fingers. “If only my eReader could vibrate.”
At least now I’m telling the truth. The only sex I have is in my head. I am masterful at solo flights. I return to my room to get ready for bed, but I leave my eReader alone. I can’t go there tonight. It would feel wrong.
Instead, I cycle through my plan for tomorrow as I toss my jeans into the hamper. I could try to catch Patrick on the subway to ask him out, or try to find time with him alone at rehearsal. The prospect makes me nervous as hell, and I feel as if my organs are all boinging around inside me. But I remind myself that I’m ready, that it’s time to step beyond the past.
I choose the perfect outfit to wear: a jean skirt, black tights, and a teal sweater. Maybe I’ll even wear a charm necklace Kat made for me last fall with a beret on it for when I won the part in Les Mis. I keep it hanging from the lamp on my nightstand so I can see it every day, and when I reach for it to lay it on top of my clothes, I’m instantly reminded of what else is in the nightstand.
The small wooden box inside the top drawer. I’ve kept this box with me for six years. And it’s calling out to me in a haunting voice, an ever-present reminder that I can’t forget or ignore.
I answer the call once again. I open the drawer on my nightstand, and I remove the box, place it in the middle of my bed, and take a deep, calming breath. I know what’s inside, but this thing is a bomb nonetheless. It’s living and ticking and it’s tried to destroy me before.
I reach inside the drawer, pull out a chain that holds a tiny key and unlock the wooden box. Before I even look at the pictures, I can see him perfectly–Aaron. Dark hair, close-cropped, light brown eyes, and that dimple on the right side of his lips that made me fall for him. His sense of humor, the jokes he made about our school mascot, the dozens of red roses he brought me when I played in our production of Mamma Mia. Those are the good things.
I reach into the box, my fingers shaky. I take out a picture. Him and me at prom. I’m wearing a red dress that falls to my knees and my hair is in a French twist, with a few loose tendrils. He’s unbearably handsome in his tux, that smile giving nothing away. I open the note next, the folds in it so permanent now they’re like tattoos. I read the first few lines.
“God, I f*cking love you so much, Jill.”
That’s what gets me every time. Those words. Those awful, painful words.
I close the box, lock it and return it to the drawer.
* * *
The next morning I’m on the train, a cute knit cap pulled over my blow-dried hair, a red scarf wrapped around my neck, and a skirt on even though it’s winter. But Patrick doesn’t board at the same time. Or on the same car.
I peer into the car next to me, then head down to the other end, weaving in between passengers holding onto straps and poles. I look in the window to another car. No Patrick there, either. As I exit on Fiftieth Street, it only vaguely occurs to me that it would be really unusual to be on the same car of the same train at the exact same time every day.
I’ll have to snag some one-on-one time during rehearsal.
I walk up the steps and into the building with the studio, heading to the elevator panel to press the button.
“Hold the elevator.”
I turn, and it’s Davis.
“Please,” he adds when he sees me. He shifts to a playful tone and flashes a smile that feels as if it’s just for me. His inky blue eyes twinkle and for the briefest of moments, I have this strange sense of him appraising me from stem to stern, surveying my body from the short gray boots that Kat brought me from Paris, to the black tights on my legs, to my blond hair peeking out from the hat. It should bother me, his eyes on me, drinking me in, but it doesn’t. Maybe because it’s so fleeting, so brief, that I might have imagined it.
Besides, I’m guilty too of being less than professional in my random thoughts. Even though I have no intentions for him, given that it was all a mistake.
I try to delete from my head the conversation Kat and I had about him last night as I speculated on his predilections. But I keep thinking about that scarf and I can picture Davis twining it around feminine wrists, pinning them, having his way.
F*ck.
I can’t go there. I shouldn’t go there. What happened in his office was wrong.
“Elevator’s not even here yet,” I say in an effort to focus on the innocuous.
“I’m sure there will be another one,” he says, and I notice he’s not wearing a winter coat even though he’s just come in from the cold. He wears jeans, shoes, and a white button-down shirt that must have been tailored for his chest. He’s holding a coffee cup in one hand, and a sesame seed bagel in the other. It’s only us in the lobby. Waiting. I glance at Davis again, and he’s not even shivering. It’s like he’s made of iron, impervious to the elements.
“Don’t you ever get cold?”
“No.”
“You’re kind of badass.”
His lips quirk up in a grin. “Thank you.”
Then I press my hand against my mouth. “Shit,” I mutter.
The grin is erased and he now has this caring look in his eyes as he reaches a hand toward me, as if he’s about to rest it gently on my arm. But he doesn’t, and I find myself missing the possibility of his touch. He stops halfway, then pulls back before he asks, “What’s wrong, Jill?”
He seems so genuinely concerned. It’s such a different side of him than I see in rehearsals with the whole cast.
“Sometimes I forget to turn on the filter that’s supposed to prevent me from saying things like that to my boss,” I say, because that’s the only way I should think of him, and you shouldn’t be too personal and chit-chatty with your boss. But I can’t get a read on him in any capacity.
It’s as if my finely-tuned internal calibrations on people-reading don’t work with him. On the outside, I can size him up in seconds. He’s the type of good-looking that could grace the pages of a GQ ad, relaxing in a leather chair, a suit jacket tossed casually over the arm, wearing a crisp white shirt, a few buttons undone, holding a sturdy glass of scotch, his midnight blue eyes impossible to look away from.
When it comes to work, he’s a drill sergeant times fifty. He’s a colonel keeping us all in line. But he’s also an artist and a gentleman, and he has this soft side every now and then. A side he seems to show to me. Davis Milo is the strangest mix of sophisticated class and unbridled intensity I’ve ever seen. It’s as if a Merchant Ivory movie f*cked a Quentin Tarantino flick and made him.
“I really wish you wouldn’t call me your boss,” he says. Maybe he’s in the same boat, too, and can’t get a read on how to be with me.
“But you are, aren’t you?” I say, and then realize that the question—aren’t you—has taken on a life of its own and sounds flirtatious. I didn’t mean it to come across that way. I don’t know why I said it like that. I don’t know why I’m leaning closer to him and volleying back, but maybe it’s because the air around us feels warmer, sharper, and I want more of it.
More of the mistake.
He tilts his head to the side. He keeps his eyes on me, not letting go. Something about the way he looks at me makes me want to tell him things, to open up, to share all sorts of secrets I’ve never told anyone else. His dark blue eyes are so pure and unflinching that they seem to demand nothing less than total honesty.
Of course, that’s his style, that’s his MO, that’s how he directs and elicits the most compelling performances from actors, by demanding unwavering truth on stage.
He doesn’t respond to my question. The silence expands, an electric kind of quiet, and soon I can’t take the tension.
“My boss,” I add, as if I have to explain, but my voice seems feathery, like it belongs to someone else.
“Technically, I’m not your boss. The producers are. I’m only your director.”
That’s all he says, and I can’t tell if he’s returning the serve, or if he’s just a master at handling actors. At handling me.
I look up at the sign above the elevator that indicates what floor it’s on. Third floor. The elevator chugs, and it’ll be here any minute, and then I’ll be alone in it with him. My mind gallops off to all the sexy scenes I’ve ever read that take place in an elevator. Part of me wants to put an end to the imaginings, but the other part of me wants to unleash them.
I can’t take that chance.
“I’m going to take the stairs,” I say, and turn on my heels.
“Good idea.”