Roomies by Christina Lauren

twenty-seven

Isuppose I should be grateful for the truth in the saying Sometimes when one thing falls apart, other things fall into place. After all, without the meltdown of my relationship that afternoon outside the federal building, I would never have left the theater. Without leaving the theater, I would never have gotten a waitressing job two days later at Friedman’s in Hell’s Kitchen, where I work three afternoon shifts and three nights a week. Without the restaurant job, I wouldn’t have my days free to write. And without writing, I wouldn’t have what feels like a tree taking root inside me, growing up and invisibly out of every pore.

My scramble of ideas about growing up in the symphony hall, subway buskers, and the glitter and brass of Broadway turns from a journal of jumbled words . . . into an essay.

It seems so obvious now: Write about music, you dummy.

I forgot the joy of seeing words coming out of my hands before they’ve even come into my head. When I close my eyes and type, I see Calvin’s hands moving over the neck of the guitar; hear the clatter of change falling dissonantly into his guitar case down at the station, and remember how he barely registered the ocean of people crashing in waves all around him on the subway platform.

For a couple of weeks, I try to keep moving: waitressing, word count, running in Central Park at least once a day. In part, it’s the rush of accomplishment and seeing my body shed the extra pounds, creating definition where there used to be none. But also, every time I slow down and sit on the couch, or lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, I’m miserable. The old standby habit of distracting myself online is impossible. I see photos of Calvin everywhere on Twitter and Facebook. On buses and at the subway station. Discarded Playbills litter the street.

He’s texted a few times—once because he forgot some sheet music here, and he picked it up when I wasn’t home. On four other occasions, he’s texted to check in, and each time I answered the question directly, no more:

How are you surviving this first week apart?

I’m trying.

I sent you six months’ worth of rent. Did you get it?

Yes, I got your check, thank you.

I haven’t seen you at the theater in weeks. Where are you working?

I got a new job. I’m working at Friedman’s.

Will you have dinner with me on Monday?

I’m sorry, I can’t. I work Monday nights.

This last one was sent only four days ago, and it wasn’t a lie—I do work Mondays. But my new manager is nice, and likes that I work hard and don’t complain; I’m sure I could have asked to swap nights with someone. The thing is, there isn’t anything particularly romantic in Calvin’s messages; as ever, my problem is that I have no idea how to read him. I worry that if we start talking more, this new, improved version of Holland will fall apart, because I’ll want him back more than I’ll want her to stay.

I do give myself a few minutes every day to think about him; I’m not completely dead inside, and I don’t have that kind of self-control anyway: Sony Music rerecorded the soundtrack with Ramón and Calvin.

It is glorious.

When the afternoon lunch crowd is slow, I’ll ask the head chef, José, to put the soundtrack on in the kitchen. I’ll go to the dark corner with a glass of ice water and press it to my forehead while I listen to “Lost to Me.” The sound of Calvin’s guitar—the hopeful opening chords that surge into an anxious, feverish rhythm later in the song—seems to reverberate inside my skull.

I know how those notes sound when they’re coming from across the room, from across the bed. I know how they sound hummed contentedly into my ear with the warm curl of his body all along my back. I flush hot with the need to cry, and roll the cold glass along my forehead—back, and forth, and back, and forth—and try instead to think about my essay and my new job. Emotion takes over in a different way; loss is tinged with pride, and I can go back out and wait my tables and earn enough to pay my rent all on my own for the first time in my life.

At one in the afternoon on a Wednesday, I finish the essay.

The cursor blinks at me, both patient and expectant. But there are no more words for this particular story. I haven’t gone back and read it in its entirety, but when I do, I realize that it’s more than just about music—it’s about Calvin specifically, and my own journey after meeting him, and how pure, sublime talent transcends everything else, no matter where you find it. It’s about how the clatter of trains and sour smells of the station dissolved away when he played, and the way the audience similarly disappears now when he’s onstage. It’s about the pride in having discovered someone and done something to make sure his talent didn’t stay hidden forever.

It’s a love letter—there’s no hiding that—but the oddest thing is that I’m pretty sure it’s a love letter to myself.

Like firing a homemade rocket into the sky and hoping it reaches Jupiter, I send my essay off to the New Yorker. In fact, I laugh when I put a stamp on it because the idea that I could be published there is hilarious—but what do I have to lose? I’ve never been published anywhere close to this level of prestige. It’s easy to imagine an editor—a man so cerebral he cares nothing about appearances, has tea stains on papers all over his desk, and uses words like hiraeth, sonorous, and denouement in casual conversation—opening my submission and tossing it with a dismissive groan over his shoulder, where it lands in a pile of other delusionally ambitious essays. I say a quietly sarcastic “Go get ’em, tiger!” when I drop it in the mailbox.

But then, three weeks later, I think I stop breathing for a full ten minutes when I receive a letter saying that it’s been accepted.

I walk around my apartment, holding the editorial letter, rereading it out loud. I want to call Jeff and Robert, of course, but I have to push past the Calvin cobwebs in my thoughts to get there. This article is about us, and not only do I need to get his permission to publish it, I want him to read it, simply because I want him to see.

To see me.

But strangely, I think he always has. And calling him after five weeks of silence is easier said than done.

I go for a quick run to work through my excited/nervous energy.

I call Davis, who makes me deaf in my left ear with his enthusiasm.

I take a shower, and make a sandwich, and do some laundry.

Step up, Hollsy, Jeff says in my head.

When I look at the clock, it’s only three. I haven’t wasted the entire day, and I can’t procrastinate any longer: Calvin should be free.

The phone rings once, twice, and he picks up halfway through the third.

“Holland?”

The sound of his voice on the phone sends static along my skin, a low-frequency hum of nostalgia and want.

“Hey,” I say, biting my bottom lip so I don’t grin like an idiot. It is so good to hear him.

“Hey.” I can hear the smiling lean to the word, can practically imagine how he’s flipped his hair out of his eyes, how his happiness reaches every part of his face. “This is a nice surprise.”

“I have some good news.”

“Yeah?”

I nod, swallowing down my nerves and looking again for confirmation at the letter in my hands. “I wrote an essay about . . .” I don’t even know how to describe it, really. “About you? And me. Music and New York. I don’t even know . . .”

“Th’ one you were working on before . . . ?”

Before we split.

“Yeah. That one.”

He waits for more, finally prompting, “And?”

“And . . . I sent it off to the New Yorker.” I bite back a grin. “They accepted it.”

He pauses, and I hear his breath come out in a gust. “No way.”

“Yes way!”

“Holy shite!” He laughs, and the sound of it punches me right in the face. I miss him so much. “This is amazing, mo stóirín!”

His old nickname for me. There it is, and my heart goes boom.

“Do you want to read it?”

He laughs. “Is that a serious question?”

“I can trade shifts with someone on Monday, if you wanted to have dinner?”

Dinner, with Calvin, and this glow inside me that feels right for the first time in ages.

“Tell me where,” he says, “and I’ll be there.”

“You’re finally going to let us read it?”

It’s the first thing Jeff says when he opens the door Monday afternoon and sees me standing there, holding a large manila envelope containing the editorial letter and a printed copy of my essay.

“It’s even better than that,” I tell him, waving the envelope enticingly. I’m nearly drunk with glee. “Where’s Bobert?”

“In the kitchen.” Jeff grimaces in warning. “Come help.”

Once inside, I register that the air smells suspiciously of Robert’s cooking—a mixture of burnt bread and scalded tomato sauce. “Honey, come in here, I think I messed up the pasta.”

Although he also calls Jeff “honey,” I know for a fact he’s speaking to me. I slide the envelope onto the entryway table, pointing at Jeff. “Paws off. I have news.”

He holds his hands up in surrender, promising not to peek, and I meet Robert in the kitchen.

“You knew I was coming,” I tell him as he sits down at the kitchen table with a glass of red wine, surrendering responsibility. “Why didn’t you just wait for me to get here?”

“I was trying to surprise you with lunch.”

He’s adorable. I survey the meal: it’s really just pasta and sauce.

“Just dump it,” he says. “It’s scalded.”

I give him a sympathetic smile, and with one tilt of the pan over the trash, it’s handled. Robert orders Vietnamese delivery, Jeff brings the envelope into the kitchen, and it sits there on the table, silently throbbing.

We start off with a little bit of small talk, though every few seconds I can see them glancing down to the table.

“How are things?” I ask.

“Brian really stepped in it last week,” Robert says. I’m already feeling high from the impending dinner with Calvin, and the news that Brian fucked up somehow makes me feel plastered with thrill. “He got into a screaming match with a woman who was wandering around the lobby before a show, and she turned out to be some foreign diplomat’s wife, who was getting a tour and lost her way coming back from the bathroom.”

I wince; my happiness is tempered somewhat by the realization that the confrontation probably turned into a big mess for Robert and Michael. “Oof. Sorry.”

Robert shrugs. “Calvin seems a tiny bit more alive these last few days.” He says this carefully, knowing he’s just dropped a live bomb in the room. “Ramón got engaged, so the cast threw a big party for him last week.”

I know I should feel glad that Calvin looks more alive, but in a totally selfish sense it was a relief that he wasn’t bouncing around, happy-as-ever Calvin without me this past month. And on top of that, to realize that I’ve missed what was probably a really fun party . . . this update bums me out. Basically, I am a jerk.

Jeff sees this written plainly all over my face, and laughs, but not unkindly. “You know, Hollsy, you could take him back anytime you want.”

“I’m not sure about that,” I say. For as excited as I am to see him tonight, I’m still not sure that we’re in the same place emotionally. I’ve had so much time in my own head—on my runs, in the bustle of waiting tables—to understand how things got so intense between us so quickly, and how it could still happen even if he didn’t love me the way he thought he did. Joining Possessed was emotional for him; the relief of being here legally was emotional. Gratitude can be deceptively deep sometimes. This time apart has sucked, but it’s likely been a good barometer of how genuine our feelings are.

I know mine are real. I hope his are, too.

My stomach ties itself into a knot.

“Seems to me you were the one who ended things,” Jeff reminds me.

“I was, but I think it was good for him to have some distance.” I take a deep breath. “We’re having dinner tonight, so . . . we’ll see.”

Robert grins widely at this, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand. “We’re so proud of you, Buttercup.”

“Thanks, guys.” I look up at them, wondering whether I need to thank them more exhaustively—for raising me, for bringing me here, for propping me up, and for shepherding me through the crazy decisions I’ve made this year. But one look at them tells me they already know how grateful I am for them. So I just say quietly, “Thanks for everything. I can’t even imagine not having you.”

“You’re the child we never had,” Robert says simply. “You’re our pride and joy.”

We need to move into this essay business or I am going to end up an emotional puddle in their dining room.

“So, I had a bit of an epiphany a little over a month ago,” I tell them, drumming my fingers on the table. “It feels so obvious now, but I think being with Calvin really pushed me to realize it.”

They both blink expectantly at me.

I slide the envelope across the table.

Robert opens it, and claps his hand to his mouth as soon as he sees the letter from the New Yorker on top. Jeff shouts before he launches himself out of his chair and picks me up out of mine, holding me a foot above the floor.

After the screams and exclamations and several rounds of reading the letter out loud, we quiet down enough to sit, and for them to begin to read the essay itself through their proud tears.

Robert’s expression sobers and turns heart-achingly tender when he realizes that this essay is, in part, about his influence on my life, and my future. Although I’ve incorporated the editorial notes that were suggested in the letter—and I know they’ve made the overall theme stronger—it’s still scary to hand this over to him. I write like I know what I’m talking about in the musical sense, and now that he has the essay in his hands, I’m suddenly terrified he’s going to tell me all the ways I got things wrong when speaking about pitch, and composition, and raw musical talent.

I see his eyes flicker back over the same sentence a few times, and try to guess what section he’s reading. My nerves are going to eat their way through my stomach and up my throat. I can’t just sit here, watching them read while we wait for lunch.

Curling up on the couch in the living room, I pull out my phone, lazily scrolling through my Twitter feed. News, news, the world is on fire, news . . . and then I’m stalled at a photo of Calvin standing next to a beautiful brunette on a red carpet. It’s not even on his Twitter account, or the Levin-Gladstone social media feed.

It’s on Entertainment Weekly.

It’s like swallowing ice—everything in my throat seizes up. In the preview image, he has his arm around her waist. He’s wearing my favorite smile.

I shouldn’t. I really shouldn’t—but how can I not? I click the link to the article.

For the second time in a month, Broadway guitarist and heartthrob Calvin McLoughlin steps out with indie actress Natalie Nguyen, this time for the New York premiere of the political thriller EXECUTE, starring his bromance better half and It Possessed Him star Ramón Martín.

The easy-on-the-eyes duo has been spotted twice in New York City, with—

Abruptly, I drop my phone facedown on the coffee table. There is a storm inside me named Hurricane Natalie.

Hey you! Checking in to see if you’re free?

Calvin seems a tiny bit more alive these last couple weeks.

I lift a throw pillow to my face and scream.

“Holland, this is exquisite!” Robert yells from the table, misunderstanding my meltdown.

The pillow gets hurled across the room. “Does Calvin have a fucking girlfriend?”

Two sets of footsteps pad across the floor, coming to a stop behind the couch.

“Does Calvin have a girlfriend?” Robert repeats. “Not that I know of . . . but I haven’t really seen him outside of performances.”

Jeff gingerly retrieves my phone from the table, looking at the article still up on the screen. “Oh! She’s the woman from . . .” He snaps his fingers. “What was that film with Josh Magellan, about the tour group that went to—”

“Right, right,” Robert jumps in, “to Nova Scotia.” He taps his mouth while he tries to remember. “What’s her name? She was fabulous in it.”

“Her name is Natalie Nguyen.” I punch the pillow. “Can we skip the part where you tell me she’s an amazing talent, and get to the part where my husband has his arm around her tiny waist on the red carpet?”