I've Got This Read online

  Between us, Dimi and I manage to move him along—finally—and as Dimi closes the door behind him, he shoots me a glance over his shoulder. “Give it a few seconds for him to get out of sight, then I’ll go and you can call Trav,” he says. “Congratulate him for me. I’m going to see if I can grab a ticket myself.” Dimi and Trav have become pretty close over the past month. Trav’s really getting into his consulting job at the community theater—he’s there every Monday evening and Saturday morning.

  I smile—gratefully this time, not my public smile. “Thanks, Dimi. Have a look at the comp list and grab one from there if there are any left.” We get a certain allocation of comped tickets for the shows at the village, ostensibly to use for promo packages and give to VIPs. Because the shows themselves aren’t run by JU, we can’t just comp tickets and absorb it into the cost center—well, we can, but we have to pay full price for them.

  He grins at me and slips out. I slide my phone from my pocket and dial Trav in fewer seconds than it’s ever taken me in my life—and then I have to wait four rings before he answers.

  “Hey.”

  Uh-oh. That is not the voice of someone who is thrilled to receive a brilliant opportunity.

  “Hi,” I say, wondering if I should wait for him to mention it. Fuck it. “I hear congratulations are in order.”

  “Yeah.”

  Man, he sounds like he’s about to cry. I’m genuinely worried now, because even if he doesn’t want to be a Broadway star, the idea of doing a couple of performances in a lead role shouldn’t make him this depressed.

  “Trav, you okay?” I ask hesitantly. I don’t want to stir things up, but I can’t pretend this is normal.

  There’s a long silence. His breath hitches.

  “No.”

  Fuck. “Where are you?” I hit a key on my laptop and the JU app pops up.

  “At home.”

  Despite my concern, a warm buzz shoots through me when I hear him say “home.” It’s nice that he thinks of it that way. A few taps on the keyboard sends a message to Dimi that I have to go, and he should handle whatever else comes up today.

  “I’m coming, baby. Let’s have some quiet time together, yeah?” I close my laptop and snag my keys.

  “You’re busy,” he protests, but it’s halfhearted.

  “Never too busy for time with you,” I assure him as I stride out of my office. Dimi is hurrying toward me, a concerned look on his face. I flash him a smile and shake my head, and he stops, nods.

  He’s got my back.

  “Put some music on while you’re waiting,” I instruct Trav as I hit the stairwell. “I’m going to lose signal, but I’ll be home soon.”

  I just hear him murmur an assent before the call drops out. Trav, not surprisingly, loves music and dancing. After the third time he asked me if it was okay for him to play music while he was hanging out at my place, I told him to feel free to just blast it whenever he wanted. And he does. He’s got really eclectic taste in music—the show tunes were expected, but he mixes it up with club music, rap, top forty, classical, jazz, occasionally country, though he says he has to be in the right mood for that. What surprised me was his love for cheesy ’80s power ballads. And when I say love, I mean obsession. I’ve seen his playlists, and he has many of them dedicated to the power ballad. He plays them often, loudly, and belts out the lyrics with enthusiasm and emotion.

  It’s adorable. It’s endearing. It’s captivating. I don’t understand why he loves them so much, but when I watch him singing along and dancing around, my heart feels too big for my chest, and I want nothing more than to keep watching for the rest of my life.

  Heavy stuff, considering we’ve known each other less than two months.

  I DON’T exactly speed all the way home, but I am walking through the door from the garage in good time. I could hear the music before I even got out of the car, but it’s only as I walk through the kitchen toward the living room that I realize it’s one song on repeat.

  “If I Could” by 1927.

  It’s one of Trav’s favorites—it might actually be the favorite. He plays it all the time. This is a big deal because he has literally thousands of songs in his playlists, and I’ve been introduced to titles and artists I’ve never even heard of. There are only a few songs I’ve heard him play more than once, but this song gets played at least three times a week—and that’s only that I’ve heard.

  I asked him about it after the first couple of weeks, on a lazy Sunday when he’d played it three times.

  “What’s your obsession with this song?” I teased as the opening notes played, but I was genuinely curious.

  His face went deliciously red, and he shrugged. “I just like it.” He reached for his iPhone. “I’ll change it.”

  I stayed his hand. “No, leave it. You like it, that’s all that matters. It just…. You’re always so practical, and then I discover this secret fetish for power ballads—”

  “It’s not a fetish!” he protested, and I leaned over and kissed him.

  “Share this with me,” I murmured, kissing my way down his neck. “Tell me why you love this song so much.”

  His breathing got heavy as I nibbled on his collarbone, and he wrapped his arms tight around me, sliding his hands over my bare back.

  “I just….” He gasped. His hands roamed down toward the waistband of my sleep pants. “I… it speaks to me.” He shoved down my pants, and we got a little distracted for a while.

  Later, lying in each other’s arms on the couch, “If I Could” long over and another playlist blaring through the speakers, he turned his head toward me.

  “I know the power ballads are dumb,” he began, and when I started to speak, he shook his head. “I know they are, Derek. But they’re so… honest. And power is the key word. They’re all about feelings being amped up and belted out there. I like that. I like that there’s no hiding, no pretending. You can’t sing one of those songs quietly. You have to put it all right out there.”

  I’d never thought of it that way. To me, power ballads were just one more aspect of the ’80s to make fun of, along with big hair and shoulder pads. It’d been a long time since I’d actually stopped to listen to one—probably since my childhood.

  “I can see that,” I said slowly, stroking his arm. It was so nice to have my hands on him, just touching. “So why ‘If I Could’ specifically?”

  He hesitated. “The lyrics just speak to me. I want to be someone’s favorite star too.” He kissed me then, and I was too preoccupied to think about it anymore. Later, I’d looked up the lyrics and found the line he was talking about. It made sense to me—doesn’t everyone want to be the center of someone’s universe?

  Now, though, listening to the song play again, I wonder if I misinterpreted what he meant. Maybe it has to do with his job? A more literal stardom?

  Shaking off the introspection, I go to find him. He’s lying on the couch in the living room, staring at the ceiling, face blank.

  “Trav?” I call quietly, and he turns his head.

  “Hey.”

  I cross to the couch and sit beside him. “What’s up?”

  Tears well in his eyes, and something twists in my chest. “Oh, hey. It’s okay. Tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll fix it.” I can’t stand to see him cry.

  He makes a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh and sits up. “You can’t fix this. Don’t worry, I’m just being stupid.”

  I grab his hand and squeeze. “Not stupid,” I say firmly. “Your feelings are never stupid. Tell me.”

  He avoids my gaze and sighs. “How’d you find out? That’s a dumb question,” he says on a brittle laugh. “This place is a hotbed of gossip.”

  “It really is.” I don’t know what to say. Should I push him? Or just let him tell it in his own time—if he even wants to.

  He leans against me and sighs again. “I’m good at my job,” he says quietly.

  “I know,” I reply, just as quietly. “I’ve seen you. I googled you, remember?”


  He lifts his head, grins at me, and I’m relieved. “I googled you too,” he confesses, and then the grin dies. “That’s right, you saw the feature with Laurie Henderson.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s true. I have turned down big parts.”

  I hesitate. “This is probably a bad time, but just out of curiosity, how many?”

  This time he laughs outright. “Seven.”

  Wow. My guy is awesome. “I’m so proud of you,” I say impulsively, and he pulls back, looking at me in surprise.

  “Why?”

  I shrug. “Because you’re awesome. That’s it.”

  He blushes hotly. “Um. Well… thanks. Anyway, I’m good at my job, and I do a good job. I try to be reliable and always give my best. But I don’t do lead roles.”

  He stops, and I get the feeling he wants to say more but needs encouragement. “Why not?” I squeeze his hand again. I can give encouragement.

  He takes a deep breath, and I smile. We worked out not long after we started seeing each other that it’s a habit we share, so I know he’s preparing himself for something.

  “I’m scared.” The words are almost soundless, just a whisper. I wait because I don’t understand. He takes another deep breath. “I…. You know… I told you that I used to get bullied.”

  I nod slowly, trying to work it out. Did someone bully him at work? No, wouldn’t he have said so, when he told me about the bullying? “Yeah,” I say, mostly because he seems to be waiting for verbal acknowledgment.

  “I… It was always worse when I was… when I didn’t hide. If I sort of crept around at school and didn’t speak up in class, they all seemed to… forget about me, I guess. But when I was… confident, for want of a better word, it was like I had a target on my back. I’ve never been an outgoing person, but it started to seem better—safer—if I just… hid.”

  Ding ding ding. Something clicks in my head. If he didn’t feel able as a teenager to be himself, to put himself out there, that explains the attachment to power ballads—right? He said it himself, what he likes about them is the no-hiding element of putting it all right out there—loudly.

  “So you tried not to attract attention.”

  He sighs, rubs his forehead, and nods. “Yeah. It didn’t make it stop completely, but it was… easier. And it tended to be more physical, which wasn’t great, but it was worse when they…. I got so sick of being shoved around, but sometimes I hated it more when they just used words. They… they always went with the same theme.”

  “The gay thing?” Trav hadn’t come out to the world until college, but I didn’t figure that would have mattered to his classmates. A kid who openly took dance lessons and was involved in theater plus never had a girlfriend would have been an obvious target for bullies.

  “Some,” he admits, “but that didn’t bug me as much. I was okay with being gay—it was probably easier for me because I knew I wanted to work in theater, and that’s an industry where homosexuality is almost expected. It was more when they told me how worthless I was. No, not even that—more that I just wasn’t any good at anything.” He stops, takes another breath. “It was worse when I was actually doing stuff. The school play… I used to go out for it every year, and I always got a part. I loved it, but the bullying was always worse then. They’d say things like how I wasn’t as good as I thought, that people were laughing behind my back, that when opening night came, I was going to make a fool of myself.”

  I open my mouth to utter an outraged denial, but he’s shaking his head.

  “I know it’s not true, Derek. I know. The logical part of me knew even then. I’m a good dancer. I’m a good actor. I can sing well. I never got any part for any reason other than that I’m good at what I do. I know this. But… there’s a tiny part of me that always worries that maybe they were right. The part that’s purely emotion, with no logic. And it’s dumb, but when I went to college, the bullies hit the exact same spot—I was no good, I thought I was special, but I wasn’t. One day I would see what a fool I was making of myself.”

  He sucks in another deep breath, and this time it’s shaky. My chest aches from holding in everything I want to say, and my arms ache to wrap around him, but he needs to get this out. I can’t take this from him.

  “That tiny, illogical, emotional part of me started to think that if two unconnected groups of people both said the same thing, there had to be an element of truth to it.” He holds up a hand to stop me. “I know there isn’t. I knew then, but it still bugged me. My folks could see something was worrying me, and they kept asking until I told them. We talked it out, and they pointed out everything I already knew. They even took me to see a therapist. I haven’t struggled with this alone, and I know nothing they said to me was true. But I can’t stop that tiny part of me from thinking it is.”

  He takes another deep breath and flops against the back of the couch, closing his eyes. I study him for a moment. I can see now where this is going, but I think he needs to say it out loud.

  “Are you scared every time you perform?”

  My words feel heavy, and part of me wishes I hadn’t said them, but Trav opens his eyes and looks right at me.

  “Yes.”

  “But you do it anyway.”

  He sits up, leans against me. “I have to. I love it so much… I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life. When I’m too old to dance on stage, I might try going out for plays only, or I’ll find another way to stay in theater.”

  “And you’re good at your job. You know it’s true. That’s not me saying it because I love you; other people in the industry obviously think so too.”

  It’s only when the silence drags out that I realize what I’ve said.

  Fuck.

  Is it too soon?

  It’s definitely not a good time.

  Is this going to make things harder for him?

  “Trav, I—”

  His arms wrap tightly around me, and he buries his face against my neck. “I love you,” he whispers. I close my eyes. Everything in me relaxes as I put my arms around him too. This is right. This is how it’s supposed to be.

  We sit there for a while, just holding each other. I don’t know what my future will bring, but I know Trav will be in it. There’s no fucking way I’m letting him go. Maybe I’ll make that a physical reality as well as a metaphorical one—I’ll just sit here holding him all night—

  Except Trav has to work. He has to perform. In a lead role.

  I swallow hard.

  “Trav?”

  “Mmm?”

  The contented sound is a balm to my soul. I love knowing I can make him sound like that when not long ago he was so upset.

  Too bad I have to wreck it.

  I rub his back, a few long strokes, then let go. “Trav, I love you, but we need to finish this.”

  He sighs, squeezes me, then lets go and straightens. “I know.” He meets my gaze, and there’s something in the depths of his green eyes that wasn’t there before. He’s… more settled. Calmer.

  More confident.

  He’s beautiful.

  “I love you too,” he tells me. “I’m not just saying it because you did. I’ve been… thinking about it for a while.”

  I smile at him, take his hand, lift it to my mouth, and kiss it. I want to kiss his mouth, those soft, pink lips, but I’m afraid if I start, I won’t stop.

  Then I drag the elephant back into the room.

  “You’re good at your job and you love it, even though you’re afraid every time you go on stage.”

  “Yeah. For a long time, I used to throw up every time I had to perform. I was so convinced I’d make an idiot of myself, that I’d freeze or just plain suck and ruin the show for the audience, for the rest of the cast, for everyone. I… convinced myself that even if I did end up sucking, I was such an insignificant part of the show it wouldn’t matter. That worked really well when I was just in the chorus. When… when I started getting better parts, I had to tell myself that as
long as I wasn’t in the spotlight, as long as I wasn’t the star of the show, it didn’t matter if maybe I fucked something up. And… that works for me.”

  “But you’ve basically convinced yourself you can never have a lead role, ever,” I protest. He nods.

  “I know. And now tonight I have to, and I’m screwed.” Tears fill his eyes again. “I don’t want to be a laughingstock, Derek. I don’t want to let everyone down. I don’t want them all feeling sorry for me because the audience walked out and Rick has to give refunds.”

  Well, just fuck that.

  “Travis—” I stop. “What’s your middle name?”

  He gives me a weird look. “I don’t have one. My name’s not Travis, either.”

  I blink, sidetracked. “It’s not? Is it just Trav?”

  He shakes his head and swipes away a tear that’s rolling down his cheek. “Traveon.”

  “That’s unusual.” I kiss the spot where the tear was, and he smiles shakily at me.

  “It’s Welsh. My dad’s dad emigrated from Wales when he was a kid, and my parents decided to give us Welsh names as a reminder of our heritage.”

  That’s pretty cool. I didn’t know his grandfather was Welsh, and I’m about to ask him about it when I realize exactly how far off track I’ve gotten. I clear my throat.

  “Traveon Jones, I can’t believe what I’m hearing!”

  He looks confused. “You can’t believe I’m part Welsh?”

  I laugh. I have to. I mean, come on, you did too. After a second Trav joins in.

  “You know what I meant,” I chide. He huffs, but nods.

  “I know.”

  “You know that Rick wouldn’t risk another show like this afternoon.”

  “Rick doesn’t know I’m a risk,” he points out, and I leap into the opening.

  “That’s right; he doesn’t. Rick’s a professional who’s worked in the industry for… how long?”

  Trav can see where I’m going with this. “Twenty-five years,” he mutters, looking at his hands.

  “And in twenty-five years, he’s probably worked with a lot of people. Day Dot won awards, didn’t it?”

  He nods.

  “So if Rick, who’s been working with good performers for twenty-five years, doesn’t think you’re a risk, maybe that means something.”