Chapter Eighteen: “The Resolve”
Chapter Eighteen
“The Resolve”
SEWANEE STOOD IN FRONT OF THE ENTRANCE TO COSMO’S STUDIO
gearing herself up to ring the buzzer.
She had a lot on her mind.
The dinner and conversation. Marilyn and Stu’s engagement. Her talk with her mom. The things she needed to change in herself if she wanted anything else to change. But all of that was overshadowed by the way the night had ended with Nick.
How? How had he walked her all the way to her pensione, and up to her room, and watched her undress–especially given
how
she’d undressed–and tucked her into bed, and then . . .
left
? Every step of their walk home she’d been thinking it was cute, how far he was taking this whole will-they-or-won’t-they thing. But then he did it. He . . .
left
! And still, she’d been sure she’d hear a knock on the door any minute later. Any couple of minutes. Any five minutes, ten, twenty minutes later.
She did not.
She knew he wanted her. He had made that clear on the dock. And yet, there was that gnawing feeling creeping around inside her. That stalking insecurity.
She took a deep breath of crisp morning air and pressed the buzzer.
She was immediately admitted, walked up the stairs, and found Nick’s scruffy face waiting for her at the top of the landing. “Morning,” he said, barely above a whisper. He was smiling, so Sewanee followed his lead, smiling back.
“Morning. You got here early, too.”
His smile broadened. “Come on through,” he whispered. He held a finger to his lips as he stood aside to let her pass.
She entered the studio’s control room and found Cosmo sleeping on the couch. That explained the volume. Nick waved her into the small breakroom, went to a tiny Formica table, picked up a to-go coffee and a white paper pastry bag. “First: caffeine and carbs.” He held the items out to her.
She smiled appreciatively and took a much-needed gulp of coffee and a bite of roll, and asked, with affected innocence, “So. How was your night?”
“Good.”
“Get done what you needed to get done?”
“Absolute-mente,” he answered, in a remarkably spot-on Stu impression.
“Looks like you didn’t get much sleep. Who was she?” Took another bite.
Nick chuckled. “Don’t even.”
Cosmo shuffled into the breakroom in leopard-print slippers, hair mussed, eyes two watery slits, mouth a crooked smile, mumbling “
Buongiorno
” and “
Scusami
” and something entirely lost on Sewanee other than the word “
Caffe
.” Nick moved out of his way and said, “Take your time, we’ll go into the studio.”
“Grazie mille.”
His voice sounded like a bullfrog with laryngitis, but he turned around, remembering something, and continued, “Oh Nick. I tell you, last night . . . you surprise me. You so good.”
“Cheers, mate.”
Cosmo turned back to the coffee machine. Nick and Sewanee left the breakroom and Sewanee murmured, “So it was a he?”
“What?”
“Nick-uh,” she breathed near his ear, “you so good-uh.”
Nick groaned and crossed to the soundboard, picking up a set of headphones. “Take a seat.”
She held up a hand. “I’m not judging! He
is
adorable.”
He took her by the shoulders and sat her down in the chair. “Headphones. On head.”
She grinned. “What am I listening to?”
“Listen to as much as you can stand, then you can yell at me, hit me, do whatever you want to me.”
“Promises, promises.” She put on the headphones and crossed her arms.
Nick walked away, pressing a button on the control panel.
The sound of Brock McNight’s voice filled her ears.
It was the scene they’d recorded yesterday.
She opened her mouth to tell him he’d put on the wrong thing, but then she heard it.
The difference.
This was not yesterday’s performance. The words were the same, but the vocalization was new. It was connected. It was the voice she had heard when he’d read
Goodnight Moon
. It was Brock McNick.
She was drawn into the story as an aroma draws one to a meal. She uncrossed her arms, put her forehead down on the desk, and just
listened
. When it got to the steamy portion, she couldn’t help but look up at Nick. He’d sat down in Cosmo’s chair and was leaning back in it, his boots propped on the edge of the low coffee table. He cradled a guitar.
She’d never seen him in his element. He made so much sense this way. As she listened to Brock describe what he was doing
with his hands, she watched Nick’s hands glide up and down the guitar’s neck and expertly pluck its strings. The sound was not breaching her headphones. He was playing quietly, head tipped back, lips moving only slightly. She didn’t think he was singing; was he writing something in his head?
In her ear, his voice cracked with lust. With emotion. The vulnerability was unnerving. Arousing.
When his section was over and hers began, she slowly took off the headphones.
At her movement, Nick stopped playing and turned the chair slightly to face her. She wasn’t sure what to say, but she knew him well enough already to know he wasn’t one to let a silence linger. Unless there was touching involved.
“Okay,” he muttered. “Go ahead, take your best shot.” He put his elbows on his knees and jutted out his chin as if he were putting his head on a chopping block. He closed his eyes.
Sewanee placed a kiss on his cheek, letting her lips linger there.
Nick opened his eyes.
She pulled back just enough so they could look at each other. He smiled. She smiled. Then she brought her lips to his with the tenderest touch. They suspended there, never breaking eye contact. It wasn’t a taking, like Vegas; it was a giving. An exchange. Of respect, of admiration. The gift of being seen through a kiss.
They eventually parted and leaned back in their chairs.
“Nick.” Despite her smile, her throat tightened slightly. “That was incredible.”
He nodded once. “And I loved doing it. Go figure.” He took her hand. “And I’m sorry for what I said yesterday. You
are
a director. A damn good one. So between you being you and Stu being Stu, all I can say is, thanks. I needed that.”
“How long did it take you? How many takes?”
“One.”
“Seriously?”
He shrugged. “I imagined you standing there across from me, and I spoke to you.”
Sewanee grinned. “You acted.”
He shook his head. “I was being real.”
She grinned wider. “Exactly.”
Cosmo walked in with his coffee. “He show you what he do last night?”
“Yes he did.”
“Is good, no?”
“Is good, yes.”
Cosmo beamed. “I go set up the room.” He shook his finger at them. “I going to miss you, the both of you.” He went into the live room and started rearranging mics.
Sewanee turned back to Nick. Her hand went to her heart. “Can we keep him?”
Nick chuckled. “I wish we could.”
She gestured at the soundboard. “He is an amazing engineer.”
“And you should hear him on bass.” Off Sewanee’s confused look, Nick said, “We jammed a bit.”
“Last night? It was midnight when you left me.”
Nick scoffed. “It’s a music studio, I knew he’d be here. He happened to be rehearsing with Enzo and Mario and . . . some other O. So I hung out and when they took a break around two, I asked him if he’d let me do another take.”
“And then you went back to your hotel?” she asked rhetorically.
“Well.” Nick rubbed a hand over his scruffy jaw. “The other O had to go home and they needed a guitarist, so–”
“So let me guess.” Sewanee smiled.
So did Nick. “Then, around four or so, the other guys left and
Cos opens some vino and then he starts telling me about this American actress he’s had a crush on for years.”
Sewanee laughed. “And he’s like,
you’re
from America, do you know her?”
Nick laughed, too. “Right? But he didn’t know her name, just knew the show she was on. Very popular here, apparently.”
“What was the show, maybe I know her?”
“It was called
Get Chelsea
, and when we looked up–”
“Nick!” Sewanee’s eye bugged. “I did a season on that show.”
“And when we looked up the cast, guess who the actress was?”
She blinked at him. Late to the party. “Me.”
“It was driving him mad yesterday.” Nick chuckled. “Swore he recognized you. But he was too embarrassed to ask.”
Sewanee peeked through the glass and caught Cosmo’s eye. He smiled sheepishly and waved. She waved back while saying, through clenched teeth, “This is oddly mortifying.”
“Why? You were great.”
Her head whipped back to Nick. “What?”
“You were. We were able to watch–”
“You watched the show?”
“No.”
She exhaled in relief.
“We found your old demo reel online and watched that.”
Her face heated. Her throat tightened. “Tell me you didn’t.”
Nick shrugged. “Okay, we didn’t.”
“You didn’t?”
Nick laughed. “Of course we did! Why wouldn’t we watch it?” His smile softened. He took a beat. “Why wouldn’t you want us to watch it?”
The answer sat silently between them. Sewanee’s ever-stalking insecurity unable to be spoken aloud. At a loss, she looked down again.
“You were brilliant,” Nick murmured. “Just like you’re brilliant in
Casanova
. You’re something else, Swan.”
“No,” she mumbled, “I’m someone else.”
Nick’s lips separated. He reached out and tipped her chin up. “Eventually, don’t know when, but eventually? You’re gonna have to stop thinking you’re nothing more than the damaged version of yourself.”
Before Sewanee could respond, Cosmo came back into the control room and said their mics were set up and they could start whenever they were ready.
Nick stood.
He held his hand out to her.
“I may have missed my opportunity last night, but how about we put this to bed?”
THEY EXITED THE
studio into the bright light of day, giddy. There’d been a grovel, an admission of love, mind-blowing makeup sex, and then, but of course, a proposal and ensuing HEA. And throughout it all, they’d been connected. Real.
They paused on the sidewalk and Nick clapped his hands together. “Right! Should we go to yours or mine?”
Sewanee made a show of considering this, batted her lashes. “Well, gosh, Nick. I’m not sure.”
He smirked and took her hand, then her wrist, then her forearm, reeling her into him like a rope. “I can make right here work.”
Sewanee unspooled herself, stepped back, put her hands on her hips. “Oh golly! Gee, I simply couldn’t.” And then she bounced away. Nick had no choice but to give chase.
He raised a suspicious brow. “Why do I feel like I’m in a scene from
Grease
?”
Sewanee giggled coyly. “Let’s get a celebration drink first, mister, and see where that takes us.”
“Tell me you mean booze and not a milk shake.”
“Why, of course, you silly!”
He sidled up close to her, his fingers finding their way to the back pocket of her jeans. “Is it weird this whole retro thing is turning me on?”
She slapped his hand away. “You behave yourself, Nicholas Sullivan.”
Nick groaned. “Is this payback for last night, Sandra Dee?”
Sewanee stopped, turned around, all wide doll eyes, and placed her hand on her chest. “Why, whatever do you mean?” Never breaking eye contact, she slowly slid her hand downward, and then around both breasts, and then out for him to take. Daintily. Like a lady. “Shall we?”
Just as he was about to take it, she turned and kept walking.
“Oh, we are going to ‘shall we’ all right,” Nick promised, trotting after her.
They crossed a piazza, the open door of a taverna on the other side beckoning. There were a few tables set up outside, folded wooden chairs leaning against them. They sat and waited for the server to come and take their order. Normally Sewanee would have ventured inside to get someone’s attention, but not today, not now. Every extra minute she played Nick was an hour in Nick time. Besides, she was more than content to be sitting in a somewhat rickety chair, at a somewhat rickety table, with a very solid Nick. A solid if somewhat frustrated, somewhat derailed, somewhat put-out Nick.
Before the waiter even landed at the table, Nick held up two fingers and called out to him, “Prosecco,
grazie
.”
The waiter spun right around and went back inside.
Nick was silent, looking out at the piazza. He drummed his fingers on the table between them.
“What are you thinking?” she asked in her normal voice.
“What I want to do to you first,” he answered without hesitation.
Would his honest directness ever not catch her off guard? It was so disarmingly sexy.
She looked down at his hand. At the ring on his middle finger. She reached over and touched it. “Does this have a story?”
He interlaced their fingers. “It was Tom’s. June’s ex-partner? She refused to marry him. And she didn’t believe in rings. But he did, so he wore one.”
“That’s sweet.”
“No, it’s not. It was a fight. Everything with them was a fight. You don’t want to marry me? Fine! I’ll wear a ring anyway, how do you like
that
?” Nick had to chuckle. “Maniacs.” His focus went back to it. “I found it in her stuff after she died. I never knew she’d taken it with her when she moved us back to the States.”
“Is he still around?”
“He is. I’m actually going to stop over in Dublin on the way home. Check on him.” He looked into her eye. “He took it hard. Even though it’s been, what, twenty years since they split. I think he always believed she’d come back to him.”
The waiter dropped off two glasses of bubbly and Nick gave him cash, told him to keep the change. When he was gone, they raised their glasses.
“To . . .” Nick said, an echo of their Vegas toast. He waited for Sewanee to join in, but she took a moment and then said instead:
“To June.”
“Of course,” he murmured, “to Junie.” Then, “For bringing you to me.”
“And you to me.”
They both sipped.
“I decided last night I’m officially done,” Nick said, setting down his glass. “
Casanova
’s gonna be Brock’s last project.”
“Really?”
Nick waved a hand. “I’m ready. And I couldn’t have a higher note to go out on.” He smiled. “Besides, Sarah Westholme’s spoiled me for any other co-narrator and she’s retreating back into the mists of retirement.”
Sewanee watched the bubbles rise up in her glass. “I actually don’t know about that.” Nick quirked his head at her and she met his gaze. “I liked it. I liked doing Romance.”
Nick put his hand over the top of her glass. “Don’t drink any more of this, I think they put something in it.”
Sewanee chuckled, shrugged. “I’m serious.”
“But you hate the HEA bullshit.”
At his skeptical look, she took back her glass. “I mean, yes. I hated the premise that all we have to do is endure the twists and trope-y turns of life and then,
bam
, we get rewarded. Ridiculous.”
“Indeed.”
“But recently I’ve been thinking . . .” She looked out at the piazza. “I haven’t got this totally figured out, but I think my problem was that it promised something unattainable. We can now rest assured these people will go forth and live happily ever after. But, really, HEA comes from fairy tales and fairy tales end with: and they lived happily ever after. Lived. Not live. Past tense, not present. And that works for me.”
Nick’s brow crinkled. He leaned forward. “Sorry, the
tense
change made it work for you?”
“Granted, I’m a word nerd, but yeah.” He still looked confused so she leaned forward, too. “To
live
HEA is to say, from today onward life will be happy. I mean, how can you know that? Shit happens. Over and over. It’s what Stu was saying at dinner, that’s what got me thinking about this. That life isn’t linear. About that incredible dish being a plate of failure.” Sewanee took a sip. “I
don’t think you can know if you lived happily ever after until your life’s over.” She set down her glass. “Maybe that’s why your whole life flashes before your eyes when you die. So you can see the movie from beginning to end and know.”
Nick dropped his chin in his hand and gazed at her. He tapped his temple. “Is it always like this in there? Does your neck get sore from holding that big brain up all day long?”
She snorted. “Anyway, it’s not ridiculous. It’s not bullshit. It is possible. It’s not fantasy
or
reality. A happily ever after is built by both, together, over a lifetime.”
Nick took a moment. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking the exact same thing.” Sewanee laughed, but he said, “No, seriously, it’s almost exactly what I was talking to Stu about on the boat ride back to St. Mark’s.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“What were you talking about?”
“Emerson and dolphins.”
Sewanee chuckled.
“After a thrilling dissertation on the striped dolphin’s migratory patterns and mating irregularities he brought up that Emerson quote: it’s not the destination; it’s the journey. And he said Emerson was ass backwards like me. That it
is
the destination and not the journey. Because only after you’ve arrived can you judge the merit of the journey. But then he said”–and here, Nick dropped into his dead-on Stu impression–“it probably wasn’t Emerson anyway, it was probably some bumper sticker writer and no one should take advice from a bumper sticker,
or
a has-been sneaker-maker for that matter, and did I happen to notice how each wine came in a different-shaped glass at dinner?”
Sewanee laughed, then, imitating her mom, said, “Stuuuuu.”
Nick laughed as well. “I think those two have a shot at HEA.”
He sat back, took another sip, and assessed her. “So more Romance, eh?”
Sewanee sipped, too. “Maybe. Not necessarily narrate. Maybe direct some Duets. Maybe find the next Brock McNight.”
Nick had a particular look on his face.
She reached over, patted his forearm. “Aww, don’t worry. You’ll always be my first.”
He caught her hand as she pulled it back. He brought it to his mouth. Ran his lips from her wrist up along the side of her pinky. Kissed the tip of her finger. Then the center of her palm. Breathed in. “Done playing games?”
Her face opened like a flower. “Yes.”
With her other hand, she lifted her glass. He pulled back and lifted his. She quietly sang, “You’re the one that I want, you are the one I want.”
He grinned and returned, “Ooh-ooh-ooh.”
They finished the prosecco, stood, and left the table hand in hand.
AS THEY WOUND
through the Ghetto and back to the center of town, the distant sound of a cello drew them into another piazza. In the middle, a lone cellist sat on a stool, hat at her feet brimming with coins, playing a sonata. After watching for a moment, Nick tugged Sewanee into his arms and began dancing.
As much as she wanted to get back to the hotel, this rhythmic swaying felt like the pinnacle of intimacy and she melted into him. “Can we stay like this forever?”
She felt his chuckle in her chest. “Yes. At least until we have to go back to the real world. Or get hungry.”
They continued dancing. Sewanee knew that beyond Nick’s humor, there was a sobering truth. She knew what she could expect
from him in a hotel room; she didn’t know what lay beyond that. She felt safe enough in his arms to ask:
“What happens then?”
“Are you asking what my intentions are?” She heard the smile in his voice.
“Kind of. Yeah.”
“Simple. I want to be with you.” At her silence, he pushed her away, coaxing her out into a lazy spin. “What do you want?”
Sewanee smiled back, but exhaled. Long and slow.
Nick reeled her back to him. “Remember, now: there’s nothing more attractive than a woman who knows what she wants.”
His tone was light, all unaffected nonchalance. But she also felt the slightest hint of discomfort.
“I want to know this is real,” she said. “But how can . . . is that even possible?”
“You want the Romance version or the Women’s Fiction version?”
She looked up at him. “Neither. I want the real-life version.”
He spun her back out, thinking. “We do long distance for a while. Until we can organize our lives in such a way that we can be together.” He pulled her back in.
“How?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“But how?”
“We just will.”
“How can you be so confident?”
“Because I believe in us.” He peered down at her. “Don’t you?”
“Of course.” She used the opportunity of ducking under his arm to break eye contact. “But there’s so much going on. So much up in the air. For both of us. Something could happen and then what?”
“Something will happen. Probably many things. We’ll get frustrated. Angry. We’ll disappoint each other. We’ll say things we don’t mean but deep down kinda mean a little.”
“Or worse.”
His feet slowed. “What’s going on?”
She tugged his shoulder toward her, willing him to recommit to the dance, even as she kept her gaze averted. “I think I’m scared.”
“Of?”
“You. You’re . . . you’re like some . . .”
“Yes?”
“Some super-stealth sex weapon that could go rogue at any moment,” she blurted.
Nick belted out a laugh. “What?”
“You’re like the Jason Bourne of Romance. You know things no man should know. A military-grade weapon just walking around in broad daylight.” She widened her eye, leaned into how absurd her fears were, especially as she was now saying them aloud. “How can I know you won’t use your powers for ill?”
Nick answered honestly. “You can’t.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, she supposed. “How can I know you’ll always want me?”
“You can’t.” Again, with a tone of sincerity. His refusal to engage in false reassurances or empty flattery tugged a disconcerted chuckle out of her. “I’m serious. How can you know you’ll always want
me
? What if I gain a hundred pounds? Lose my hair? My mind. What if, what if, what if?”
“I’d still want you,” she answered seriously.
They stopped dancing, but remained close. He shook his head. “You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“Feelings aren’t constant, they’re transient. Sometimes for the
better, sometimes not. You can believe in them, but you can’t know them. How can you know what something is before it becomes it? It’s like . . .” His voice faded. “Like a caterpillar and a butterfly.”
“What?”
Nick shook his head. “Nothing. Riffing.” He reached up, pushed her hair off her face. “You just got done telling me you can’t know an HEA until it’s been lived, but now you want a guarantee of getting there?”
“Not a guarantee, no, but some assurance that–”
“I can assure you I won’t cheat on you, because that is in my control. I can only control my actions, I can’t control . . . life.” Nick started dancing again. “Why do you automatically assume the worst?”
His tone was remarkably void of judgment. He was curious. She sighed. Her accident? Her father? Her insecurity? Pick one. “Because . . . because . . .” Ah-ha. “Because we don’t feel real to me. It feels like we fell out of a Romance tree and hit every trope on the way down.”
He laughed. “Snowed In.”
“Just One Night.”
“Epistolary.”
“Mistaken Identity.”
“Love Triangle.”
She chuckled. “For a minute.”
“I think that means we’re on to Second Chance, no?” She didn’t answer. His hand widened, fingers spanning more of her waist, her back. The hand holding hers interlaced their fingers and he brought it to his chest. “This isn’t real enough for you? What do you need? Some deus ex machina? Some contrived fight over a pointless misunderstanding to make you realize what you had and almost lost?”
Sewanee shook her head. This wasn’t a June French novel. They didn’t need to dramatically blow apart in order to come back together. They were just two people doing their best to not step on the other’s toes while figuring out how to dance.
The cellist had ended the song. They parted for a moment and clapped appreciatively. She began playing again.
Before reengaging, though, Sewanee said, “I want to know we aren’t mistaking this for some Romance novel.”
“We’re not. We can write our own book. Day by day, page by page.”
She saw the slightest flicker of doubt in his eyes. Not doubt in what he believed to be true, but in whether she could believe it, too. In her capacity to believe something that couldn’t be known. Sure, she could accept the concept of HEA in the philosophical abstract, but here, in the practicality of an intimate moment, in having to make a choice and live with its consequences . . . he wasn’t sure she could do that.
She saw him fully, then. The pieces of himself that he’d disparately shared with her and which she’d diligently collected, but couldn’t assemble: a child who grew up never having the security of believing he’d been wanted; a man who’d lost his dream and was learning how to believe in it again. She saw failure and success, weakness and strength, and most of all, the longing for someone to love all of it. To love him.
“Ask me again what I want,” she murmured.
“What do you want, love?”
“I don’t want to be in any book with you anymore. I want to be in real life with you.”
“However it may end?”
“Yes.”
“Happily or not?”
She was surprised to find the answer so easy to say. “Yes.” Then, “Absolute-mente.”
The kiss they shared this time was not chaste.
She heard clapping, a couple of catcalls, and was transported back in time to a Las Vegas blizzard, Nick pushing her against a wall, a roving pack of unchaperoned boys hooting. The difference this time was she had nothing holding her upright, they were unmoored in the middle of a cobblestone piazza, and she felt her head swim and her knees liquify. She clung to him tighter until he muttered, “We need to go.”
“Please,” she panted.
“I’m legitimately terrified something’s going to ruin this.”
She guffawed. “We’re tempting fate.”
He grabbed her waist. “Did you feel that?!” He met her eye. “That wasn’t an earthquake, was it?” Then he tickled her.
“Oh, no!” she screeched, squirming away.
He grabbed her from behind. “I’ll save you!” He picked her up and walked, the way a slightly larger child carries a slightly smaller one. They were laughing giddily, tripping over themselves, utter embarrassments. “Anything could happen! At any moment–”
Her phone rang.
They froze.
“No,” Nick whispered as if it could hear him. He dropped her. She spun around. His finger came to her lips. “Don’t answer it.”
“Nick, I-I have to. It hasn’t rung once in three days, what if–”
“No, right, of course.” He stepped back, raked a hand over his face, took a shaky breath, all while she fished her phone out of her jacket pocket.
An unfamiliar number, but an L.A. area code. Her heart stuttered. She answered. “Hello?”
“Hi, is this Sewanee Chester?”
“Yes?”
“Hiya, this is Adaku Obi’s manager, Manse Rollins, how ya doin’?”
“Uh. Fine.”
“Good, good, glad to hear it. So, listen, we have an issue.”
An issue? An issue a talent manager would be calling
her
about? Did they want her for the role, after all? The thought made her stomach flip. But, interestingly, not in joy or excitement. In something uncomfortably close to dread.
And in that instantaneous gut check, her relationship to acting became clear: she didn’t want it anymore.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Well, Adaku’s in the hospital.”