Page 64 of Cool for the Summer

Yeah, friends might be too much to ask of my poor heart.

Cleo seems to notice that the energy has changed. She spends more time lying at my feet when I’m on my computer, or watching me from her bed while I’m working in the kitchen. I try to give her extra cuddles and pets. Not her fault that her temporary minders don’t have their shit together.

Now that I’ve perfected the molasses cookie recipe, I’m working on the white chocolate macadamia one. I’m not sure I’ll even have the heart to put molasses cookies on the menu, even though I’m super proud of the recipe. But the memory of Donovan’s kisses will be brought to mind every time I mix up a batch, and that won’t help if I’m ever going to move on.

Moving on seems like a distant fantasy, however, when my heart still insists on lighting up whenever Donovan walks into the room.

I’m chopping a big bar of white chocolate when he does just that, dressed in jeans and his white button-down that makes his olive skin glow with health. He has his backpack over one shoulder, Pete’s keys in hand, and sunglasses pushed up over his head.

“Going somewhere?” I ask.

“Yeah, actually, I have to go to the city.”

I drop the knife on the cutting board with a sharp clatter. Jack and Pete get home in two days, and he’s cutting and running?

“I have an audition this afternoon. Or a meeting. My agent wasn’t very clear. But I have to go, so I was going to ask if you could take care of Cleo tonight?”

“Of course,” I answer. Isn’t that the whole point of us both doing this job, so if something came up for one of us, the other could take over? Then why does it feel like he’s abandoning both me and Cleo?

“I appreciate it. Depending on how the meeting goes, I might stay over in the city tonight. But I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m going to park at the station.”

I relax minutely. “Don’t forget about Jack and Pete’s party.” I pick up the knife, study the shards of white to judge if I’ve gotten the size right.

“No, I won’t.” He stands there for another moment.

“Good luck at your audition-meeting-whatever,” I say without looking up.

“Thanks.”

Another silence descends, but I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how to get back the easiness between us when he’s rejecting everything I can possibly offer him.

“Well, bye,” he says finally.

I only look up again when I hear the door to the garage bang shut. I glance at Cleo, who’s watching me carefully.

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” I say, willing myself to believe my own platitudes. “I’ll be okay.”

TWENTY-NINE

DONOVAN

The trainto New York is crowded and the air-conditioning is broken in the car I first pick, so I move backward until I find a seat in a cooler car. My nerves are on high alert. Joan told me the casting director for the commercial gig wants to see me, but she wasn’t clear if it was an audition or something else. I don’t have any script pages to go over and I’m too nervous to read for pleasure. So I stare out the smeared plexiglass window at the ultra-green countryside as it turns into the browns and tans of the suburbs and then the brick and metal and glass buildings of New York City.

I try to keep my mind blank, but I can’t help but think about the way Beck looked when I told him I was heading to the city. He was baking—in his element—but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. I wonder if he hates me now. I haven’t had the courage to ask him, or to leave the house altogether. With Jack and Pete coming home in such a short time, it seems petty to cut out early. Not to mention I still don’t have anywhere else to go. My stuff’s in storage with a friend who’s on Long Island for her summer vacation. Practically everything I own is in the backpack on my back. I’m homeless, as itinerant as Beck was when he showed up in Rosedale. But I don’t even have a car.

I sent Joan my play yesterday, but she hasn’t read it yet, or if she has read it, she’s still figuring out how to tell me she hates it.

This possible job is the only thing I have going for me right now, which is kind of pathetic. Beck’s words hover in my mind, making me doubt everything I thought I knew. He said I could change my mind about what my life’s supposed to be. For years, I chose my career over a domestic life, telling myself I didn’t want both, but when Beck showed me door number three, I was too—what? Scared? Stubborn?—to walk through it.

I emerge from Grand Central and am hit with the unmistakable smell of the city in August—a thick wall of car fumes, damp air, and the exhaled breaths of millions of people. I’m disoriented at first, accidentally start walking in the opposite direction from my destination, which is strange. I’ve lived in New York for twelve years, and it’s one of the easiest cities to navigate. Still, I feel like a visitor in a foreign land.

I’m sweating through my shirt by the time I get to the nondescript office building Joan told me to go to. I take some steadying breaths, put on my audition armor, consisting of my professional smile and my actor’s charm. I open the door to the suite and hope for the best.

An hour later,I’m shaking hands with Phil, the producer of a series of commercials for high-end sunscreen. That’s the product I’d be hawking as the star of three commercials—just to start. They want to target gay men with this advertising campaign, and they want to build the campaign around me. It wasn’t an audition—it was a pitch. They want to pay me a mind-boggling sum of money to star in ads essentially as myself, only a slightly buffer, sunscreen-wearing version of myself, of course.

I hit it off with the creative team, and they’ve promised to send Joan the contract by the end of the day. Apparently, they have studio time booked and their first choice fell through at the last minute. I’m not offended to be a replacement, especially when they’re saying all the right things.

I leave the building and call Joan.

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