Page 35 of High Notes & Hail Marys

“Ven…” you start to argue.

“Ven will be fine,” he says. “You didn’t ruinanything. You looked amazing. A little stiff, maybe, but nothing too bad. I didn’t even think about prepping you for something like this. If anyone screwed up, it’s me. And I didn’t bring you here just to look good next to me. I invited you because I wanted you here with me, too.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. Maybe I wanted to show off my stud of a boyfriend.” His voice is teasing, but his face is serious. “You sure you don’t want to get out of here?”

It’s as if his hands are leaching confidence into you. Crossing the barriers of your shirt and your skin. “I’m good,” you say.

Sterling brushes a kiss against your lips. Just a soft one. There’s nobody in the hallway currently, butthat could change at any time.

“Let’s go,” he says softly. He buttons you back up, patting the front of your jacket after to let you know that it looks right. Hand-in-hand, he leads you out into the atrium.

***

The show is actually pretty cool.

You weren’t briefed extensively on the point of the ceremony, but it has to do with honoring celebrities who make sizable contributions of time or resources to charity. It turns out that Sterling recently joined the board of a foundation combatting children’s hunger by raising money for school lunch programs. He was invitedafteryears of being the charity’s largest donor. The presenter on stage reads the audience these facts, and Sterling stares straight ahead. You are shocked. A lot of people—you would know; you play football with some of them—are insufferably public about their good works. Sterling has just been here all along, doing it quietly. You want to burst with pride when he is called up to receive a plaque and say a few words.

He keeps it brief, talking about his own upbringing in a comfortably middle-class, two-parent household, and how important it is to him that kids born with fewer advantages get what they need to thrive. He cites a few statistics onschool lunch programs in the United States, which he must have memorized, and shares a few words about how the charity has lobbied successfully for expanded free lunch programs and funded breakfast initiatives in ten of the poorest states in the country. Notably, he avoids talking about his own participation in the foundation, and instead on its goals and ongoing projects. When he closes out the speech with a call to action for Hollywood to take the issue seriously, he’s greeted with a standing ovation.

Similar adulation greets each of the other nine celebrities who are being honored during the evening, but you, selfishly, think that Sterling did the best. There is champagne on ice at each table, and discreet waiters buzz around swapping out empty bottles for fresh ones when necessary, moving like assassins through the theater with no interruption to the goings-on onstage. Your nerves stay buzzing for the first hour or so, and you probably down a bit more bubbly than you normally would. You’re a big guy who built up an impressive alcohol tolerance at a noted party college, but the fizzing drink goes down easily, and you don’t realize that you’ve maybe had a tiny bit too much until the lights go and dinner is served after the show.

Everyone stands up to stretch and glad-hand around the room as the waiters disappear into the back, and you get a rush of blood to your head asyou push your chair in. It makes you laugh a little under your breath. Sterling smiles, confused.

“You okay there?”

“The champagne,” you say, miming tipping a glass with your wrist. “It’s strong.”

That makes him smile genuinely. “Well, yeah—when you put away a whole jeroboam by yourself.”

“A jero-what?”

“It’s an exaggeration.” He rubs your lower back affectionately. It sends little prickles of heat through you, amplified by the alcohol. “I have to say hi to a few people. Will you behave if I leave you here?”

He’s teasing you, but his words flare in your gut, bright and hot. Maybe he sees something change in your face, because he momentarily, fleetingly, bites his lower lip.

“I’ll try,” you say. It comes out rumbly.

“Be back when the food comes,” he promises.

Without Sterling to occupy you, you turn your attention to your tablemates. Two of them have departed for parts unknown—probably to work the room, just like everyone else—but there’s an older couple talking quietly to each other in the remaining two seats. They slipped in just after the lights went down at the start of the awards, soyou didn’t get to introduce yourself earlier. One of them—the man—looks vaguely familiar.

“Good evening,” you say when there is a lull in their conversation. Trying to sound sober.

The gentleman, who has a lion’s mane of silver hair and a distinguished, close-clipped beard, smiles at you. The woman is perhaps a decade younger, her blonde updo shot through with gray. Her smile is a lot bigger.

“Oh!” she says. “You’re Sterling Grayson’s young man. The Cyclone.”

“Yes, ma’am,” you reply. “Kaius Reinhart. Pleasure to meet you.”

“A footballer!” the man replies, with a distinct British accent. “Can’t remember the last time I saw a game. I really should change that; I used to enjoy it. Should’ve guessed, big fella like you.”

“He’s been away for work the last six months,” his wife explains. “Asia. The time difference is not very favorable for live sports.”

“I guess it wouldn’t be,” you say. You keep trying to place where you know the man from. The champagne buzz isn’t helping. “What do you do for work?”

“I love the Yank southern accent,” he comments. “It’s always so charming. I work in film.”

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