“Okay, who is he, where’d you meet him, and is he cute?”
“Noah, he’s in Mame—chorus—and he’s all-caps cute.”
“A thespian, so some common ground. What look are you going for?”
“I—”
One of the roaming staff—a guy with a cloud puff of emerald green in jet-black hair, beautifully kohled brown eyes—moved in. “Good afternoon, ladies, what can I help you with today? I’d just love to do your eyes,” he said to Cate. “And yours.”
“It’s her.” Mallory pointed at Cate. “She’s got a date.”
“Oooh. A hot one?”
“It’s just coffee.”
“These things have to start somewhere. Sit down right here, and let Jarmaine work his magic.”
She could do her own makeup, and thought she had a good hand with it. But for this . . . “I want to look like I didn’t really bother, you know? Or only a little.”
“Trust me.” Jarmaine took Cate’s chin in his hand, turned her face this way, that way. “You have some good choices in your basket. I can use some of those. So.” Jarmaine whipped out some makeup wipes. “What’s he like? Does he have a friend?”
He swept, buffed, brushed, lined while Mallory looked on.
“I like what you’re doing with her eyes. They’re already crazy blue, but you’re making them, like, bolder.”
“She chose a good palette, neutral but not boring. We’re going for the I didn’t do a thing, I’m just this ridiculously beautiful, so neutrals are best.”
“I’m going to braid your hair,” Mallory decided. “Just a casual, low, loose braid. It’ll go with the makeup.” Out of a section of her backpack, Mallory pulled a fold-up brush, a small rat-tail comb, and a little clear case holding a selection of bands.
Her mother’s daughter, Cate thought.
“Hair and makeup.” Jarmaine smiled at Cate. “Movie star treatment.”
She smiled back even as she thought: Jesus God, I really hope not.
After Jarmaine deemed her done and gorgeous, after she checked out, she went out with Mallory.
“I’ll walk with you part of the way, then cut over. I’ve got a boatload of studying to do. But I still expect a full report.”
“You’ll get it. Thanks for coming with me. I’m stupid nervous.”
“Just be Cate, and unless he’s a moron, he’s going to ask you out again. Unless his big cute hides a jerk, you’re going to go out with him again. Slow down a little, you want to get there about five after coffee-date time. Not rude late, but not on the mark.”
“I need to learn these things.”
“Listen to me. I am the master.”
Mallory hooked an arm through Cate’s, gave her a hip bump.
“Don’t stay over an hour, even if you’re doing great. Maybe, in this case, an hour and fifteen—but that’s max. Then you’ve got to go. If he wants more, and he will, he’ll ask to see you again. But don’t do the need to check your schedule deal—lame and pissy—unless you really have to.”
“My social calendar is wide open.”
Another hip bump, more forceful. “Don’t say that! Just, if he says how about catching a movie tomorrow night or whenever, you can repeat the day. Friday? Sure, that’d be great. If he makes a move, goes in for a kiss, fine, if you want to kiss him. But no tongues, not over a coffee date.”
“Jesus, I have to start writing this down.”
“You’re an actor, cuz. You’ll remember lines and staging. I need to split. Remember those few simple rules, then relax, have fun.”
Mallory caught the WALK at the intersection, moved with the throng to cross. “Full report!” she shouted.
Be Cate. Five minutes late, which wasn’t Cate because she prided herself on being on time. Stay an hour to an hour-fifteen. Don’t pretend to have a crowded calendar, and no tongues.
Following her director, she hit her cue, walked into the rumble and scents of Café Café.
The sofas and oversized chairs, always at a premium, were already filled, the baristas at the coffee bar already busy.
She spotted Noah at a two-top wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt instead of the tank he’d rehearsed in. Those beautiful lion eyes met hers as she started toward him.
“Hey. You look great.”
“Thanks.” She slid in across from him. “How’d the rest of rehearsal go?”
He rolled those eyes. “It went. We’re getting there. Hey, Tory.”
“Noah. What can I get you guys?”
When Noah looked at her, waited, Cate decided on the simple. “A regular latte.”
“Skinny latte, double shot, thanks, Tory. I’ve got a dance class tonight,” he told Cate. “I need the double shot.”
“Teaching or taking?”
“Taking. Three nights a week. Can I just say, get it out of the way, Lily Morrow is a goddess.”
In no way a moron or a jerk, Cate decided on the spot. “She’s always been mine.”
“Has to be mutual. She really lights up when you’re in the house. What do you do when you’re not—in the house?”
“Try to figure things out.”
His smile, slow and sweet, did jittery things to her heart.
“Hey, me, too.”
They talked, and it was easy. So easy she forgot to be nervous. Forgot about the hour rule until her phone alarm went off.
“Sorry, sorry.” She pulled it out, shut it off. “That’s to remind me to order dinner. I’m filling in for G—for Lily’s PA for a couple of weeks. I, ah, need to get back to that. This was nice. Thanks.”
“Listen, before you take off, there’s this party Saturday night. Some of the cast—some civilians, too—just blowing off steam. Do you want to go?”
Repeat the day, she reminded herself as everything inside her cheered. “Saturday? Sure.”
He held out his phone. “You could put your number in my contacts.”
Of course, of course, she knew how it worked. She did it with friends all the time. Just never with someone who asked her for a second date. She passed her phone to him, took his.
“I can pick you up about nine.” He passed her phone back. “Unless you want to grab a pizza first.”
Oh God, oh God! “I like pizza.”
“Eight then. Just text me the address.”
“I will.” When he didn’t make a move, she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. “Thanks for the coffee.”
She strolled out, and when she did her happy dance well out of sight, Tory glanced over at Noah, lifted her eyebrows.
He mimed a huge sigh, and beat a hand over his heart.
Three weeks later, after pizza and parties, after dancing in clubs and long, desperate kisses in the sweet bloom of spring, Cate lay under him in Noah’s skinny bed in his closet of a bedroom in the cramped apartment he shared with two Broadway gypsies.
In her first-time haze, the lumpy mattress was a billowing cloud, the punishing beat of rap pulsing through the wall from the apartment next door the song of celestial angels.
While she had no comparisons, she felt absolutely certain she’d just experienced the true meaning of every song, every poem, every sonnet ever written.
When he lifted his head, looked into her eyes, she was inside the greatest love story ever told.
“I’ve wanted us here since the first time I saw you. You had on a blue sweater. Lily was taking you on a backstage tour. I was scared to say anything to you.”
“Why?”
He twined a lock of her hair around his finger. “Besides you’re so damn beautiful? Lily Morrow’s granddaughter. Then you started torturing me, coming to rehearsals, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I figured hey, if I ask her for coffee and she blows me off, at least I won’t die wondering.”
He lowered his head, kissed her lightly, lips, cheeks, eyes. Heart and hormones stuttered inside her.
“I was so nervous, then we started talking.” She laid a hand on his cheek. “And I just wasn’t. I was really n
ervous about this, then you touched me, and I just wasn’t.”
And still, her first.
“It was good, wasn’t it?”
He gave her a considering look that rushed doubts to the surface. “Well . . . I don’t know. I think we should do it again, just to be sure.”
Doubts washed away in delight. “Just to be sure,” she agreed.
Because Lily ruled a cab—no subway—if Cate stayed out past midnight, Noah walked her over to Eighth Avenue to hail one.
Walking—slowly—hand in hand with him, she thought New York looked like a movie set. The light drizzle was sheer romance with streetlights shimmering in thin puddles and on wet pavement.
“Text when you get home, okay?”
“You’re as bad as G-Lil.”
“That’s what happens when somebody cares about you.” He pulled her in for one more kiss. “Come to dance class tomorrow night. You’ve got the moves, and you know you like it.”
She did. Maybe her muscles were rusty, but she’d enjoyed the two classes he’d already talked her into. Besides, he’d be there.
“All right. I’ll see you there.”
Now she pulled him in, then slid into the cab. “Sixty-seventh and Eighth,” she told the driver as she shifted to keep Noah in view as long as possible.
Then she pulled out her phone, texted Darlie.
I’m not going to die a virgin!!!
She snuggled that knowledge to her, dreamed out the window as the cab made the turn, headed up Eighth.
She laughed out loud at Darlie’s answer.
Welcome to the club, slut. Now gimme deets.
She floated through the spring, took dance classes, added yoga, and on a whim decided to take a scattershot of classes at NYU over the summer.
French, just because the sound of the language appealed to her; Film Studies, because she may not want to act, but the business still interested her; and Writing the Screenplay, because maybe she could.
And once a week, she and Lily had dinner, just the two of them, in the condo with New York beaming through the windows.
“I can’t believe you made this.”
Basking in the accomplishment, Cate watched Lily take another bite of the penne with basil and tomato. “Me, either, but it’s pretty good.”
“Sweets, it’s as good as Luigi’s—but don’t tell him I said so. And you baked Italian bread.”
“It was fun. Nan and I learned how to bake bread from a neighbor in Ireland. It took me back there, brought her back to me. Plus, I wanted to surprise you.”
“I haven’t been this surprised since I got my first gray hair—and this is a lot happier. I don’t suppose you can do an encore the next time your granddaddy’s here.”
“I know you miss him.”
“It’s hard to find the time or energy to miss anything, but I do. The damn old goat’s got his hooks in me.”
“Did you always know?” Wondering, wondering, Cate toyed with the little gold heart around her neck Noah had given her for her eighteenth birthday. “I mean right from the start that you loved him?”
“I’d go with attracted to, which irritated the holy hell out of me. I’d had a marriage go bad, was hitting that age where Hollywood wants to flick you off if you’re a woman. Actually, I’d been bouncing off that for some time. I’ve got two kids in college, and what I saw as the fight of my life to stay relevant as a film actor. Then he comes along.”
“And he’s so handsome,” Cate said with wiggling eyebrows to make Lily laugh.
“Child, that man got a triple scoop of good looks out of God’s goody bag. Now, being an actor of a certain age in Hollywood, I’m cast as the eccentric aunt—at least they didn’t make me her mother—of his love interest. Nobody blinks that he’s twenty years older, it’s not even part of the story.”
“But you got the hero in real life.”
“I did, not on purpose, but I did.” Considering her girl, Lily stabbed more penne. “You’re old enough to hear I thought—we both thought—we’d just have some fine sex, then move on. God knows neither of us intended to ever get married again. I had the bad, he’d had the damn near perfect.”
Pacing—the story, the meal—Lily set down her fork to take a tiny sip of wine. “Olivia Dunn was the love of his life. When we started realizing it wasn’t just sex, however fun, between us, I had to give that fact some hard thought. Could I stick with a man who had that kind of love, still had that kind of love, in him for another woman?”
She took another tiny sip from the single glass of wine she allowed herself on the night before a dress rehearsal. “You know what I figured? Any man who had that kind of love in him, well, I’d be a fool to walk away from what he’d have in him for me. And my mama, she didn’t raise a fool for a daughter.”
“All my life, it was seeing how you are, the two of you, that showed me what love is, or, I guess, could be.”
“Then we did something right.” She set the wine down. “That leads me comfortably into a subject I’d hoped you’d bring up with me. But since you haven’t, I’m just going to poke right in like the bear into the honeycomb. And hope I don’t get my nose stung. It’s charming, my sweets, that you and Noah think you’re keeping your relationship on the down low.”
“I . . .”
“I even understand why you’re trying to keep it quiet—though for heaven’s sake, Catey girl, it’s theater. We’re a gossipy bunch, and we dearly love sex and drama.”
Trepidation about what would come tangled with relief of letting go of a secret. “I didn’t know how you’d react.”
“Then somewhere along the line I did something wrong if you don’t know you can talk to me about anything.”
“I do know. I’m sorry. That’s not fair. Most of it’s me. It’s been so good, just so good not to have to worry about what people might read about me, or hear about me, or say. She’s so into her engagement, her big wedding plans, she doesn’t need me to get press right now, and I just don’t want to give anybody anything. I did tell Darlie, and Mallory knows. And Noah’s roommates. I started to tell you so many times, but . . . I didn’t really know how.”
“Let’s start with this, and hell, I’m breaking my rule and having a second glass of wine. You can have one with me. It’s an occasion.”
Before Lily could get up for the bottle, Cate jumped up, brought it and a second glass in from the kitchen. “Am I like driving you to drink now?”
Lily patted her hand. “You’re giving me an excuse to indulge myself. Did he give you that sweet necklace?”
“For my birthday.”
“He earns points there. It’s a thoughtful gift. I want to know if he’s sweet and thoughtful with you otherwise.”
“He is. He always walks me out to get a cab, waits until I’m driving away, and asks me to text him when I’m home safe. He listens to me, pays attention. He got me back into dance class, and I didn’t know how much I missed it until he did. He’s kept it quiet because I asked him to.”
“I’m going to tell you I asked around about him—that’s not only my privilege,” she continued, when Cate’s mouth opened, “it’s my duty. So I know he doesn’t drink or do drugs because he’s serious about his work. He comes from an interesting family—which we southern ladies appreciate and admire. He works hard, I see that for myself. And he’s good, he’s damn good. He can go places.”
It shined inside her, the approval she heard from the most important woman in her life. “He loves the theater.”
“It shows. Now, the big one. Are you being careful, both of you?”
“Yes. I promise you.”
“All right then, it’s time he started coming to the door instead of you meeting him outside, or wherever. I haven’t said anything to your father or to Hugh, and I won’t, as that’s for you. And I understand, I do, your need to keep it out of the press.” She leaned over to take Cate’s hand. “But it will get out, sooner or later. Both of you need to be ready for that.”
“I’ll
talk to him about it.”
“Good. When are you seeing him again?”
“I was going to meet him after rehearsal tomorrow, and . . .” She caught the arched eyebrows. “I’ll have him come to the door.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It delighted Cate how easily Lily and Noah hit it off. How could she not love listening to two of her favorite people sit and exchange theater stories?
When Lily insisted he come for dinner, he brought flowers for both of them. And that pretty much sealed it all around.
She missed them both, almost painfully, when the play had its out-of-town openings in San Francisco and Chicago.
But they both had to focus, as she saw it. And it gave her several days to find out how she handled living on her own.
For the first time in her life, she thought, standing on the terrace in balmy air, eating Chinese takeout from the carton. No anxiety, no nightmares, just her own routine.
Good long walks every day and daily yoga practice. Dance class, though it made her miss Noah all the more. Afternoon research on the courses she’d take in a few weeks.
Two abortive attempts at writing a screenplay, both so bad she trashed them. She’d still take the course, she decided, but had a feeling her area of talent didn’t extend to writing.
That was okay. Scooping up noodles, she walked to the polished concrete wall, looked down at the busy, busy world below. She’d find her place, eventually. In that busy, busy world or somewhere else. But now, right now, this quiet time, this interlude where she could stay anonymous, where she could walk by a newsstand and not see her own face, or some headline shouting her name, gave her all she needed.
Ireland had given her that as a child. She’d take it from New York now, and because she wasn’t a child any longer, she’d use the time, the interlude to explore her talents, or lack thereof, her abilities, or lack thereof.
Maybe she’d take a photography course, or art lessons, or, or, or.
“I’ll find out,” she murmured as she went back in, closed the glass doors on the rumble of the city.
She settled down with her tablet, did some searching on photography. She did like looking at people, listening to them. She might be good at capturing images.
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