by Sarina Bowen
“Yes. Nick was adamant that you weren’t to be blamed. Of course, tempers were running pretty hot in the room—Heitman’s especially. My fault, I suppose.”
Maxie shook her head as Alfie crossed her ankles, legs tucked to the side, her ivory clutch resting on her knees. Give her a floppy hat and she could be posing for Singer Sargent. She was still confused.
“Your fault? Why?”
“Because of the production, dear. No one is pleased that we’re shortening the run.”
The light bubble in her chest popped.
She slumped in her chair and focused on the pain of the remote control wedged under her butt. If she could keep herself from thinking about anything other than how uncomfortable she was and how much she didn’t want Nick’s mom to know that she’d been sitting by herself in the dark all night, crying for hours, then maybe she could hold on.
“Shortening the run.”
Just a little longer. Always polite to delay the breakdown until after the guest left. But her breath jerked in her chest and her fingers were like ice.
How many people would be out of work? Even the ones who didn’t work for her directly were still her responsibility and she’d—
Lock it down.
She was too keyed up to even hear what Alfie said next, the rushing sound in her ears thumping in time to the stutter of her heart.
Nick had warned her. Had told her that she needed to meet his mother, to understand who was driving what he’d accurately called an incoming train wreck. And here she was, sitting in the rubble with a woman who’d decided that her pet project wasn’t as fun as she’d been led to believe. So she was shutting it down early. Nick’s constant efforts to open her eyes to the mercurial nature of his mother’s moods took on new meaning in an instant. She’d thought he was pushy and full of micromanagerial bullshit, but he’d seen this coming from a long way off. In his own way, he’d been trying to warn her.
She wished she hadn’t been too stubborn to hear him.
When she held the door open for Alfie’s exit, her hand shook on the knob. For thirty minutes, she stood there, head pressed to the door, stunned to immobility by the news.
Thirty minutes was all she gave it.
Time to mobilize. She called Marcus first because, before anything else, she owed him an apology.
“I put you in a terrible position, and I apologize.” She didn’t believe in beating around the bush. “I left town in the middle of an emergency. I should have stayed put.”
“I wouldn’t be much of a stage manager if I couldn’t handle a crisis, now, would I?” Marcus’s voice was no nonsense. “And you’re entitled to a personal life. Remember?”
She ignored his comment. “It’s my job to stay on top of things. Not your job to clean up my messes. So thank you for going above and beyond.”
“It started with my show, which makes me equally responsible for that mess. Unless this Stage Manager title you gave me was bullshit?”
“No way.” She pressed a hand over the pang in her chest. She was grateful to have earned this kind of loyalty.
“Then we’re good. Next time we’ll stay on top of things together.”
“You got it,” she promised.
“And you’re still buying drinks!”
Laughing kept her from crying. “Top shelf all the way.”
Marcus and Ruben helped her brainstorm potential landing spots for everyone on her crew who was going to be out of a job months earlier than anticipated. They pooled industry gossip and brought in Heitman, too, when it was clear that they’d need a bigger name than Carving Bananas, Inc. to pull some strings.
Surprisingly enough, Heitman asked her to hold off on making backup plans. His calmness in the face of Alfie’s sudden defection was frustrating, but Maxie crossed her fingers and trusted him. He told her to continue prepping for the show’s dress rehearsals in a month, assuring her that he wouldn’t leave her or her people in a lurch.
Four weeks later, she danced in the wings when Heitman announced that they’d found additional investors to replace Nick’s mother and the show wouldn’t be closing for at least six weeks. It was still a shorter run than they’d anticipated, but it would give them enough time to work things out.
But less than a month into that six-week run, it was clear that magic had sparked on their stage. Reviews poured in from all the Chicago papers and magazines, most of them raves for the cast, the director, the playwright and the production. Rumors of nominations for half a dozen different Jeff Awards were already flying around and, most importantly, the box office was booming. The curtains wouldn’t be closing on their show at all.
When the invitation came to the Lyric Opera’s Opening Night Ball, she almost laughed. The play had made it to the middle of September and was still going strong, no thanks to the woman whose name on the return address made her shake her head.
Alfie.
That woman.
Nick’s mother kept coming by the show every week or two. She would sneak backstage to gossip with the cast in the wings until someone shushed her and sent her up to Maxie’s booth for a chat. Apparently the fact that the show had turned out to be a smashing success—ticket sales picking up each week until they had to extend their run in order to take advantage of the momentum—was enough to erase Alfie’s memory of abandoning ship.
All they’d needed was enough of an investment from their new backer to keep the show going for long enough for word to spread.
You could have knocked Maxie off her director’s chair with a feather when she found out sometime around the first extension of the run who had provided that emergency influx of cash.
Goddamn that man.
He hadn’t called. He hadn’t come by the show. Her angel of interrogation hadn’t asked a single question about where his money was going or what would happen next. As far as she could tell, he’d written an absolutely enormous check and then abruptly disappeared.
All she got was one lousy text in the middle of the night, sent to her after she tried to call Nick and found him unreachable.
You got this. Break a leg.
The frustration was killing her.
All she could think about were the horrible words she’d thrown at him about not standing by her. It had taken some soul-deep introspection, and a heavy dose of that top-shelf booze she’d promised Marcus, for Maxie to figure out where she’d gone wrong. She gave it even odds that Marcus had already fallen asleep on her couch halfway through her monologue about Nick.
“See, Marcus. He is loyal. It’s jus’ that the personal is pro—is not professional.”
Thank god her drunken realization had stuck with her when she finally clawed her way out from under the hangover of the damned the next day. Because she really had figured it out.
Nick was loyal, loyal to the nth degree. In his personal life. She’d seen him support his mother in a hundred ways, even when she was pushing his boundaries, dragging him way past his comfort zone. But whereas Maxie treated her professional life as an extension of her personal life—hiring her friends, practically adopting semper fi as her motto—Nick ran his business differently. As inspired as he might be by some of the groups in which he invested, Nick was still led by his brain rather than his heart when it came to work. Maxie never let people go once she’d brought them into her fold, but Nick could make the unemotional decision when it was time to sell a business that had reached the pinnacle of its success.
And that was okay. Different from her wasn’t automatically a bad thing. She could trust him to stand by her because she was personal for him. Not business. And the way Nick had stayed away from the show only made her faith stronger.
Yes, Nick had stood by her. And she couldn’t even thank him for it.
Of course she could have. She knew perfectly well where he lived, but when she showed up on his doorstep, fully prepared to grovel, the doorman told her that Mr. Drake was unavailable. This happened repeatedly, until she was afraid that the doorman’s next call
might be to the cops, who wouldn’t be at all thrilled to see her again. He wasn’t answering his cell phone, either—damn caller ID for making life difficult—but she finally managed to worm some info from his assistant. He was out of town, apparently, and not expected back for weeks. Which meant she really couldn’t go back and tell him that she’d been wrong. That she knew he was the one who had been there for her when she needed him.
The envelope holding Alfie’s invitation was heavy, the creamy weight of the paper a sign of its luxury. It was nicer than any paper she’d ever written on.
She could live with that.
Because Maxie knew for damn sure that Nick’s mom would expect her son to attend the event.
A texted RSVP would have to do. She’d need all her free time to start persuading Sarah to lend her another dress.
* * *
“I heard that you lined up jobs for everyone on the crew and half the cast within the week. Not that they ended up needing them.” Alfie flagged a server. The woman always had an eye out for the ones with the wine. She indicated their glasses and leaned back to allow the man to lean in close and pour.
“I could have cost them their jobs. I was prepared to do anything to fix it.” She’d never been so happy not to use her industry contacts as when she’d learned that the show’s run wasn’t being shortened after all. She craned her neck, keeping her own eye out, though not for the server.
She knew how much importance Alfie placed on appearances. Maxie was counting on that to ensure that Nick showed up at the ball. And when he did, she was prepared to throw herself at his feet and grovel like a good drama queen for as long as it took to convince him that she regretted their breakup.
“Well done, girl. But who on earth are you looking for?”
She flushed. So much for subtlety. “Isn’t Nick coming?”
“Of course, dear.” Before Maxie could relax, Alfie continued. “But he bought a table for his latest group of scruffy entrepreneurs since they’re back from those Silicon Valley sessions. Those shrimp-tempura people.”
“Temporal.” She smiled. “It’s a new system to evaluate transit needs in urban areas in order to maximize public transportation efficiency.”
She was a Google stalker, yes. She’d sunk that low.
“Whatever you say, dear. I think they’re over by the mayor’s table.” She gestured to the front of the room by the temporary stage where the Lyric’s full orchestra sat, ready to play during dinner service.
Damn. She’d never casually bump into him all the way over here.
Right. Humiliation was already a given. She’d just have to walk up to a table full of strangers and beg her ex-boyfriend to take her back.
Piece of cake.
She braced her hand on the edge of the table and prepared to stand up and stride over to Nick’s table, eyes locked on her target. She could barely see Nick, but she watched as he leaned closer to hear something his neighbor at the table had said…
His neighbor, the exquisitely turned-out Elizabeth. Who caught Maxie’s eye and nodded at her with a smile. Friendly as always, the horrible woman.
Maybe she needed to run to the bathroom and quickly vomit first.
Maxie excused herself and ran to the ladies’ room. God, this was going to suck. Running cold water over her wrists to cool her overheated self seemed like a solid plan, although maybe sticking her entire head into the sink would be a better idea.
She was in there for so long that other guests came in and out, and at one point she was surrounded by three chattering matrons who were well on their way to tipsy. For a second, she resented them, these women whose opinions Nick cared about so much. If it weren’t for them, he wouldn’t care about appearances.
That wasn’t fair, though. It wasn’t their fault or Nick’s fault. And she finally knew enough about herself to say it wasn’t her fault, either. Being comfortable or not with public attention wasn’t good or bad. It just was. She couldn’t expect Nick to feel fine with it like she did, but she’d wear him down until he agreed with her that it wasn’t the end of the world.
There was nothing she wouldn’t do in her campaign to get this man back.
She stood up, dried her hands and threw her shoulders back. Her reflection in the mirror was pale—theater night owls never had tans—but elegant. Her dress, borrowed from Sarah but not ‘shredded,’ was still eye-catching. She’d never turn her shine off. But she wasn’t trying to shock anyone or push their buttons, so the long column, while slit up to there, was classic in its cut and drape.
The fire engine red color was for principle’s sake.
She knew she didn’t need to dress down for Nick. And she knew that Elizabeth wasn’t a threat to her. If Nick’s ex were what he truly wanted, then he would still be with her. She wouldn’t just be his date to society functions.
He wanted Maxie. She knew it deep in her stomach, as if she’d chewed on his bones and swallowed his heart. That man belonged to her and she belonged to him, and a little awkwardness was a small price to pay for her happily ever after.
Time for her entrance, stage left.
She paused at the entrance to the room. Alfie’s table was the first one inside the door. She’d missed the beginning of the speech, so she looked to see who was onstage, droning on about the importance of cultural pride and opera in Chicago. As her eyes sought out the man at the podium in front of the orchestra, the familiar voice echoing over the PA system suddenly snapped into clarity.
What. The. Fuck.
Nick Drake was onstage.
“We appreciate every penny we squeeze out of you each season and thank you for your support.” Polite applause drifted across the room. Maxie hustled over to her table and slid into her seat. “Lastly, there’s just one more thing I want to say. I know that many of you have known me since childhood.” While he spoke, Nick’s hands played with the placket of his tuxedo shirt. A widening gap between the edges slowly revealed a blood-red T-shirt beneath the pristine white cotton. “So, what I’m about to do right now is going to be, um, quite a surprise.”
He tore his dress shirt wide open.
The punk-rock shirt below screamed: NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS, HERE’S THE SEX PISTOLS!
She clapped her hands over her mouth and wondered if she’d have to pick her eyeballs up off the floor in a moment. Holy shit! What was he doing?
With rock-and-roll flair, Nick wrestled his tuxedo jacket off and whipped it to the floor like a rock star smashing a guitar. A never-ending string of giggles burst into life in Maxie’s belly and snorted their way out via her nose.
“Oh, my goodness. What is Nicholas doing?” Alfie peered at the podium, one hand delicately pressed to her throat.
“I think he’s, uh, making a spectacle of himself,” Maxie said, her laughs morphing in an instant to teary gasps. Because he was.
Nick Drake was making a complete and utter spectacle of himself.
And he was doing it for her.
The next words he growled into the microphone made everyone in the room lean forward a little bit.
“For what is about to come, I ask your forgiveness.” He swept a hand through the air, drawing the orchestra’s focus. “Hit it, boys.”
The first strains of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Pride and Joy” hit the room like a sledgehammer, the strings and reeds and brass of the orchestra doing their best to rock out the blues anthem.
The room sat in total silence.
“Oh, hell no,” Maxie muttered and slammed her chair back. No way was she leaving her man to die on stage in front of a dead room. She punched her fist in the air and screamed out a groupie’s howl.
“Whoooooo-hoooo! I’m your sweet little thing, baby!” She grabbed Nick’s mom by the elbow and yanked her to her feet. “C’mon! I know you have it in you, Alfie.”
Tears were streaming down her face and the stage was blurred, but she could still see Nick strutting awkwardly with a mike stand in his hand. Oh, this fabulous, amazing man. She lifted her hands in
the air, clapping wildly and screaming her head off. Beside her, Alfie was shouting and throwing flowers from the table centerpiece at the stage as the sound rolled over them like a wave.
“This one’s for you, Maxie.”
God, she loved him so hard her heart could beat right out of her chest. She dragged her forearm across her eyes to clear them, clapping the entire time as Nick sang, enthusiastically if less than tunefully, his voice rumbling on the low notes, “Well you’ve heard about love giving sight to the blind—”
She knew what her job was here. She danced next to her chair and sang her heart out. Alfie boogied next to her and then dragged the guest next to her to his feet to make him dance with her.
The upright bass players at the back of the stage had a dip and sway thing going on, the violins were bobbing and bowing in a synchronized dance, and even the guy on the triangle was getting down with the groove.
The first people to stand up and dance were the three tipsy matrons she’d bumped into in the bathroom. Their whooping and hollering turned heads, leaving Maxie flushed with relief as some of the crowd’s attention moved off her.
God, she lived in the warm spotlight of other people’s attention on her and even she was sweating from the pressure. For Nick to do this—and she knew damn well this was his I love you writ large, she wasn’t an idiot—must be mortifying to him.
Nick’s table of young entrepreneurs, paralyzed by the grandeur of the occasion, broke like a dam collapsing and surged to their feet, joining Nick for the chorus. Several of them broke away and made their own dance floor. Could you really swing dance to the blues? They were giving it a go. Even Elizabeth was up and dancing, though she stopped to smile at Maxie and give her a quick thumbs-up.
The iceberg that was all of Chicago’s high society in their fancy dresses and tuxedos cracked deep and crashed into the ocean when the mayor and his wife stood up at the front of the room and bopped in place to the beat. Men and women got to their feet at every table—not all of them, because some people would never learn how to enjoy life, would always choose propriety over spirit and would waste miserable, boring years because of it. But enough of them did to bring a grin to her man’s face as he sang his heart out to her.