Costars (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance)

by Adams, Claire

  It took him a while, but Jace finally convinced me to let him take me to John Coltrane night at a local jazz bar I never knew existed.

  I don’t hate jazz; I just hate nearly every modern person associated with it. I think it has something to do with the hats.

  John Zorn’s pretty cool, though.

  Anyway, we get to the club and Jace is kind enough to pay the cover. Okay, it was one of my conditions for accompanying him.

  The place is pretty full, but we manage to find a small, circular table on the second floor balcony, overlooking the stage. There’s a group of six guys on stage, each one with a different saxophones. I’d always thought there were only two or three, but there they are.

  It would be nice if there was some kind of rhythmic accompaniment, but as it stands, the six guys are watching each other’s feet to make sure they all come in on the downbeats at the same time.

  Okay, so maybe it’s the hats and the pretentiousness.

  Still, the music isn’t bad.

  What’s better, where Jace and I are sitting, we’re far enough away from the wailing version of Cousin Mary.

  “So,” he says, “what do you think of the place?”

  “Do you think they’re going to get anyone on the drums sometime tonight?” I ask. “I’ve always been a fan of jazz drummers.”

  He smiles. “The way you were talking on the way here, I got the impression you didn’t care that much for jazz.”

  I can’t believe I have to explain this to him.

  “It’s not the music,” I tell him. “It’s the self-important douchebags who profess to be experts on the genre like…” I look around, “pretty much everyone here tonight.”

  “How do you know what people are ‘professing’ if you can’t hear what they’re saying?” he asks.

  “How are you doing?” I ask, changing the subject.

  “What do you mean?” he returns.

  “Well,” I say, “we’ve kind of taken a step in a new direction and I guess I’m just curious as to what you’re doing with that.”

  “What I’m doing with that?” he asks.

  For an intelligent man, I’m really finding myself explaining a lot of things to him.

  “I mean, what you think about what’s happening between us,” I tell him. “Fuck, that sounded like it came from an after-school special, didn’t it?”

  “I’m happy about it,” he says. “I thought I’d be more conflicted, but I’m really very happy about.”

  “Good,” I tell him and look back at the stage.

  Three of the six saxophonists are doing their own variations on the same head swagger — I really don’t know what else to call it — that the other three are doing as a unit.

  “Do you think anybody in here has an original bone in their body?” I ask.

  “It’s Coltrane night,” he says. “People aren’t going for original, they’re going for him.”

  “I guess,” I answer and look back at the stage.

  “What do you think about what’s going on with us?” he asks.

  “I’m good with it.”

  “Well that’s good,” he snorts.

  I look up at him. “What?” I ask.

  “I never know what to do with you,” he says. “Sometimes you’re so detailed and intense on a topic, but other times you’re just blasé about everything. The funny thing is I can never tell which way you’re going to react.”

  “You know what I think we need right now?” I ask.

  “What’s that?”

  “A drink,” I tell him. “Any chance I could convince you to make a quick trip to the bar?”

  “If we wait a minute, I’m sure our waiter will be around,” he says.

  “You know what I think is funny?” I ask him.

  “What’s that?”

  “You invited me to a jazz bar, but not once since we sat down have you looked at the stage or seemed the slightest bit interested in the music,” I answer.

  “I don’t really care for jazz,” he says.

  I glare at him. “Then what the fuck are we doing here?” I ask.

  “Well,” he says, “from what I’ve heard, one of the coolest places you can take a date is a jazz club.”

  “I guess it depends on the date,” I say and look over at him. He looks disappointed. “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, though.”

  That perks him right up. I wield quite the power with this man, don’t I?

  “You know what I think we need right now?” I ask.

  “Drinks,” he says. “Fine, I’ll head over to the bar and-”

  “No,” I interrupt. “I’m past that. What I think we need right now is a nice secluded or semi-secluded place where I can ride you like we’re back in the first year of the roaring twenties and I’ve just won the right to vote.”

  His face is red. It’s hilarious.

  “I don’t know if there’s anywhere in here that’s private enough for something like that,” he says.

  “Lame,” I say and add a fake yawn for good measure. “You know, it’s not every day a gorgeous woman like me offers to let a person into her holy of holies. That goes double for women in jazz clubs.”

  He smiles at me again and I slide my foot up the inside of his leg, winking at him when I get close to his crotch.

  “I bet we could find a spot,” he says.

  “Great idea,” I tell him. “You go scout locations. I’m going to sit here and watch the six faces of Coltrane and wait for someone to come by and offer me a drink.”

  “How about we go together,” he says.

  I look over at him and roll my eyes.

  “Fine,” I tell him, “but you just bought yourself five minutes eating my pussy before I get anywhere near your dick — oh, hi,” I say, looking up at the waitress who’s trying to pretend like she didn’t hear anything I was just saying. “I’ll have a ginger ale, please.”

  Jace is redder than before, but he eventually manages to spit out an order for a martini, shaken not stirred.

  The waitress smiles politely and walks away.

  “You know what you did there?” I ask him.

  “What I did where?” he asks me.

  “You just ordered a watery martini,” I tell him. “When you shake a martini, the ice in the shaker chips apart and gets into the drink, making it watery.”

  “Maybe I wanted a watery martini.”

  “Well, in that case, it looks like you did just the thing,” I tell him. “So, are we fucking or what?”

  “I think we should talk about what happened today,” he says.

  “Nah, that’s all right,” I tell him. “I think I could do without that particular conversation right now.”

  “Death isn’t an easy thing to deal with. It’s not easy for me, and I’m an oncologist, for Christ’s sake,” he says.

  “Well, I think that was a good talk,” I tell him. “We covered all the bases and I don’t know about you, but I feel better now.”

  “Grace,” he says, “are you backing out of the trial?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell him. “Can you just leave me alone about it so I can figure out what I want here?”

  “Sure,” he says, “but if you don’t make a decision by tomorrow morning, you’re going to get kicked out of the trial anyway. I just wanted to make you aware of that.”

  I can’t really explain why, but the idea of being kicked out of the trial sends a jolt of adrenaline through me. I have to put my hands in my lap to make sure Jace doesn’t see them shaking.

  “Why would they kick me out so quickly?”

  “People drop out,” he says. “This early, there are others on the waiting list who can still get in, but after tomorrow, the thing’s going to be closed to everyone but those who are already in it.”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “I would have thought that was pretty clear,” he says. “I jumped through a lot of hoops to get you in there in the first place.”

  “No pr
essure, then?” I snicker.

  “I’m not trying to pressure you,” he says. “I’m really not. I was just trying to answer your question. Personally, I think it’s worth a shot, but if it’s not something you’re ready for, I’m sure there’ll be more trials down the road.”

  “You wouldn’t be mad at me if I told you that I didn’t want to go through with it?” I ask him.

  “No,” he says with a shrug. “I want you to have every opportunity to get better, but I’m not going to be pissed at you for backing out of a drug trial. If it was a known cure, I’d probably be pretty irate, but as it is, I don’t see anything to be gained by browbeating you over it.”

  It’s strange that that’s what it’s taken to get me to make a solid decision since what happened in his office earlier today.

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “I’ll be there tomorrow. Same time?”

  “You’ll want to show up about an hour earlier,” he says. “They did intake with almost all of the trial participants today, but since you missed that, they’re going to have to squeeze you in before everyone else starts showing up.”

  “Okay,” I tell him.

  “Grace,” he says, “I really do think we need to talk about-”

  “Here are your drinks,” the waitress says, placing my ginger ale and Jace’s pathetic martini onto the table. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”

  “I’m good,” Jace answers.

  “Nope,” I tell the waitress.

  She walks away and, before Jace can start in again, I preempt him. “What happened today is that a woman who had cancer died in your office,” I tell him. “Yeah, it was difficult, even though I didn’t actually see it happen, but that’s just something I’m going to have to deal with. She had something different than what I have, didn’t she?”

  “I can’t really talk to you about other patients,” he says, “even deceased patients.”

  “Okay,” I respond. “How about this: Am I going to need a wheelchair and an oxygen mask sometime down the road?”

  “It’s hard to say,” he answers. “It depends on the progression of your-”

  “Okay, I was trying to get you to tell me without actually telling me, but I don’t think it really matters. I’m going to assume that the woman either had a different diagnosis than what I do, or she was a lot farther advanced than I am.”

  “Okay,” Jace says, taking a sip of his martini. He pulls a face and looks up at me. “I used to love shaken not stirred martinis, but now it just tastes like slightly alcoholic water,” he says.

  “It’s always nice to know I can still ruin things for people,” I smile. “Anyway, what freaked me out wasn’t that I was seeing the ghost of brain tumor future. What freaked me out was the knowledge that there’s really nothing any of us can do about the day we die — once it’s there, I mean. I didn’t hear any of the conversation between the three of you before that guy started screaming, but I’m guessing — and no, I’m not asking for you to confirm or deny this — that when she woke up this morning, she didn’t say to herself, ‘huh, I think I’ll head to the doctor’s office and die today.’ Hell, maybe she did. I don’t know. What I do know is a slight but profound variation on something I’ve known most of my life.”

  “Which is?”

  “That we’re all going to die someday. Maybe it’s going to be the oligodendroglioma — I’m seriously getting good at saying that now, by the way — maybe it’s going to be a car accident, maybe it’s going to be something else entirely, but when you’re going to die, you’re going to die. I think people who think they ‘cheat death’ are just kidding themselves. I don’t believe in fate, but I also don’t believe that a person is going to see each and every thing coming. There’s no way.”

  “What’s the variation?” he asks, “Or was that it?”

  “The variation,” I tell him, “is that even if I go through this treatment, who’s to say I don’t go into your office one day for a checkup or an update or just to bother you while you’re working and something happens, maybe a reaction from the medication, maybe something else, and I end up falling to the ground dead?”

  “Who’s to say you don’t?”

  “Nobody,” I answer. “I was freaked out, and I can still hear that guy screaming at you, but I just knew that I didn’t want to be like her, still making every appointment even though I’m half a breath away from my last. I want to do something more. I’m not saying I want to start a charity or do the fun run thing — I’m not a masochist. I just don’t want to spend all my life in a hospital while the rest of the world just passes me by. Who knows, maybe when I’m supposed to be walking into oncoming traffic because I’m not paying attention, I’m in the hospital getting a needle stuck in my arm.”

  “I think that would be the better option,” he says.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I tell him. “At the same time, though, maybe I’m supposed to be out doing something that I’ve never done before, something that’s going to add a once-in-a-lifetime experience to this little world of mine and I’m just in there, again getting a needle stuck in my arm?”

  “There’s no way to know that kind of thing,” he says.

  “I get that,” I tell him, “and your saying that isn’t the first time the thought’s crossed my mind. Every time I get that far in my inner dialogue, though, I just think of that woman wheeling past me, her son walking behind her with his fingers gripping the handles of his mom’s wheelchair so tight his knuckles are white.”

  “Like I said,” he explains, “I’m not going to fault you whatever you choose here. Obviously, I wish you’d go through with the trial because-”

  “I know the reasons,” I interrupt. “We’ve talked about the reasons, I’ve read about the reasons, and I’ve thought about the reasons so much over the past while that I could jot them down with my eyes closed. And I know exactly what you wish I’d do; you made that pretty crystal when I was in your office this morning.”

  “What do you mean?” he asks.

  “Does it not occur to you that you never really indicated that you would respect my choice before that woman died in your office today?” I ask. “I’m not saying that’s why I didn’t go to the first day of trials, but it’s not like it didn’t change anything.”

  “What did it change?”

  “It changed the way I felt about you,” I tell him. “I’m going to do what I’m going to do, just like you’re going to do what you’re going to do and everybody else is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but when it started to feel like you weren’t taking me seriously. When it started to feel like you were just discounting what I had to say because you thought it was just fear and nothing else — I didn’t like that. I don’t like that. It looks like you’ve come around, and I’m not saying this is a permanent mark on your record or anything, but — I don’t know. I guess I just thought you should know that.”

  He looks down at the table and then back up at me, sipping his drink and making that same disgusted face he made a few minutes ago.

  “You’re right,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you,” I tell him. “Now, is there any way we can move past this conversation?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “If you want to talk more about it later we can; if not, that’s okay, too.”

  “Sounds great,” I tell him. “So…”

  “What?”

  “You owe me no less than five minutes with your face between my legs,” I tell him. “What up?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Wandering Star

  Jace

  Grace has been in the trial for almost two weeks now, and she seems to be doing all right with the new medication.

  What she seems to be most excited about so far is that, as she’s not taking her normally scheduled round of chemo, her hair is starting to grow back to a point where she’s almost willing to ditch the wigs.

  The last time she saw the inside of my office was the day she was originally supposed to start the trial, and I�
��m a little worried that she’s going to have a stress reaction when she comes in.

  I’m not the one running her scans right now, and even if I wanted to access the scans the trial doctors have been taking, I wouldn’t be able to, but that’s not why she’s coming to the office.

  Ever since that night in the jazz club where she and I found a dark corner behind the stage, she’s been really into having sex in situations where there’s some kind of possibility we might get caught.

  I’m not a psychologist, but I did take enough courses during med school to know that we’re treading into dangerous territory. Eventually, if we keep upping the ante, we’re either going to get arrested or even worse, we’ll start to get sexually bored with one another.

  You’d think that would be enough to dissuade me from giving her the green light about her coming in today when Yuri goes on her lunch break, but the truth is, I think this might actually be a good thing for both of us.

  I haven’t told her this, although I can’t say exactly why, but I’ve had some trouble being in this office, myself.

  It’s one of those things that eventually fades with every time I come into work, but for Grace that might never be the case.

  If I’m to be totally honest here, though, I think I’m starting to get the same thrill out of doing the sort of thing that Grace does.

  Yuri knocks on my office door to let me know that she’s headed out to lunch and I nod.

  I thought she was going to be out of here as soon as my last appointment was over, but she must have had some paperwork to do.

  When Yuri’s out the door, I pull my phone out of my pocket and send a text to Grace, saying, “The eagle has left the nest.”

  I hit send, but as soon as I do, I just know that Grace is going to give me shit for using such a cliché code phrase.

  The top drawer of my desk contains something at this moment that it’s never had in it before and, I imagine, never will have again.

  My phone buzzes and I look down at it.

  “You’re so fucking lame,” Grace writes. “I don’t know if I really want to fuck you anymore.”

  I write back, “Oh, will you just shut up and get in here?”

  It’s only a couple of minutes before the door to my office opens and Grace slinks in, wearing a black, asymmetrical skirt and a red scoop top. She’s been waiting on the next floor up to get the message that Yuri went out to lunch.