Jay let go of me and picked up the mic. “You guys are the best! Thank you so much for indulging me. Right now, I have a special surprise. A guy I know a lot of you are familiar with, a guy I’ve heard called ‘arealsinger’ and ‘phenomenal’ and someone who ‘paints pictures with words.’ Give it up for Ari Friedrich!”
“You did fuckingnot,” I said, even as Ari jogged out from stage right, lifting a hand to greet the crowd.
“Oh, babe. I super fucking did.”
16
Jay
For most of my life, I’d thought nothing in the world could be better than the feeling of being onstage: connecting with an audience through lyrics I’d written or melodies I’d plucked out, making them laugh or smile. It had always been the thing I was best at.
But standing over by the Whispering Key gazebo in the circle of Rafe Goodman’s arms, swaying to Ari’s final song of the evening, I knew I’d found my true place, because I’d never felt safer or more loved than I was right then. And I knew whatever the future had in store for us, it was going to be exponentially better now that we were together.
“So I was thinking…” I began.
“Mmm?”
“What if I wanted to make this whole thing permanent?”
Rafe’s hands tightened on my waist. “Define ‘whole thing.’ Because if you’re talking about Ari Friedrich singing for me on the regular—”
“Do not make me kick you in the shin, Rafael.”
He scraped his teeth over my chin, making me shiver. “Seriously. Tell me. You can have anything you want from me, Jay Rollins. What do you want to be permanent?”
“All of it. You. Me. This beautiful island. Playing concerts on the Key. The recording studio in the backyard, and all those othersomedaythings we talked about. Basically, if you took the product of every summer day we spent together, added in all the other days of the year plus nightly sleepovers and daily coffee, and multiplied it by the power of probably excessive levels of sex, that’s what I’m proposing.”
Rafe’s eyes searched mine in the moonlight. “Where do I sign?” he whispered. “And when you go on tour—”
“About that,” I interrupted. “What if I… didn’t?”
“If you didn’t,” he repeated blankly. “Tour?”
“Uh-huh. Not as much, anyway. If Iron Pipes invites me again, I would totally go, obviously! Also Bonnaroo. And Outside Lands. Coachella. And, um, Shaky Knees.”
“Babe, those are just weekend festivals.”
“Right.”
He shook his head. “If you’re thinking of not touring because of us, because ofme, think again. Don’t you dare shrink your dreams down to fit our relationship. I’m your biggest fan, and I’m with you a hundred percent, so believe me when I tell you,wewill grow to fit however huge your career becomes, okay? And maybe we charter planes from now on, since we have the money… and since I feel like blow jobs during takeoff and landing would really alleviate my anxiety.”
“That’s not it!” I laughed. “Just listen, okay? And keep an open mind.”
Rafe held me tighter. “I’m listening. I promise.”
“Okay, so… for the longest time, I focused on one dream, thinking if I just got to the next level of success, I’d finally be happy. But the truth is…” I bit my lip but smiled around it anyway. “The truth is, I was more genuinely happy spending three days with you and a hitchhiking auto thief in a kidnap van that reeked of Shalimar than I was the night I found out I had a gold record. Because that night, I didn’t have the man I love to share it with. I was like a chord missing a note. Just the tiniest bit off-key. Because you weren’t there.”
“Babe—”
“Still listening time!” I said severely. “So now I have a new dream. It’s brand-new—it kinda all took shape in my mind in the last couple days—but I know it’s soul-deepright,the way things sometimes are. I want to play here on the Key. I want to write music here.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “And I maybe want to invite other artists to come here, too, so we can work on stuff together and I can help produce their tracks. I want to keep all the parts of my career that I want and get rid of all the parts I don’t enjoy but thought I had to do in order to be successful. I want to put a new spin on what success means.”
His smile crept over his face like sunrise. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. And like… what if I maybe possibly also wanted to do a summer program for LGBTQ youth in the arts? George gave me that idea on the plane here—”
