“Come on, come on,” he muttered at the phone.
Ximena picked up on the last ring, her voice muffled.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m about to head into prenatal yoga, can it wait?”
“Um,” Tom said, because he wasn’t sure it could wait. He had no idea how long it took to order furnishings, how long it took for that stuff to arrive on Martha’s Vineyard in winter, and how long Rosie would give him to finish the work before she pulled the plug. “Do you have a minute?”
Ximena sighed heavily, as a celebrated, Tony-nominated actress had every right to when her flaky younger friend began unexpectedly imposing on her charmed existence. “I’ll go sit in the break room.”
As soon as the background noise of other parents faded, Tom began to babble at her, detailing the trip out here, the state of the inn, and his conversation with Rosie this evening. As he moved through the inn, shutting windows, his eyes kept falling on things that would need to be replaced or repaired.
He didn’t know how to do this. He’d never done anything like this. He should never have told Rosie he could do all this.
“Calm down,” Ximena said. “You’re stressingmeout, and stress is bad for the baby.”
“No, you don’t understand, panic is a great way for me to get things done,” Tom told her earnestly. “Basically that and spite? Those are the only fuel this machine accepts.”
“Are you going to panic until everything’s done? No? Well, then, I think you should just go to your ex, level with her, and apologize for wasting her time. If she’s a reasonable person, she’ll understand that you can’t spend the next six months playing Chip and Joanna with her when rehearsals start in three.”
“Six months!” he yelped.
“Yeah, have you ever ordered furniture? Even stuff like rugs can take weeks to arrive.”
“My furniture is all thrifted,” Tom said. He put his palm against his forehead. “Ximena. Please, you have to help me.”
“Iamhelping you. I’m sure she doesn’t want to set you up tofail. Maybe you could just help her pay someone else to do the interior—”
“You know how to do that stuff. I’ve been to your apartment. It’s gorgeous. It looks great.”
“Yeah, because Lú hired a decorator,” Ximena said, sounding amused.
“But you have good taste,” Tom begged. “Can you just come out here for a little while and tell me what stuff I need, even? Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
“I’m in my second trimester, and your inn is full of bees,” she pointed out. “This isn’t going to work. Besides! What are you going to do if rehearsals start while you’re in the middle of this disaster?”
Tom chewed helplessly on the inside of his cheek. From this last window, he could see the lights on in the cottage he’d left Rosie in. She was less than a thousand yards away, and she’d probably put on fuzzy socks and soft, stretchy pants that clung to her ass and that lip balm that smelled like vanilla.
When he was twenty-two, he’d thought there would be unlimited opportunities to see Rosie getting ready for bed, and he’d missed it more often than not. He’d taken the worst, least scenic, longest detour imaginable from the life he could have had, and he just wanted back on the interstate. He didn’t want to be in this fucking decrepit inn; he wanted to be over in the cottage, watchingEntertainment Tonightwith his head in her lap as she put three specific types of lotion on specific delicate parts of herself.
But the only clear path to that position he could see led him through this impossible task first.
“I won’t do the show if I can’t get this done first,” he said. “I swear I won’t, so you’ve got to help me.”
It was almost blackmail.
“You can’t pull out of a lead role on Broadway, Tom, Jesus Christ.”
“I haven’t signed anything! It’s not pulling out—”
“They’re writing you new lines! They are planning promotional T-shirts with your face on them! You barely have a professional reputation to wreck, but if you tell the producers you’re out at this point, I’m pretty sure that would do it.”
Tom leaned forward and rested his forehead against the clammy wood of the doorpost. “I know, I know.”
“Just tell your ex you can’t do it,” Ximena insisted.
“I can’t tell her no. If I have to choose between another ten years in regional theater or another ten years where Rosie’s not speaking to me, I know which one was easier to live through the last time,” Tom said. That, at least, felt crystalline clear when he spoke it. If Rosie watched him make a giant hash of this, at least she’d see himtrying.
Ximena groaned dramatically.
