The delivery guys rolled up the back of the truck and set up the ramp to unload a big white leather couch and several groups of café tables and chairs. But the very best thing in the lot Rose had purchased was in the rear, covered in blankets and belted to a dolly. Tom’s eyes landed on it, narrowed in concentration as he wondered what it was, and then flew wide open when he figured it out.
“An upright piano?” Tom breathed, his voice joyous. He jumped into the back of the truck and peeled back a corner of the blankets. The piano was slightly battered, lacquered in blinding white, and embellished with a rainbow of exotic butterflies.
“I got it real cheap,” Rose bragged.
The piano straddled the line between beautiful and tacky in a way that precisely fit the vibe Rose was cultivating for the basement event space, even if it was butterflies rather than birds. It was going to be the centerpiece. Of hervision, as Boyd put it.
“You bought me a piano?” Tom said, wheeling around with an expression of delight spreading across his face. No, Tom was a stage actor; he smiled with his entire body. “Rosie.Baby. I always wanted a piano. This is amazing. You bought me a piano?”
“I…well. Technically I bought myself a piano for the downstairs bar,” Rose said, feeling her pulse tingle in her fingers. She’d been sure he’d love it. Maybe part of her had also wanted to remind him that there were benefits to being in a relationship with her too.
Tom grabbed her wrist and held up her hand to splay his much-larger palm against hers. “But nobody in your family plays the piano. Because you all buy gloves in the children’s section.”
“Rude and true. But other people play the piano besides you. Adrian plays.”
Tom snorted indelicately and put his hands on Rose’s hips, pulling her closer. “You didn’t buy this queer-ass butterfly piano for Adrian Landry so that he can play you a little anxious Shostakovich when he’s out here once a year.”
“Also rude and true,” Rose admitted. She let her conspiratorial grin bloom on her face. “Okay, yes. I bought you a piano. I thought this summer, you know, if you do come, we could have musical trivia night with my family.”
Maybe they wanted to try some new things too—not the same old bocce ball tournaments and fried turkeys from Rose’s childhood. She couldn’t imagine a better rainy-day activity than Broadway standards with Tom in the new airy pink space.
“This summer? But what about tonight? This is what we’re doing tonight, right?” Tom asked, hands vibrating on her waist.
“Of course,” she said.
“And you’ll sit next to me and turn the pages on the music, right?” Tom asked, expression as sweetly intent as when he’d waited for her at the end of the Simboli Hall Chapel aisle.
“Of course I will,” Rose said.
“And everyone will have to say nothing but nice things about my singing?” Tom concluded.
“Or they’re turkey chow,” Rose promised.
Tom whooped and ran off to gather enough people to move the furniture into the basement. Rose pressed a palm over her heart.
It was a bigger space than he thought, that she was making for him in her life. It was going to be the best part.
22
Rain had started at nightfall, and it was still rattling against the high windows that sealed in the humidity. The air was warm in the enclosed space of the basement, thickly scented with feminine perfume and styling products. Tom had pulled Rosie halfway into his lap and draped himself around her in the corner of the cracked white leather sectional couch that now faced the karaoke stage. His chin rested on her shoulder and his palm on one of her bare knees, round and pink below the hem of the cotton dress she’d changed into halfway through the evening. He was happy, and also a little drunk.
Tom couldn’t keep up with both Rose and Ximena’s conversation to his left and the parade of earnestly terrible karaoke singers up on the stage, so he was attempting neither, simply enjoying his rare feeling of accomplishment. The renovated basement was a nice space. He’d carried in most of the furnishings. He’d performed capably on the piano—“Watermelon Sugar,” “Cruel Summer,” and “Peaches” (You are hilarious, but don’t do three songs about oral sex while my parents are here)—soRosie might now look forward to many similar evenings, tucked into his side as was right and proper. His life was all in order for once.
Rosie turned her head and shot him a slightly apprehensive look, and it took Tom a moment to realize that her conversation with Ximena had turned to Ximena’s favorite subject: the baby. Tom immediately schooled his features into the appropriate attitude of benign interest. Acting squeamish about Ximena’s deeply considered plans with respect to breast pumps and babywearing would likely dislodge Rosie from his lap, if not his life.
“—only take two weeks off, probably, which sucks, but at least Luísa gets three months at her firm,” Ximena continued.
Having satisfied herself that Tom didn’t object to the subject, Rosie turned back to Ximena. And why would he object? He and Rosie were supposed to be on their fifth kid by now under the original plan. He’d always wanted kids. And if, like Ximena had suggested, Rosie’s biological clock was ticking, it was his ally in his campaign to win her back. It made him feel a little ruthless to think about it that way, but he’d take all the advantages he could get.
“They’re making you come back two weeks after your first baby?” Rosie asked, scandalized.
Ximena shrugged. “I was lucky they didn’t recast me. Probably would have if Lú’s dad weren’t putting up so much of the funding. So I’ll perform right up till my water breaks. In the middle of the Sunday matinee, probably.”
“I think portraying Berta as nine months pregnant and still dating two different men is a baller move, actually,” Tom putin, because the play had few features to recommend it, and a heavily pregnant Ximena swaggering around the stage as a famed seducer of virgins was going to lead to some interesting reviews. “I think you should wear the baby onstage when you come back. Get them some Equity credits.”
“And the casting director is throwing me a baby shower on the Eataly rooftop, so there’s that, at least,” Ximena said, disregarding Tom’s half-serious suggestion. She looked at Rosie, then Tom, then back at Rosie. “You should come,” she said to Rosie.
Tom held his breath, but Rosie easily pulled out her phone to add the details to her agenda.
