“Nonsense. The boys will be thrilled you’re here.” There was a swell of noise around us and she raised her voice. “We’re in back. It’s quieter there.” She caught the attention of a server and pointed at me, motioning that I would need a drink. She rested a hand on my arm and I bent to hear. “The food is really quite good, but the service—well, I guess they’re still figuring it out. In L.A. every waiter thinks you might be their big break. They bring a bottle of Evian and it’s an entire production.”
She pulled me into a paneled room, moody in the low, warm lights. She was right, it was much quieter, the noise dampened. “Look who I found. Charles, make some room.”
Tyler’s face lit up, eyes and smile wide. “Here.” He moved Addison and then himself down the booth, so his space was open for me. The leather upholstery still held Tyler’s heat and as I sat I was conscious of his closeness; just a shimmering slice of air between us.
Charles sat across from us, next to a man I didn’t recognize. “Really glad you made it,” he said. He pointed at me. “This is the star of the night.” The guy—I didn’t catch his name—in a dark suit, perfect fit, was a friend of theirs. He lived in Chicago but was in Cleveland on business. “Sawyer’s a great school,” he said. “Terrific. I never could have gotten in with my grades. Much less a job here.”
Somehow Lauren had already maneuvered to get another place setting and was piling it with food. “You have to try this, really,” she said. “Addison complains there’s nothing to do in Sawyer, but I think this is wonderful. It’s all from local farms.”
You wanted to hate the Mitchells; no one should be that beautiful and that rich, one should have to choose. But there was something comforting just being in their presence. They emanated a gracious energy, nothing cliquish about it; they invited you in. Charles was raising money for a new film, a staggering amount, hundreds of millions. He relished it, all of us in the grip of the story as he played it up, saying he couldn’t reveal a thing. “These days, they’ve got NDAs for every possible scenario.” (“Non-disclosure agreements,” said Lauren, leaning across the table.) But Charles dropped enough hints that we all knew which actress had signed onto the lead. “Don’t say a word!” he said. “Dad, come on,” Addison grumbled. “Give it a rest.” But he was grinning.
And they clearly loved Tyler, whose own family wouldn’t be able to afford this trip, probably not even this meal. Charles and Lauren asked about a class project and egged on his ridiculous stories. The visiting friend asked after the soccer season. They had just narrowly triumphed over Carnegie Mellon. The day of the match, the assistant coach, a new hire, a young guy who had just graduated from Michigan, showed up reeking of booze and brutally hungover. An hour outside Pittsburgh, he threw up on the bus. “The driver went ballistic,” Tyler said. It was a charter bus and the driver didn’t feel he owed the college anything. He pulled over and insisted the assistant coach get off, right there on the side of the highway. He wouldn’t listen to any pleading on the coach’s behalf. “And he did! He walked right off. Or staggered off, actually,” Tyler said, swooping his body in imitation, and everyone laughed. Somehow or other, the coach had found his way to Pittsburgh, arriving right at the start of the second half. Tyler lowered his hands and his arm brushed mine. I tilted my facetoward him, the slightest shift, and caught the sweet punch of his breath.
“But Mark.” Lauren turned to me, chin resting on clasped hands, ice blue eyes intent. “I can’t stop thinking about your lecture. Did you really work in a forensics lab?”
“Well, I interned. Just a few months.”
“That must have been fascinating. But forgive me, a little gruesome.”
“Go easy, honey,” Charles said. “He’s not on trial.”
“It’s okay.” I laughed. “I guess I’ve always had a bit of a morbid streak.”
“I suppose we all do,” Lauren smiled, “buried somewhere inside. But what was it like? Tell me everything.”
Our private little room grew in warmth as the night went on, not stuffy heat but a cashmere prickle, the amber lights glinting off the flocked wallpaper and bathing us in a tactile glow. The rumbling bass of the classical music piped overhead and the softening murmur of the dissipating crowds beyond our walls melded into a soundtrack just for us. We stayed for hours, Charles ordering bottles of wine in twos, making a big fuss about letting Addison and Tyler drink. He grinned at me, wolfish—“Don’t report me.” He lifted my glass and a maudlin wave of sadness crashed over me. Did everyone have a family like this?
On my walk home, the street fair was still going strong, raucous even, surging with an end-of-the-week energy. Strings of vivid white lights laced across the blocks between lampposts and street signs. Against the murky, blank sky they emitted a phosphorescent bubble, producing the sense of a world severed from itself. Packs oflocals drank from funnels of beer. I shivered at the thought; it had gotten quite cold. I passed a row of game booths, a young woman whooping as her toss hit its mark.
When I reached my block I found they’d closed it off for parking. A guy was stationed there, working security—he had an enormous walkie-talkie clipped to his pants, dragging them down; they looked like they were about to fall off. “Street’s closed.”
“This is my block.”
He said nothing, just pointed in the direction from which I’d come.
I circled back and looped down a side street, coming at my building from the other way. My phone dinged. A text from Stephen.
You were great tonight. Sorry if I was weird, I just wanted to celebrate you. Hope we can do that soon.
Then another ding. A second text.I love you.
I stared at the screen, unsure what I should say. Or what I wanted to say. I felt bad, sneaking out after I’d ditched on our plans. But I’d enjoyed myself, I really had. And Stephen said it was my night. Shouldn’t I spend it as I liked?
I put the phone away and pulled out my keys; I’d reached my building. And then I heard my name.
“Hi, Mark.”
Tyler stood on the sidewalk, thin jacket loose against the cold.
“Tyler. Hello. What’s going on?”
He looked at the keys in my hand and then rocked, heal to toe, eyes scrolling my building’s façade. “Do you live here?”
“I do. Where are the others?”
“Addison is staying with his parents tonight, they got a second room. I was supposed to meet up with Kennedy but my phone is dead. Actually—” he clutched his phone and waggled it in the air “—do you have a charger I could use?”
I turned and looked at my building, its obdurate red bricks. Above our heads, the light from my kitchen window blared yellow; I’d forgotten to shut it off.
