What he didn’t want was to be ruined and then abandoned. What he couldn’t stand was the idea of forfeiting his comfortable life only to end up alone and humiliated. It was the same fear that kept him from California half a lifetime ago. It felt delusional to imagine actually being with Scott, especially when he had everything to lose and Scott would be risking essentially nothing. If his father thought he was a basket case now, what would he think about Carver throwing over his wife and job and home and frozen embryos for an affair with his secret high school boyfriend, the broke musician? The only way to make that worth it was to make it work, and there were no guarantees possible here.
The mingling part of the wedding had begun. Carver went about this methodically, hugging his ancient great-aunt, joking around with his parents’ friends, and introducing Lillian to old high school classmates who Letty had evidently kept up with. He felt people’s superficial pleasure with him — the way they approved of his nice clothes and charismatic wife, the way they understood him to be a successful person and treated him better for it just in case. He felt his parents close on his heels, glowing with ambient pride.
This approval used to feel so good, but now it just felt necessary, like he would fall apart in its absence. His need for it made him resent the thing itself. Carver could feel himself getting cause and effect mixed up, feeling patronized by people who sounded impressed with his career, as if they could see that he was a child whose world turned on their approval. He stuffed this feeling down again and again. The sun sank lower, and the view from the windows turned black. He needed a drink, but kept getting caught up in conversations he could not extricate himself from, and he was being watched far too closely to say to anyone: “Excuse me, I need a drink!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Scott always had a hard time assimilating into a social event after he played a gig at it. People seemed to view him as either a beleaguered dancing monkey or a minor celebrity. “Hey, you’re the guy,” was a popular line, and they always pointed at him as they said it.
On top of that, no matter how many years he spent doing this, each performance still tired him out mentally. He knew guys who could turn it on and keep it on for the duration of an entire music festival, both onstage and off, and he felt like they were a different species.
Tonight, the only people he really wanted to talk to were Letty and Carver. Letty so he could congratulate her and ask if he’d delivered what she wanted — but tonightshewas a minor celebrity and almost impossible to get a second with. Carver, so he could ask him… he wasn’t sure what. Was last night real? Did you feel what I felt? I know you felt what I felt, I felt you feel it, so what does that mean? What’s the deal with you and your wife? Have you been thinking about me today? Why did you look at me like that while I was playing, why do you keep looking at me like that? Am I crazy? Are you crazy? Do you like me, yes or no?
He knew the answer to ‘am I crazy’: yes. He couldn’t be once again entertaining fantasies about actually being with Carver. He needed to take Carver’s resistance and ambivalence at facevalue. He was a romantic, yes, but never delusional — if it were anyone else running this hot and cold on him, Scott would have written them off. He knew better, he did.
But he knew Carver better still. He could see how unhappy he was and he could see how happy he’d been last night. He could feel that Carver wanted to be taken care of by him, he could sense it. Scott could never take care of his material desires, he knew this, but he was sure he could take care of Carver’s soul. He was sure he could love him in a way he’d never been loved before. The issue was, how the fuck did you communicate that to a person?
Even if he could figure out what to ask Carver, he couldn’t get him alone either. He was busy being paraded around by his parents, those sick fucks. Scott liked Nora and Doug on a personal level, they had always been nice to him, but he knew they were a couple of sick fucks. Carver was never good enough for them, but his success was. It was so transactional, like the story of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, which Scott had found disturbingly capitalist even as a child.
So Scott went out on one of the balconies to smoke. He leaned over the railing, looking out over the ghostly dark golf course, lit here and there by floodlights. It was a new moon, and he could make out a few stars from here. He dug his cigarettes from his pocket, then realized he didn’t have a lighter. A young couple was standing nearby, also smoking, and talking in Spanish too rapidly for him to pick up much. From what he could tell, they were talking about the country club’s gaudy architecture. He sidled up to them, and when they glanced at him, he asked for a light in Spanish.
The woman laughed, and the man reached into his pants pocket. “We do speak English,” she said, “but that was nice, you were slick with it.”
He laughed too. “Thanks.” The guy lit Scott’s cigarette for him. “Thanks, man.”
“No problem,” the guy said. “I’m Alex, this is Serena, we work with Letty. You were good up there, you got a Spotify?”
Scott exhaled smoke. “Yeah, hand me your phone a sec?”
Alex obliged. Scott opened the app, navigated to Silk Tourniquet’s page and handed it back.
“Oh, shit,” Alex said, his eyes flicking around as he scrolled. Serena got closer and peered over his shoulder. “You’re like, an actual guy, not a wedding act.”
“Yeah, this isn’t my usual gig.”
Alex started to play one of his songs on low volume, holding the phone up between his ear and Serena’s. Scott looked away, waiting and smoking, feeling awkward. He never had any idea what to do with himself in one of these moments.
“This is good shit,” Serena said, glancing at him and smiling.
“Yeah, why haven’t I heard of you guys?” Alex said, lowering the phone and hitting pause. “You have a great voice, you need to get yourself famous.”
Scott ashed his cigarette over the railing. “Not everyone has your good taste, man.”
Alex laughed. “I’m gonna check your shit out though, for sure.”
“Thanks,” Scott said. “We sell vinyls.”
“Hey, we like vinyls.”
“Well, if you feel so inclined.”
They hung out and chatted for a while longer before Scott went back inside. He felt braced by the night air and the cigarette, and resolved to find Carver and take him aside to at least get a read on him, but now he was nowhere to be seen amongst the two hundred or so people in the reception hall. Scott craned his neck, using his height to his advantage, but no dice. Conway walked by, and he stopped her to say hi.
“Oh hey!” she said. “You were great up there.”
“Appreciate it. Hey, is Carver around?”
She nodded. “He went to get a drink, he said.”
