He hands us the menus, points out the wine list, and asks us if we’d like to start with their house selection, “A fine red with . . .” He goes on for a bit about oaky finishes, but I can barely hear him over all the words in my head I need to say to Kevin, all the things I want to hear from him.
Kevin seems to either get what I’m feeling or is having the same trouble concentrating, because he agrees to the house selection pretty much as soon as the waiter has closed his mouth.
“I hope that sounded okay,” Kevin says, toying with the cloth napkin on his plate before unfolding it on his lap. “If you want a different wine—”
“No, that sounds great.” I nod perhaps more vigorously than I should for wine I don’t particularly care about. I open the menu and try to read the options, but my heart feels like it’s pulsing in my throat and I’m not really reading anything at all.
“The focaccia sounds good,” Kevin says. “If we wanted to start with that—”
“I love you,” I blurt out, and Kevin looks up from his menu, his eyes wide. “I’m in love with you. Like really, deeply in love with you. And I knew that even before the phone sex thing, which was incredible, by the way, and—”
I cut off because I notice Kevin’s eyes darting to something just over my shoulder, and I turn to see our waiter standing there with the bottle of wine, his own eyes wide, and I die a tiny bit inside.
“I’ll just leave this here,” the waiter says, setting down the bottle instead of pouring it into our glasses and walking off quickly.
“Oh my god,” I say with a groan, and Kevin appears to be torn between stunned and laughing his ass off.
“Really?” he says quietly, apparently leaning into the “stunned.”
I smile back at him, the pressure of all those nerves easing now that I’ve finally said it. “Yeah, really.Though maybe I shouldn’t have talked about phone sex in front of our waiter. Or at least saved that for after the appetizers.”
Kevin grins. “I didn’t mind.” He sets his menu down and pours us each some wine, and I can feel his leg brush against mine under the table. “Though maybe we should order so he doesn’t have to worry about coming over here again for a while.”
“Good idea.”
He beckons the waiter back over, and we order—I just pick the first thing my eyes land on from the menu, an osso buco dish—and the waiter takes our menus and is gone. Now it’s just us again, and the words I said.
Which seem to be well received, judging by the expression on Kevin’s face.
Although now that expression is turning nervous again, and I wonder if he’s worried about what that means for us, given the issues I’ve been all too open about with dating a rock star and doing the long-distance thing, and I’m just about to tell him the decision I’ve come to.
But he speaks first. “I love you, Maya,” he says, and his eyes are so warm and brown, and those words melt me all over again. “And I want this to work out, you and me. So if you’ll give me a chance, I’m willing to leave the band.”
And now I’m the stunned one, even as my pulse races. “What? Seriously? You’d do that?”
“I would, if that’s what I need to do for us. I told Shane that I would.”
I have about a million questions, and I’m pretty sure this is far from the most important one, but I ask it anyway. “How didthatgo?” I know how worried Kevin has been about how Shane would react one day when Kevin wanted to leave.
I just thought that day was much, much further off.
“Better than I thought it would,” Kevin says, with no small amount of relief. “He doesn’t want me to leave, obviously, and has all these suggestions about how I could still work with them if I moved out here, how I wouldn’t have to tour, but—” He shakes his head. “We can figure all the details out. I just need to know if this is even a thing you want.To be with me.” He swallows, and even though I’ve just told him I love him, I can feel the worry hanging there between us, that maybe I won’t really want that, that maybe his offer of giving up this huge part of his life won’t be enough. My heart cracks a bit.
I reach my hand across the table and he puts his there, too. Our fingers entwine again, so warm and so right.
“I want that,” I say, squeezing his fingers in mine. “I do, Kevin. So much. But—”
His expression drops like he’s settling in for the gut punch, and I squeeze tighter, hoping to forestall that fear. “But is that what you want, really?” I ask. “To leave the band, or to not tour or to work remotely or whatever? Like, is that something you’d want even if I wasn’t involved?” Despite my shock about this offer, I remember how he said that first night that he didn’t think he could do this forever. And before I tell him my decision, I need to make sure he isn’t thinking of this as a best-case scenario—getting to be with meanda way out of the band.
He wets his lips. “No. But you’re more important. Getting to be with you is themostimportant. I mean that.”
He does, I can feel it through my whole being. And the knowledge that he loves me enough to make that sacrifice for me makes it easier to make my own for him.
I knew what I needed to do after that phone call last night, and terrifying though it is, I knew I wanted to. For him. For us.
For me, too.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “How about this instead. How about I move out to LA and you stay in the band and you get to have both?”
