“Brooklyn?” Silas echoes. “No, I mean…Wait, what?” He leans forward and reads a few descriptions of the amenities in the apartments on the list. “On-site gym…roof deck with incredible views…bike room…” He looks sideways at me. “Logan, I can’t afford these apartments.”
“Sweetheart, I can. The list is already filtered to the maximum I’m willing to pay. This is not a hardship for me, Silas. I want to take care of you.”
I turn toward him, bending a knee and pulling it up on the sofa. “We can stay here or in my Upper West Side condo whenever you want, but I want you to have a place that’s yours. Just like I want you to have money that is yours alone to control. You might be my boy, but this isn’t an allowance. This is my way of sharing my life with you.”
Silas looks between the laptop screen with its list of apartments and me several times before saying anything. “I…Logan, I don’t want you to think I’m only interested in you for your money.”
I laugh. I shouldn’t, because Silas hunches in on himself, but I can’t help it. “Oh baby, I know that.” I’m going to hold him again in a minute, but first I lean forward, swivel the laptop toward me, and click open my email.
There’s a new message at the top of my inbox from Adrienne. Excellent. I open the attachment and turn the laptop back so Silas can read it.
His eyes flit back and forth, reading the first part of the contract. His lips move, silently spelling out “Approved Production Contract,” a term he must know as a member of the Dramatists Guild, then his eyes jump back to the top of the document, which lists the parties to the contract.
“James Cohen?”
“Yes,” I say.
“The Broadway producer?”
“Yes.”
“The one who’s produced, like half of the last dozen big hits on Broadway?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t he have, like, ten Tony awards?”
I shrug. “I don’t know how many he has. Should I call him back and ask?”
“Call him back?” Silas’s head jerks around to face me. “Wait, you asked James freaking Cohen to produce my musical?”
“No. I sent your musical to James and he called me and said he wants to produce it.”
Silas stares at me like he doesn’t know what to say. “James has been a client for a decade or more,” I tell him. “I know what he likes.”
Silas still doesn’t say anything, though his brows are drawing together and he’s starting to frown a little. I shift closer to him.
“Sweetheart, James is an experienced producer. You said it yourself, he’s produced half of the last dozen Broadway hits.” And more than a few shows that closed within the opening week, but I don’t mention that. “He has his pick of shows and he knows what he wants. If he wasn’t truly interested in your musical, he would have told me so.”
“But he only looked at it because you sent it to him.”
“True. But do you think I’m the first or only person who’s sent him something to read?”
He sighs. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Right.”
“Baby, I didn’t tell him about us when I sent it to him. Yes, he looked at it because I sent it to him, but he made his own decision about it before he knew anything about us. And he wants to produce it because he thinks it’s brilliant. That’s the word he used when he called me.”
Silas still looks like he’s been hit between the eyes. “What?”
I put my hands on either side of his face and lift it to look at me. “James Cohen thinks your musical is brilliant and wants to produce it on Broadway, Silas.”
“James Cohen?” he repeats. His voice is weak, but his eyes light up. “James freaking Cohen thinks my musical is brilliant?”
“Yes.”
“And he wants to put it on Broadway?” His voice tips higher at the end in his excitement.
“Yes.”
