Where Do I Start? Read online

  “Hey, Dweeb,” I said gently as I could. I know that sounds sort of nasty—it wasn’t. It was exactly the opposite. “This is for you,” I said and gave him the glass of champagne.

  I tried to hide my shivering.

  “Fletch. Wow. This is weird.”

  “Yep, prit-tee much.”

  Roger’s face is always a bit flushed, but it went almost pale now. Was he thrilled to see me again? Or outraged? Horrified, more likely.

  “What brings you—I mean, kind of the last—why?”

  “A date. His idea.”

  “Ah. Of course. You’re with somebody.”

  “Hey, Fletch, you remember Katrina?” said Tommy, jumping to the rescue or I swear we would still be standing there, miserable, me staring at Roger and Roger staring at the carpet. “Katrina got the shingles, poor thing, and Roger got her tickets.”

  Roger. A little shorter than me, he looked up at me now from under this adorable clump of brown curls that always flopped over his forehead. He blushed through the scatter of freckles that ran across his nose and cheekbones.

  I didn’t really believe in love or relationships and stuff, but if I’d ever had a boyfriend, Roger had been it. No. I definitely had had a boyfriend, and it had been Roger. We had even lived together for like a year and a half. But there in the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House—don’t ask me why—it was like—I don’t know what it was like. I mean he looked exactly the same, but somehow now, the cluster of freckles was the cutest bunch of freckles in the universe. Those big brown cow eyes were—I literally had to struggle to breathe. I’m not really the mushy type, but it kinda broke my heart, seeing him standing there. There should have been something I could say, but I had no idea what it was.

  He looked so shy. Okay, he always looked shy. And he seemed embarrassed. And hurt.

  “Hey, how about that Verdi, huh?” said Tommy. “I mean, they sure don’t write tunes like that anymore!” Roger gave a little half-laugh. I couldn’t stop staring at him.

  “Did Gwyneth Paltrow really spill wine on you?” said Tommy, still valiantly trying. “That’s frigging awesome! Although honestly, it just looks like you peed yourself.”

  “You look—wonderful,” I said.

  Roger pushed back the curls from his forehead and looked at me for a second.

  “There-you-are-there-you-are-there-you-are!” My date was calling. You’d think I’d been hiding instead of standing here in the middle of the lobby holding my torch. “I’ve been looking all over for you, Toots.”

  There it was—Toots. In front of everybody.

  “Darwin, these are some friends of mine,” I said as Darwin put his arm around me. Darwin wanted to show me off. Okay, what the hell. I wanted to brag about him too. Look who brought me to the party!

  “Tommy Radford, Roger Prescott, this is Darwin Stewart Harrison.”

  “Fletchy’s little friends! Charming-charming-charming,” said Darwin, extending a limp hand.

  “Ohmygod, Darwin Stewart Harrison, the brilliant costume designer?” Tommy, of course.

  “If there’s another one, I’ll sue.”

  “What a thrill to meet you!”

  Darwin liked nothing more than a little fawning, and Tommy fawned with the best of them, pumping Darwin’s hand.

  “I’ve admired your work since—forever!”

  Tommy handed me his champagne glass, and in no time he had his arm around Darwin to take a selfie. Darwin flashed his huge fake smile in time for the picture. Obviously Tommy was impressed.

  I mean, c’mon—people wanted to take selfies with my date! How cool was that?

  I turned back to Roger. Was he impressed? With my six-time Tony-winning date?

  Roger looked at Darwin. Then he looked at me. Back to Darwin. And then—and then he just sort of looked away.

  That was it.

  That was all he had to do. And I suddenly saw the entire evening differently. I saw what Roger saw—Darwin, the preening old queen, sad and desperate, paying for the beautiful date he could paw and pretend. And when Roger looked at me, he saw that I was just today’s eye candy, an expensive accessory like a watch. The boy du jour.

  I was a joke these people would snicker about tomorrow morning. And did you see who Darwin brought? Where does he find these guys?

  It was my worst fear come true. Someone had seen right through me—and of all people, it had been Roger, the guy who suddenly meant more to me than all the world.

  My head buzzed.

  Roger said something to Tommy, and Tommy said something. And they went. Darwin said something, and then he said something else that sounded annoyed. I think maybe I said something.

  And I bolted.

  I pushed through the crowd and out through the glass doors at the front of the opera house, and I walked away from there as fast as I could, past the guys piling the folding chairs onto carts, past the fountain, and past the waiting limos.

  I can’t tell you where or in what direction or even how long I walked. Somewhere along the way I must have turned around because when I realized where I was, I was right back in front of that damned opera house, sitting on the black marble edge of the fountain. The water was turned off now. There were some guys taking down the lights and the speakers and loading stuff onto a truck. A security guy was eyeing me.

  It was a very different place now. The party was definitely over.

  Only a few hours earlier I had been having the best day of my entire life. And now, I didn’t know if this was really the worst day of my life—that’s a tough one to call, so many to choose from, you know?—but it was right up there. And all because of one look from an ex-boyfriend, if that’s even what he was.

  I was twenty-five years old, and I’d come so far, or so I’d thought. You can’t know this, and I don’t want people to know from looking at me, but I didn’t exactly grow up playing tennis at the club. Along the way, I’d done every crappy job you can think of and probably some you don’t want to think of.

  I’d had a ton of sex, way more than I should have probably, but it was always with hot guys, guys I wanted to sleep with. When Darwin came along and he was interested, I thought, hey, maybe I been selling myself short—maybe I should be aiming a little higher. But had I ever really wanted to have sex with Darwin? No. Not once. And I’d done it anyway. Did I ever find him attractive? Never. He’s funny, he’s bright, he’s obviously crazy talented, and he knows everybody, he knows everything, he could be a hoot to be around. He was also a nag, a perfectionist, and an insecure insomniac, workaholic, paranoid hypochondriac. Truth be told—I didn’t like him much.

  I’d never taken money from him for sex. I’d taken plenty of other things, however, and some of those other things I’d even disposed of. For money. And if a guy gives you taxi fare, and then you take the subway…

  Let’s be honest—if you go on a date and can show a profit at the end of the evening, there’s a word for that. And that’s what Roger saw when he looked at me.

  This was what had gone through my head while I walked.

  I don’t drink at all, not ever. Bad for the looks, and my looks were all I had in the world.

  But I’m sure people thought I was drunk when they saw the guy in the fancy tux hurling into a trash basket in that little park across from Lincoln Center.

  All because Roger had looked at me, so…how? It wasn’t a disapproving look, he wasn’t disgusted, he wasn’t scolding. It wasn’t contempt. He seemed just kind of sad. Pity? No. Disappointment. Whatever else he thought of me, he had expected more, he had thought I was better than this.

  So had I.

  I had disappointed Roger once before, and it was a terrible, miserable feeling. It had been two years since I’d seen him, and those big, sad, deep brown eyes could still rip me up.

  This is what I thought about as I sat there on that fountain,
watching the moon disappear behind that fucking opera house.

  And I didn’t have the tiniest glimmer of a clue of the roller coaster I had just climbed onto.

  Chapter 2

  How It Ended

  Roger

  I hadn’t thought about Fletch in forever.

  Okay, that’s a pointless lie. Who am I kidding, I still thought about Fletch all the time. Maybe not in that first-thing-in-the-morning-every-goddamned-day way anymore, but he was still sort of lurking, and little things could remind me. Lots of little things.

  But now all I could think of was the last time I’d seen him—before seeing him at the opera, I mean. Not a happy memory.

  The last time I saw Fletch…

  We’d been living together for about a year and a half. And mostly it had been fantastic. I was really happy. I had this incredibly hot guy, who wanted to hang around me! Who’d have believed it? Why me?

  He was way out of my league, and yet, there he was: Always glad to see me when I came home, always there in bed at night, always there at breakfast. And I felt really good about myself, the way you can.

  When somebody looks at you as though you’re really attractive and wonderful, you start to believe it. And, of course, you want to believe it. Life was just plain fun with Fletch. We laughed a lot.

  And the sex was amazing.

  I had had some inklings along the way. A couple unexplained things or improbably explained things. I ignored them. I believed the explanations. Because I was an idiot. Because I wanted to believe them. And he couldn’t be cheating on me, I thought, because he was so sincere when he was around. That’s honestly what I had thought.

  But then there was that last day.

  I was sitting on the couch cross-legged when he got home. I heard the door open behind me, and I didn’t turn. My dog Haggis went to greet him. Haggis, my Scottish terrier, loved Fletch like crazy.

  Yeah, me too.

  On the coffee table in front of me there was just a wine glass, a nearly empty bottle of wine, and a small white plastic jar, labeled in large black letters, all caps:

  LUBE

  No mistaking that. Right to the point, no mincing words. It was a little pocket-sized jar of lubricant, so convenient for sex on the go.

  With somebody not me.

  He saw it, of course. I’m sure he recognized it. He came around the couch, and I could see the little cogs of his brain working, looking for another one of those improbable explanations that I just might be naïve enough to swallow. But it’s not easy to explain away a jar marked LUBE.

  “I wasn’t going through your pockets,” I said. “It fell out when I was pulling stuff out to give to the laundry guy.”

  “I just got that—you know, for us—”

  “It’s half empty.”

  “Roger—I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t. I’ve suspected before. When you smell of some cologne I don’t recognize, when you come home and jump in the shower after you’ve taken a little too long going to the grocery store or getting a haircut. I didn’t want to face it but there it is.”

  “Roger—” He went to sit down in the chair opposite.

  “No, don’t sit down. Because you have to go, Fletch. I can’t. I’m not like you. I can’t do this.”

  “I never promised—”

  “Don’t give me your crap about promises.”

  “I can only tell you—it had nothing to do with you or how I feel about you. It’s completely separate.”

  “The thing is, Fletch—you knew what this would do to me if I ever got a clue, if I ever opened my eyes and caught on. You knew it would do this to me. It would tear me up from the inside.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You knew—or you wouldn’t have lied about it. But you went ahead and did it anyway. You chose. You could think twice about hurting me horribly, or you could get—whatever—with whomever. And we can see which was more important to you.”

  “That’s not how it was at all, Dweeb, not ever. Don’t say it like—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. I never really knew, but I had hoped somehow—that this”—I made a vague gesture to myself and the apartment—“had meant something to you.”

  “It did! It does mean something to me, a lot!”

  “While you were screwing around constantly.”

  “It wasn’t constantly.”

  “What was it then? Once a month? Twice a week? What?”

  “Please, Roger—”

  “Yeah, you’re right. God knows I don’t want to talk about it. I just want you gone.”

  “Roger, it doesn’t have to be the—”

  “Oh yes it does, Fletch. It absolutely does. I’ve had all afternoon to chew on this, and the only conclusion that makes any sense involves you going and not coming back. So call Marco and tell him to make up the couch.” Marco was an old friend of his, and Fletch had crashed there a few times before he moved in with me.

  “I’m so—sorry.”

  “Come back and get your things when I’m not here.”

  Fletch went to the door.

  And he went out.

  I ran to the door and double locked it. I wanted him to hear the locks slamming behind him.

  But I heard them too, and the sound was horrible. Final.

  I turned, leaned my back against the door, and slid down to the floor. The dog was, of course, all over me. I grabbed him, hugged him, buried my face in his tough coat—and I bawled.

  As if I hadn’t already done that enough that day.

  So if, two years later, I didn’t seem all that overjoyed to bump into Fletch at the opera—now you know why.

  Chapter 3

  How It Started

  Fletch

  “Hey, Fletch, look over there!” said Marco, pointing across the street. “Those guys gotta be goin’ somewhere.”

  That’s how Roger’s and my story actually began. Almost four years ago now. Maybe I should have started with this, instead of at the opera, because if Marco hadn’t spotted that group walking through Soho that Saturday night, the best thing that ever happened to me would never have happened. And the worst thing that ever happened to Roger.

  Marco and I were out, bumbling around on those funky cobbled streets with only a few bucks between us. It had been one of those unexpectedly warm days in spring, a lot of people out and about with no coats for the first time. The kind of night when you have to go out, even if you’re broke.

  Marco and I made a pretty awesome team: Marco is gorgeous—Italian, tall, completely buff, with dark hair and eyes and the most amazing eyelashes. If you like Italian guys, Marco is your dream. By contrast, I’m a blond, blue-eyed boy, a little taller than Marco, super fit but not so beefy.

  I’m everybody’s dream.

  We were both just twenty-one at the time. We’d been best friends and occasional sex buddies since our teens. Marco’s family owns a fish market in Hell’s Kitchen, where Marco also works. (And yeah, he smells a little of fish no matter how much he scrubs.)

  So on this particular night—like many others—Marco and I had spent some time standing at the end of the bar looking picturesque and waiting to see what came up.

  It can be fun, but the drawback to this mode of entertainment is that you don’t necessarily attract the kind of people who attract you back.

  So we headed out onto the street to see if we could find a party to crash, and lo and behold, there was a party on the march, right across the street—five well-dressed, professional-looking people, late twenties, all chattering away at once. As Marco had pointed out—they had to be going somewhere.

  “Let’s go,” I said. We jaywalked across the street and fell in a few feet behind our new friends. Sure enough, at the next block, they went in a door and rang a buzzer. Marco and I stepped in behind them. They smiled poli
tely, we smiled politely. They got buzzed in, we went in as well, and we all waited for the elevator together.

  “Guess we’re going to the same party,” Marco said, flashing his grin. Marco was generally gorgeous, but his smile could be lethal. There were two women in the group, and you could see their immediate reactions to Marco. It was almost funny. The guys were obviously straight and there was nothing from them, but the two women seemed ready to have his babies, I swear. The elevator door slid open, and the five got in—but it was one of those ancient, tiny elevators, and it was already crowded.

  “We can wait,” Marco said.

  “Don’t be silly,” said one of the girls and she grabbed his shirt. “There’s plenty of room.”

  She pulled him in so they were scrunched together facing each other. I sort of backed in. It was like a rush-hour subway. There was a guy behind me—judging from the pudge against my back, he’d been skipping the gym for a while—and a pair of boobs squished themselves against my left arm. She smiled. I smiled.

  Marco is decidedly more open-minded about these things than I am. I like guys. I’ve done the other, but I definitely have a preference. I don’t think Marco cares either way. Any port in a storm, as they say.

  We all smiled, polite, a little awkward. The elevator gave a lurch and we were moving.

  “You guys aren’t Goodkin Berdann,” said the woman who’d pulled Marco in on top of her.

  “No, ma’am,” Marco said.

  “Actually Bob suggested we should stop by,” I said.

  “Cool,” said the guy behind me.

  “Bob from Accounting?” asked the boobs to my left.

  “That’s the guy,” said Marco.

  It took forever to get to the third floor, which was apparently where we were going. Party noise increased as we rose, before the seven of us stumbled out of the elevator built for four. There was an open door just down the hall. The sound of chatter poured out the doorway, as did a smiling blond giantess. Late thirties, built like a Norse goddess. Like a Norse goddess with big hair.

  The others now rushed to shake hands, kiss cheeks, greetings, greetings.