Love on Stage Read online

  Manny was persistent. “What was his name?”

  Gavin gave in. “Lazaro Hernandez. And we dated for nearly four months, until he graduated and moved to Atlanta.”

  “You weren’t too broken up,” Larry said. “I remember you were humping that big football player like the next day.”

  “That was charity work,” Gavin protested. “Warren Updegrove was so deep in the closet he was about to find Narnia. I helped him along.”

  “That’s our Gavin,” Manny said. “Mother Teresa with a dick.”

  Gavin held up three fingers to Manny. “Read between the lines.”

  He got up and stalked to his bedroom. He couldn’t believe his roommates were being such assholes. Didn’t they see the change in him? He wasn’t that old Gavin—the one who slept with anybody with a dick. He was in love.

  He slept in Saturday morning, and by the time he woke, there was a text from Miles. He was already on the road to Nashville; he’d call Gavin later. Gavin luxuriated in bed for a while; his shift at Java Joe’s didn’t start until noon. He thought back to the night before, to how awesome the sex had been with Miles and then to what his roommates had said.

  Had he really changed? Maybe without even realizing it, he was using Miles the way he’d used so many guys before—gotten concert tickets or fancy dinners or just a real good fuck, then said sayonara.

  It was an uncomfortable feeling, and he wanted to go right over and talk to Miles, confront him with the idea, see what he said.

  But Miles wasn’t there. He was on the road to Wisconsin, where he had committed to spending almost three weeks with Gavin and his family, for no money, when it was obvious he had a lot of high-paying clients right there in Miami. No wonder Gavin’s father kept asking if he and Miles were dating. From the outside, it looked like a real loser proposition.

  Unless, Gavin thought, sitting up. Unless Miles was right, and Gavin had talent, and there was a potential for the Singing Sweethearts and their grandkids to cut a record. Did they even call it that now that music was all digital? He got up, practiced his scales, and then went to work.

  That night, Miles called to check in. “How’s your practice coming?” he asked.

  “There’s an awful lot to remember,” Gavin grumbled, leaning back on his bed. “All that stuff about phrasing and emotion, on top of remembering the lyrics and getting the notes right.”

  He opened his shorts and began idly playing with his dick. Just the sound of Miles’s voice gave him a hard-on.

  “You get to the point where you aren’t remembering,” Miles said. “You’re just feeling, and the emotion comes through.”

  Miles kept talking, but Gavin closed his eyes and focused on his dick, strumming it just below the slit with his thumb as he daydreamed about Miles.

  “Gavin? Are you still there?”

  He opened his eyes. “Yeah, Miles, I’m here. I was just having a moment.”

  “I bet I know just what kind of moment you were having. You’re a real horndog, Gavin.”

  “I’m not,” Gavin protested, sitting up. “I’m a serial monogamist. And right now, I want to be monogamous with you.”

  “You will be soon,” Miles said.

  They talked for a while longer, and after Miles hung up, Gavin was left in a happy, sexy haze.

  Monday morning he was at Java Joe’s for his last shift before leaving for Wisconsin when Careful asked, “What are you going to do for coffee up there?”

  “Suffer,” Gavin said. “There’s no coffee shop for miles around. And the only pot at the house is from like the 1950s.”

  “Take one of the machines,” Careful said, nodding toward the display of cappuccino makers for sale. “Just be sure to bring it back.”

  “Hey, thanks, Careful,” Gavin said.

  “You remember who your friends are when you become a big star, okay?”

  “I’ll never forget the little people who made it all happen.” Gavin smiled at him and then turned back to the cash register, where a woman who was max five feet was standing. “No offense,” he said to her. “What can I get you?”

  He carried the machine back to his apartment at the end of his shift. He already had a plane ticket back to Miami after Labor Day, and Careful had promised to put him back on the schedule when he returned. All in all, things had worked out very sweetly.

  There was something intriguing about having sex with Miles after all that time he’d spend lusting over him and then having to wait again to have some more. That afternoon while his roomies were still at work, Gavin put Miles’s playlist on his iPhone, then took off all his clothes and lay back on his bed.

  He could still smell Miles’s cologne, could feel those sensuous fingers caressing his skin. He grabbed his dildo from the bedside table and slicked it up. Then, with his eyes closed, thinking of Miles, he pushed it past his anal ring and up into his channel.

  He sat up on the edge of the bed and began riding up and down on the dildo, stroking his dick as he did. He imagined that was Miles’s dick plowing his ass, Miles’s hand on his dick, Miles’s lips on his.

  His orgasm wasn’t as great as the one with Miles had been, but it only had to hold him for another day or two until he could sample the real thing once again.

  The next morning, he was on his way. As the flight attendant made his pre-flight announcements, Gavin was reminded of the title of a story he’d had to read in college, “We Are Having an Adventure.” He sat back in his seat, made sure his seat belt was fastened, and waited for his adventure to begin.

  Erica picked him up at the airport in Minneapolis for the hour-and-a-half drive home. Gavin was so eager to get started that he wanted to sing in the car, but he was afraid that without the music behind him, he’d hit a wrong note or get off-key, and that would totally suck in front of his opera-singer cousin. But when she said, “Next stop, Eau Claire,” he couldn’t resist.

  He began the parody song they’d written together as kids, to the tune of a Gilbert O’Sullivan song. “Eau Claire, the moment I met you I swear,” he sang, not caring how he sounded.

  “I knew you were weird,” Erica chimed in.

  “You’ve been what I feared.”

  They joined together on the chorus, and by the time they finished, they were both laughing and Erica had them on I-94 heading east.

  “You sound good, Gav,” she said. “You been practicing?”

  “Yeah. I told you about Miles, right? The dude who’s coming up to help us? I’ve been working with him.”

  “I looked him up,” Erica said. “He has some serious chops.”

  “I know. He’s pretty awesome. He told me he used to hang around with all these old-time musicians when he was a teenager.”

  “Not just old-timers,” Erica said. “I read that he started working at Emilio Estefan’s studio summers while he was in music school. That he’s produced songs for Pitbull, Jimmy Buffett, Dr. Dre—I mean, all kinds of music, all kinds of artists.”

  “I told you, he really knows his stuff.”

  “I can see that. How did you hook up with him? In a bar? Online dating?”

  “It’s not like that,” Gavin said, crossing his arms over his chest. “He comes in to Java Joe’s all the time with his headphones on, so I figured he was just some random Music Dude. A couple of days after I got back from July fourth, I was feeling happy, so I sang something to him when I handed him his latte. He said I had a good voice, and I told him about the Dells gig.”

  He turned to face her. “Get this. He’d actually heard of the Sweethearts, and he digs that kind of music. So he was the one who came up with the idea to work with us.”

  “Coolness,” she said. “I have to tell you I am so thrilled to escape the muck and manure for a couple of weeks.”

  Erica was spending the summer with her parents on their family farm before heading off to graduate school. “If things go my way, someday I’ll be singing at the big opera houses in Europe. That is, as long as this master’s in opera opens the right d
oors.”

  Gavin was struck by how music had been so instrumental in his family’s destiny. When the Sweethearts broke up, Grandma Frances was the first to marry, Gavin’s late granddad, who sold used cars. He had been an adoring fan of hers, a “stage-door Johnny,” she had called him. Without music, they might never have met.

  Next to marry was Erica’s Grandma Ida, to a farm boy she had dated as a teenager. With the money she’d earned from singing, she and her husband had bought a farm outside Eau Claire, and she’d settled quickly into the role of a farm wife. She and her husband had four sons. Erica’s father, the second in line, had gone to the University of Wisconsin to study agriculture, where he met his wife. They had rebelled against factory farming and set up their own small organic farm on a piece of family land.

  Erica had grown up milking cows, collecting eggs, and helping her family sell organic produce at local farmers’ markets. When her parents experimented with playing opera to their chickens to encourage them to produce more eggs, Erica got hooked on the music, singing along with the arias as she worked.

  Gavin had always felt a kinship to Erica because both of them seemed to have been born into the wrong families. Gavin hated his small-town roots, his father’s salesman bonhomie, the way the straight world seemed to conspire against him by making him take chemistry and literature and gym class, when all he wanted to do was perform.

  Gavin had been conscious as a kid that his family was wealthy, more so than his cousins, at least. Because his father owned the dealership, they always had new cars. They went on Caribbean vacations during the winter, and his mother never complained about buying him the coolest clothes. Erica’s family, on the other hand, scraped for spare change, according to his father. They “lived off the land,” eating what they grew. Erica’s mother made their clothes, and they never left the farm for vacations.

  Erica pulled up in front of his family’s house, a Colonial style on a full acre in the best part of town. “See you tomorrow at the lake,” she said. She leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. “Thanks for organizing this, Gavin. I’m really looking forward to it.”

  He hopped out and grabbed his duffel from the back. “Thanks for the ride. I’m looking forward to this too,” he said, though he knew he had very different reasons from Erica’s.

  Saying Something

  The front door was locked, and he didn’t have a key, so he had to ring the doorbell. The familiar sound of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” rang through the house, and Gavin recalled Miles’s Beethoven tattoo. It was almost like fate had brought them together when they had so much in common.

  No one came to the door. There were no cars in the driveway, and when Gavin peered through the glass, he saw the garage was empty too.

  Had he forgotten to tell his parents he was coming home? Where was the marching band, his parents waving, his favorite foods prepared and ready on the table? Or, failing that, where was the spare key?

  He checked under the welcome mat, above the door lintel, and then began picking up rocks and flowerpots. He finally found the key taped beneath a garden gnome and used it to open the door. The burglar alarm began beeping, and he confidently entered his birthday—082591 The panel continued to flash red.

  WTF? His parents had changed the code? He grabbed his phone and punched the speed dial for his dad.

  “My wayward son,” his father answered.

  “What’s the alarm code?”

  “Your sister’s birthday.”

  “Gretchen’s? I thought it was mine!” He scrambled to remember her birthday and plugged the numbers in.

  “The world does not revolve around you, Gavin,” his father said as the alarm panel shut down. “I assume you’re at the house.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” he muttered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yes, Dad, I’m at the house. Where is everybody?”

  “It’s the middle of the afternoon. Where do you think we are? I’m at work. Your mother is at her yoga group. And Viking is down the street at Mr. Goldsmith’s for a play date. You can pick him up.”

  Viking was the Irish setter his mother had bought the summer before Gavin left for college. Gretchen—aka Wretched, when they were kids—had already moved in with a boyfriend in Madison and made it clear she was never coming back.

  “Sure, Dad.”

  “Give Mr. G a twenty, please. I’ll pay you back this evening.”

  After he hung up, Gavin dug around in his pocket. A twenty? What did his father think he was made of?

  He stopped short. Crap. When had he started channeling his father in his brain?

  He found a folded twenty in the back of his phone case, his emergency stash. After leaving his bags in his room, he walked down the street to the Goldsmiths’. Mr. G had to be eighty, and instead of greeting people at a superstore for extra cash, he took in dogs whose owners worked all day.

  When Gavin rang the bell, a cacophony of barking erupted inside the house. Jesus, how many dogs did the man have? Mr. G opened the door a crack, as if he were afraid Gavin was some kind of burglar. But immediately Gavin understood why; a very large cocoa-colored standard poodle tried to nose his way out.

  “Ranger! Back!” Mr. G said. “Hello, Gavin. Come on in.”

  He body-blocked the big poodle, and Gavin stepped into his foyer. Viking romped over to him and put his paws up on Gavin’s waist, trying to lick his face. Gavin laughed as a couple of Yorkies scrambled around underfoot.

  He handed Mr. G the twenty and accepted Viking’s leash in return. He clipped it on, and Mr. G cracked the door open again for him. Viking took off down the street as if he were a greyhound chasing a rabbit, Gavin stumbling behind him.

  “Viking! Heel!” he yelled.

  Viking paid no attention to him. Gavin began to run, figuring he could outrace the dog, but all that happened was that Viking galloped on ahead, dragging Gavin behind. “Stop, you crazy dog!”

  When they got back to the house Viking turned on him, jumping and licking. “I know. I missed you too.” Gavin leaned down and kissed the dog’s titian head.

  Viking turned and ran into the house, returning a moment later with a red-and-white-striped rope in his mouth. Gavin sat on the marble floor of the foyer and played tug-a-rope with him until the front door opened and his mother walked in.

  “Gavin. You’re home.”

  Why did both his parents have such a talent for the obvious? “Yes, Mom.” He stood up and kissed her cheek. “You look good.”

  Natalie Kaczmarek wore a scoop-neck pink T-shirt and white cargo shorts, and she carried a blue yoga mat. No makeup, no jewelry, and she was still one of the prettiest women he knew, even though she was close to fifty.

  Though he’d just been back in Wisconsin for Independence Day, Gavin had gone directly to Starlit Lake, and he realized he hadn’t been back in this house for at least a year or more. As his mother went off to do something motherly, he looked around. There was a new painting in the living room—what looked like a street scene from the French Riviera. Both the sofas were covered with blankets, which he realized was so that Viking could choose whichever he wanted to rest on.

  Otherwise, the house looked the same. He fooled around with Viking for a while; then his father came home, and the dog immediately abandoned Gavin.

  The big joke about Viking was that his mother had bought him as her surrogate child, against his father’s objections, but quickly Viking had become his daddy’s dog. Gavin couldn’t help but be jealous, because he’d always been the family favorite before.

  Gretchen was the first-born, and she’d been a colicky baby. His parents had almost decided not to have another child because she was such a handful, but then Gavin showed up. He was sweet-natured and adorable, and Gretchen hated him. Looking back, he couldn’t blame her. She was smart, way smarter than he was, but she was also pudgy and cranky. She’d bring home straight As, where Gavin scraped by with Bs and Cs, but it was clear that his parents liked him best.

 
It wasn’t until puberty, when Gretchen’s plumpness turned into curves and her braces came off, that their parents woke up and realized that they needed to pay attention. By then it was too late. Gretchen dated older boys with motorcycles and marijuana. She stayed out late and skipped family events.

  She kept up her grades, though, and followed a boyfriend to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, their father’s alma mater. She graduated with a degree in computer science and moved to Seattle, where she worked for a startup company that did something so complicated Gavin had no idea how to describe it.

  Gretchen was the dark-haired one in a family of blondes and the smart one in a family that valued looks and charm over intellect. No wonder she’d cut out as soon as she could. But then, Gavin had done the same, hadn’t he? He’d gone to college in Miami instead of Madison and come back only for holidays.

  At the dinner table, his father wanted to talk about Miles. “You think this guy can help you make a record?” he asked.

  “Nobody calls them records anymore, Dad,” Gavin said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Gavin shrugged. “He likes that old-fashioned kind of music.”

  “Choral singing is making a comeback,” his mother said unexpectedly. He thought she was probably the least musical person he knew. They’d never even had a stereo system when he was a kid. If he wanted to listen to music, he had to use an MP3 player.

  “Really?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Look at the a cappella group your cousin Archie sang with. Every college these days has at least a couple of those groups. And there was that TV program last Christmas—what was it called?” She looked to his father.

  “The Sing-Off,” he said. “Some great performances.”

  “You watched that?” Gavin asked.

  “We’re not Philistines here in Wisconsin,” his father said. “We get not only broadcast TV, but cable and satellite. If the three of you could sing as well as one of those groups, you might have something.”

  “I’ve been working with Miles for the last few weeks, and my singing has really improved. He gave me these vocal exercises to do, showed me how to read music and how to manage my breathing.”