Put a Ring on It (16 page)

The sounds reached such a pitch as he shook Casey’s hand, Theo found himself fighting the urge to see if the latest boy band had filed out behind him.

“He is even sexier in person, isn’t he?” Casey asked his audience with a hand on his heart.

“You’re not so bad yourself.” Theo used the leverage of the handshake to pull Casey into a brief hug and kiss, then sat as if overcome. Making a show of eyeing the audience in alarm, Theo leaned in toward Casey and stage whispered, “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I have a fiancé. We’d better keep that between us.”

The audience ate it up.

Casey did his bit to let Theo pitch
Two For the Show
. After Theo had given the sketch of the plot, Casey asked, “So will we get to see as romantic a proposal scene in your show?”

“Well, it takes place in the 1940s. Not only could they be fired, they could be imprisoned.”

The audience made a collective moan of disappointment until Theo continued with a wink, “But it is a musical, so you’ll just have to hope the last song is a happy one.”

“You’ve been working in theater yourself since you were a teen. How long did it take you to write an original show?”

Theo tried to shut out the implicit criticism in that. Everyone who mattered knew he had a lot of creative input in the shows he produced. “I’ve had the idea for years, but I really began working on it this past year.”

“Since you met Kieran.” Casey’s lips were thin, but his teeth were blindingly white in the smile he cheated toward the audience.

Was that true? Was falling for Kieran why the fragments had finally come together and spilled out as fast as he could jot them down? Or was it something else? The peace and security Kieran brought with him into Theo’s house. A lack of competition for a career spotlight. The comfortable silence that let Theo finally hear the harmony of those duets, the call and response, the perfect match of lyric and note. Only a lifetime of practice let Theo keep all that confusion locked behind a warm smile and nod. “That’s true.”

The audience let out an “Aw,” as if they’d been cued by a basket of puppies.

“With that kind of love as an inspiration, I know I can’t wait to see it.”

“Me either.” Theo gave a polite laugh, his upstage hand finding and pressing the wire lion’s head he’d been carrying around in a pocket.

“So tell us something about the wedding. Kieran said he wants to get married on the beach? I’ve always found romance on the beach got sand in all the wrong places.”

Damn, it was hard keeping a grudge against the guy who’d killed off Dr. Harrison when he could work that kind of stagecraft.

“Whatever Kieran wants is perfect for me. I’m just lucky he said yes.” It was a great house. Theo felt the energy feedback looping as Casey steered them. After this, no way could The Fraz or Pfarrer not come in on
Two For the Show
.

“Well, I know after watching that proposal everyone is dying to see you guys tie the knot. Right?”

There was so much affirmation they could have been in a Baptist tent revival instead of a Manhattan studio.

“Check this out.” On the monitor where they usually ran clips of whatever media project was being hawked, a beautiful sunset beach venue appeared, lit by tiki torches, tropical flowers in the foreground, a makeshift flower-draped altar near the water.

In what was obviously green screen projection, Casey stepped into the image in a tuxedo jacket and silk shirt on top, sagging tropical print board shorts on bottom. The prerecorded Casey waggled his bare toes for a laugh.

“We weren’t sure if you were going casual or black tie.”

The audience found it hysterical initially but tired of it quickly, the laughs almost immediately tinged with discomfort.

“I told you I wasn’t cut out for beach romance,” Casey told them. “I think this is more what Kieran had in mind.”

The dubbed-in Casey shrugged and disappeared, to be replaced by a computer-dropped image lifted from the proposal video, Theo on one knee, holding out the ring to Kieran. They were close to the altar. Subtract the winter clothes—and the flowers that would make Kieran’s nose and eyes run—and that would be pretty perfect. Theo could see it. That was them.

Casey sighed along with the audience. “And who wouldn’t kill to be on a beach in Hawaii instead of freezing here in New York. So sick of it, right?” The image vanished from the monitor. “So we thought, everyone wants to see the wedding, you want it on the beach, everyone would love a little escape from New York right now. Well, hold onto your socks, because a week from next Sunday,
The Casey McMann Show
will be flying you to Hawaii, where we’ve booked the sunset beach wedding package for you and Kieran and twenty guests at the Ho’omaka’ana Resort on Maui.”

KIERAN HAD
thought he hated being the Korean IT Guy With the Hair. He’d be happy to go back to that if it got him out of being the Korean IT Guy From That Proposal Video. People kept seeking him out at work. Half of them had to say that he and Theo were absolutely adorable. The other half wanted him to know it was great, and they completely supported it. Kieran ducked his head, nodded, or murmured thanks. He wanted to tell them if they really wanted to show support, they could cut a check to some group working on gay—or even better, transgender—employment rights so Brett’s roommate, Vanessa, couldn’t get fired or forced to use the wrong bathroom if the bank where she worked switched managers.

He found some temporary escape in offering to make a coffee run. He’d barely hit the lobby when his phone went off. He thought it was a last-minute request for soy instead of skinny, but it was worse. It was Theo’s “friend” Gideon.

“What? I’m at work.”

“Is this your idea of stalling, or is there some new definition I’m unfamiliar with?”

He’d gotten Theo to agree to August. By August things would have calmed down. Theo would either have decided on his recasting or—or not. But it would feel a lot more solid than all of this drama.

“I’m talking about your fiancé on
The Casey McMann Show
, arranging your dream wedding to take place in two weeks.”

Kieran’s heart pounded hard and sharp and quadruple-espresso fast. The ache spread into his shoulders as he tried to catch his breath. “What? I didn’t—” He dug into his memory. Theo had woken Kieran up with a long, sweet blow job, which might account for a few missing brain cells. Then when he was dressing after a shower, he’d asked if Theo had a busy day.

“Couple of appointments,” Theo had answered with a yawn.

To Gideon, Kieran snapped, “We don’t exchange printed schedules. I didn’t know he was doing another appearance. Wait. How did you know?”

“There’s this new thing called social media. I believe your generation is supposed to have some familiarity with it.”

Kieran squeezed the phone against his ear. They could all fuck off. Gideon, the people waiting on their coffees, and fucking Theo. Kieran was done. Past done with this shit. He’d just—what? Exactly what was he going to do?

“If you could stop showing how fucking much better you are than everyone for five seconds, maybe you could explain what’s going on?”

“I already told you. Theo is on
The Casey McMann Show
, planning your wedding in Hawaii. Do you need me to explain how to stream a live video on your smartphone? I thought you were a computer engineer.”

“And I thought you had a job. I mean, besides obsessing over Theo’s love life. Unless, that is, you wish you were still a part of it.”

Kieran followed that up with the most satisfying hang up of his life. He wished he’d been on a landline so he could slam the phone into the cradle instead of pressing End hard enough to feel the screen give slightly.

He did log on to the local station’s site, but by the time he’d gone through a sign up and started the stream, the host was making chocolate truffles with a kid in glasses who looked about ten.

He stomped off into the cold. He’d love to say he didn’t believe Gideon, but that was too easy. Theo announcing plans to take off and marry Kieran in Hawaii in two weeks sounded exactly like what had been going on for the last five days. Theo brushed aside everything Kieran had done to try to slow it down, to find a way this didn’t end in disaster.

Kieran couldn’t take any more. If his choices had boiled down to this sham of a wedding that was nothing more than a dress rehearsal for Theo’s next show, or full stop, this is where I get off, Kieran knew which one he had to pick. He just wished it didn’t have to come with such a big dose of empty on the inside.

Standing in the line for coffee, he caught up on the YouTube clips of
The Casey McMann Show
. Knowing the wedding package had come as a shock to Theo only made the emptiness inside bigger. It would be much easier if Theo had been the one to blunder forward, ignoring his promises to Kieran. But Theo didn’t turn it down either, despite the fact that he could have flown them to Hawaii on his own without help from
The Casey McMann Show
.

As Kieran waited for the drink order, Gideon’s number flashed with a message. Maybe it would have been better not to read it, but Kieran might as well get all the shit out where he could see it before he had to pick which pile to land in.

The prenup will be faxed to Theo’s apartment by five.

Gideon could shove his prenup. Theo and Casey—who made a much better couple anyway—could shove their Paradise Wedding Package. And the caffeine-deprived of the forty-third floor could shove their drink order. Coffee and being nice to other people was what had gotten him into this fucking mess anyway.

Kieran was taking the rest of the day off from being IT Guy or So-Cute Fiancé Guy. He switched his phone to airplane mode, shoved it into his pocket, and went out the door.

THE WORST
thing was, Kieran still couldn’t stand the idea of hurting Theo. Knowing it couldn’t work out didn’t automatically make everything easy. Why couldn’t Theo have waited? Till August or next year. And how the fuck did you do this? Walk away from someone who made everything suck less because he was dragging you down a path where everything would suck more?

This was the absolute problem with giving a shit. And Kieran wasn’t ever going to make that mistake again.

He’d have to go back to the condo sometime—have to have the conversation sometime—but first he went to the Hayden Planetarium show. Stupid to waste over twenty bucks on a ticket when he was going to have to find someplace to live if he didn’t want to end up back under his mother’s roof, Kieran knew, but the sight of the giant sphere lured him in. He needed the thirty-minute escape of seeing how fucking insignificant all this shit was compared to billions of years and infinite space. If anything could serve as a lesson on how not to give a shit, it was the stars. The crazy drama in Kieran’s life was less than a blink in the existence of a star.

Pulling in all that cold distance from the night sky to dull the awareness of the empty space in his chest, he walked the rest of the way west to Theo’s condo.

Kieran knew Theo pretty well, so he thought he knew what to expect when he stepped out of the hall. The assault of cleaning fluids on his nose he’d anticipated, but Theo wasn’t puttering around in the kitchen, dusting and dancing, or folding clothes while he walked on the treadmill. He wasn’t at the piano.

He was on the couch, face turned toward the window. Motionless. Eerie. Even asleep, Theo made sounds and sighs and shifted. A liquor bottle and shot glass were on the coffee table. Kieran tried to hold on to the not-giving-a-shit coldness, but it turned to seawater in his lungs, choking him.

“Did you come back for your stuff?” Theo didn’t turn around.

The sound that came out of Kieran was a gasp without even the idea of a word behind it.

He’d thought he was ready, had everything lined up, and now he wouldn’t even need it. Theo was making it easier. On both of them.

But his shaky voice said, “Why would—” He cleared his throat. “—you ask that?”

“I’m assuming you heard what happened on
The Casey McMann Show
. And that you aren’t interested in my explanation, since you turned off your phone.” Theo’s voice, his expressive, toe-curling, stomach-flipping voice was flat, and he still didn’t turn around.

The stillness was freaky. Like he wasn’t real. Right then Kieran wished none of it was.

He took a few steps past the kitchen but stayed on the wood floor that separated it from the living room. “How did you know I turned off my phone?”

Theo poured a shot from the liquor bottle, knocked it back. But the motions looked mechanical. “If you didn’t….” He lowered the glass to the table with a solid thunk. “If you just ignored my calls and texts and increasingly pathetic voice mails, then you are much more of a coldhearted bastard than I ever imagined.”

So they were going there. It wouldn’t be the first time Kieran had been slapped with that label. It had been a favorite of Henry, back in Boston, who’d failed to grasp the concept of friends with benefits. Kieran knew the whole litany: stoic, cold, analytical,
Asian
.

But this was Theo.

“Thanks.”

“I’m not mad, Kieran.”

Not
baby
. He hadn’t realized how much he’d miss it.

Theo went on, “You tried to tell me. I know I screwed up with the proposal—never saw the video coming. But I thought I fixed it. At least I tried. Even today—”

“What happened?”

Theo finally turned to look at him. “What does it matter?” His face was as toneless as his voice.

Kieran, who would have been a complete lock if there had been a vote for Least Likely to Cheer Anyone Up Ever, wanted to drive that look away. But he didn’t know how. He didn’t even know how to make his feet go farther into the living room so they weren’t having this conversation with ten feet of space between them.

The edge of the carpet was the demilitarized zone. One more step could take things too far. Then all the nasty, painful secrets they both knew would be dragged out and employed as weapons of mutually assured destruction.