Page 63 of Love Scenes

When we finish the song, Garrett whoops out in appreciation. His seal of approval is a high I think I can ride for the remaining days until the show.

“This is going better than I expected,” Emmy adds. “Should we become a real band?”

It’s another ego stroke that bolsters me up.

We can pull this off.

We really can.

And then we move on to our first run-through of our finale.

Sarai hits the twos and fours of “Listen to the Music” with gusto. It doesn’t matter, because without a drummer here, Joseph’s having a hard time holding a consistent tempo. Emmy and Garrett are true professionals, eyes on Joseph’s hands, trying their best to match his speed and salvage this. There’s nothing I can do to help the situation. When a musical boat starts to sink, I only know how to watch it go under, so the verses I sing are fragmented and impatient. I can’t hear where we’re going and it’s obvious.

A line of sweat forms a perfect river down the center of Joseph’s head, over the slope of his nose and onto the rug under my coffee table. When the song slows, and it’s only occasional strums while he sings the last bridge before the final swells of the chorus, he has an almost evangelical look about him. Feverish. Desperate to solve this. Emmy is supposed to take the fancy guitar riffs near the end, but she can’t leave Joseph hanging, so she strums along with him to our disjointed finish. The instrumentation peters out and Joseph squeezes his eyes closed, wincing as if he’s waiting for a scolding.

Sarai pulls the song up on her phone again. “We could play along with the real version until your dad’s here,” she proposes, so soft and kind I want to squeeze her. “I think that will really help me.” She says it like her tambourine was the problem. Like she’s the one who needs saving. It’s a gesture so much bigger than her years and executed with the kind of simplicity that only seems to come from the hearts of children.

We run the number again, streaming the original track through my TV speakers. Having a driving beat behind us makes it so that when Joseph can’t keep up, he’s able to stop and let the song carry itself until he can jump in again. My two distinct vocal cracks are masked by the actual vocals. It’s obvious this is the one song we really need Joseph’s dad for, which means we will have to find time to rehearse during setup. Or wing it.

If I’m guessing, it will be the latter.

“It’s supposed to be a fun thing anyways,” I tell everyone, unsure who it is I’m trying to convince.

Emmy wouldn’t have come to this if she wanted us to flop onto our faces. We want this performance to be worthy of reposting on our social media accounts. Something to give sound bites over. Something to draw attention to my foundation and pull in even more outside donors after the fact. Something to think of every time a Kearns song gets licensed for a commercial or a TV show.

The fact that Daniel Traverson used to fly by the seat of his pants every year truly astounds me now.

We rehearse a little while longer. When even Emmy starts missing some of her parts, I know it’s time to call it. Everyone’s come to this after a long day. There’s no sense in making this even more frustrating for all involved.

Even with the lows, it’s exhilarating to have created together. Made music with our voices and our hands in the middle of my living room, a place I once sat and cried with a cold plate of bucatini while hate-watching the movie Joseph and I shot in Ireland.

Emmy and Garrett head out, waving once and then linking hands. Sarai goes into the bathroom to get ready for bed. She’s spending the night in Tyler’s old room, then coming to set with me tomorrow, insistent that she doesn’t mind the early wake-up.

Joseph makes a show of heading toward the door. “Better be going,” he says, fishing his keys out of the back pocket of his jeans.

“Hold on.”

I grab his arm and pull us to the little alcove of my front entryway, which is out of the eyeline of the rest of the house. Eleven-year-olds are nosy by nature, and it’s not at all out of Sarai’s wheelhouse to have her ear pressed to the bathroom door, listening to this conversation. I saw the way she clocked the chocolate and the roses and the quick glances between Joseph and me.

“Thank you. For all of this.”

He waves me off.

“No. Don’t make this a small thing. You’ve gone so far beyond what anyone’s ever voluntarily done for me. I got an email today about your donation too. Which I really thought was a joke until the money came through. It means a lot.”

“I told you. I owed you.”

It’s a strange thing to say, and it nags at me. “We’re past the point of settling old debts and you know it. Don’t act like you did it because you had to even the score.”

“I’m not acting like anything, Sloane.”

“Really?”

He grimaces. Takes a step back and then two forward, suddenly holding my face in his hands. It’s the exact kind of indulgent gesture all the best actors used to use in theater school, and I hate that my mind goes there. Hate that I can’t divorce my job from my real life in moments like this, when Joseph’s looking at me with so much consideration that I can barely breathe.

“I just don’t know what to do with you,” he whispers.

“Don’t think too much,” I say, giving the one piece of advice I can never seem to follow, knowing full well that I’m playing thislike a scene myself, landing every beat in a way that would have made my classmates softly applaud.