Ever since the moment she uttered the word “marriage,” I’ve felt this almost otherworldly pull toward Courtney. And if I had the guts to examine why, I might realize that Courtney’s articulating something I want for myself, too. Marriage—the certainty, the inherent partnership, the unconditional love, the promise of a sweet forever—is something that I want also.

  Someday, I quickly amend as I think back on it. Not now, but someday.

  I had been unwilling to share those deep thoughts with Dina last night, so instead I’d said: “I feel protective of her. She’s a good person. I don’t want to see her get hurt.”

  “Because you like her.”

  “Yes. Fine. I like her.”

  “What are you doing about it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To stop her. What are you doing? Why don’t you ask her out?”

  “We’ve been out,” I replied. “We’re friends.”

  “Josh, I’m not an idiot. Your face doesn’t read ‘friends.’ It reads ‘get-in-my-bed-and-stay-there, you-hot-slice-of-woman’!”

  In spite of how crappy I’d felt, I laughed. “You know her. She’s antidating. She would rather marry a stranger than date another person. And I’m…” I blew out an exasperated breath. “I’m into her, yes. But come on. I’m not ready to get married. To anyone.”

  And Dina? Dina, who’d fought Courtney tooth and nail about arranged marriage only two weeks before, looked up at me from under thick, black lashes and asked:

  “Why not?”

  And it’s that question that’s buzzing around in my brain as, here and now, I stand outside of Miss Saigon, waiting for Courtney.

  Why not?

  Every good reason in the world rushes to my mind.

  First and foremost?

  Because I’m not ready.

  I’m not ready to be a provider like my dad. By the time he was my age, he was a junior accountant with a solid health care plan and potential for growth. He had a wife and toddler at home and another on the way. By contrast, I live in an apartment with four other people, and some months, when I need to pay for a performance venue or ad space in a drama festival program, my finances are so tight that I have less than twenty dollars in my bank account after paying rent.

  I’m not ready to be tied down. I like flirting with random girls at Tidewaters. Chalking up as an anomaly the fact that I haven’t even been able to look at another woman since I started having feelings for Courtney, I’ve always liked keeping my options open. Am I really ready to be with one woman for the rest of my life?

  And last but not least, Courtney and I as a unit aren’t ready. Sure, we’ve technically known each other for over a year, but we’ve only gotten closer recently. Most people I know date for years and then live together, to be sure they have a solid basis for forever. Frankly, at this point, Courtney and I would have little better than an arranged marriage ourselves, were we to get together.

  I’m just not husband material in any real or traditional sense, and trying to act like I am is just going to end up hurting both of us by killing my dreams and disappointing a woman who deserves the best of everything life has to offer. And I refuse to do either.

  I lean against the cement wall of the Lunt-Fontanne theater, watching cabs drop off passengers who are either on their way to a show or out for a night on the town. A misty rain is falling, and it lands in tiny droplets on my lashes and cheeks. A bus honks its horn as a scalper tries to sell me tickets, and I think to myself, I love it here. This is a good life, isn’t it?

  I turn to the left to inhale the smell of hot dogs and roasted chestnuts and then—

  And then I see her.

  I see Courtney Jane Salinger walking toward me.

  She’s holding an umbrella, and her blonde hair, like liquid honey, tumbles around her shoulders in waves. Her dress is royal-blue silk and short, but what really draws my attention are the knee-high, brown-suede boots she’s wearing. They allow a strip of skin to peek out between the tops of the boots and the bottom of the dress. And—fuck me—but how I covet that skin. I want to kill every man who’s checking out that strip of skin, because I want it to belong to me.

  I force my gaze up, over the hem of her unbuttoned khaki trench coat, lingering on her full breasts before finally landing on her smile. She’s like a tractor beam—and I know the definition of “tractor beam” because I just looked it up to see if it’s an appropriate phrase to use in my play. First coined for science fiction novels, it’s a beam of light that attracts one object to another over a distance. She’s the beam of light. She’s my beam of light, and I’m attracted. I can’t fucking look away.

  One hand holds an umbrella, and she raises the other in greeting as she comes closer. I feel mine lift from my side, like she’s bidden it gently to respond in kind, and it must comply.

  “Hi,” she says, stopping before me. Her voice is breathy like she’s been running, except I know she hasn’t been.

  I want to say something. I mean to speak, but I can’t. I can’t say anything. I just stand there staring at her—so glad to see her, so furious at her for this arranged-marriage bullshit, so angry that I like her as much as I do, and so fucking sad that our time together isn’t limitless.

  She scans my eyes with hers for a second and then steps closer, reaching for me, and drawing me into her lilac-scented arms for a hug hello. Touch. It’s an aphrodisiac. It’s a promise of something without giving everything. My body reacts where my mouth cannot, and I pull her against me, shaking inside, my eyes closing in surrender as she leans her cheek against my shoulder.

  And that’s how we stand, holding each other in front of the Lunt-Fontanne theater; opponents with a small respite from a terrible war, with only one another for support. I can’t have her. She can’t have me. Damn you, fate and attraction and everything else that has hurled us into outer space together, two celestial bodies gravitationally pulled to one another, for better or worse.

  Still holding her tight, I lean down a little so that my lips are close to her ear.

  “Hey,” I whisper. “How’re you feeling? Dina said you were under the weather.”

  “Better,” she says, still resting against me. I can’t lie—the hint of congestion in her voice makes me weirdly happy. I was worried she was avoiding me last night. And if she’s really got a cold, it proves she wasn’t.

  “I missed you last night,” I admit. “At least two gimlets went to waste when I thought I saw you in the crowd.”

  “Poor gimlets,” she says, leaning away. She cocks her head to the side and smiles up at me. “Someday I’m going to get a cat and name him Gimlet.”

  “To remind you of your wasted days in New York?” I ask, but my real question is: To remind you of me?

  “Not wasted,” she whispers, her voice earnest and soft. “Never wasted.”

  Her smile turns sad, and she straightens. My arms loosen as she steps out of my embrace.

  “This will be my third time seeing this show,” I tell her, gesturing for her to precede me into the theater.

  “Mine too!” she exclaims, grinning at me over her shoulder.

  Oh, my heart. My stupid, reckless heart.

  I feel it. In that moment, I know it.

  I’m falling for her. No matter how much I don’t want to, no matter how much our timing sucks, no matter how little time we have—I’m falling hard and fast, and I have a feeling there’s nothing I can do about it now.

  I show our tickets to the usher, who waves us inside.

  “Did I hear him right?” asks Courtney. “Did he say ‘Orchestra, Row B’?”

  I nod. What can I say? I splurged. I wanted her to have the best seats in the whole damn house. I just wanted to do this one stupid thing for her.

  “Josh!” Her smile is blinding. “I’ve never sat so close. Thank you.”

  I can’t help myself. I take her hand in mine, grateful beyond measure when she doesn’t pull it away.

  Moments later, seated side by side in the dark, our fingers are still linked together, though we haven’t looked at each other since I took her hand, as though meeting each other’s eyes would break the spell we’re under.

  Soon we are swept away on a tale of forbidden love between an American soldier and Vietnamese bar girl during the American occupation of Vietnam in the 1970s. The eighth musical number is called “Sun and Moon”; a love song between the hero and heroine in which they speak of their differences—or rather, of how, in spite of those differences, they have fallen in love with one another. She calls him “sunlight” and herself “moon,” and the two are joined by “the gods of fortune.”

  Unable to stop myself, I turn and look at Courtney, who lifts her chin before twisting her neck just a touch to meet my eyes. Lifting her hand to my lips, I press them to her skin while my eyes, no doubt black and shiny as they seize hers in the darkness, try to tell her everything my voice can’t.

  You’re my sun, I think. My dreams are the earth, and I’m the moon.

  I recall a little-known fact: the earth’s moon is the only permanent, natural object in the solar system on which the sun has a stronger gravitational influence than the planet the moon orbits.

  Briefly, fleetingly, I wonder if it’s possible that my attraction to Courtney—my fierce gravitational pull to be near her, to both possess and belong to her—could prove stronger than my dreams.

  And for the first time since I moved to New York—for a split second that will surely haunt me for the rest of my life—I don’t know.

  I don’t know, and that terrifying sliver of doubt makes me lift my lips and release her hand. Her eyebrows furrow together in confusion, but I look away, focusing my attention on Chris and Kim, whose passionate, reckless love affair in Vietnam will lead to tragedy.

  ***

  “So, how was viewing number three?” I ask as the applause dies down, and the house lights come up.

  Her eyes are red, and tears make her cheeks glisten. “I always hope that the ending will be different. I get it that Chris went home from Vietnam and married Ellen, but he loves Kim, too. When he and Ellen go back to Vietnam, I wish—I just wish he’d have chosen Kim.”

  “Over his wife?”

  She sighs. “Kim’s the mother of his son. He made her a lot of promises. There’s an argument to be made that Chris should choose her over Ellen.”

  “Do you think Chris knew Ellen before he left for Vietnam?” I ask her.

  “Does it matter?”

  I stand up, leaning down to pick up her umbrella and offering it to her as she stands up.

  “Yes,” I say. “Maybe Ellen was his first love. Maybe dreams of her—the girl back at home—were what got him through Vietnam.”

  “Dreams can change,” she says, taking the umbrella from me as we step sideways out from our row into the congested aisle.

  She walks in front of me, and I trace the delicate line of her neck with my eyes, hungry to memorize it, though it will only torture me later, as memories of Kim tortured Chris once he returned to America.

  Back outside, the rain is coming down heavier than before, and Courtney opens her umbrella.

  “Get under!” she says.

  I duck underneath, standing close to her. “Let’s go for a drink and see if it lets up?”

  She nods, and I put my arm around her shoulders, leading her away from the theater and around the block to the Rum House, one of my favorite spots in the ultratouristy Broadway district. It may look sketchy on the outside, but with its dark wood, red leather banquet tables, and creative cocktail list, it’s a piece of old-time Broadway heaven in the middle of Disney-fied Times Square, and I love it.

  I hold open the door and she rushes in, turning around to smile at me with eyes brightened by our dash through the rain. “Where are we?”

  “The Rum House.”

  “A real, live dive,” she says, looking around with approval.

  My friend Godwin is at the piano with his partner, Rosy, who’s finishing up a slow and sultry rendition of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” from Showboat.

  I gesture to an empty table in the corner. “Grab it for us? I’ll go get us drinks. A gimlet, I assume?”

  But she surprises me by shaking her head. “New bar, new drink. Pick something for me!”

  I watch her sidle through a small group of people, then I turn to the bar, waving at my friend Hannah, who was a classmate at NYU.

  “Josh! Where are you coming from?” She leans over the bar and kisses my cheek.

  “Miss Saigon.”

  “Ooooo! Good times. Won’t be around much longer, either.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Revival’s almost ready to go on tour.”

  Hannah looks over my shoulder. “Who’s that?”

  “Friend.”

  “Hmm.” She grins. “What are you and your friend having tonight?”

  “She told me to surprise her.”

  Hannah nods sagely. “And you saw Miss Saigon tonight?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are we trying to impress your ‘friend’?”

  I shrug.

  “I got you covered,” she says. “Go sit. I’ll have Manny bring them over.”

  “You’re the best,” I say, putting a twenty in the tip jar because I know she won’t let me pay her for the first round.

  As I pass by Rosy, she grins at me and waves, finishing up her song to a round of polite applause.

  “Joshy!” she says. “I saw you come in!”

  “We ducked in to get out of the rain.”

  “Have a request?” she asks, glancing in Courtney’s direction. “You name it. I’ll sing it.”

  “Love Never Dies?” I ask.

  “Coming right up,” she says, winking at me.

  I make my way to Courtney, sliding into the round booth beside her. “Hi.”

  “Are you a regular?”

  “I don’t know about a regular, but Hannah and I went to school together.”

  “And the singer?”

  “Rosy? She and Godwin have been a fixture here for years. Hannah introduced me to them.”

  “They’re fond of you.”

  “What’s not to love?” I ask, winking at her.

  She laughs at me. “Where’d you learn to be so charming?”

  “Better tips,” I tell her, reaching for the bowl of nuts on the table and taking a handful. “You get better tips if you flirt.”

  “Aha! It’s all about financial gain, huh? I can respect that.”

  Manny stops by our table with two bright-red drinks in martini-style glasses, each garnished with an orange slice, maraschino cherry, and little paper umbrella. “Thanks, Manny.”

  “What is this?” asks Courtney, her eyes sparkling as Godwin starts playing the opening notes of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s masterpiece “Love Never Dies,” from his Phantom of the Opera sequel of the same name.

  “I have no idea,” I admit, leaning down and taking a sip. “But whatever it is, it’s—”

  “Delicious,” we say at the same time.

  “Who knows when love begins?” sings Rosy, “Who knows what makes it start? One day it’s simply there, alive inside your heart.”

  We both turn toward the music, and without being creepy, I watch Courtney as Rosy sings, wondering if this song that I love so terribly will touch her heart as well. It doesn’t take long for her lips to part and her eyes to widen as the song swells with words about a forever love that will never die, that will even outlast those who experience it. When the song is over, Courtney dabs at her eyes, clapping loudly for Rosy, who nods at us and mouths, “You’re welcome” before taking a break for water.

  “Is this your life?” asks Courtney. “Broadway shows and divey bars and beautiful music?”

  “And barely making rent, and never knowing if my dreams are in vain, and wondering if the day will come when I’ll have to admit that it’s never going to happen.”

  “Don’t say that.” She reaches for my hand. “It will happen, Josh. I believe in you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re beautiful and smart, funny and kind,” she says, echoing my compliments to her from last weekend. “You’re going to be a big hit someday, and I’ll tell everyone I ‘knew-you-when.’”

  “Where will you be?” I ask her, a hollow feeling making my chest ache. “When all my dreams are coming true?”

  Her smile falters for a minute, before she forces it into place. But she pulls her hand from mine. “Hopefully, I’ll be happily married. Maybe with a baby on the way.”

  “White picket fence and a minivan?”

  “Negotiable,” she says.

  “Really?” I ask, because this surprises me.

  “I grew up in New York City until I was twelve,” she says. “My parents always had a house in Greenwich for weekends and holidays, but our primary residence was here. They swapped that arrangement so I could go to middle school and high school in the suburbs.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “How would you?” she asks, taking another sip of Hannah’s magical (and quite potent) rum punch. “Mmm! This is so yum—”

  “Don’t do it,” I blurt out.

  Her eyes meet mine. “Don’t do what?”

  Give me a chance! Give us time!

  “Don’t use the matchmaker service,” I say.

  She’s staring back at me, and I realize that her expression is filling with hurt. “Why not? Why wouldn’t you want me to be happy?”

  “I do want you to be happy,” I say.

  “Then don’t take my dream away from me, Josh. I’d never take yours away from you. Friends don’t shatter each other’s dreams. They look out for each other.”

  “Friends?” I scoff, feeling desperate, feeling angry.

  “Yes,” she says, confusion joining the hurt in her eyes. “Friends. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “News flash, Courtney,” I spit out. “Friends don’t hold hands. They don’t dance in the moonlight. They don’t go on dates. They don’t blow money they don’t have on theater tickets. And when they’re together, they don’t have to fight against kissing each other with every bit of strength they have!”

  She’s staring at her drink, looking utterly distraught. Finally, she lifts her head, and the pain in her glistening eyes just about flattens me. “This was a mistake.”