Such is Life
The next week rushed past, with long hours in the studio, pampering the grannies, rehearsing their footwork and when the music would kick in, and so on. It was a lot of work, but Gavin was dogged, always the first up in the morning, making coffee drinks for everyone, then hurrying them into the studio as soon as they were finished. And in the late evening, after the grannies had gone to bed, Gavin would gravitate toward Miles’s studio, and they’d sit together, listening to music, cuddling sometimes.
Thursday afternoon, after a long rehearsal with Miles, the three cousins took a break. Gavin found Archie out by the lakefront, his cell phone on the ground beside him. “’Sup?” he asked.
“Mary Anne’s on the phone with her mother. I’m waiting for her to call me back.”
“She seems really nice,” Gavin said, sitting on the grass beside his cousin. “How long have you two been going out?”
“Sophomore year,” Archie said. “I was singing with the MadHatters, and she and a bunch of her girlfriends were kind of like groupies.”
“Kind of like?” Gavin asked, raising his eyebrows.
“They used to come to all our concerts, stand in the front, and cheer,” Archie said. “I didn’t even know they were there at first. When you have those lights on you, you can’t see the audience. And we sang some complicated arrangements, so I had to focus.”
“So how’d you finally hook up?”
“One of the guys in the group was a brother at this frat, and he invited us all to a party. I was getting myself a cup of punch when Mary Anne came up to me and said she really liked my voice.”
“Did she say it was dreamy?” Gavin kidded.
“You just won’t let that go, will you?”
Gavin held up his hand. “Sorry. Go on.”
“So I got her some punch, and we started talking. You know what the punch is like at those parties, right? There was grain alcohol in there. We just kept on talking and drinking punch and then… Well, you know.”
“That night?” Gavin asked. “Without even a real date?”
“Of course not that night,” Archie protested. “Mary Anne’s not that kind of girl. She’s a social worker.”
“And you got social with her.”
“One of these days, I’m going to kill you,” Archie said. “What about you and Miles? How did you two meet?”
“Almost every morning, he comes into the coffee shop where I work. He’d always have these earbuds in, and when he pulled one out to order, I’d hear what he was listening to. In my mind, I called him Music Dude.”
Archie leaned back against the tree. “And?”
“I used to draw a music note in foam on his latte,” Gavin said. “But he never noticed me, until one day I handed him his coffee and sang a little.”
“Did he say you had a dreamy voice?” Archie asked, grinning.
Gavin shook his head. “Nah, he was all business. I made a move on him, and he backed away like I had burned him.”
“That must have been a shocker for you.”
“I don’t get everything I want, Archie,” Gavin said. “My life is not one sexual conquest after another.”
“Yeah, tell me another fairy tale,” Archie said. Then he laughed. “Fairy tale. Get it?”
“Yes, Archie, I get it.”
“So then how did he end up coming up here, if he rejected you?”
“I tried again. You know the old saying. If at first you don’t succeed…”
Archie shook his head. “I wish I had half your confidence, Gavin. If Mary Anne hadn’t come on to me, I probably never would have even spoken to her.”
Archie’s phone rang, and Gavin got up and went for a long walk along the lake. It was funny that Archie thought he was so confident, when he felt so uncertain about his relationship with Miles. It seemed all they did lately was rehearse and then sleep together. And by sleep, he really meant sleep.
It was a very different pattern from everyone he’d dated in the past. He’d always had a separate life from anyone he dated, just getting together for dinner or movie dates, then sex. None of the long, intimate conversations he’d had with Miles before the music work had engulfed them.
He’d thought things were different with Miles—but different in a good way? He just couldn’t tell.
Gavin, Archie, and Erica sang together even when they weren’t performing for Miles, just for fun. Gavin learned all the lyrics to the Jason Mraz song that Archie and Erica had sung together, and it became one of their favorites.
Friday afternoon after lunch, Gavin found his grandma out on the porch by herself, rocking back and forth in her chair. “How are you holding up, Grandma?” he asked. “You have to remember to take care of yourself.”
“I’ve been taking care of myself, and my sisters, for as long as I can remember, baby boy,” she said. “Don’t you worry about me.”
He sat on the porch steps beside her.
“You’re sweet on that boy, aren’t you?”
Gavin was surprised that his grandmother was that perceptive. Or had his father said something, asked her to watch the two of them? “Miles? Yeah, I guess I am.”
“There shouldn’t be any guesswork,” Grandma Frances said. “When I met your Grandpa Al, I knew right away that he was the one for me. I was just about your age too.”
“How’d you know?” Gavin asked, sitting back against one of the banisters.
“The first time I saw him, he was standing beside the stage at Funtown Amusement Park right after we finished singing. He had an armful of roses for me, and I blushed just as red as those roses when I realized.”
“So he must have seen you before,” Gavin said. “To have brought you those roses.”
She nodded. “He said he’d heard us sing at Our Lady Queen of Peace and thought I was just the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, with a voice like an angel.” She smiled. “He had the gift, you know. He could charm anybody he wanted to. Just like your father, and just like you.”
“Really?” Gavin didn’t remember Grandpa Al that well. He’d died when Gavin was a kid. Mostly he remembered a genial guy who always had quarters for ice cream when the truck came around. “I always thought we inherited our personalities from you.”
“Oh my no, baby boy,” she said. “I was always the shy one. It was Ida who was the show-off. She had that curly blonde hair, you know, and those round cheeks, and she would always step up when we needed to audition. I just stood there and sang.”
She rocked back and forth. “You need to be that person for Miles,” she said. “I can tell he’s a quiet type, like me. You’re going to have to pull him out of his shell.”
“He’s not in a shell, Grandma. He’s a great musician.”
“Of course he is. Behind the scenes. I know that type of man, baby boy. He hides behind that keyboard.” She looked down at him. “Now, tell the truth to your old granny. Would you even be here with him if you’d waited for him to make the first move?”
“He’s the one who asked to come up here,” Gavin protested. “He said that he knew your music, and he was going to the concert anyway.”
“I am not talking about the music, baby boy.”
Gavin looked down at the rough wood and remembered. He’d made the first move on Miles, sucking his fingers, and been rebuffed. But he had tried again, kissing Miles at the restaurant, and that’s when things had taken off between them.
“I guess so, Grandma. I used to see him come into the coffee shop where I work, and I liked the way he looked. But it wasn’t until I sang for him that we really started to connect.”
“Oh, your grandpa loved to hear me sing,” she said, rocking. “I stopped for a while after he passed, you know. I just didn’t feel I had the music in me anymore without him around. It was my sisters who brought me back.”
Gavin reached up and squeezed his grandma’s hand. “I’m glad they did,” he said.
He decided it was time to make some changes in the way things were going with Miles. He went up to his bedroom and put on a pair of swim trunks and a T-shirt, then went to the studio. “You’re working too hard,” he said when Miles pulled off his headphones. “All work and no play makes Miles a dull boy. Come with me.”
“I really should work, Gavin.”
“Yes, and you really should spend some fun time with me. Now that my whole family knows we’re a couple, we don’t have to hide anything. And it’s Friday afternoon, and we’ve worked our butts off all week. I want to do something fun.”
Miles smiled. “In the middle of the afternoon?”
“That’s the best time to take the rowboat out on the lake,” Gavin said. He reached for Miles’s hand. “Come with me.”
“I don’t know. I’m more a powerboat kind of guy.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll provide the manual labor. Put on a bathing suit and some flip-flops, and let’s go.”
Miles reluctantly turned off his computer and then stood up. While Gavin scatted through his scales, Miles dug through his suitcase and found a pair of black bathing trunks. When he’d changed, they walked down to the lakefront, past lazy bees and swaying trees. It was a perfect afternoon for a boat ride. The sky was a bright blue dotted with puffy white clouds, which diffused the sunshine. There was little humidity and a pleasant breeze.
Whoever had used the rowboat last had shipped the oars and dragged it up on the shallow beach. Gavin pushed it to the water’s edge. “Go on, get in. It won’t tip over.”
“You’re sure?”
“Miles. I grew up here, remember? We went out in this rowboat nearly every day when I was a kid.”
Miles stepped into the boat and sat at the bow. Gavin gave the boat a final push and then jumped in, facing Miles. He lifted the oars out and began to row toward the center of the lake.
“This is nice,” Miles said after a minute. He leaned back. “I could get accustomed to this kind of service. You have any grapes you can peel for me?”
Gavin splashed him with an oar, and Miles laughed. When they got a few hundred yards from shore, Gavin shipped the oars again, and stretched his long legs forward. “How cool is this?” he asked.
“Most cool,” Miles said.
They sat in silence for a while, until Gavin couldn’t hold off any longer. “What do you think is going to happen when we go back to South Beach?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will we still, you know, see each other?”
Miles cocked his head like he didn’t understand. “Of course. Why wouldn’t we?”
Gavin shrugged. “This is all so awesome, you know. Rehearsing with you, having you around all the time. We’re like in a little bubble up here. But when we get back home…”
“We won’t be able to spend so much time together. That’s true. I have a business to run, you have your modeling work and your shifts at Java Joe’s. But that’s real life. We’ll have to work around all that in order to see each other.”
He leaned back against the bow, and his T-shirt rode up, revealing a thin line of flesh. “What’s the other side of the lake like? You going to keep rowing?”
Gavin grinned and stood up. He pulled off his T-shirt and said, “Actually, I feel like a swim,” and then he jumped into the cool water.
The rowboat rocked wildly, and Miles yelled, “Gavin!”
Gavin went under, then popped back up, water streaming from his head. “You called?”
“What are you doing? How are you going to get back in the boat? Do I have to call fire rescue or something?”
“For a guy who grew up in Miami, you’re a real pansy about the water,” Gavin said. He grabbed the gunwale of the boat and hoisted himself back in. The boat rocked again, but once he was in his seat, it settled into its natural rhythm.
“You scared the shit out of me,” Miles said. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“Welcome to my world,” Gavin said. “Every time I think you might get tired of me and dump me, I feel the same way.”
Miles stood up, struggling to keep his balance as he paced the few steps toward Gavin. “Shove over,” he said and then sat down beside Gavin on the center bench. “Neither of us are going anywhere.” He grinned. “At least not until you show me how to row this thing.”
Miles took one oar and Gavin the other, and after some awkwardness, they developed a rhythm and began rowing toward the far shore. “See, it’s easy if we work together,” Gavin said.
“And such is life,” Miles said, then pecked Gavin on the cheek without ever disrupting his rowing.
Paying Attention
Erica’s mom was a whiz with a sewing machine, and she came up to Starlit Lake that weekend to whip up matching dresses for the three grannies. Gavin was in the living room helping Grandma Frances as Aunt Barbara measured her.
“What are you all wearing?” his aunt asked him.
“I figured we’d wear our regular clothes,” Gavin said.
Erica was across the room. “We can’t do that. We need something unique, something coordinated.”
“I can work on that after I finish these dresses,” her mother said.
Erica shook her head. “We should go shopping. There’s that outlet mall between Madison and Milwaukee.”
“Why would you want to buy something made in some sweatshop in Thailand or China?” her mother asked. “You’re just exploiting those poor people.”
“I think it’s better to exploit strangers than family,” Gavin said. “You have enough work to do, Aunt Barbara. Erica’s right. We should go shopping.”
“Just wasteful,” Aunt Barbara said, but she went back to pinning up the hem on Grandma Frances’s dress.
“Thank you for rescuing me,” Erica said when she and Gavin were alone later. “I haven’t let my mother make my clothes since I was fourteen, and I’m not about to start now.”
“Your folks are really crunchy granola, aren’t they?” Gavin asked. “Do they ever buy anything they haven’t grown or made themselves?”
“She isn’t spinning her own cotton yet, but I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Miles says that he has a quick project he has to work on tomorrow,” Gavin said. “Why don’t we play hooky and go shopping?”
“I like that. We’ll get Mary Anne to go too so I’m not outnumbered by guys with questionable fashion sense.”
“Excuse me?” Gavin said indignantly. He waved a hand from his chest to his feet. “I am a model, and I am the height of fashion on South Beach.”
“My point exactly,” Erica said. “We’re talking Wisconsin Dells, not Miami Beach.”
Erica’s mother went home that afternoon with all the grannies’ measurements, and with no parental units around to object, Mary Anne drove down to stay over with Archie. The more time he spent with her, the more Gavin liked her. When he’d first met her at a family party, he’d thought she was shy. But away from the looming presence of Archie’s family, she turned out to be a small girl with a big personality. She matched the barrettes in her blonde hair to her shoes—pink that day—but Gavin didn’t hold it against her.