Page 39 of Absolute Certainty
She nodded. “Yeah, he didn’t sleep at all last night because his tooth’s been bothering him, so he went to the dentist at the crack of dawn for a filling. He wanted to sleep off the pain before the next show.”
Jay’s eyes widened. “And he’s performing like that?”
Shrugging with a grin, Sahar said, “Oh, yeah. We’ll generally only call out if we’re sick, so no one else is infected, but Ethan’s back now, and since Christian’s no longer on as Darcy, and he’s back in the ensemble, he doesn’t have to do as much singing. If he did, he might’ve had to.”
“Ah, that makes sense.”
“Since Eloise is with you, I’m going to hope you won’t be picking up more shifts. Proud of you if that’s the case,” she added.
He let out a low huff. “Yeah, no. At least not the super last-minute ones.”
“Good.”
A conversation about how they couldn’t believe it was already July occupied them until the waiter returned with their food.
“Oh,The Wolf Ladywas finally delivered to my doorstep this morning. Noidea why it took so long, but I’m intrigued to read it,” Jay said before biting down on edamame.
Sahar nearly choked on her shishito pepper, and it wasn’t because she couldn’t handle its spiciness. “Okay, but you can’t judge my taste for it. There’s a lot of nostalgia connecting me and that book. I haven’t read it in over ten years, and it might not hold up. I just think about those characters often.”
“I won’t judge your taste, even if I question it.”
Sahar popped the salmon roll into her mouth and chewed before speaking. “Twelve-year-old Sahar and thirty-one-year-old Sahar aren’t the same person.”
“I would hope you wouldn’t be,” he said matter-of-factly.
She scrunched her nose and flashed him a toothy grin. Something about Jay made it easy for her to be…well, herself. The same person she was around all her closest friends. And she liked that. She liked having another friend in her corner.
But maybe she shouldn’t be herself. Maybe she should tone it down.
“Can I ask you something?”
Jay nodded.
“What’d youreallythink of the show?” she asked, taking a piece of calamari.
His expression looked puzzled for a beat. “I told you. I thought you were a fucking star,” he repeated.
She smiled, shaking her head. “No, not me, though I appreciate the compliment. I do. I mean the show in general. I’m curious whatyouthink, as someone who’s in the industry but not so much into romance.”
Jay sat up straighter. “Okay, first, I never said I hated romance. Let’s make that clear. But I thought it was incredible—the production as a whole. I can see why it’s so loved and how it swept the Tony Awards.”
“Have you read Austen?” she asked.
He bobbed his head up and down. “Yeah,Pride and Prejudicewas part of my curriculum in high school. And I took a British literature class in my undergrad where we had to readSense and Sensibility.Other than those two, I haven’t read any others.”
“A follow-up question, then. What’s your favorite book, or at least one of them? You technically know one of mine.”
There was something thrilling about dissecting his brain and understanding him more intimately. She couldn’t remember the last time she had asked someone what their favorite book was. Sahar wanted to know everything about Jay.
Stroking his beard, he pondered. “Um…you know, I’ve never thought about it? MaybeThe Outsiders?OrAnd Then There Were None?”
Sahar perked up. “Jay, what do I have to do to get you to write me a whodunnit?”
A laugh burst out of him, low and rumbling. “Oh, I want to. Believe me. I’m just not sure I could.”
She narrowed her gaze. “You absolutely could. The majority of your characters have that stoic humor in them that could translate well into satire with a few shifts in how the dialogue is structured. A lot of the conversations we get between Henry and the chief, George, made me think of it.”
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You think so?”
