Choir Tour Confession

The airport was pure chaos, and I loved it and hated it at the same time. Our whole choir had shown up at six in the morning with duffel bags and rolling suitcases, and Mark was already waving his clipboard around like a traffic cop.

"Section A, altos! Section A! Let's go, people!"

I'm Marta, by the way. Thirty-two years old, car mechanic, alto in the community choir, and generally a person who does not get excited about group travel. But Lisbon! A whole week of singing in a historic church and eating pastries and pretending I don't have to be back under a car on Monday. I was excited. I was.

Then I saw Jeremiah.

He was standing by the check-in counter with Esther, one of the sopranos, and he had her laughing so hard she had to grab his arm to stay upright. That's the thing about Jeremiah. He's thirty-one, he's a tenor, and he works at the garage with me, of all places, and every woman in a ten-mile radius orbits him like he's got his own gravity. He's not even that handsome. Okay, he's handsome. Tall, warm brown skin, this smile that comes on slow like he's letting you in on something. But the charm! The charm is what gets me.

"Hey, Marta," he called across the lobby. "You brought your own toolbox in case the plane breaks down?"

Very funny. Everyone laughed. I flipped him off with a smile, which is our whole relationship in one gesture, honestly.

We got on the plane and I ended up wedged next to Annika, my soprano friend, who had already bought a tiny bottle of wine before eight a.m. and was not apologizing for it.

"Vacation starts now," she announced, clinking her little plastic cup against mine.

"Vacation started when I handed my keys to my cousin and told him not to call me unless the shop is on fire."

She laughed and settled back. And because I am weak, I found myself telling her about the check-in counter scene.

"Did you see that? With Esther? He does that with everyone, you know. Everyone. I swear he flirts with the ticket agent, the security lady, the man pushing the snack cart. It's exhausting just watching it."

Annika looked at me over her cup with this slow smile spreading across her face, and I knew exactly what was coming before she opened her mouth.

"Marta. Honey. Do you maybe like him?"

"What? No. Absolutely not. He's my coworker. He's annoying. He calls my torque wrench 'the little wrench' just to get under my skin."

"Uh huh."

"He flirted with the rental car guy a few months ago, Annika. The rental car guy."

"So you've been keeping count." She sipped her wine like a queen. "That's very neutral behavior for someone who doesn't like him."

I stared out the window at the ocean and said nothing, because what was there to say? The truth was I had noticed Jeremiah for months. The way he remembered everyone's birthday. The way he carried old ladies' groceries at the choir fundraiser like it was effortless. The way he sang, God help me, the way that man sang. Tenors, you know? They get all the good lines and they know it.

"Look," Annika said, softer now, "all I'm saying is, jealousy feels a lot like anger from the outside. And from the inside too, probably. You've been glaring at that man for two hours."

"I have not been glaring."

"You glared at his carry-on bag."

Okay, fair. I had glared at his carry-on bag. It was a very smug bag.

I told her it was complicated, which it was, and she let it go, but she had this little smirk the whole flight, and I knew I had handed her ammunition I was never getting back.

***

Lisbon! Oh my goodness, you all. The light there is different, everything looks like a postcard someone edited too much. We got to the hotel, a budget place near the old town with a tiny elevator that barely fit three of us and our egos, and Mark immediately herded us to the church for our first rehearsal.

The church was old and beautiful, stone walls and this echo that made even warm-ups sound holy. We lined up, sopranos in front, altos behind them, and Mark gave his usual speech about representing our city with dignity.

Which lasted about ten minutes before Jeremiah turned around during a water break and asked me something that stopped my heart a little.

"Hey, will you run the interval exercise with me? You've got the steadiest ear in the altos and I keep rushing the fourth."

I blinked at him. "You want me? You've got half the tenors falling over themselves to help you."

"Yeah, but they're wrong," he said, grinning. "You're not wrong. Come on, five minutes."

So there we were, standing in the side aisle of a four-hundred-year-old church, him singing intervals at me and me singing them back. And here's the part I keep turning over in my head. He watched me the whole time. Not the sheet music, not the ceiling, me. Every time I hit the note he'd nod, this small satisfied nod, like I'd confirmed something for him.

"Perfect," he said after the fifth round. "See? You're the only one who keeps me honest."

"You could just count in your head like a normal person."

"Where's the fun in that?" He was smiling, that slow one, and up close it's worse, believe me. There's a little scar over his eyebrow and I had never been close enough to see it before.

"You're staring, Marta," he said, way too pleased about it.

"You're imagining things."

"Am I?" And he just laughed and went back to his spot, leaving me standing there with my pulse doing something unprofessional.

Rehearsal went long because Mark is our tour manager, and by the time we spilled out into the evening street everyone was starving and arguing about restaurants. Annika appeared at my elbow like she'd been summoned.

"So. The interval thing."

"It was a vocal exercise, Annika."

"It was flirting with sheet music. That's flirting with extra steps."

I laughed before I could stop myself, and she raised her eyebrows like she'd won something. Maybe she had. Because the truth, which I'd been dodging since the airport, was sitting in my chest now, warm and inconvenient: I didn't hate watching Jeremiah charm people. I hated watching him charm people who weren't me.

And later, walking back to the hotel through those narrow glowing streets, he fell into step beside me like it had been arranged. Nobody arranged it. Nobody had to.

"Quiet today," he said. "That's new."

"I'm on vacation. Conserving energy."

"For what? The pastry festival?"

"For beating you at cards later, probably. Annika brought a deck."

"See, this is why I like you," he said, easy as breathing. "You always think you're going to win."

I stopped walking right there on the cobblestones. "Like me? You like me?"

He looked at me like the answer was obvious and slightly funny. "Marta. I've worked next to you for two years. What do you think?"

I did not have an answer prepared, that's the honest truth. I said goodnight and speed-walked to the hotel as if someone were chasing me, and Annika was already in the room, and she took one look at my face and started laughing before I said a single word.

"Oh no," she said. "Oh, this is going to be a great week."

***

Day two was the group dinner, which meant Mark had booked a place three weeks in advance and made a seating chart. A seating chart, at a dinner, like we were a wedding. Guess who he put next to me? Go on, guess.

Jeremiah. Of course it was Jeremiah. Mark later swore it was random, but my last name and his aren't anywhere near each other in the alphabet, so make of that what you will.

The dinner was loud and wonderful, all that bread and grilled fish and half the choir trying Portuguese words and butchering them cheerfully. Jeremiah kept stealing bread off my plate. Not ordering his own, mind you. Mine.

"There's a whole basket," I told him.

"Yours tastes better."

"That's not how bread works."

"Everything you have is better. It's a fact of the universe." And he said it so easily, like he was commenting on the weather, and I spent the rest of dinner very interested in my wine glass.

Afterward people split up. Some went to find a fado bar, some went straight back. Annika got pulled into the card players' group (yes, at a restaurant, she's relentless) and somehow Jeremiah and I were just walking, the two of us, through those narrow streets with the laundry hanging overhead and the lamps making everything gold.

"You're quiet again," he said.

"I'm full. Bread theft is exhausting."