#sorry...not sorry

Larson died suddenly in 1996, on the morning of Rent’s first Off-Broadway preview show, and was never able to witness its enduring success. He’d also written Tick, Tick…Boom! as an autobiographical story about trying to break into Broadway, and performed it as a one-man “rock monologue” in the same years he was developing Rent. It was posthumously adapted into a full-fledged musical (with assists from Larson’s college friend Victoria Leacock Hoffman, a producer, and Tony-winning playwright David Auburn) and several companies have performed it Off-Broadway since. In 2014, Miranda—who has long been inspired by Larson’s legacy—starred in a special two-week run of the show in between the workshop and Off-Broadway debut of Hamilton. He played Larson’s character, alongside Leslie Odom Jr. and Karen Olivo.

Just as Miranda looked up to Larson, Larson idolized Sondheim. His song “Sunday” began as an admiring parody of another “Sunday,” the Act One closer from Sondheim’s Pulitzer-winning Sunday in the Park with George. The 1984 musical followed French painter Georges Seurat as he worked on his seminal pointillist painting A Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte, of park-goers on the banks of the River Seine. In the original “Sunday,” Seurat guides his subjects in the park into a perfect composition as the chorus sings in harmony. Larson’s version swaps the Island of La Grande Jatte for the legendary Moondance Diner (a Manhattan haunt, since closed down, where Larson had once worked as a waiter), subbing in himself for Seurat.

So when Miranda began to formulate his version of Larson’s “Sunday,” he imagined a paean to the musical theater that inspired Larson and that Larson inspired. He began texting friends like Hamilton alumni Renée Elise Goldsberry and Phillipa Soo and Fun Home star Beth Malone (who appeared with Garfield in the 2018 production of Angels in America); original cast members of Larson’s Rent, such as Daphne Rubin-Vega, Adam Pascal, and Wilson Jermaine Heredia; and Broadway legends including Bebe Neuwirth, Chita Rivera, and, of course, Bernadette Peters. Much like in Sondheim’s version, a transformation occurs over the course of the song. As the patrons enter the diner, theater lovers will instantly begin to clock them as one Broadway legend after another. The diners then begin to subtly flash signature moves, props, and outfits from their iconic roles. A Sunday brunch becomes a can’t-miss Broadway revue. And by the time Garfield takes Peters’s hand in the same way Mandy Patinkin took her hand in the original “Sunday,” a feeling of joy begins to crescendo alongside the music.

Harper’s Bazaar assembled those stage icons along with Miranda and Garfield to retell the story of how a Sondheim song became a Larson song became a Miranda song—and then became one of the 2021’s most joyous movie moments.

ACT I. “CONNECTED THROUGH TIME AND SPACE”

Before he could build out the call sheet, Miranda had to build his vision of “Sunday”—an homage nestled in a diner transformed into a theater-lover's dreamscape—and sell it to his dream cast. Luckily, they were more than happy to buy in.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: My thinking was that this is a loving homage to Jonathan Larson’s mentor and hero Stephen Sondheim. And it’s his riff on the song “Sunday,” the greatest end of Act One ever written. My big thesis was that Jonathan only ever heard the song alone at a piano, and I’m in the position to stage it with a full company as George Seurat had in Sunday in the Park with George. So my responsibility is to create Jonathan’s dream choir. That was my goal: literally find the artists from the works that inspired Jonathan. Of course Bernadette Peters, but then so many other legends, like Joel Grey and André De Shields and Brian Stokes Mitchell and all the folks that I’m sure Jonathan saw and loved.

HOWARD MCGILLIN (Phantom of the Opera): I made my Broadway debut in Sunday in the Park with George. I had just landed in New York. I’d literally been in New York a couple of months when I got a part in the show. Singing “Sunday” every night was like going to church.

BETH MALONE (Fun Home): Sunday in the Park with George is my favorite musical. It got me through high school. I had that album jacket memorized. I played the vinyl incessantly. I never saw the show, but I felt like I had seen the show.

BERNADETTE PETERS (Sunday in the Park with George): Jonathan Larson’s idea was to rewrite the song “Sunday,” which I was in originally, but from the perspective of a waiter—a frustrated waiter, since he was really a composer—serving Sunday brunch at a diner.

PHYLICIA RASHAD (A Raisin in the Sun): What a great idea to take this song and change the lyrics in this way, to take us from a park in Paris to a diner in New York. In the song “Sunday,” people are just hanging out, seated on the grass, and here we are sipping tea and coffee, describing the colors of the seats in the diner.

CHUCK COOPER (The Life): Oh, it’s exquisite. Jonathan took the melody of the song and tweaked it just a little bit so that all of us theaterphiles know what it is, and we can hear what he’s doing with it.

RENÉE ELISE GOLDSBERRY (Hamilton): I met Lin while doing the workshop for Hamilton, and in between the workshop and our Off-Broadway run at the Public Theater, he did Tick, Tick…Boom! and I went to see it. It was the first time I’d ever actually seen the show, and I fell in love with it. I could see how important the show was to Lin, and I have a particular connection to Jonathan Larson, having had the privilege of being in the last Broadway company of Rent.

WILSON JERMAINE HEREDIA (Rent): The way Lin put it was that when our characters appear, we’re the seeds of the ideas that were growing in Jonathan’s mind. We’re in his psyche, just sort of hanging out in his medulla, and now we’re coming to life.

ANDREW GARFIELD: The scene is this kind of otherworldly moment where they all meet in an imaginary realm.

DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA (Rent): It’s set in this piece of old-school history, the Moondance Diner. That’s still my neighborhood, and it breaks my heart every time I see that fancy hotel in the place the diner once was. I’m trying to go with the flow, but the Moondance Diner is irreplaceable in my mind. Those are irreplaceable pieces of New York.

ANDREW GARFIELD: It’s obviously a very personal moment for Lin. It speaks to his pure imagination and to Jon’s pure imagination and the legacy that Lin is continuing for Jon through Tick, Tick...Boom! But also as a theater maker himself, Lin is absolutely a reincarnation, if you will, of Jon. They are absolutely connected through time and space.

ACT II. “I WAS TOTALLY AMAZED THAT THEY HAD MY BLACK ASS UP THERE”

Miranda began outreach to the star-studded patrons of the Moondance Diner before the Covid-19 pandemic first touched down in the United States. What he found was a Broadway community more than eager to pay tribute to Larson, Sondheim, and the theater canon.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: I was inspired by those cheesy posters you sometimes see where Amy Winehouse is sitting next to James Dean, who’s sitting next to Marilyn Monroe, who’s sitting next to Elvis and all these people who were gone too soon, who exist outside of time together in that moment. So I gave myself permission to put Rent cast members in with future “collaborators” of Jonathan from shows that were influenced by or direct descendants of Jonathan’s work. That’s why Beth Malone dressed as Big Al from Fun Home and [Renée Elise Goldsberry and Phillipa Soo as] the Schuyler sisters are in the diner.

RENÉE ELISE GOLDSBERRY: It seems a little ridiculous to include me and Phillipa Soo in this scene, to place these characters that we were allowed to play on the level of all these incredibly talented theater legends. For us to be included in this scene was a tremendous honor.

BETH MALONE: I got this text from Lin, and he was very mysterious, very covert. It was like a fishing expedition. “Where are you? What’s your schedule like?”

PHYLICIA RASHAD: Everything was kept under wraps, all quiet on the Western Front.

BETH MALONE: He called me and described this idyllic scene in which all of these legends of Broadway are in this diner of dreams. And I just thought, “How in the world am I getting this phone call?”

BEBE NEUWIRTH (Chicago): I got a call from my agent saying that there’s this number in this movie, and they’re asking—oh, I don’t know, there was some wonderful term for us, like “legends”—to be in it.

CHUCK COOPER: First of all, I was totally amazed that they had my Black ass up there with these guys. Holy cow! This is the who’s who of American theater.

ANDRE DE SHIELDS (Hadestown): This is the magic of this community. It’s large, but by the same token it’s tiny. It’s an entire universe, yet it is a tribe.

JOEL GREY (Cabaret): It was going to be different actors from Broadway, including Ms. Peters, who’s my great friend, and just a lot of nice people.

BERNADETTE PETERS: I actually checked in with Steve Sondheim. I thought, “Well, how does he feel about it?” Because “Sunday” is a very sacred number to me, and to touch it again, at first I was apprehensive. But I admire Jonathan Larson, and then Steve gave it his blessing, so I went into it started to learn the song. And it had the same sort of effect on me as “Sunday” because it was it was also sacred to this character. It was really approached with great reverence, I think. It ended up being a beautiful experience, a transcending, uplifting experience.

BEBE NEUWIRTH: I’d done a lot of things online in quarantine, as many of us had. Readings of this or that, but it was very depressing to me. I think it almost does a disservice to the work because a performance is an energetic exchange with the audience and with your fellow performers, and it’s brutally difficult to connect when you’re a square in a Zoom. So I felt an elation at the thought of being in the same space with my fellow artists.

ADAM PASCAL (Rent): Lin doesn’t know this, but I was going through a really hard time in my life at that time. When they flew me to New York from Los Angeles and put me in quarantine for two weeks, all to shoot this one day that they required me for, I had needed so desperately to get out of the situation I was in at the time and be alone for two weeks. It literally saved my life. He doesn’t realize this, but I owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

ACT III. “ARE YOU FUCKING SEEING THIS?”        

Though filming was initially delayed by the pandemic, the show must go on, and soon the ensemble was reassembled—this time in November 2020, the height of the latest Covid-19 wave. But after developing airtight protocols, the scene went into production. And no amount of face masks, face shields, and unenviable Covid enforcement officers could put a damper on the “lovefest.”

RENÉE ELISE GOLDSBERRY: They had asked us to quarantine for like two weeks, and I must admit, it felt like a big ask because I have kids and I had another job. But if there was anyone I was going to figure it out for, it was for Lin and for this project.

ADAM PASCAL: They put us up in a hotel in Brooklyn. The 2020 election was going on at the time. There was all this excitement.

BETH MALONE: I’ve actually never spent that much time alone in my entire life. I sat there watching the election results come in, just waiting and waiting as it took days for them to count the results. Everybody was demoralized. Then when it was called, we were all shouting from our hotel rooms. I started hanging my head out the window, and there were people everywhere. It was like being on the set of Fame—people dancing in their windows, dancing on their fire escapes. I had ordered in a bottle of champagne, so I popped that thing open and poured some over the fire escape to somebody living below me.

BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL (Kiss Me, Kate): I realized later how complicated the scene was to shoot—coordinating everybody, having people coming in at different times, in makeup at different times, in the trailers at different times, and all of these considerations that you normally wouldn't even think about when shooting a film before Covid.

BETH MALONE: They developed all these protocols that allowed us to go in and shoot when the pandemic was at its height and still keep everyone safe. We had our director’s chairs with our names on them, which were all zigzagged eight feet apart in this giant warehouse. We sat there with masks and face shields on, and we’d have these shouting conversations in between takes.

CHITA RIVERA (West Side Story): It was very complicated to schedule and I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to be a part of it. But Lin was gracious enough to really insist that my table would still be available even at the very last minute. And so he kept telling all of the stagehands and everybody, “Don’t cut that table! It's going to be Chita’s!” That in itself is quite delicious, you know?

BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL: Somehow they figured it all out. I’m glad I didn’t have to! What’s amazing to me is seeing how you can still create a work of art even with all of these restrictions and challenges.

JOEL GREY: Everybody was kept very separate. They were very focused on health and safety, and everybody appreciated that, so you didn’t really get to chat or hang.

CHUCK COOPER: The Covid cops were all over us! You know, other than from my wife, I hadn’t had a hug in like a year—and theater people are hugging people! It was just a big lovefest.

PHYLICIA RASHAD: We had to be policed because we all kept wanting to huddle together and talk again. But no, no, they were very strict. Very, very, very strict.

BERNADETTE PETERS: They had a really, very strict Covid cop on set that was saying, “You have to separate! Stay six feet apart! You can’t be that close!” He was just doing his job, and he was doing a good job.

BETH MALONE: I was like, “Oh my God, did I just see Bebe Neuwirth get yelled at for being too chatty?”

BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL: For a second, you felt like a four-year-old that’s been caught doing something terribly bad.

PHYLICIA RASHAD: It was like being a child and going to a big birthday party. It had that kind of excitement to it.

RENÉE ELISE GOLDSBERRY: I mean, it was torture—torture! We had been apart for so long. All Pippa and I wanted to do was just jump on top of Lin and kiss him a million times.

ANDRÉ DE SHIELDS: Lin-Manuel referred to us as the “legends.” And as I looked around, I thought, “Oh wow, Andre, you are in some rarefied company here.”

BETH MALONE: My chair ended up being close to Howard’s chair. We’d look across at each other, like, “Are you fucking seeing this?”

ANDRÉ DE SHIELDS: We would pass like ships in the night. “Oh hey, Stokes!” “Hey, Dre! What you doing?” “Well, I’m just leaving. I’ve been wrapped. What are you doing?” “Oh, I’m just reporting in.”

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: There were just so many little corner moments that happened, like watching Joel Grey talk to Andre De Shields. Those are two Wizards of Oz from two different musicals. It was the wizard from Wicked talking to The Wiz. Howard McGillin telling me that when he went into his audition for Sunday in the Park with George, he had to sing “Move On” with Bernadette. Just all these crazy stories of the day that I will take with me for a lifetime.

DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA: To see Jim Nicola [artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop, where Rent workshopped] and [actor] Roger Bart, who was Jonny’s muse in so many ways, sitting in the corner. They’re in the diner too. The people in the diner are like a serious foundation of so much. To be part of that kind of chain, it was like a whoa moment. My heart was just going up, and up, and up in my throat.

BETH MALONE: For the most part, they would separate us into little pods. I ended up being with Andre De Shields and Chita Rivera—and it was plenty good.

RENÉE ELISE GOLDSBERRY: Oh, Chita Rivera was telling aaaaall the tales.

BETH MALONE: Chita was just holding court. She had a million stories and she could not be stopped. Every time we would cut, she'd pick up where she left off.

PHILLIPA SOO (Hamilton): She's sitting at a diner table and we're sitting on the floor, listening to her and just marveling. What came across was Chita's generosity in wanting to share with us her experiences and how excited she was to be a part of that room.

BETH MALONE: She told us about a time where they had put somebody new into [the original Broadway production of] West Side Story, and they brought Chita back to teach them the choreography. And she said at the time, “I don’t know how! I don't remember the moves!” And then she says to us, “But you know what? The dress remembered.”

ACT IV. “A RUSSIAN DOLL OF MUSICAL THEATER”

As the actors arrived on the soundstage, they began to marvel at the many layers of Broadway history being referenced pile high in the set, costumes, and choreography.

ADAM PASCAL: It was just such a great vibe, as odd as it was. The other thing that was really amazing about the experience that day was that for the movie, Lin recreated Jonathan Larson's apartment.

DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA: Lin is like, “Come here, come here. Let me show you the apartment.” We turn the corner on the soundstage, and we’re in fucking Jonny’s apartment on Greenwich Street. We’re in the apartment, the one with the bathtub in the kitchen.

ADAM PASCAL: It was just so remarkable how exact it was.

WILSON JERMAINE HEREDIA: It’s weird to say that it felt haunted—it wasn’t his apartment; he was never in that place—but they spared no detail in order to make it look like his place.

ADAM PASCAL: The whole apartment was done pretty much to scale. But it was so much smaller than I remembered. It’s like if you go back to your old high school and things seemed larger in your memory because of where you were in your life, but now you have perspective on it. Being in Jonathan’s apartment that night with that cast and meeting everybody that night, the whole experience was so huge that my memory of his apartment was just much bigger. When we went back in, it was like, “Oh my God, we all crammed into this little apartment.”

RENÉE ELISE GOLDSBERRY: It’s more than Jonathan Larson. It’s also Sondheim. I feel like Lin recognizes this great continuum and I think tries to operate very responsibly inside it as a member of that elite group of composers. He can be true to the what’s unique about himself. He doesn’t have to copy or emulate. So there’s something that’s really beautifully signature to Lin at all times and also celebratory of the people whose shoulders he stands on.

ANDREW GARFIELD: It’s this perfect amalgamation of all the things: It is New York, it is the theater community, it is all of these legends who live in his imagination past, present, and future. It is the legacy of his life, it is his lineage, it’s all one thing and, of course, the communing at this diner, at the Moondance, on Sunday, where lots of theater legends would go. There’s something just so perfectly orchestrated and meta about the whole thing. Lin’s beautiful imagination combined with Jon’s, combined with Sondheim’s, combined with all these legends, and with Bernadette as this centerpiece. This is theater heaven. There’s no getting any better than this.

DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA: It’s like a Russian doll of musical theater.

ADAM PASCAL: It’s a theater geek’s fantasy scene—and Lin on set the day that we were shooting was the king theater geek.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: The scene is Jonathan’s dream. That was always my guiding principle. So to have Bernadette there—but it’s not just Bernadette as a patron or as a diner, it’s also Bernadette with Dot’s hat from Sunday. It’s Joel with the emcee’s cane from Cabaret. It’s Chita as a grande dame of theater, so that she gets to sit while everyone else stands. Her choreography is no more than a kick as she turns her legs. She would have preferred to be doing the full choreography, she told me many times. But I was like, “No, no, you get to sit.”

BERNADETTE PETERS: Everybody had something that represented them and their work. Joel Grey had his cane and Bebe had a little black dress.

BEBE NEUWIRTH: They requested that I wear something to reference how I looked as Velma in Chicago. I said, “I know I’ve got a little black slip dress here somewhere—or three or four.” I happened to have a very nice little satin dress. It was a pretty clear choice.

HOWARD MCGILLAN: I did a Zoom call with Melissa Toth, the costume designer, with my own wardrobe, my own suits and shirts and ties and stuff. Because I’m a singer as well as an actor, I’ve spent a lot of time on stages, in clubs, on cruises, you name it. So I’ve got a pretty extensive wardrobe of suits.

CHUCK COOPER: Oh, I never do that anymore. When costumers ask, “What do you have in your closet?” I always tell them, “I have nothing. I don’t wear any clothes!” So they measured me and brought me clothes and I put them on.

DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA: Jonny once gave me a hoodie, a black hoodie, and I wore it for a play that I did with the original Mimi boots [from Rent]. They’re shit-stomping combat boots with four-inch heels, and they’re perfectly ancient and perfectly messed up. So I wore the Mimi boots, and I wore Jonny’s sweatshirt. I’m sentimental like that.

WILSON JERMAINE HEREDIA: With me, it was the obvious. It was Angel’s “boy attire.” And it was the color, sort of. My jacket originally in the show was burgundy. So they found something that was similar to the first outfit where Angel meets Collins.

CHITA RIVERA: The wardrobe woman was amazing. She took me directly over to a wardrobe rack, I said, “I’d like that skirt and that blouse,” and I think she suggested the hat too. Or was it Lin who suggested the hat? And it was all in the hat.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: “Does anyone still wear a hat?” She’s our “Ladies Who Lunch” with her martini.

ANDREW GARFIELD: I really got into Sondheim while working on playing Jon, so Bernadette Peters became this idol to me.

BETH MALONE: I get choked up just thinking about watching Andrew hand a rose to Bernadette and walk her downstage. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. The look on Andrew’s face was one of reverence. He is such an empath, and he so beautifully conveyed the outpouring of adoration we all feel for her. It was unbearably exquisite.

ANDREW GARFIELD: That was the most important moment of the whole thing. That whole sequence was about honoring Bernadette and, therefore, Sondheim.

BERNADETTE PETERS: I could feel the energy from Andrew, and it was touching and beautiful. It was so wonderful to connect.

ANDREW GARFIELD: There was a weird thing that I had to do, where I had to treat all of these geniuses—apart from Bernadette, who was the exception to the rule—as just annoying diners. I had to inhabit a space where I had to be in charge of all of these incredible legends, which was a hilarious position of control to be put into.

ACT V. “IT RECOGNIZES A HUMAN BEING THAT WE LOST TOO SOON”

As the final number came together, so did the magnitude of what it meant to the starry ensemble: a tribute to their old friend, a recognition of their own life’s work, a testament to the artistry and technology of modern storytelling, and much-needed respite from a quarantine-induced longing for connection.

BEBE NEUWIRTH: I think a lot of us probably felt like we were really breathing fully for the first time in a long time, because we were in our element. Well, I should only speak for myself; I was in my element because I was with other artists, collaborating to make something beautiful. I guess there was a camera there. I guess they filmed it. To me, it just felt like I was on stage with a bunch of fantastic performers.

BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL: It was a masterful work of editing. They shot in all these separate tiles and could put us together because they had all of this incredible technology. But technology doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have the right people: the director, the lighting designer, the actors, the musicians. And all those people need to be on their A game and really be invested in that moment.

PHYLICIA RASHAD: It was like one of those musicals from yesteryear that I used to watch as a child. I always wondered, “Will I ever be a part of a work like that?” It was the greatest thing. I kept saying, “Finally, this is my Gene Kelly moment!”

RENÉE ELISE GOLDSBERRY: There’s no bigger fan, no bigger nerd for theater in its purest form than Lin-Manuel Miranda. So I’m not in the least surprised that the very first thing he would do with the directorial opportunity is to pay tribute in this way to the legends of the theater.

ADAM PASCAL: I’m so honored to be considered a part of this community. And now, 25 years later, to still be here, to still be relevant in the world of theater? That means so much to me. And in a way, being part of that scene is an acknowledgement of that.

JOEL GREY: It felt like this song was Lin’s gift to Broadway.

WILSON JERMAINE HEREDIA: It definitely felt like we were being honored and I couldn’t thank Lin enough for that. It wasn’t until I saw the movie that I was like, “Oh, wow. He’s really put us all in there.” I nudged my wife and said, “Hey, baby, I think he’s saying that I'm great too.”

ANDRÉ DE SHIELDS: And, in addition to everything else, perhaps someone will watch this and say, “Wow, Andre De Shields has cinema chops too!”

BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL: I can’t think of another person but Lin that has the skills, the heart, the knowledge, and the respect for this industry—and for Steve Sondheim and Jonathan Larson and all of the people that make it theater happen.

CHUCK COOPER: We’ll see what Steve thought of it, but I thought it was a fabulous treatment to the song, and really, in keeping with Lin’s genius.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: Sondheim was very, very kind. He really enjoyed the movie. Not only that, he gave me notes and gave me a rewrite for a scene, which is for the last voice-mail message Jon gets, the one from Sondheim himself. He was like, “My one note is: The last voice mail Sondheim leaves was a little cliché. I don't think I would ever say that. Do you mind if I write what I would say?” What, am I going to turn down a rewrite from Sondheim? So he rewrote it and sent me a voice memo acting it. And that’s what you hear in the movie.

ADAM PASCAL: I always envisioned that at some point there would be a Jonathan Larson movie of some sort. But the fact that it’s Tick, Tick...Boom! and that Lin directed it, it’s so beautiful. I’m so grateful and overjoyed that there is this tribute to Johnathan. He deserves it. I hope millions of people see it because he deserves it.

WILSON JERMAINE HEREDIA: It was a depiction of a very small part of the entirety of his life. It was a life interrupted, but you get a sense of what he was brimming with.

DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA: It recognizes a human being that we lost too soon. And he wasn’t just one thing. He had so much potential. So it’s nice when we recognize the potential, because someone will see it, and someone will pick up that flame. Not might; someone will. And that’s good enough for me.

RENÉE ELISE GOLDSBERRY: I think Lin is very much aware of the gift of time that Jonathan didn’t have.

PHILLIPA SOO: I’m so grateful to celebrate the life of an iconic writer and artist through the eyes of someone like Lin-Manuel Miranda, who has such an appreciation and close connection to Jonathan Larson’s legacy. He himself is a writer, celebrating a writer, and ultimately just celebrating storytelling in this community artists.

ANDREW GARFIELD: It’s just so personal and so close to all of our hearts, in our longing to honor Jon and to honor musical theater people. I do hope Jon gets to be known far and wide, and I hope we can keep the ripples of his work moving through the world. That’s what feels most important to me.

“I mean yeah, he tried to take over the world, but I’d still be down if he asked. Well his younger self of course. He was fine when he was younger and GILFs are not my thing.” This statement gets a few eager head nods of agreement from the other new recruits around the kitchen island. We just completed our first mission as official X-Men members and are currently celebrating with a few drinks. Before I can bring the sweet liquid to my lips again, I hear a familiar voice join us.

“And who’s this GILF I’m apparently losing my girlfriend to?” I whip my head towards the entrance to see James Proudstar leaning against the archway. After a few weeks in Arizona, he’s finally back at the mansion.

I give him a huge smile as I go to hug him. “We were talking about Magneto, but you have absolutely nothing to worry about.” I give him a quick peck on the cheek. “Because we can’t go back in time.”

He gives a dramatic pout as he places his hand over his heart. “I came all the way from the reservation just to hear you lusting over another guy. Why did I even come back?”

“To be with your loving girlfriend who brightens up any room she’s in, literally.” As I say this, I release a string of electricity from my fingertips. Though that turned out to be a bad idea, resulting in me losing focus and shooting it across the room straight into the trash. Soon the room is filled with shouts to put out the small flame that was quickly growing. The panic only rises when someone thinks fire plus more fire equals no fire and decides to add their own to the mix. You can guess this only made the fire grow stronger; gotta love drunk newbies. Thankfully the fire is soon dowsed by a large pile of snow, courtesy of Professor Storm’s daughter. Once the situation is handled, we all fall out into fits of giggles, slightly more sober after the  incident.

James wraps his arm around my waist, catching my attention. “I’m taking that as my que to stop you from going any further tonight.”

“Whaaat? No, we were just about to rank the perky butts of all the guys in our squad.” In my mind, the excuse I gave him was perfectly sound and reasonable, apparently not to him.

“You don’t even realize how you sound right now, do you? Babe, I’m pretty sure that’s classified as sexual harassment. How much have you had to drink?” He glances at the glass behind me, long forgotten since his arrival.

“I’ve actually only had a few drinks, however, those shots mixed with lack of sleep has put me in a crazed sober state. And that’s not even including my everyday Luna Lovegood head-in-the-clouds personality that you fell so hard for.” I finish with a cheesy lopsided grin and angel pose.

James responds with a roll of his eyes and a suppressed smile. “Yeah and its time for you to go calm down before you start frizzing up again. How does relaxing in my room with some Netflix sound?” He suggests, guiding me out towards the main staircase. After two struggling steps, he decides to just carry me the rest of the way.

No complaints were coming from me, although his close proximity after being apart for a few weeks had certain areas of my body tingling. “Netflix and chill? More like Netflix and fuck my brains out.” I mumble to myself.

“What was that?”

“What?”