A/N: Hey all! I'm posting three new chapters. As promised, this is the scene where in everyone attends the opera. I had intended for it to be longer, but the muse sort of moved me in another direction. So, we'll get to Harvey and Bess having dinner the next time I post something present day. However, the two chapters following this are of the rock climbing incident. So, hopefully no one will be too disappointed. Enjoy!
Harvey was prepared for Donna to cry during the opera. Several of the singers on the Met's roster were Pearson Hardman clients. Hell, Harvey had personally handled several of their contract negotiations. Needless to say, he and Donna had been to several performances, opening galas, fundraisers and the like. Harvey was grateful that Donna was always willing to come—otherwise he would be left talking to Louis, who always had something negative to say about the performance—and Donna was grateful to be asked. It gave her an excuse to dress up, and she was a sucker for tragic love stories. Inevitably, Donna ended up sobbing her eyes out every time they went to the opera. Call it old fashioned, but Harvey had taken to stuffing a handkerchief in the pocket of his jacket for the moment when Donna's eyes started getting drippy.
Today, however, he knew she would be even more of a wreck than usual. She had been with he and Bess through the worst of it, and she held that girl very close to her heart. So, when the three of them seated themselves in the box, Harvey far to the right of Mike and Donna, he pulled out the handkerchief, handed it to Donna and said, "For when the flood gates open." She smiled then and started to tear up, and Harvey knew instantly that he was in for a long night. What he didn't expect however was to hear Mike sniffling softly beside him in the middle of Bess's first aria.
Harvey was entirely enthralled from the moment she stepped onstage, so much so that even with Ross beside him turning into a whimpering child, he could not be distracted. Bess looked so effortlessly at home, so genuinely happy, sweet, innocent, good true. All the things that Mimi was supposed to be, and everything she was as well. When she had sung her last note, the house broke into applause, cheers ringing throughout the high ceilings. Harvey would have clapped if her were able; instead, he simply sat there, somewhat stunned. Distantly, he wondered how the hell he had been lucky enough to be one of the few people who had heard Bess sing her entire life. At this point, he was really the only person in her world who could claim he had been there since the beginning.
The other thought that ran through his mind throughout the night, especially after several glasses of champagne, was how very much he wanted to kiss her again. He remembered the last time they kissed so vividly. It had been after her undergrad senior recital at Juilliard. He hadn't seen her in three and a half years, but when the invitation showed up at his office—placed on his desk by Donna no doubt—and how could he say no. He had stayed after the recital finished, waiting until after she had been greeted by everyone else who had come, only to walk backstage, kissed her, told her loved her, and left. It was the last time they had spoken until that morning.
He remembered the feeling that possessed him now as the same on he had after her recital. It was almost reverent, somewhat predatory, too. In essence, he was sure there was something psychological about it. After all, who wouldn't want to kiss the lips that held such a sound?
The performance was over far too quickly in Harvey's opinion, though the curtain calls had gone on for fifteen minutes with Bess being called out for ten bows. She looked utterly flustered by the end of it, and she couldn't stop herself from running a hand through her mussed up hair and laughing. If anything he was sure it only made the audience love her more.
In the end, Donna had indeed found a wealthy and exceedingly attractive businessman of some sort or another with whom to do undoubtedly tawdry things. And Mike, shocking though it was, walked straight from the box, pulled out his cell and called Rachel, insisting that she come over to his apartment now because, "We may die. We could die anytime. One of us could get TB!" Harvey was fairly sure that Rachel knew TB was highly curable, but it seemed to work nonetheless, and both his faithful companions left happy.
And so, Harvey waited in the lobby, sipping a glass of champagne until a very no-nonsense woman in her mid-forties approached him and asked if he was Harvey Specter. Upon confirmation that he was she informed him that: "Miss Covington wishes to leave as discretely as possible. She requests that you wait for her with your car on the east side of the house. She will be coming up the stairs from below the house. It's a quick escape route for the performers when they need to get away quickly." Harvey nodded, and was told that Bess should be there in about ten minutes.
He waited inside the Tesla in silence, just where Bess's assistant had indicated. It took longer than expected, and he was just about to call Bess when the girl herself came leaping over the passenger side door, and plopped into the passenger seat, a large duffle bag in hand. "Drive!" she yelled to him, though her tone was playful and light.
Harvey looked her over as she sat there in the passenger seat, giggling as though she were high, which—in a way—she must have been. Her hair was damp, and she had clearly come from a shower. Her face had very little makeup on, nothing beyond eyeliner and mascara, her standard look. She wore a large pair of sweat pants with boots pulled over them, a Harvard sweatshirt that he was sure had belonged to him at one point in time, and a large gray scarf. And she looked as happy as he had ever seen her. Soon he found himself laughing along with her, and the pair said not a word to one another for the entire drive.