by L. A. Witt
My chest hurt. I’d brought all of this into his world. Why did people have to be such fucking garbage?
The worst part was that it was completely consuming what few conversations we did have. I barely got to talk to him at all, and I missed him like crazy, and even more, I missed talking about things besides the media frenzy. He didn’t talk about his patients or coworkers or even Lola. I didn’t talk about filming. Everything I loved about our relationship had suddenly taken a backseat to everyone else talking about us. We had to do something about that.
I checked the time. He’d be home from work by now, and done walking Lola if he hadn’t taken her to the park. I doubted he’d gone to the park; he was probably desperate to go home, batten down the hatches, and hide himself and his dog from the world. Couldn’t say I blamed him.
For once, though, I was home early enough and was awake enough that I could actually call him. So with my heart in my throat, I speed-dialed him.
“Hey.” One word had never contained so much exhaustion and frustration. He didn’t sound all that happy to hear from me, either.
“Hey,” I said uselessly.
“They finally let you go for a night?” He sounded like he was trying to make light conversation but had to really work at it.
“Yeah. Sorry I haven’t been able to call.”
No answer.
I swallowed and rubbed at my beard. “How are you holding up?”
“Honestly?”
My throat tightened. “Yeah.”
Brian sighed. “I’m not. I… this is so much more than…”
“I know. I didn’t think it would get this bad.” My shoulders sagged under the weight of everything. “I figured they’d go nuts over it, but…”
“But not like this?”
“Yeah.” I am so sorry, Brian. “I don’t know why they do this. I really don’t.”
“I don’t either. But they do. And I swear it’s getting worse. Like, it was one thing when they were just talking about us.” His voice shook badly. “But now they’ve figured out where I live and where I work. I mean, there were two photographers outside the clinic when I left work today. So far no one’s followed me inside the clinic or all the way home, but…” Brian blew out a breath. “Now I’ve got reporters calling my cell phone. How did they even get that number? How the hell do I deal with this?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and hated how useless it sounded.
“It would probably be okay if it weren’t for all the shit people were saying. If they want to take my picture, it’s annoying, but… whatever. But that on top of…”
“I know. And… God, I am so sorry.”
He sighed heavily, and his voice shook when he spoke again. “I thought it would just be people speculating about us. Taking some pictures, making up some gossip. But it’s like every time I turn around, they’re there. Between that and the messages I keep getting from people… Adam, I… Do you know how humiliating it is to have literally thousands of people talking about all the reasons I’m not good enough for you? All over the internet for two solid weeks?”
I forced back a sudden rush of bile. “Brian, they have no idea what they’re talking about. Of course you’re good enough for me.”
He laughed bitterly. “Not according to—”
“Fuck them,” I said through clenched teeth. “For God’s sake, it’s me. I’m still that kid who fucked up your order at the diner a million years ago. A few movie contracts and paychecks haven’t changed who I am, and who I am is still the kid who thinks you’re out of my league.” A lump replaced the acid in my throat. Now that I’d said it out loud, the emotions were overwhelming.
Do you know how afraid I am of you realizing you can do better?
“I’m not out of your league,” he whispered. He went quiet. We both did. I gnawed my thumbnail, trying desperately to both hold onto my composure and figure out what to say. Before I could, though, Brian pushed out another heavy breath, this one full of resignation. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
My heart dropped. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… this is too much. I knew there’d be media attention, and that was hard to swallow, but I thought I could deal with it. But now… shit, I’m getting hate mail. I’m the butt of jokes all over the goddamned internet. I had to lock down all my social media, and at this rate, I might have to change my email address.” He paused. Then, in a voice so unsteady it broke my heart, he whispered, “This wasn’t what I signed up for.”
“Just give it time,” I pleaded. “They’ll lose interest. I know it sucks right now, but I promise they—”
“Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.”
I swallowed to force back the lump in my throat. “They’re trolls, Brian. I know it’s horrible, the shit they say, but do you really want—”
“I don’t want any of this,” he said unsteadily. “I don’t want the hate mail. I don’t want to wake up every day wondering what’s been said about me, what my coworkers and friends are reading, what my parents are seeing. Waking up with acid in my gut. Waking up scared. All I wanted was to be with you. I can’t… Fuck, Adam, I can’t pick a leaf of spinach out of my teeth in the privacy of my own home without being terrified it’s somehow going to be a meme tomorrow.”
“I know,” I whispered, my voice shaky. “God, I know. And I’m sorry. Just… tell me what I can do.”
“I don’t know if there’s anything either of us can do,” he said, sounding like every word was excruciating. “All I wanted was to be with you. That’s all I want now. But this… God, I can’t handle it, Adam. And if we split up, everyone’s going to pounce on that too, so I think it would be better for both of us if we just get that part over with.”
“What?” I was suddenly on my feet. “Brian, no. We can work with—”
“Maybe you can,” he said, and I might have thought he sounded calm except there was the faintest tremor at the edges of his words. “I don’t even like being the center of attention in a room with ten people. This? I… I just can’t. I thought I could, but…” He sighed again. “There’s nothing in this world I want more than to be with you. Nothing. And I don’t want to hurt you. I swear to God, that’s the last thing I want. Being with you is amazing. Everything else is…” His voice cracked as he said, “It’s hell.”
I winced, squeezing my eyes shut. “Brian…” I had no idea what to say. What could be said? “It won’t stay like this. It never does. They’ll get tired of it, and—”
“They haven’t yet.”
“I know. I know.” I raked my free hand through my hair. “But give it another week or two, and they won’t give a shit about us anymore.” I frantically racked my brain for the right words. “My publicist and assistant said the same thing when I talked to them earlier. They didn’t expect this big of a shitstorm, or that people would be such trash fires about everything, but whenever something like this blows up, it dies down just as fast. We just have to ride it out.”
Please. Please, Brian. Ride this out with me. We can do this. It’s worth it.
“They didn’t think it would be this bad,” Brian said. “How can they—or you—be so sure it’ll die down?”
“Because it always does. People have tiny attention spans when it comes to this, and there’s always a bigger scandal right around the corner.”
He released a long, ragged breath. For a moment, neither of us said anything. Finally, he spoke. “I’ve seen how the tabloids talk about shit. Even if this isn’t a headline anymore, it’ll keep coming up. How many months or years do you think I can handle being a sidebar in every article about you? Where they talk about your new movie or what you’re wearing, and oh by the way, have you seen the asshole he’s dating for some reason?”
I flinched. “This is why I don’t read the tabloids. And you shouldn’t either.”
“We don’t, but people do. And I just can’t deal with it. Especially now that we barely have time to talk, and when we do talk, it’s about all t
his other shit.” He blew out a breath. “One day everything was great between us. Then we came out, and suddenly there’s… nothing except coming out.”
My heart dropped. “It’s just until I’m done filming. We knew this was coming.”
“Yeah, but not on top of everything else. With as little as we’re seeing each other or even talking, it’s only a matter of time before they start speculating that we’ve broken up anyway. No matter what we do, or what we don’t do…” He trailed off, and he was silent for a second before he whispered, “I’m sorry, Adam. I…” The pause after that was long and heavy, as if he’d stopped himself from saying something important. “I know this hurts. It’s killing me too. But I just… I can’t. I’m sorry.” There was a note of pleading in his voice that broke my heart more than anything else: This already hurts like hell—please just let me go.
So I said the only thing I could think to say: “I’m sorry.” As soon as the words were out, I cringed. They sounded worse every time I said them.
“So am I.” Beat. “I, um. I need to go.”
No. Please. Don’t.
But I wouldn’t force him. This conversation was hell for me, and I didn’t imagine it was fun for him either. Somehow I choked out, “Okay. And I mean it—I’m sorry about all of this.”
“I know. I am too. This… fuck, this isn’t what…” He pulled in a deep breath, and I could almost see him setting his shoulders back and steeling himself. “I really need to go. Goodbye, Adam.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Goodbye.”
And then the call ended.
I sank back onto the sofa and stared down at my phone. The silence in the room rang in my ears. Tears stung in my eyes.
How had it all gone so wrong?
We’d both braced for a lot of media attention after we went public, but neither of us had bargained for the cruelty being aimed at him. Could I blame him for not wanting any more of it?
Of course I couldn’t blame him, but letting him go still hurt like hell.
So what was I supposed to do now? Call him back and try to undo this? Call Vanessa and beg for some kind of insight or just ask her to let me cry on her shoulder? Scream into the void because what the fuck else could I do?
Finally, alone in the silence of my empty house, I covered my eyes with my hand.
And cried.
Chapter 32
Brian
I was already crying by the time I put the phone on the coffee table. It wasn’t the first time I’d broken down today, but it was the worst. Now it wasn’t just the weight of emails and venomous comments and intrusive questions. It was all that plus letting go of Adam.
I’d tried and tried all day long to come up with a solution, but every time I’d circled back to the same truth I’d had to lay out for him—that we couldn’t do this. That I couldn’t do this. It didn’t matter how much I wanted him or how much walking away hurt both of us. I’d tried ever since the news had broken, but I couldn’t fucking cope with people watching my every move, showing up at my work, and publicly speculating about my sex life, every one of them pounding the point home that I didn’t deserve Adam.
I wiped my eyes and sniffed. Guess you win, assholes.
Well, the trolls had won. The paparazzi probably didn’t want us to split up—they just wanted something to talk about. Some way to cash in on Adam Jacobsen having a boyfriend. So in that respect, yeah, maybe they had won. They had plenty to talk about. Hell, now they’d have a breakup to talk about.
And I had…
Nothing.
Just a deep, relentless ache that had been stuck there since the morning after the charity gala. I didn’t imagine it would get any better. Hadn’t expected it to. But was it too much to ask for it to not get worse?
For weeks, my life had been full of Adam. Texting. Emailing. Facetiming. Counting down the minutes until I saw him. Begging time to slow down so a visit wasn’t over too soon. And now he was gone, and everything suddenly felt empty. Like the world had been yanked out from under my feet, and now I couldn’t figure out how to stand.
I’d almost gotten married once in my life, and after we’d split, I’d basically spent a week shaking my head and wondering what in God’s name I’d ever seen in that train wreck of a relationship. Our breakup had been a long time coming, and even though it hadn’t been fun to call it off, we’d both been relieved to move on. Bullet dodged.
I didn’t feel that way about Adam. I wanted Adam so bad it hurt. He hadn’t been the reason I’d called things off. He was everything I wanted in a friend and a boyfriend, and he’d wanted to ride things out and weather the storm. Maybe he was strong enough to do that. I wasn’t.
Where could we have gone if we didn’t have to deal with this bullshit?
Oh, now wasn’t that question some salt that this wound didn’t need?
I wiped at my eyes again, my hand shaking badly. Why the fuck did I agree to go to the gala and come out? Was being in the closet again really worse than this shit? Than being in an ugly spotlight and ultimately not having Adam at all? Especially since I hadn’t split with him because of anything within our relationship. After the gala, things hadn’t changed between us, just around us, and in a way that I couldn’t fucking handle because I was a weak fucking coward. And then he’d started filming, which meant our relationship existed almost entirely in the comments, articles, and photos I couldn’t avoid.
Jingling tags let me know Lola had come into the room. A moment later, she jumped up on the couch beside me, flopped down, and rested her head on my lap. She whined softly.
“Hey, sweetheart.” I tousled her ears. She stared up at me, and I had to be imagining how sad her big brown eyes were. “You want to go out for a bit?”
She didn’t move. Maybe I should take her to the park. Let her run around with the other dogs.
In my mind, I saw Adam throwing her toy for her in the dog park, and I swore out loud. I was never going to be able to visit that park without thinking of him, was I?
Assuming I could do anything without thinking of him.
Lola nudged me with her nose, still looking up at me as if to ask “Dad, what’s wrong?”
And if there was anything that could break what was left of me tonight, it was my dog’s innocent worry. So I gave up trying to hold myself together, buried my face in Lola’s coarse ruff, and just cried because I didn’t know what else to do.
It shouldn’t have hurt like this. We’d only been seeing each other for a few weeks, and we’d only spent maybe ten days of that in the same state. I’d ended years-long relationships without feeling like my insides were being ripped apart like this.
Because the relationship had been fine. Things with Adam had been great. Hell, they’d been perfect. He was everything I could have asked for in a man. It was easy to imagine being in for the long haul with him. It didn’t matter that it was way too early to think about things like moving in together or even getting married. We just clicked that well.
It wasn’t right for us to be splitting up now, and it tore me apart to let him go, but… what else could I do? I couldn’t live like this.
If it had just been the odd camera or the occasional article making it seem like our relationship was somehow newsworthy, I could have gotten used to that. It was weird and intrusive, but I could have adjusted.
But the tweets.
But the emails.
But the direct messages.
But the constant feeling of being laughed at and judged and followed and hated… I couldn’t take it. I just couldn’t.
I sat up and wiped my eyes with a shaky hand, still keeping the other arm around Lola. I wanted to be with Adam. I felt things for him I’d never felt for any other man, and if those feelings were this strong already, then God knew what a few months or years could make out of this. And knowing I’d hurt him? That he was probably a wreck just like I was? Probably distracted as hell while he’s trying to work? Fuck.
There was no getting around it, though. I
thought I could deal with the realities of dating someone that famous, but I was wrong, and all I could do now was try to move on with my life. I might even get lucky and get some privacy and normalcy back, but I wasn’t holding my breath.
I was, however, suddenly desperate for a taste of my pre-fame life. Sitting up a bit straighter, I sniffed and cleared my throat. “What do you say we go to the dog park, kiddo?” I tousled Lola’s ears. “I think you deserve that after this.”
She wagged her tail, but didn’t go bouncing off to find her leash. She just kept staring at me, ears up and big brown eyes fixed right on me as if to say, “Are you sure you’re okay, Dad?”
I smiled even as another tear slid free, and I stroked her neck. “Come on.” I rose. “Let’s go to the park.”
Either she was convinced I was all right, or her dog brain had shifted gears, but she jumped off the couch and barreled into the kitchen. I chuckled, following her as I sniffed sharply. Lola grabbed her harness and leash, and she went nuts when I picked up the toy and treats. She yipped and spun around, tail wagging, and I managed to laugh.
“Come on, kiddo. Let’s go play.”
She was gone like a bullet, heading straight for the front door. Smiling despite my tears, I followed.
When I walked back through the living room with Lola’s treats and toy in hand, my phone was buzzing on the coffee table. I cringed. Was Adam calling me back? I wasn’t sure I could handle talking to him, but I couldn’t ignore him either.
With my heart in my throat, I picked up the phone.
Unknown caller.
My stomach lurched. Fuck. Another reporter. I declined the call and turned off my phone. I felt guilty about switching my phone off. If there was an emergency or something, no one would be able to reach me.
I just need a break. That’s all.
Just long enough to walk my dog and catch my breath.
That isn’t too much to ask, is it?
I put the phone back on the table and headed for the door. I never left the house without it, but today, I needed to be away from it. Away from all the people who might call me, all the assholes who had opinions about me and Adam, and all the text conversations I could scroll through to torture myself about the man I’d just broken up with.
