He visibly winced. I’d known his body so well, long before he let me make love to him.
“I’m sorry, Chase,” I said. “You have to believe I never meant to hurt you.”
Chase took off his glasses and sighed. “I do,” he said, but I sensed there was more coming. And none of it good. “I just…I don’t think I have the strength for this. For the gossip and the…you know.”
The blind items. Yeah, there had been a few of those. Which superhero star is fucking his male personal trainer? It was all good fun, so long as it wasn’t your private life they were slobbering over.
“So, what?” I said. “You’re just going to crawl back into the closet?”
His expression hardened. “I’m not crawling anywhere. It’s nobody’s business but my own.”
“In theory, yeah. But not in this town. Expecting Hollywood not to gossip is like…like expecting a bear not to eat you.”
“Bears don’t eat people,” said Chase. “Bears just want to be left the fuck alone.”
They did. I was pretty sure there was a whole Werner Herzog movie about people being eaten by bears, but that wasn’t the point right now. “While being paid millions for making movies?” I said, determined not to get sidetracked. “Be real, Chase. You can’t have it both ways. It sucks, but that’s the way it is.”
Chase polished his glasses on the hem of his shirt and exhaled slowly. “I’m debating what to do right now,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“On one hand if we keep on working together people are going to say we’re together. And if we don’t…”
“They’re still going to find a way to say we’re fucking.”
“Yeah.”
“So?” I said, and I knew I wasn’t going to like the answer. After everything we’d talked about, he was chickening out.
He shrugged. “Do I really have a choice, here?”
Yes. He did. He absolutely had a fucking choice and I couldn’t believe he couldn’t see it.
“I’m not doing this,” I said, deciding to shut this down and save myself the hurt.
“Doing what?”
“Sneaking around. Lying. Participating in whatever charade you have in mind. Goddamn it, Chase, isn’t it enough that we’ve proved there are at least sixty million people in this country who hate us enough to vote for Donald fucking Trump? And a vice president who thinks you can ‘cure’ gay kids by electrocuting them until they’re straight?” He opened his mouth to speak but I kept going. “If there was ever a time in history to stand up and say ‘we’re here, we’re queer and you’d better believe we’re not going anywhere’ then it’s now.”
“Do not,” said Chase. “Do not make this political.”
“Why? Why not? You like being stuffed back in the closet because Putin wouldn’t like it? Why shouldn’t there be a gay action star? Isn’t it about time?”
He swallowed hard. “I…I’m not like you, Finn. I’m not that brave.”
“You are. You can be. Be that brave, or this is over.”
His eyes filled with tears. “That’s not fair.”
“It is fair,” I said, blinking back tears of my own. “All I want is for you not to be ashamed of me.”
“I’m not ashamed of you. And you have no fucking right to say things like that.”
“Don’t I?”
He gave me a hot, hurt look and I so desperately wanted him to say I was right. No sneaking around, no bullshit, no avoiding the question if someone asked. I wasn’t asking much. I was just asking him to be the person I knew he was.
But he didn’t. He shook his head, cut his eyes away, and started to walk away from me.
“And bears totally fucking eat people, by the way,” I heard myself yell after him. On reflection it was probably not the best thing I could have said.
10
There were times when you had to stop lying to yourself.
Nobody knew this more than me. I watched my clients do it all the time. They told themselves they were good to keep going, and that that knee would be fine if you iced it, only to pop an ACL during a charity tennis match a week later. We told ourselves to ‘feel the burn’, that the more it hurts, the better it is for you, to the point where things like Crossfit gained traction, where if you weren’t actually pissing, puking and coughing up a kidney then you weren’t exercising hard enough.
Bullshit, I told my clients. Pay attention to that knee. Don’t try to chaturanga on a weak arm, not unless you want a rotator cuff injury. Toughing it out was one thing, but pretending you weren’t in agony wasn’t going to get you fit. It was just going to get you hurt.
I sucked at taking my own advice.
The week after we broke up I ran a half marathon and revived a plantar fascia problem that had been driving me nuts on and off for a year. I should have called the podiatrist, updated my orthotics and taken it easy, but instead I turned the fan on full blast, jumped on the nearest treadmill and went in search of a faster mile. I wanted to hurt. I wanted to collapse in a heap and not have to crawl out of bed for a week, because the effort of keeping a smile on my lips was starting to make my face ache.
I kept waiting for the day when Chase would call. I imagined every word he’d say, every breath and every hesitation as he explained that he’d been an idiot. He could see that now, and that none of it – the premieres, the interviews, the whole world finding you fascinating – was worth anything if he couldn’t have us.
But he didn’t, and every day that he didn’t the fantasy seemed dumber and more distant, and every day that he didn’t the world seemed colder and grayer and less like a place I could stand any longer. I went through the motions at work, pushing people through their paces while wondering what was the point? They could have been hamsters running on wheels for all there was any purpose to it.
When the day was done I wiped down the machines, vacuumed the floors and took out the trash like I did every other day, only on the tenth day after we broke up (I know, I counted) there was something different.
Shithead was lurking by the trashcans.
“What the fuck?” I said, and he emerged from behind a dumpster with his hands raised high, like I was planning on shooting him. With what, I don’t know what he imagined. Currently the only thing I had in my hands was a plastic bag full of recycling. What was I going to do? Pull it over his head and suffocate him.
“Don’t hurt me,” he said. He didn’t have a camera this time. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Really? Because it looks a lot like you were going through my trash.”
Shithead gave me a weird, avid kind of look, the kind that an animal might give you if you shone a flashlight into its eyes and caught it in flagrante delicto with its face in an ice-cream tub or some other dumpster delicacy. That was when I realized he wasn’t quite all there.
“I know he’s been here,” he said, with the same ratlike intensity.
“He hasn’t. Now back off and leave him alone. Leave me alone. You’re treading on about five different anti-stalking laws right now.”
“He was here,” said Shithead. “I know you don’t go to his place.”
Oh boy. “Okay,” I said. “Do you need psychiatric help? I ask because I feel kinda bad about last time.” I took out my phone to call the police.
“He comes here at night,” said Shithead.
I stopped typing the number. “What?”
“Did you break up?” he said. “Because he comes here. Hangs out by the pool. Next to the cabana.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Chase. He comes here at night. Stands right there, looking up at your window. Did you two break up?”
“Uh, that would be absolutely none of your business,” I said.
“Have you talked to him?”
“You’re creepy,” I said. “And I’m calling the cops. Bye bye.”
I didn’t so much want to shoot the messenger as fire the shithead directly into the sun. Just when I thought I wa
s getting better at maintaining, along he came and set me back to the kind of depths of hopelessness that had threatened to swallow me whole. The idea of Chase standing under my window at night was dangerous. It was too close to the things I’d fantasized, things I couldn’t afford to dream about because with every day that passed they were less likely to come true.
It was like Shithead had poked a finger in a gunshot wound. And maybe I deserved that. I didn’t know any more.
All the same I fell for it.
Pathetic, I know, but that night I sat behind the darkened window, staring at the shrubs beside the cabana, waiting for them to rustle and move, and for him to step out the way he had the first time.
I’m sorry, he’d say. Can you forgive me? And I would. I would tell him that I would always tell him the truth from now on, no matter how uncomfortable.
But he didn’t come. I stared at the bushes until my eyes ached, and he didn’t come. And I cried.
The next day I walked around frayed and puffy eyed from lack of sleep, but Ivy – God bless her – managed to keep quiet about it until the evening.
She came in while I was busy vacuuming up that strange gritty dust that collects on floors at the ends of treadmills. The poor woman had probably just stuck her head in to say goodbye and make sure I wasn’t hanging from the rafters, but at the same moment the vacuum cleaner – which I admit hadn’t been sounding great in the first place – uttered an awful grinding wheeze and stopped.
I turned around and kicked it. It righted itself on its wheels and I kicked it again, furious that something else had managed to go wrong. On the third kick I felt it bruise my toes through my shoe, but I was too mad to stop. I punted the fucking thing halfway down the gym, screaming the whole time.
“GO. FUCKING. FUCK. YOURSELF!” It rolled and the lid smashed open. I saw a piece of blue plastic fly loose from the rim as it popped open, disgorging a bag full of evil smelling dust. The sight of its guts laid open like that must have triggered some ancient caveman brake in my head – it’s dead, you killed it, time to quit – and I stood there, shaking, my heart and my head feeling no better for all the rage and poison I’d just spewed.
Ivy approached slowly. “O-okay,” she said, looking down at the mutilated appliance. “I was just coming in to ask if you were okay, but…”
I sniffed hard. “Is it that obvious?”
She smothered a laugh. “Sort of, yeah.”
“Everything is terrible,” I said.
“Come on. Nothing is that bad.”
“It is. And if you think it’s not then you’re deluding yourself.”
Ivy sighed. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s just clean this mess up first. How about that?”
I got a dustpan and brush and swept the worst of it up, while Ivy attempted to put the vacuum cleaner back together, without success. I’d need to get it repaired and I was already thinking up what I’d say; that it had fallen from the top of the stairs or something. Any other explanation than having to admit to a stranger that you’d kicked the shit out of the in the throes of an outright fucking toddler tantrum.
We didn’t speak. She knew me well enough to know there was no getting anything out of me until I’d simmered down, so I swept to the sound of a TV happily babbling Hollywood inanities at the other end of the room. Lawsuits, babies, premieres, haircuts, a symphony of Neros fiddling away while the world burned.
“I think your vacuum cleaner’s broken,” she said, eventually.
“Yeah. I know.”
Ivy took a breath. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know. Do I?”
“It was Chase, wasn’t it?”
I emptied the dustpan into the trash and turned around, surprised.
“Don’t look like that,” she said. “You were miserable before, but you were twice as bad after the last time he was here. What happened? Did you two finally do something?”
“What do you mean, finally?”
Ivy rolled her eyes. “Duh. Every time he came in this place you were ridiculous.”
“I was not.” Was I?
“Was too. Every time he walked in you got Tex Avery eyes. Like, popping out of your head with big ass hearts in them.”
“Okay, fine,” I said. “I have…had…” I was about to say I had a crush on him, but that was ridiculous. “We had a thing.” I said. “A big…thing.”
“How big is big?”
“Like…love big? Is that big?”
“Oh shit, yeah,” said Ivy. “That’s huge.”
I sat down on the end of the nearest treadmill. “Ivy, what the fuck am I going to do? I feel terrible. I’ve never been so goddamn miserable in my life.”
“Well, we could open that bottle of wine in the office fridge.”
“Okay, that sounds like a plan.”
She went out and came with two plastic cups from the water cooler, a bottle of Mendocino rosé that had been a gift from a client, and a shopping bag with a box in it. It was a jigsaw puzzle.
“What’s this?” I said.
“Golden Gate Bridge,” she said, taking the box from the bag.
“Why are you bring me jigsaw puzzles? I haven’t had a stroke.”
“You will if you don’t relax,” she said, and opened the box, pouring pieces out all over the floor I’d just swept. “Come on. It’s fun.”
I opened the wine. “We’re going to have a serious conversation about what you get up to at weekends. Because if this is it…”
Ivy ignored me and carried on flipping over the pieces the right way up. “Whatever. Give me some booze. And tell me what’s going on with you.”
“Nothing,” I said, pouring out a cup and handed it to her. “It’s over.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“Yep.”
“And?”
“The studio would prefer him to stay in the closet for now,” I said. “And I’m not into that.”
Ivy winced. “Ow.”
“Yeah.”
The TV was still on. I thought about turning it off, but some masochistic instinct made sure I kept one eye on it. It was the London premiere of Chase’s movie, and I hadn’t even known. I felt as twice as stupid about last night. I’d been sat there the whole night like some dog sitting on its master’s grave, too dumb to even know that Chase was not only not coming back, but that he was half a planet away from me right now.
I watched Ivy turn the jigsaw pieces over.
“No…” I said.
“No, what?”
“Here.” I slithered down off the end of the treadmill and sat cross-legged on the floor. “You’re just flipping them. Sort them as you go. Separate the edge pieces.”
“Just like a man to become an instant expert,” she said.
“I’m not a man right now. I’m getting into rosé and jigsaw puzzles. To all intents and purposes I’m a sixty-five year old lady.”
She laughed and started to separate out the edges. “I’m gonna be an awesome old lady.”
“Yeah, well, you’re giving yourself a head start.”
“Shut up. Which way up are we doing this? Are you top or bottom?”
“That’s a very personal question.”
“I mean are you doing sky or sea?”
“I’ll start with the ocean,” I said, seeing as I seemed to have more pieces that color.
She peered over her glasses at me. “So…bottom?”
I raised a middle finger. “Versatile. With top tendencies.”
“Figures. You love telling people what to do.”
I pictured Chase unfastening his jeans, peeling off his shirt as he ascended the spiral staircase to bed. And always with that look in his eye, that bossy come-hither look that said this was going to happen. Oh, he’d ordered me around plenty – faster, deeper, don’t hold back, I can take it…
It hurt all the more because for a moment there I’d had a taste of what it felt like not to hurt. I’d been drinking and talking almost normally, but then he was right bac
k in my head again, under my skin, reminding me of how sad and sour the world felt without him.
I reached for the remote control, unable to stand the pain of seeing him again.
Only I mashed the wrong button, as you often do, and the volume on the TV went up.
“…of course, all everyone is talking about is that interview…”
It was the red carpet in Leicester Square, where a British showbiz reporter was standing with one finger in her ear trying to hear over the sounds of the crowds. “Yes, Rachel,” she said. “There were rumors that Chase Morrow has been unhappy on set, but this really does put a different complexion on things…”
“Do we have time to take a look at that again?”
“What are they talking about?” said Ivy.
“I have no idea.”
They cut to an interview, one of those bland billboard junkets where actors sit next to movie posters and say nice, empty things about the movie, the director and their co-stars. Chase sat alongside his co-star - a genuine Hollywood airhead named Paul - and at first glance I might have seen nothing but Chase’s game face, that expression of agreeable interest and expectation he wore when people were asking for selfies and autographs.
But I knew him better. And I knew that look in his eye. That was the same look he’d had when he sank down on my kitchen floor, convinced he was having a heart attack. All at once I was afraid for him.
“…I never imagined that it would lead me into this industry,” Paul was saying. “And I just feel so…blessed, you know? It’s such a wonderful project and everyone is such great friends…”
Chase picked at some lint on his lapel.
“…we all get along so good, right?”
“Hmm?” Chase looked up. He seemed completely disorientated and all I wanted to do was hug him and tell him everything was going to be okay.
Paul laughed. “We’re friends, right?” he said, improvising. He clearly thought Chase was doing a bit.
“Yes,” said Chase, through pale lips. “Great friends.”
“You don’t sound too convinced,” said the interviewer, getting in on the joke.
Chase shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do this.”
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