Domestic Do-over

by Kate McMurray

  “You’re not in the closet.”

  “No, and I don’t give a shit who knows, but I’m not Mike and Sandy. I keep it separate from my professional life. I don’t put little rainbows on my company T-shirts.”

  “I did notice that. In fact, I almost asked. Are they a couple?”

  “No. Old Army buddies, but they’re both married to other men.”

  Brandon tilted his head. “Huh. I mean, Sandy I kind of guessed because he flirts with me whenever I’m around, but Mike didn’t ping my gaydar. He said he had a daughter, so I just assumed.”

  “His daughter is adopted.”

  “Ah. Well, it’s not important.”

  “No, not to what we’re discussing.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how to make this decision. It’s not even the being out thing. Again, I don’t care. It’s more that I’d be in a relationship with you in public. That’s the part I can’t get past. I want to be able to tell you ‘yes, let’s do it,’ but I don’t feel confident that we can pull it off. And I’m worried that being so public will put weight on us that we don’t know how to hold up. I care about you, I can see us staying together for the long haul, but through this? I just don’t know.”

  “I have to give Virginia an answer.”

  Travis nodded. “But by Monday, right? So we have the weekend to think about it?”

  “Yes. But do you think more time will really help?”

  Travis thought about how empty his bed had felt the night before. “Maybe?” He sighed. “It’s not fair.”

  “I know.”

  Brandon picked up a piece of pineapple with his chopsticks. Travis was surprised he could eat. Travis’s stomach felt like it was inside out.

  “Can I sleep on it, at least?” Travis said.

  “Sure. And please know that I’m not trying to pressure you to decide one way or the other. If you want to tell Virginia to shove it and go back to pretending we’re not together when the cameras are on, I can pitch that to Virginia. We can be open at the house, but not when the cameras are rolling. Does that feel like a reasonable compromise?”

  “I mean, that’s what would make me the most comfortable. We can revisit this in a month or so, depending on how filming is going, but I keep picturing us going public and there being too much pressure for us to stay together and be happy. I may not have a wealth of relationship experience, but I know things aren’t rosy all the time, even when you’re in love.”

  “I know. And I appreciate your honesty.”

  “I’ll decide by Monday morning, I promise.”

  Brandon nodded. “I’d like to cohost the show with you because it would be fun. I’m not so much looking forward to the attention I’ll get when it inevitably comes out that I’m gay. Part of me thinks it’s better to just come out and control the narrative rather than waiting for someone to find out, but another part of me wants to kick the can down the road.”

  “No good answers here.”

  “No.” Brandon smiled ruefully. He reached across the table and took Travis’s hand.

  Travis wove his fingers with Brandon’s. He picked up their joined hands and kissed Brandon’s knuckles.

  Could they do this? Travis didn’t know. But he was willing to try.

  Chapter Twenty

  TRAVIS WOKE up Monday morning at Brandon’s—where he now kept enough changes of clothes that he wouldn’t have to go home in the morning—and his phone was buzzing.

  “What the…?”

  Brandon snored on, though he stirred when Travis sat up and grabbed his phone.

  Email and text message notifications. A lot of them. Travis’s stomach sank. Bad news. It had to be bad news.

  It was.

  It took Travis a minute to sort out what people were talking about, but it became clear soon enough that it was now public knowledge that Brandon Chase was having an affair with the male project manager on his new show, one Travis Rogers.

  Travis kicked Brandon. “Get up.”

  Brandon came awake slowly. Then he blinked at Travis a few times. “Wha…?”

  Travis hopped out of bed. He showed Brandon his phone screen, where messages continued to accumulate. “We’ve been discovered.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No. The story hit some internet gossip site, and now everyone who has ever known me is emailing me to congratulate me on my now-public affair with a man everyone thought was heterosexual. My own sister is accusing me of turning you. Get the fuck out of bed. I have to go light some things on fire.”

  Brandon got up. He was still naked but didn’t seem to notice. “Calm down. It can’t be that bad.”

  “It’s bad, Brandon. And there are a finite number of people who could have leaked this. All people I’ll probably see today. You might have to hold me back, because I’m going to kill whoever did this.”

  “Okay, okay. Let me hop in the shower.”

  Travis’s complete and utter rage did not wane on the way to the Benton house for their meetings with Jessica. He spent the whole subway ride seething while Brandon tried to talk him off the ledge. When they got off the train, they walked by a row of newspaper vending machines, and Travis half expected to see his own face on the cover of the Post. He supposed he wasn’t that kind of famous yet, but this was no less unpleasant.

  His private life, aired on the internet, without his consent. It was one thing if he and Brandon had control of the narrative, but for it to leak like this, before Travis had even completely decided that he wanted it to be public knowledge, was a violation. Anyone who didn’t know he was gay sure as hell knew now. Anyone who might ever work with him in the future could find it out in a matter of seconds if they googled him. Viewers of the new show would watch Brandon and Travis talk about load-bearing walls and picture them fucking.

  This was so bad.

  Virginia was waiting for them at the house, and she was all smiles. “Hello, boys. I wondered if we could have a word before Jessica gets here.”

  “Was it you?” Travis asked.

  Virginia didn’t even bat an eyelash. “I need a decision, boys. Don’t drag this out.”

  Travis’s fury was like acid boiling in his belly. “It was you. I can’t fucking believe this.”

  “Wait,” said Brandon. “Let’s be rational. What happened?”

  “Isn’t it clear?” Travis felt half-hysterical, but he couldn’t believe this had happened. “Virginia leaked the fact that we’re seeing each other to the press, thus taking the decision about what to do out of our hands. Because now the most intimate part of our lives is just out there in public. It doesn’t matter if we wanted to keep it a secret. It doesn’t matter that we never consented to letting that information be public. All that matters is that Virginia got the fucking hook for her fucking television show.”

  Brandon stared at Virginia. “Did you leak the information?”

  Virginia shrugged. “I may have let it slip to a few strategically placed people. But I needed a decision out of you. And you’ll thank me for this later. Neither of you are closeted, are you? Brandon was ready to go public. I figured Travis would be too.”

  “No,” said Travis. He couldn’t even see anything, he was so angry. “Fuck you, Virginia. I don’t give a shit who knows I’m gay, but I do give a shit about being on a fucking gossip website.”

  “Well,” said Virginia, not looking the least bit remorseful. “Cat’s out of the bag now.”

  “Are you serious?” asked Brandon.

  “Look, this way it’s out in the open that you’re a couple. We can recut the show to indicate that you’re working on the houses together. That’s how we’ll present it. The audience will be thrilled to see a gay couple on television.”

  “You had no right!” Travis shouted. “We’re not… I mean, Brandon and I are barely a couple. How can you….” Travis shook his head. He was all incoherent rage. “You should have let us decide so we could control the narrative. Now i
t’s just… out there. You, Virginia, just outed Brandon to the whole fucking world. You don’t know what his life is like. You don’t know if his family or friends know. You have no clue what kind of fallout this will have. You just decided to put it out there because it’s best for your bottom line. But this is tremendously unfair to us.”

  “Well, what’s done is done. Jessica Benton will be here in about ten minutes.”

  But Travis couldn’t even conceive of getting through a meeting with the cameras trained on them, or speaking to Virginia without wanting to punch a hole through a wall. “I can’t do the meeting. I have to get out of here.”

  “Come on, Travis,” said Virginia. “Let’s discuss this.”

  “I’m out. I… I can’t work with you. I have to think about whether I can even do this show now.”

  With one last long look at Brandon—and hoping like hell that Brandon understood—Travis stormed out of the house.

  BY RIGHTS Brandon should have stormed out after Travis, but he couldn’t quite force himself to do it. The meeting with Jessica Benton was too important.

  And yet when Jessica herself walked into the house five minutes later, Brandon found himself saying, “Maybe we should postpone.”

  He was utterly starstruck, for one thing. They’d met once before, but Brandon couldn’t get over the fact that this woman had been in a ton of movies he’d loved. Jessica had a girl-next-door charm to her, but even without her hair and makeup being done professionally, she was strikingly beautiful. Her strawberry blond hair was pulled up into a ponytail, and the simple gray sweater and jeans she was wearing were casual but expensive-looking.

  “What’s going on?” Jessica asked.

  “We had a bit of a disagreement,” Virginia said. “About one of the other houses. It’s fine, nothing to worry about.”

  Brandon didn’t want to start a fight with Virginia while Jessica was standing there, but he completely understood Travis’s rage and didn’t know how to process what Virginia had done. While Virginia and Jessica made small talk for a moment, Brandon pulled out his phone and texted Travis, Where did u go?

  Not coming back was the reply.

  Not asking u to. Where r u now so I can find u?

  Brandon tried to tune back in to what Virginia and Jessica were talking about while he waited for the response. Jessica was starting to discuss her vision for the house, but Brandon already knew he wouldn’t be able to have a rational conversation.

  Travis might quit the show. He was angry enough that his quitting seemed likely, even. But Brandon couldn’t do the show without Travis. There was just no way. They’d fixed the Argyle Road house together. It was theirs. And Brandon couldn’t do this meeting without Travis because he didn’t know enough about estimating the costs of repairs or even know with certainty whether things should be fixed. He couldn’t identify load-bearing walls unless they were obvious. He couldn’t say whether an HVAC system was in good repair or needed to be replaced. He had no way to know whether this would be a $50,000 job or a $250,000 job.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m very interested to hear about your ideas for the house, Ms. Benton. But I think we should postpone this meeting until we can get Travis, our project manager, here. He’s more knowledgeable about structural issues, so he’ll be able to tell us what work must be done to the house before we can pretty it up.”

  Where the hell was Travis, and why wouldn’t he tell Brandon where he was? Did he think Brandon was somehow complicit in this?

  “Do you think we could get him over here now?” Jessica asked. “I’ve got another appointment this afternoon.”

  Brandon looked at Virginia. He tried to communicate telepathically that this was her fuckup and she had to fix it.

  “I apologize, Ms. Benton, this was my fault,” said Virginia.

  “Please call me Jessica.”

  “Jessica. I’m so sorry, I screwed up the scheduling. We were all supposed to meet here this morning, but I miscommunicated with Travis. Let’s do a quick walk-through of the house now so you can tell us what some of your ideas are, and Brandon can lend his expertise, and then we can meet again with Travis in a day or two.”

  “Production is going to start here this week, right?” Jessica asked. “We agreed to a pretty tight timeline. Six to eight weeks was what you said. I’m leaving for Prague to film a movie on June 1. I’d like to be done by then.”

  Brandon mentally counted. June 1 was a little over two months away.

  “That should be doable,” Brandon said.

  “Good. Then let me tell you my ideas.”

  Brandon couldn’t focus on Jessica at all. He managed to make himself say some things that she responded to positively, but mostly he thought about Travis, wondering why he hadn’t responded to the text yet. Probably because he didn’t want to be found.

  They were partway through Jessica’s explanation about what she wanted to see happen in the master bathroom—something about taking away a bedroom to make space for a bigger bathroom and a walk-in closet—when Brandon got a text from Ismael to say the kitchen backsplash tile was in and the crew was getting ready to install the kitchen appliances. Also, Ismael hadn’t been able to get in touch with Travis.

  Shit.

  They got through the meeting. Brandon apologized that he couldn’t be more helpful. “I like your design ideas, though, especially upstairs.”

  “Good,” Jessica said. “Sorry, I’m such a fan of Dream Home. I’ve been wanting to flip a house since I started watching it regularly.”

  “You watched Dream Home?”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s why I called Restoration. The fact that they were able to get you to help out with this project is amazing. I was sorry to hear about what happened with Kayla, by the way.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, please call me when we’re ready to start filming here. I’d love to do the walk-through with Travis so he can help us with a renovation estimate. I’ve got a pretty healthy budget for this project, but it’s not unlimited.”

  “Right.”

  After they shook hands and Jessica left, Brandon turned to Virginia. “How long before I signed on did you start talks with Jessica?”

  Virginia at least had the good grace to look sheepish. “There are a handful of celebrities looking at houses in this neighborhood. This could be the next hot spot in Brooklyn.”

  “So you manipulated me into doing the show because you knew there were celebrities like Jessica who wanted to work with me, specifically. And then, as soon as you found out about me and Travis, you tried to manipulate us into being the happy gay couple you want to host one of your shows. Now it’s all perfect. Except that I’m pretty sure you just violated my contract by leaking details about me and Travis to the press. Travis was still on the fence about committing to doing the show as a couple until we were on more stable ground, and now he definitely won’t do it and will probably quit the show. So I hope you’re fucking happy.”

  Brandon didn’t wait for a response. He walked out of the house and headed for Argyle Road. On the way, he pulled out his phone and called Garrett Harwood.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  WHEN HE stormed out of the house, Travis went home, not knowing where else to go. He turned off his phone, determined to ignore Brandon after he’d asked where Travis had gone. Travis didn’t want to be found for a bit.

  He was really tempted to walk away from all of it—to leave the house and the show and Brandon in the past, get a job somewhere else, forget any of this had ever happened. It was such a stupid idea, thinking he could be on TV.

  But he was in love with Brandon and the house. The show he could take or leave. If he never had to see Virginia Frank again, it would be too soon. But he’d grown fond of the house on Argyle Road. He’d put a lot of himself into the project. And he was particularly fond of Brandon.

  Brandon, who’d just stood there looking stunned when Travis had gone off on Virginia.

  It wasn’t in Brandon’s nature to roc
k the boat, and Travis knew that, but he was still angry at everyone, and he had no outlet for that anger.

  Where did Travis even stand with Brandon? What did he always say? Failure is not an option. Brandon was a man who had entered into a legal marriage with a woman he did not love in order to create the perfect false front for a TV show. This was a man who was so damaged by his father that he could not even contemplate failure.

  So, yeah, Travis didn’t care much about getting outed himself, although he cared a lot about Brandon, who hadn’t so much as moved a toe out of the closet, getting outed, and he cared even more about not having any say in the matter. And he worried that Brandon, who was clearly willing to go to great lengths to secure his own success, his public image, and his television show, would choose the show over Travis. In fact, that was probably what would happen. If, by storming out, Travis had put the show in jeopardy, well, Brandon would choose the show.

  He sat in his tiny studio apartment with the TV on for a while, but he didn’t absorb anything he saw.

  The world already knew about his and Brandon’s relationship; Virginia was right that the cat was out of the bag. And Travis wanted to be with Brandon; people finding out wasn’t a reason to leave. But maybe he shouldn’t do the show anymore. He didn’t like the idea of his life being so public. He knew that gay couples were still such a novelty to some people that they pictured what they did in bed instead of thinking about any other aspect of their relationship. Travis didn’t want that kind of scrutiny.

  He was contracted to film six episodes, though. He’d have to finish the job. Unless his temper tantrum that morning had gotten him fired. The Restoration Channel might actually be eager to let him out of his contract.

  He let out a breath and shut off the TV. He turned his phone back on.

  There were a half-dozen texts from Brandon, which he’d expected. A few missed calls too. There were three missed calls and a voicemail from Ismael, a missed call from a Manhattan number Travis didn’t recognize—probably Garrett Harwood telling him his work for the network was done—and a handful of texts from friends who had seen the gossip sites.