“But,” Jesse said, coming back into view and flipping on the little coffee maker, “if my dude wants to see surreal art or some shit, that’s fine by me.”
My dude.
That was such a Jesse way of saying it. Hunter grinned like a teenager as all his fears flittered away.
“I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive,” he said, laughing as Jesse mimed putting his mouth directly under the stream of coffee that had started from the coffee maker.
“I think they probably frown on fucking at the art museum.”
Hunter threw a pillow at Jesse, who deftly ducked out of the way. “I meant, like, one at a time. In different locations.”
When the coffee finished brewing, Jesse poured a cup. Then he lined up the edges of a bunch of powdered creamer packages and ripped them open. Jesse took his coffee black. Which meant Jesse was making the first coffee for Hunter.
It was just a small, probably meaningless, gesture, but Hunter’s throat tightened all the same.
After Jesse finished doctoring the coffee, he delivered it to Hunter in bed. Hunter had to swallow hard. When was the last time someone had taken care of him like this?
“One at time, you say?” Jesse pretended to think about it as he returned to the coffeepot. “I can be down with that plan as long as the fucking comes first.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “And also maybe third.”
Bang, bang, bang.
A pounding at the door. No, a battering—it sounded like a band of marauders was trying to get in.
“Shit!” Jesse had dropped his coffee and was shaking his hand as if he’d burned it.
“Jesse!” came a voice from the door. “Jesse, you asshole! Are you in there?”
Colin? Was that Colin? What would he be doing here?
The pounding continued. The door shook on its hinges.
“Colin!” A second voice, one Hunter recognized as Amber’s, confirmed the identity of the first. “There’s nothing to be done at this point! Leave them alone!”
Jesse was frozen with his burned hand extended in front of him.
“Fuck that! Jesse, if you’re not in there, I’m going to find you at the fucking surrealism thing.”
Hunter was frozen too, waiting for Jesse to do something. Say something. Hope mixed with dread in his gut. Clearly there was some sort of emergency. Would Jesse cop to being here? His mind started flipping through excuses. It was a quarter after nine. It wouldn’t be that weird for Jesse to be in Hunter’s room at that hour. But they were naked. They would need time to—
No. He wasn’t doing that anymore.
Jesse making a PR plan to come out to the world was one thing, but hiding from his band was another. Jesse understood the difference. Right? Hunter’s stomach clenched.
One more bang on the door, a single, short pummel, like a fist giving it a final shot.
“Hold your goddamned horses, Colin!” Jesse shouted, and relief slammed into Hunter. That Jesse wasn’t going to hide, to dissemble . . . Hunter felt like his heart was going to crack open, but only because it wasn’t big enough for the surge of emotion inside it. He sagged against the headboard, but only for a moment, because when he saw Jesse was hurrying to dress, he followed suit. Whatever it was, they would face it together.
With a glance over his shoulder, probably to check that Hunter was decent—which he was, but all he’d had on hand to scramble into was a hotel robe—Jesse yanked open the door.
“What?”
Colin marched into the room, angry and entitled.
Amber followed. “I’m sorry.” She looked devastated.
“What the fuck is going on?” Jesse demanded, stepping between Colin and Hunter, and Hunter was grateful for it, because Colin was staring at him with undisguised hatred.
But then, over the course of a few breaths, all the rage bled out of Colin. As he took stock of the situation—Hunter in a robe, only one of the two beds slept in—he just . . . deflated.
“Check your phone, man,” Colin finally said, shaking his head at Jesse. He said it again as he turned. “Check your phone. Google yourself.”
Colin left, but Amber remained, unmoving. Looking stunned. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told him which room you were in.”
“What the hell was that about?” Jesse asked.
“It’s probably best for you to check your phone,” she said softly. A little sadly. She squeezed his forearm. “Matty has been calling, but you take your time. I’ll be here when you need me.”
And then they were alone again.
But not like before.
All the joy from earlier, all the teasing happiness, had whished out of the room. Colin’s invasion had punctured the balloon.
Wordlessly, Jesse reached for his back pocket and pulled out his phone.
“It’s dead,” he said, and his voice was too.
Hunter’s own phone was charging on the nightstand. He disengaged it and nodded toward the cord, feeling a little like he was handing Jesse a gun with which to shoot him.
But no. He was being melodramatic. Obviously, something dire had happened, but it was better to know than not. He sat on the bed to wait.
It was taking a while for Jesse’s phone to come to life. When Jesse, seated on the unused bed across from Hunter, glanced up, Hunter attempted a smile, even though his stomach was churning.
Jesse returned it. Well, his face did. It wasn’t a real smile. It wasn’t coming from inside him.
That was when Hunter really began to panic.
Jesse started scrolling through texts. His face went white.
“What is it? Is it Beth? Has Russell done something?” The chasm of dread snaking through his gut widened into a pit.
It couldn’t be that, though. That wouldn’t have brought Colin pounding the door off its hinges.
Jesse laughed, but there was no delight in it. There was only disbelief. Bitterness. Regret.
“In a manner of speaking, yes, Russell has done something.”
He handed the phone to Hunter, rose, and walked over to the window.
Time folded in on itself then, because Hunter was looking at a post on GossipTO. The three-word headline took his breath away.
Jesse Jamison Gay?
He read on, ignoring notifications of several incoming texts.
We couldn’t figure it out. Our sources had dried up. There’s been nothing on Toronto-based bad-boy rocker Jesse Jamison of Jesse and the Joyride for months. Years, really, now that we think about it. No pretty groupies ready to kiss and tell. No leaks from his crew telling tales of bender-fueled mischief. Where have the trashed hotel rooms been? Where have the broken hearts been?
Where has the infamous Jesse we all know and love been?
It turns out he’s been in the arms—and bed?—of one Dr. Hunter Wyatt, Toronto-based doctor and a stone-cold silver fox if we do say so ourselves.
Allow us to present the evidence. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. Or a thousand dropped jaws.
Hunter’s jaw dropped too. They had pictures of him and Jesse from the gala. There was one of them dancing, toward the end, when Jesse had suddenly drawn him close. And another, a really grainy one, like someone had taken it with a telephoto lens, of them at the pond, Jesse hugging Hunter. From that photo alone, it wasn’t clear it was them. Just like that initial shot Jesse had shown him on the train, he thought bitterly. But together with the dancing shot, it could be pieced together, based on their clothing and Hunter’s hair color.
It took his breath away, the way they had intruded on those moments, those beautiful, private moments and twisted them into something salacious, something to mock.
He went back to the article, his skin prickling all over.
GossipTO has also been in touch with one Mr. Russell McDaniel, Jesse’s brother-in-law, who reports that on an impromptu visit to Jesse’s house, he caught the pair looking very cozy, if you know what we mean.
What followed was a bullshit interview with Beth’s as
shole ex, and then the article breezily wrapped up.
Jesse! You sly dog. You’ve managed to shock us, and that’s saying something.
Another text arrived. He could see from the preview that it was from Matty, Jesse’s manager.
He looked up. Jesse was still at the window, his back turned, still as a statue.
It was a gross invasion of privacy, but Hunter didn’t care. He tapped the message and was flipped into Jesse’s texts. To a huge string from Matty. He backed up and started reading from the first one, time-stamped at ten past two in the morning.
Call me. Important.
Check your voice mail.
Goddamn it. CALL ME.
I fucking told you to stay out of trouble. I told you to stay on brand.
That one had a link to the GossipTO story. After that, he kept going.
It’s all over the place. Everyone’s asking for statements. People. USA Today. Fucking Rolling Stone, Jesse. Call me, you asshole.
I have a crisis communications firm engaged. Standing by for whenever you decide to grace us with your attention. If, you know, you care at all about not ruining your career. About not ruining all of our careers.
Then, the one that had just arrived.
I’m sorry I flipped out on you. Please call me. We can fix this.
“We can fix this.” Hunter had a pretty good idea how Matty would propose to “fix this.” They would trot out evidence to discredit Russell—that wouldn’t be hard. They’d get someone who was at the gala to explain what had happened there. Likely someone from the hospital’s PR team, who would testify to Hunter and Jesse’s longstanding platonic friendship and come out with Jesse’s previously unpublicized donation. There probably wasn’t such an easy way to explain away the hug by the pond, but he was sure the Jesse Jamison machine would come up with something. The fucking crisis communication team, because God knew, falling for a man was nothing if not a crisis.
Fuck that. He tossed the phone onto the bed as a tide of anger rose through his body.
He didn’t know to whom it should be directed, though. None of this was Jesse’s fault, and being angry at “the world” wasn’t helpful.
And what Jesse needed right now was help. He was probably scared. He’d admitted as much last night. Okay, they could handle this. They just needed to come up with a plan. They needed to find that PR person who was not in Matty’s orbit, as Jesse had said last night.
Hunter forced down his anger and spoke to Jesse’s back. “So . . . you’re gay? Or bi?” They hadn’t actually had a conversation about the details last night, because honestly, Hunter didn’t give a crap what Jesse’s labels were. He’d needed only to be sure that this thing between them was real. Was going to be acknowledged. But now the shit was hitting the fan, and they needed to establish some facts so they could decide how to proceed.
Jesse answered but didn’t turn. “Bi.”
“Does anyone else know?”
Jesse turned. Scoffed. “They do now.”
“I meant, does anyone close to you know. Beth?” He’d been thinking about whether they could pull together a support team of sorts.
“No. She’ll be as surprised as everyone else.” Then he softened and sank into a chair near the window.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“But is it? My whole career is built on this image of me,” he said slowly, his eyes slipping shut, like looking at Hunter was too much to bear.
“I know.” Hunter did. He understood. For Jesse, coming out was going to be a lot harder than it was for most people.
Jesse opened his eyes. They were different. Shuttered. Dimmer.
Hunter had shoved his anger away a minute ago, but it had left behind an empty space, one that was now filling with unease.
“You remember that photo?” Jesse shifted his gaze to the ceiling. “The one I showed you on the train?”
“Yes.” Of course he did. That photo had dogged him.
“That’s what I used to do. Pick up the occasional guy. Not even that. Just . . . not resist when the occasional guy hit on me. But I sort of had these . . . rules about . . . what could happen.”
“You’d let them suck your dick, but not the reverse. Not anything else.” Classic closeted behavior.
“Yeah, because somehow, in my mind, if I stuck to that rule, I wasn’t . . . gay, or bi, or whatever. I was just . . . an opportunist.”
“Okay.” Hunter waited for Jesse to voice some sort of plan. Some intention. He hadn’t operated by that irrational “rule” last night, after all. He had looked into Hunter’s eyes, said, “I get it,” vowed to come out, and then fucked him.
Jesse did not articulate any sort of plan, though. Instead, he kept talking to the ceiling, telling Hunter stuff he already knew. “After that shot came out, I got crucified in the press for cheating on Kylie.”
God. If Jesse would just look at him, it would feel like he was helping Jesse make a plan instead of listening to Jesse recite a speech. Hunter tried to prevent the unease swirling around in his chest from mixing with Jesse’s weird detachment and alchemizing into panic.
“Our manager at the time dumped us,” Jesse went on. “Said it was the final straw. The guys were livid. It was a big fucking mess. I’d ruined everything. But then, somehow, I convinced Matty to take us on. He was way out of our league at the time. It felt like . . . a reprieve. So I cleaned up my act. No more pot. No more partying. No more . . .”
“No more guys,” Hunter finished for him, no longer able to hold back the panic and struggling against gray spots in his vision, because this was beginning to sound like a speech. A very particular kind of speech.
Jesse nodded. “I told him the truth about the picture. He told me—and he was right—that the world wasn’t ready for Jesse Jamison with a dude. Made it a condition of signing us.”
How do you know he was right? Hunter wanted to shout, but he refused to come off as desperate. If Julian had taught him anything, it was that he was only ever going to let himself be with someone who wanted him. Who chose him.
“Matty made us,” Jesse went on. “We were doing this bullshit regional touring, selling maybe a hundred thousand copies of a record. Then Matty comes on board with his ‘rebranding,’ and suddenly we’re headlining arenas in the States and our records are going gold.”
Hunter wanted to object, to say that Jesse had made himself. Because to think that it wouldn’t have happened without Matty? That was ridiculous. But Hunter saying it wouldn’t make Jesse believe it.
Jesse kept talking. “And I thought, well, I like women too, so there’s no problem here. It wasn’t like I was looking for anything serious. I wasn’t expecting . . .”
“You weren’t expecting what?” Hunter whispered, a single ember of hope left glowing in his chest.
“You. I wasn’t expecting you.”
Jesse finally made eye contact with Hunter, and Hunter knew it was over. The ember went black. Acid flooded Hunter’s mouth, pungent and sick-making.
It was happening again.
It was as bad as Julian. Worse.
“What about last night?” he said, trying to make himself sound angry instead of hurt.
“I thought I could do it. I was going to . . . come out on my terms,” Jesse began, but then he fell silent.
“And what were those terms?” Hunter asked, his voice, thankfully, under control. “What was that going to look like?” He could see now he should have asked this question last night. Shouldn’t have given in when Jesse had said he didn’t want to talk anymore. Shouldn’t have been so trusting.
“I don’t know.” Jesse’s voice was heavy with emotion.
Hunter moved to his suitcase and began methodically pulling out clean clothes. It was all he could think to do.
“You have to understand—”
“I do understand,” Hunter said. The disdain in his voice shocked him, but it also gave him something to hang on to. Anger was a scaffolding, a structure that would get him through the next
few minutes with his dignity intact.
“This isn’t just about me.” A pleading note had crept into Jesse’s voice. “There’s the whole band, the crew.”
It is about you, Hunter wanted to argue. Jesse was always coming out with that, “It’s my band,” line, but apparently that was only true when it was convenient.
They stared at each other for several excruciating moments. Finally, Jesse broke the standoff, returning his attention to the ceiling. He sat for a long time like that. Then he said, “I gotta go. I gotta talk to Matty.” He got up, grabbed his jacket, and without looking at Hunter, said, “I’ll call you.”
And left Hunter alone in a hotel room with a pile of lollipops and a broken coffee mug. A broken heart too.
No. That wasn’t right. Hunter’s heart had already cracked last night—that time because it hadn’t been big enough to contain all the happiness inside it. Now that the happiness was gone, he was left with an empty shell—two pieces of something that used to be a heart.
“Are you sure it’s not better for Jesse to address the controversy head-on?” Matty said, drumming his fingers on the table in the conference room at the label where they were all meeting to discuss the fallout resulting from the fact that Jesse had fallen for the wrong person.
“Absolutely not,” said the crisis communications woman—Nicole? Nancy? He couldn’t remember, but she was made for the job. Equal parts soothing and firm, she’d outlined a strategy that involved them saying nothing official but planting a reporter who would ask a rehearsed question that Jesse would then answer seemingly off the cuff. “It’s vastly preferable that he not protest too much.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” said Peter, their rep from the label.
“This is an opportunity, really,” said Nicole/Nancy. She wasn’t sitting at the head of the table—that was always Matty’s spot—but Jesse had to admire her low-key confidence. “We can use Jesse’s image as the swaggering, devil-may-care rock star to shrug this off. He’s so attractive, everyone with a pulse wants him. If we play this right, it’s not just damage control. We can end up bolstering the brand.”
The brand.
Nicole/Nancy’s plan was that they would play on his reputation as a womanizer. He was a hypersexual, devil-may-care playboy who, though he was straight, had embarked on a little gay experimentation à la David Bowie, because why not? The world was big and full of beautiful people.
Infamous Page 21
