Secret Things

by Andrews, Nazarea

  But he thinks--

  “You think I’m cheating on you. With Cari?” I say, just to clarify because the statement is so fucking outrageous that I need to clarify it.

  He doesn’t respond, just stands there, his eyeliner running, his sweaty hair flopping in his eyes. So familiar and so damn gorgeous. And he feels so far away.

  It used to be I could read Vic with a half glance.

  Now I’m pretty sure I need a dictionary, and I don’t think we’re even speaking the same language.

  “You missed the whole fucking dudes thing, did you?”

  He shrugs. “You’ve never been crazy picky about gender, Dimitri. Don’t pretend that’s a problem.”

  I stare at him, and I want to slap him.

  I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to hit him as much as I do now.

  So I stand up, and I push out of the bedroom. Nudge Camden who rolls over to blink at me, bleary eyed.

  “I’m leaving,” I tell him.

  His eyes go wide, and then he nods, and sits up. “Gimme five.”

  “Dimitri,” Vic says, his voice that annoying as fuck c’mon, babe, be reasonable.

  I fucking hate that tone.

  I shove some clothes into my bag, grab my phone and laptop, and I’m pushing out of the bedroom. Living on a bus means I never really unpacked. Kinda useful, that.

  Camden is waiting in the living area, and the band is watching him, all curious and a little bit angry.

  Jace, I think, knows what the hell is happening.

  “You’re overreacting,” Victor sighs.

  “You accused me of cheating, and called me a whore because I’m bi,” I snap. Camden straightens, and I can feel the anger coming off of him. “Pretty sure I’m not.”

  I nod at Camden, and he opens the door, stepping out into the humid heat.

  Victor takes a step toward me and I give him a nasty smile. “Don’t. Just. Go to your fucking concert, and I’m going to go home, and we’ll talk when I don’t want to punch you.”

  “You’re going back to the princess,” he says, flatly. Disbelieving.

  I shake my head. “I’m going back to my life. My job.”

  “Thought I was your life,” he says, quietly.

  I don’t know how to respond to that. Don’t know how to say I thought so too, and maybe we were both wrong.

  So I don’t say anything, and he doesn’t either.

  And I leave.

  Camden has done this before. I can tell, because he avoids any of the nice hotels, and steers us toward a shitty hotel that I’m pretty sure we’ll catch something from. Pays cash for a room that smells of stale cigarette smoke and hopelessness.

  If we run into fans here, they almost deserve whatever they manage to get from us.

  I’m quiet as he leads me into the hotel room, kicks the door shut, and tugs the curtains closed.

  Quiet as he strips the blankets off the bed, and tugs a soft knit thing that Cari gave him a few years ago out of his oversized duffle. Quiet as he pours some vodka into a little plastic cup and presses it into my hand.

  Quiet, when he asks, do you wanna talk?

  Quiet when he forces me to lay down and takes the vodka--gone now, but the damn cup is still in my hands and I don’t really want to give it up--from me.

  I’m quiet until he tugs that damn blanket up and under my chin, treating me with this almost reverent care that makes me tremble and want to cry.

  My boyfriend called me a cheater and a whore, and this is what makes me want to cry.

  “Camden?” I whisper, as he starts to move away.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks,” I say and his expression goes soft and sweet. Gentle in a way no one but Cari and I get to see.

  “Get some sleep, buddy,” he murmurs. And because I’m too tired for anything else, I do what he says.

  Chapter 5.

  Originally posted on EndersHallow by @SilenceofScreams

  Silence of Screams is sad to report due to scheduling conflicts, Dimitri Blackwood will not be joining Silence for the remainder of the summer tour. He is deeply saddened to miss seeing his friends and fans on the road.

  You can see Victor Vanes and the rest of Silence of Screams this summer in Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia.

  What is the goal of Small Things:

  Cari: We aren't trying to change the world. We're just a couple friends who work together on a silly show that people like for some reason. But, small things add up, right? Micro aggressions and small insults are just as damaging as big shit. Small things have power. Kind gestures that no one else might think about can have a profound effect. And if enough people do them, it creates a wave of kindness and good. And that can change things.

  Dimitri: What my lovely costar is trying to say is, we're trying to change the fucking world.

  (An interview with Cecile Cruz, originally posted on EndersHallow.)

  ---

  We spend two days in the hotel. The first is quiet. I read and watch TV, and Dimitri curls on his bed, sleeping and sometimes watching the slightly swaying curtains with a blank face that disturbs me.

  I've known him long enough to know he's processing, working through his anger and hurt and that until he does, he'll be like this.

  So I don't push him.

  The second morning, he looks at me and says, “I wanna go home.”

  I nod once, and he crawls out of bed and stumbles into the bathroom.

  It costs a small fortune but I don't blink and twelve hours later, we're on a redeye back to Vancouver, his fingers drumming nervously on his thigh as he twitches next to me.

  There's a part of me that wants to reach out and squeeze his fingers. Lace mine through his until his eyes turn to me and I can give him the small smile he needs but refuses to accept.

  Instead, I hand him my tablet, a script open on it and he gives me this wry smirk, like he knows what I'm doing, and starts reading.

  Cari is waiting for us when we get off the plane, with Jeb a few feet behind her. She doesn't know everything, but she knows Dee's upset and that Victor is going on the offensive.

  I thought I was pissed when I heard what he'd accused Dimitri of. But that passive-aggressive, bullshit social media post had thrown Dee to the wolves, and had pushed me from angry to outright furious, and it was only Dimitri’s reaction that kept me from confronting Vic.

  So when she opens her arms, and Dimitri steps into them, it’s natural. It feels right.

  It feels like the piece that’s been jagged and off since we left her at the airport. She murmurs something, too low for me to hear, and Dimitri makes a pained laugh, and sniffles, burying his face in her neck.

  Cari is a slender woman, and in heels, she flirts with five eight.

  Dimitri is six foot one, an inch shorter than I am, and still. When she holds him like this, it looks like she’s holding a child, protecting a child. I catch her eye and see the anger and questions there, but shake my head.

  Not yet. There will be time for her anger and for me to answer all her questions.

  But not yet.

  “C’mon. You can crash at our place,” she says, decisively. I see the argument in Dimitri’s eyes and nudge him with my shoulder. “Don’t bother, man. You gotta come get Zed anyway. And your apartment has no food in it.”

  “Traitor,” he mutters, and I nod, agreeably.

  “I'm not going home with her pissy by myself.”

  Cari raises an eyebrow as she releases Dimitri. “I'm standing right here you know.”

  I give her my best grin, the one I know Dimitri is matching and she rolls her eyes.

  “Guys,” Jeb says softly and that's our cue. I take Cari’s hand and follow him out of the airport.

  It's gorgeous in Vancouver this time of year. I grew up in Georgia, where the default temperature is hot as fuck for more months of the year than it isn't, so being here, in a place that actually believes in seasons, is kinda nice.

  I didn’t actually plan on buying a house
here, but. Things happen.

  Cari found it, one morning when she and Dimitri were out jogging. It’s about a mile from his place, and she fell hard for it. A drunken conversation later, I had agreed to sign a fucking mortgage with her, and a few weeks after that, it was ours.

  White picket fence, and ocean view included.

  It didn’t take long for news to leak. Sometimes I’m still surprised at how fast people find shit out. The studio and fan base loved that we were picking out curtains together. Carissa loved that the house was hers.

  And I was just happy that my best friend was happy.

  Coming home, for her, was a place. Where our dogs and her blankets and piano was. Where she could be comfortable and annoying and bitchy and not have to worry about that ever getting back to the press.

  For me, home was people. It was my sister in Georgia, and my best friends in Vancouver, and Tristan and Luke, out in LA. Home was the people who cared for me, not just Camden Martin, but me. Cam. The guy from Georgia that inexplicably did something right.

  That made it, despite all the odds.

  Home isn’t this gorgeous little house that screams Cari. It’s us--me and her and Dimitri, squished together on our leather couch, the dogs pressed against us, as reruns of Friends play.

  “We’ve seen this one,” I say, idly. We’ve been back for about an hour, the dogs have finally settled down, and I’m propped between them, with my arm looped around Cari’s bent knees, and Dimitri pressed against my other side.

  “We’ve seen all of them,” Dimitri grumbles.

  “I like them,” Cari says, her face set in an adorable frown.

  “We know,” Dimitri says.

  She gives us a small pout but there’s no heat to it.

  As much as we love hiatus, and traveling, there is something right about being home again. So we lounge there, watching as Ross bitches about breaks and Dimitri slumps into sleep, resting against me. I nudge Cari and she rolls off the couch after the current episode ends, and frowns down at us.

  “You gonna wake him up?”

  I ease out from under him, not surprised when he snuffles and curls into the pillow I prop under his cheek.

  He has a room. It was a guest room, one of the three in the house. Over the eighteen months since we moved in, the gray and yellow guest room became his, with his clothes and books and smelly sneakers shoved under the bed, and his teacups growing fucking science experiments until Cassie, our housekeeper, comes through and scoops them up.

  The room across the hall, a green and cream room full of sunlight, became our home office, and unofficial headquarters for Small Things.

  The remaining guest bedroom, downstairs, we actually use for guests, when we can be bothered to trust people enough to let them in.

  “He’ll get up in an hour to piss, and go to his room then,” I murmur and I can feel Cari watching me, her eyes curious and probing without making any demands.

  Cari is really fucking good at that.

  She covers him with the knitted blanket she finished a few weeks ago and then whistles at the dogs. They troop upstairs with us, and sprawl on the bed as I strip out of my clothes and tug on sleep pants. Cari vanishes to brush her teeth and comes back smelling minty and clean and looking absurdly cute in her messy bun and oversized t-shirt.

  She sits cross-legged on the bed and picks at a thread on the comforter.

  “So. Tell me what happened,” she instructs, and there’s the anger I expected at the airport.

  Broody and dangerous, it’s lingering under her gentle question and in the hard set of her expression.

  “Did Dimitri talk to you about quitting?”

  She inhales, sharply. Her expression goes shuttered and careful.

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t, Cari. You know he didn’t. We’re filming next week.”

  “Obviously,” she snaps. “What I don’t know is why he decided to consider quitting without even talking to us.”

  Ahh.

  That makes sense. She’s hurt.

  “Victor wants him to quit,” I say. “And you know he’s protective of Vic and making sure they’re always a happy picture.”

  “That’s for the public,” she snaps.

  “Oh, because we’re so honest about our relationship?” I say, arching an eyebrow.

  She frowns and shifts away.

  “He’s not quitting. He’s here. And I might have kissed him.”

  Cari’s bright blue snaps up to meet mine and a slow smile twists her lips up.

  “Um, I’m gonna need to hear all about that.”

  Sometimes I wonder how the hell I got to this point.

  How I can be sitting on my bed with a girl the public agrees is one of the hottest women in the world, barely dressed, and talk about kissing the dude asleep on our couch.

  I met Cari at the first script read through. It wasn't something we did much, after the first six or seven episodes, but back then, we were getting a feel for each other, and the cast, a feel for the director and showrunners, and read throughs were a good way to make that happen.

  I was young, and even though I'd been working in the industry for years, I wasn't anyone.

  Which was exactly what Evans Hurtz wanted.

  Cari was the opposite. She was established Hollywood royalty, known for her parts as a mean girl and a diva, and her off screen antics. When she signed to play opposite my Josef, it was a departure of everything she’d done before.

  Fans like to think we fell in love that day.

  The PR team sure as fuck doesn't disabuse them of that notion.

  And the truth was, I did fall for her then. But not the way they think.

  Cari was a quiet, southern girl a thousand miles from home, gambling everything on something new. I was a Georgia boy just as far and we were both wondering what the hell we were doing, on a show that made absolutely no fucking sense.

  When she spoke in that heavy southern drawl, and whispered for tea when the PA's made their rounds, I was snared.

  But the face she made when they produced a glass of iced tea that wasn't sweet--that hooked me and dragged me down.

  She became my best friend. We both needed something that reminded us of home, and we were young, close in age, and under the same kind of pressure. The chemistry on screen that drew in our fanbase carried over when the cameras quit rolling, and somehow, between long hours on set and quiet rides home and weekends spent in each other's apartments because there was nowhere else to go--we became best friends.

  The fans wanted it to be more.

  So did the studio.

  They didn't get that it didn't need to be more to be perfect and exactly what we need.

  And they didn't get Cari.

  So we did what was easy and what we were good at. We lied. We acted.

  We fooled the whole world--or at least the part that was watching--into thinking that the epic love story was real.

  "Um. After you left, we went out." I run down the day’s events, startled to realize it was only a few days ago and that I want it to happen again.

  "And you guys haven't talked about it, have you?" she asks, when I tell her about me running off.

  "What the fuck do you think? He's had a lot on his mind."

  "One of those things being his best friend shoving his tongue down his throat and then running."

  I groan. "Cari."

  "Do you want to do it again?" she asks, curiously and I shrug. Yes. Because of fucking course, yes.

  But she doesn't need to know exactly how much I want to do it again.

  “What are you scared of?” she asks, softly, and I shake my head, the denial already forming. Cari reaches out, shaking my shoulder. “Cam. Don’t lie to me. You aren’t any fucking good at it. Tell me what you’re scared of.”

  “Losing him,” I say, quietly. “Losing myself. Losing my career. Just. Losing. I mean, fuck, Cari. There’s a reason we’re together.”

  “We’re together because it’s easier than f
ighting the fans and the studio. But there was always the agreement that either of us could walk away, whenever we wanted.”

  “I’m not dumping you for Dimitri,” I say, grumpily.

  “You aren’t dating me, you idiot,” Cari snaps back, just as grumpy. “Or are you buying your own press these days?”

  I shake my head. A headache is forming behind my eyes, and I don’t want to deal with this. Don’t want to fight with her, or deal with whatever is brewing between me and Dimitri.

  “He’s with Vic,” I remind her. “That kiss was a fucking mistake.”

  She shakes her head. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

  I roll to the side and flick off the light, and Cari huffs in irritation. She slides onto her side of the bed, and curls away from me.

  She likes touch, but she likes it on her terms. And I’m comfortable with that. I’m used to falling asleep with my best friend a half-a-foot away, her tiny snores filling the room.

  We aren’t supposed to be on set yet. We’re supposed to be halfway to Chicago, in the back of a bus and listening to Silence of Screams play pieces off their new album. It’s nice, to be back in Vancouver and not need to be anywhere or do anything.

  My agent, of course, wants me busy, so he sends over a couple scripts that I glance at and dismiss without any real thought.

  I’m too busy with Fractal Ends to think about anything else right now, and I’m happy with that.

  Dimitri says that there’s no harm in looking at other parts. We have our three months a year off, and I could, theoretically, squeeze in a part. He has, a Hallmark original the first year he was on Fractal Ends, and Cari’s done it.

  I just haven’t felt any part so deeply that I wanted to.

  The second morning we’re back, I wake up to an empty house. Dimitri went home yesterday, with Zed and a few Tupperware containers of the chicken pasta Cari made last night and the chocolate chip cookies we’d baked when we got bored watching TV and being lazy.

  It’s strange, after weeks with Dimitri and Cari, with Silence of Screams, to be alone. With only my thoughts and the hum of the fan, and the dogs, panting at my feet.