by Lina Langley
He looked at the heading.
Rock star Max Neon with new beau, playwright E. Woodward, at the fairground.
He looked at Lara.
“You didn’t tell me that the guy you spent the night with was E. Woodward.”
Max sighed, shaking his head. “I didn’t know,” he said. “He told me he was a playwright, but I don’t remember if he told me his last name. It’s all lost in the other details of the weekend.”
“Okay, well,” Lara said. “You know I don’t like saying I told you so.”
Max rubbed the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. It hurt. “I know I should have been more discreet about us being caught but—”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about the article.”
“The article?”
“You haven’t seen the article yet?” Lara asked, her eyes widening and her voice tinged with anxiety.
“The article? What article?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Forget I said anything.”
“You have to tell me.”
“I think I’m going to go to bed,” she said. “It’s late.”
“No, wait…” He said, but weakly, and when she got out of his bed and left the keycard on the nightstand next to him, Max didn’t feel like going after her at all. He really needed to find out what she was talking about. He scrolled around until he found the article that she was talking about.
It was in one of the national sites, a news one, but not a very serious one. There was a picture of Max at the top, where he was singing into the mic, his eyes closed tightly. He looked a little bit like he was having an orgasm, which he supposed had to be entirely the point, since the title of the article was supposed to be quite titillating.
“My Sublime Night with Maxx Neon by E. Woodward,” Max said aloud as he started to read. He thought that if he said the words, they might become more real, even if they didn’t feel it right then. Max didn’t want to think that Eli had written an article about him, but the proof was right in front of him. He needed to convince himself that this wasn’t real. That this wasn’t something that Eli had written about him.
“I spent my night on Saturday in the most unexpected of ways,” he read aloud, though his voice was Eli’s voice, and he felt a little nauseous when he spoke. “My cousin had dragged me along with her to a concert for Maxx Neon, something that I was hesitant on going to in the first place. It’s not that I didn’t like his music, it’s just that I’m not really a concert guy. I prefer to stay at home and write, or as it happens, sit at my computer and wait for the screen to fill with words by itself. Of course, the latter never happens and the first hasn’t for a long time, so my only choice was recreation. My cousin, pushy as she can be, told me that she would leave me alone if I simply got laid that night. I didn’t think that it would happen.”
Max read the rest of the article, this time mouthing the words, not saying anything else. At least it wasn’t too bad—most of it was extremely flattering, talking about what the night had done for Eli in terms of his writer’s block and how much it had changed his life to see that there was a bit of hope out there. But despite all that, Max didn’t feel flattered. He felt awful. He hated that Eli had betrayed him, just like Lara had said. She hadn’t said that she had told him so, but he knew that she had to bite her tongue to do so. He slammed his phone down and groaned.
He had been so stupid. Letting the man make him feel like there might something to them. Letting him think that he wanted something more. He felt like he had put down all of his defenses to let Eli in and Eli had exposed him before the entire world.
He didn’t want to be dramatic about it. It was what it was. Eli had betrayed him, in a weird but extremely mundane way. He couldn’t exactly call him and tell him that what he had done had been shitty—he realized that he didn’t have his number. And like a Victorian novel protagonist, he was convalescing. Regardless of how much he wanted to go to Eli’s house and tell him that he had been wrong to do this, that he had been wrong to write this article, that it had been beyond a breach of trust.
Instead, he turned his phone off and sighed. He didn’t have the energy to deal with any of this. He needed to rest and he was suddenly feeling very, very tired.
He put his phone face down on the nightstand. He closed his eyes and lay back on the bed, taking a deep breath as he did so. He fell asleep, finally, but it was a fitful sleep. He kept waking up, stretching, and going back to sleep. At least he slept some, he thought once he woke up. It was light outside when he woke up the last time, but not quite day yet. Max sat up and edged toward the window, where the sun was hitting the bed. He did always like the sun. He wanted to feel the sun on his skin. It was one of life’s little pleasures and Max was quite aware that he needed something like that.
Anything would be better than the way he felt right then. He felt awful physically, but worse than that, emotionally he felt extremely drained. It was as if he had managed to outrun his exhaustion for the past few months, but now it was hitting him all at once and he could hardly do anything. He loved the sun on his face, so at least there was that.
His phone was still off on the nightstand and he wasn’t slightly interested in turning it on. He didn’t want to hear people’s opinions about his night with Eli—E. Woodward, he remembered bitterly—and how he should clearly change his name to Maxxx Neon.
Their opinions shouldn’t have mattered to him, but they did. The only reason that he did care was that they had gotten Eli’s opinion first, and Max wished that he would have given it to Max in the first place. He didn’t think that he had lied to him, not exactly, but Max had decided to trust him. Implicitly trust him. Max never had sex with someone that he didn’t trust. It had been stupid, there had been no reason for him to be so open with someone that he didn’t know. The man was gorgeous, but for all he knew, he could easily be a sociopath.
He was jerked out of his thoughts by the phone ringing. The landline’s tone was shrill and annoying in his ear. He hadn’t set up a wake-up call so he wasn’t sure exactly who could be calling him this early. His arm felt heavy when he extended it. “Hello?”
“Hello,” a voice he didn’t recognize said. “This is Fred from the front desk. I called Miss Lara Miller about this because she told me to go through her when you checked in, but when I called her about this, she told me to call you. A Mr. Eli Woodward is here to see you?”
Max hesitated. He looked around him. He didn’t want to face Eli. “Ask him if he got his jacket.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Garcia,” the man said. Max couldn’t hear the next few words he was saying. He sounded amused when he went back on the line, just on the edge of irritated. “He said that he did get his jacket and that this is not regarding that.”
“Well, tell him I don’t wish to see him,” Max said.
“That’s what Miss Lara thought you might say, and what I said to him before I called you. Would you like me to call the police?”
“What? No,” Max said, his mouth dry. “Don’t call the police.”
“Would you like me to have Miss Lara call for your security team?”
“No,” Max said. “That won’t be necessary.”
“Mr. Woodward said that he would stay here all day and night until he catches a glimpse of you, Mr. Garcia,” the receptionist said. “Now, I don’t make it my business to mingle with the personal affairs of guests, but you’re a high profile one and I do wonder if he might make some people uncomfortable loitering here.”
Max took a deep breath. “Find,” Max said. “Send him upstairs. Make sure you have Lara on standby, if you can?”
“Of course, Mr. Garcia,” the man replied. “I’ll be sending him up to your room now.”
“Thank you, Fred,” Max said quietly, hanging up the phone and taking a deep breath. He wasn’t ready for this, he thought. But he had to be.
Chapter Seven
Eli looked great when he went upstairs. Max hated how great he
looked. There might be circles under his eyes, but he still looked great, with those beautiful sparkling eyes that Max had so quickly become so entranced with and that gorgeous head of hair.
Max struggled to get out of bed, something that he hadn’t been anticipating, but at least he managed to open the door by himself. He didn’t think that he looked too much worse for wear, but when Eli saw him, his eyes widened.
“You look terrible,” he said.
Max cocked his head, his mouth a straight line. “Thanks. What can I help you with?”
“Shit, that came out wrong. Can I talk to you?”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
Eli sighed. “I guess that’s fair. Look, I came over as soon as I heard.”
“Heard what?”
“That you were sick,” Eli said. “You never gave me your number and I didn’t want things to be weird between us.”
Max shook his head. “I’m not sick,” he said. “I’m tired. It’s different.”
“You cancelled your shows,” Eli replied. “You told me how much doing this means to you. I can tell that you’re a professional through and through. You’re sick.”
“Fine,” Max said. “So I’m sick.”
“What’s wrong? The news said that you were exhausted but—”
“I am. And I’m not really supposed to be out of bed. If my mom comes over and catches you, she’s never going to forgive you.”
“Will you?”
Max sighed. “Sure. I should go back to bed.”
“Wait,” Eli said. “Let me explain myself, okay? And then you can decide if you never want to see me again.”
“I already decided that.”
“Five minutes? You already let me come up.”
“Five minutes,” Max said, opening the door a little to let him in. He watched as Eli walked over to the chair and sat down without letting Max ask him to.
“Fine,” Eli said. “I only need two. You must have read the article I wrote about you.”
“You didn’t have anything to do with my current condition. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I wasn’t trying to,” Eli said. “And I wasn’t trying to write a penthouse letter about our night together.”
Max didn’t say anything.
“I wasn’t,” Eli said. “I know that you have no reason to believe me, but it was just… you left my house and I went straight to my computer. It all started flowing out.”
“I’m glad to have been of service.”
Eli shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I don’t care about what you meant,” Max said. “I read your article. It was fucking fascinating to see what you thought of me.”
“Max—”
“No, it’s okay,” Max said. “My favorite part was that you didn’t even tell your readers why you ended up kicking me out of your house. What word did you use? You said that it was sublime. Except you forgot that I left your house with my tail between my legs after you kicked me out.”
“That was—it wasn’t necessary for it to be part of the article. Look, I wasn’t intending to publish it, for what it’s worth. I sent it to my friend Cynthia, she works at the website that published it, and then she sent it to the acquisitions editor.”
“You still had to sign a contract,” Max said, swallowing. “Right?”
“Yes,” Eli replied. “I—I didn’t think it through. I didn’t think that you would ever see it and I didn’t think that you would even care if you did so.”
Max sighed. He sat down on the bed and groaned.
Eli watched him. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be okay,” Max said. “But just because you didn’t think I would see it…”
“I know,” Eli said. “It was basically a diary entry and I decided to share it with the world. I was just…”
“What? Say it.”
“I was so excited I had finally managed to write something,” Eli said. “I wanted to make sure that someone else saw it. That someone else proved to me that it was real.”
Max sighed, shaking his head. “Believe it or not, I get that.”
“You do?”
“Yes,” Max said, his gaze away from Eli’s. He thought that if their gazes met, he might burst into tears and that would the death knell to whatever little dignity he might have left. “You could have shared it with me.”
“I… it never occurred to me,” Eli said.
“Because you don’t think I’m a person,” Max said, taking a deep breath. “It’s clear to me that you only see me as a tool. Great, I undid your writer’s block. Now you get to go home. Write your next brilliant play.”
“You’re upset.”
“And you’re a genius.”
“I didn’t think that you would care about not taking you into consideration.”
“I know,” Max said. “You have made that clear over and over again.”
“I need to explain myself.”
Max watched him, leaning forward and chewing on the inside of his mouth.
“When we hooked up, I thought my night couldn’t get any better,” he said. “I thought it was going to be a good memory. And that was that. Then you wanted to spend the day with me and I could feel myself getting more and more hopeful. It was a little like a fever dream. Everything was perfect. When you went up to my apartment, I couldn’t wait to touch you, to kiss you, to feel my mouth on yours.”
Max kept on saying nothing.
“And then you got to my house and we walked inside and I couldn’t… I didn’t wait, because I couldn’t. And when I pulled away from you, I knew that it was over.”
Max shook his head. “It wasn’t,” he said. “I wanted to do something for you.”
“I know that you did,” Eli said. “And if it had just been sex, Max, I would have been so into it. But it wasn’t. After we kissed, after you’d come in my mouth, sure, there were thoughts of sex. I wanted you. But it wasn’t just about that. I looked inside my apartment and you were there and it made me realize just how much I wanted to spend my life with you. How much I wanted to introduce you to my cat and my bearded dragon.”
Max smiled. “That makes sense.”
“I didn’t want to get hurt,” he said. “We had both made it so clear that this was nothing but a fun time between the sheets. And let’s be honest, you beckoned me over at a meet and greet, I’m probably just another notch in your bedpost.”
“No,” Max said, shaking his head. “You’re not. I don’t do that.”
“What?”
“You’re the first person I have ever done that with,” Max said. “Ever. I’ve wanted to before, but you’re just… you were so magnetic, Eli. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you. And honestly, talking to you would have been enough. What ended up happening, well, I wasn’t expecting it.”
Eli’s eyes widened. “You’re serious.”
“Yes,” Max said, then took a deep breath. “Here’s something to share with your newly acquired legions of fans, if you want. I’ve only ever slept with three people. You’re one of them.”
“What?”
“I told you,” Max said, his heart in his throat. “I don’t do one night stands. My first was, well, my first. The second one was my ex. The third one was you.”
Eli shook his head, his face pale. “But you were so good.”
“Yeah, because I was with one person for a long time, and I’m good at anything I practice a lot,” Max said. “You were really good too and the number of partners you had never crossed my mind. Should I feel inadequate?”
“No,” Eli said, shaking his head vigorously. “But I do feel like an idiot.”
“You should,” Max said. “Because you could have asked me instead of making assumptions about me.”
“I know that.”
“And yet…”
“I’m an idiot, okay? I should have asked you I just thought there wasn’t a chance of us happening.”
“So you made sure of it.”
“I hope I didn’t make sure of it,” Eli said, sighing. “I owed you an apology. In person.”
“Thank you,” Max said, watching him. He wanted to forgive him, but it wasn’t coming naturally to him right then. He appreciated the humility it took to come here, though, so he sighed and shook his head. “It’s okay. Really.”
“It is?”
“Well, I’ll get over it,” Max replied. “Just like you’ll get over me.”
Eli shook his head. “That’s not what I want.”
“What do you want?”
“A date,” Eli said. “One date.”
“How do I know you won’t write about me?”
“I might write about you,” Eli said. “I won’t send it to anyone that might publish it. I promise.”
Max smiled dryly. “I suppose that’s a start.”
“So is that a yes?”
Max looked around him. “I’m supposed to be resting.”
“Then I think we can start a movie marathon,” he said. “Don’t you?”
“A movie marathon?”
“For sure,” Eli said. “And if you get sick of me, I’ll leave. And you never have to see me again.”
“Ever?”
“Yes,” Eli said. “I promise.”
Max smiled at him. Eli sat down on the bed next to him, handing Max the remote. He started looking through the movies that the hotel had available on their streaming service and soon they were watching something they had both seen when they were children. At first, they were far apart, but soon Max had slung his arm around Eli and was holding him close. They were laughing as if they had known each other forever. When the movie was over, Eli sighed into Max’s chest. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Max said, kissing the top of his head. “I was angrier that you never gave me a chance. The article might have used my name, but it was more about you.”