by E. Davies
And then there were the jeans, which were so obviously cut for women that they’d look weird or press his packer into his junk until he went numb.
Overall, Jake had found four pieces that he was happy with, all of them the plainest garments he could get.
“I would wear this if I had boobs,” he sighed as he put back the shirt and shrugged. “I’m done.”
“Are you sure you don’t need more?”
“Of course I need more!” Jake exclaimed, a little louder than he’d meant to. “But good luck actually finding anything. It’s itchy or thin or hot, or it has this stupid shit.” He batted at the ruffles and bows on some of the clothes nearby. “If I wanted to look sexy, I’d just get naked. Oh, wait. I’m not going to be sexy naked for, like, months. Years.” Now that he’d started, he couldn’t seem to stop, and tears had welled up in his eyes.
“Jake, deep breaths.” Kyle reached out to touch his arm, but Jake shook it off and paced back and forth.
Irrationally, Jake wanted to ignore all of his advice. He wanted so badly to just sit down and cry until someone figured out how to make a nice, professional shirt that fit him. Hell, he’d take a potato sack right now, as long as it didn’t have awkward chest flaps for the boobs he didn’t have.
These two had been so sweet about the whole thing that he felt bad snapping at them, but he couldn’t keep his annoyance under wraps, either.
“It’s the fucking hormones,” he muttered under his breath. Since starting testosterone, he’d felt so much more grounded. When he was angry, it was harder to keep it from clouding his common sense, but he didn’t burst out crying like he had before.
Which meant people couldn’t use that against him as his parents once had. And now he was vulnerable all over again.
It wasn’t just embarrassing to get a harsh blast from the past—it rubbed in his face the fact that it had only just begun.
He was going to have to deal with life like this, always feeling like he was running on a tank that was just past empty, for months to come.
This time, it was Nic who rested his hand on his back. “Come on. Let’s get outside and get some fresh air.” The way they moved together—Kyle taking the hangers out of Jake’s hands while Nic comforted him—made Jake ache for Tristan.
Jake didn’t resist. He dug a couple wrinkled twenties out of his wallet and pressed them into Kyle’s hand, then let Nic steer him out of the store.
“Sorry,” Jake mumbled. His eyes stung as he wiped them again. He hadn’t actually cried that much, but the frustration that had welled up inside him was so draining. “It’s all… a lot to handle, at once. The baby, and losing my job, and moving in, and marriage…”
Shit. He hadn’t meant to say that.
Nic’s eyes got wide for a second. When he looked down at Jake, it was clearly toward his hand.
“Uh, we’re not… telling anyone,” Jake said, low and urgently. “Shit. Sorry. Can you keep that under wraps?”
Nic mimed locking his lips and throwing away the key. “But… why?”
“Health insurance.”
Nic got it right away. “After getting fired, right? And his coverage is good?”
“Good enough for what we need.” Jake patted his stomach lightly.
Nic nodded as he guided Jake to sit on the bench outside the store entrance. There was nobody hanging around outside, which made it easier to talk. “It’s hard to find trans-friendly plans.”
Though he wondered how Nic knew that, Jake nodded. “It is. It was a fight to get my top surgery approved. God, that feels like yesterday in some ways. And now I’m going back through the medical system. I hated my last surgeon. I swore I was done with doctors and all that shit. Except… this is what I want.”
“I never wanted kids,” Nic said. And, unless Jake was mistaken, his next words were, “Which is good. I had to get a hysto for bottom surgery.” When Jake’s head snapped up and he looked at him, Nic added, “Yeah, I’m stealth.”
Everything made more sense all of a sudden: why Kyle had seemed so knowledgable, the stealth friend-of-a-friend Tristan had mentioned, and how considerate all the guys had been around him. Jake processed this for a few moments and nodded. “So you get the juggling act.”
“Oh, yeah. Been there, done that.” Nic patted his hand. “If you need a listening ear, I’m good at that.”
Jake took a deep breath and tried to choose what he wanted to complain about. There were so many possibilities. “Everything’s happened so fast. I’ve always wanted to have a kid or two of my own, but I was hoping for… later this year, or next year.”
Nic whistled under his breath. “That’s sudden.”
“Yeah. I’d only just come off T, like, a couple months before. I thought it would take a lot longer after so many years.”
Nic nodded. “They do always obsessively tell us T isn’t birth control, but… it kinda is.”
Jake nodded back, glad to have someone around he could dump this on. “Until it’s not. So it’s what I want, but so fast. Same with Tristan. He’s everything I could ever want in a guy, but he’s here now, when the rest of my life is in chaos. Switching careers… I mean, that assumes I’m gonna find another career, but I’ve been forced into this. And handed an opportunity, if I can study or train or something over the next six months. But it’s all now, now, now.”
“And you haven’t had time to decide,” Nic said.
“Exactly. But I don’t know why I feel like I need to do that.” Jake folded his arms as he gazed toward the store entrance, waiting for Kyle to come out. “It is what I want. Shouldn’t I be happy about everything?”
Nic seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Sometimes we’re good at fighting things we really want, just because we’re so used to having to fight for everything we have. But things can go wrong, in all the right ways. And you can stumble into things you never expected. Usually at exactly the wrong time, but you make it the right time if you want it that bad.”
Kyle emerged and looked around for them, and Nic stood up and waved him over. The smile on his face was precious—all the more so now that Jake knew that they had more in common than he’d thought.
I could have that, too.
“How are you doing?” Kyle asked when he reached them and handed over the bag and change.
The fresh air—as cool and fresh as L.A. smog ever got, anyway—had done him a world of good. Jake straightened his shoulders and smiled up at him. “I’m ready to head home and nap that one off. Thank you, guys.”
Hopefully they who can keep a secret.
Nic winked when Jake looked at him, as if guessing what he was thinking. With that much reassurance, Jake relaxed. Nic was right: it was time to trust the way his life was unfolding.
It might be imperfect, but it was his life, and he only got one chance at it.
22
Tristan
“I like the chemistry between you two. You have a real intensity that’s going to come out perfectly on screen. The screen tests didn’t lie.”
Tristan snapped back to reality and shook his head slightly to clear his thoughts. For a second, he’d wondered how the hell Stefan, the director, had known about him and Jake.
It was hard not to get distracted by his boyfriend—legally, his husband—when he was drawing so heavily on their relationship for his craft.
Brian’s pride was evident as he jumped in to answer. “Tristan and I are planning on going over the sides for tomorrow before we leave.”
“Yeah,” Tristan chimed in. “It’s helped a lot so far.” They’d just run through their first blocking, and Stefan had been open to the ideas that he and Brian had thrown at him. That was promising in terms of their working relationship over the next few months.
As usual in the film industry, the first scene they were shooting wasn’t the first scene of the movie. By this point, they’d already met and become friends, and they were talking behind a tree, supposedly nearby a house party. But the party itself would b
e shot later this month. They were starting with some of the one-on-one outdoor scenes, making it a little easier to arrange filming as they finalized shooting locations for the indoor scenes.
It was a risky move to start with their first kiss, but it also made sense in terms of the overall storyboard. It wasn’t Tristan’s job to question it—he and Brian just had to make it work.
He liked Brian already, which made it easier. They’d talked a lot over the last few days about their characters and how they were going to play the emotional elements of this scene, so Tristan was glad but not surprised that Stefan was so pleased. He’d felt that chemistry himself.
“One thing, though.” Stefan glanced between them. “Tristan, I think your portrayal is slipping a little too much into stereotypes. Can we reevaluate it together and come up with something more… well, more relatable?”
Tristan raised his eyebrow. He was starting to wonder what the hell these directors were smoking. “Am I being too gay for a gay movie?”
Brian laughed, but it was uncomfortable. In Tristan’s eye, Brian’s character, a young twenty-something who had been accepted by all his friends and family, was the harder one to play. At least his own character background had more meat to it—a compelling backstory of mixed acceptance and rejection that he could draw on.
And a very gay narrative, apparently.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Stefan chuckled uncomfortably. “I like Brian’s All-American attitude. I think the audience will relate to him, but you…”
Tristan stared him down, but Stefan kept talking.
“When we’ve blocked you moving, that… dramatic flair works well in the scene, but it will be more compelling if it’s a divergence from how we see your character in other scenes.”
Brian’s gaze flickered between them both.
“So, tone down the camp from now on,” Tristan interpreted. At best, this was heavyhanded direction. Actors didn’t usually respond well to being told how to do their jobs, so he didn’t feel bad acting peevish about it.
This so soon after the commercial? Why had everyone, all of a sudden, cast him in gay roles and then told him he was being too gay for the role?
Surely to God he wasn’t suddenly acting noticeably gay now that he was in a gay relationship. It sounded like something a homophobe would say, and it didn’t make sense even the moment he thought it, but the fear was still real.
Unless… There was one person who could shape the casting agents’ and directors’ impressions of him before he’d even met them. And Brian was straight—from everything he’d seen of him when he’d Googled him, he was the picture of perfect straightness. Wife and two kids and a square chin and loving parents and all.
It was an uncomfortable realization that maybe… just maybe… this sudden turnaround wasn’t about the characters he played, but instead, it was based in something other than what he did on the clock. If Bobby had told directors his relationship business, he was going to be pissed off.
“No, no. We’ll reevaluate as we go along, before we’re… er… too invested in any single choice.”
Tristan didn’t like the sound of that at all. “I’ll make the choices I feel fit the character best, because that’s my job. I’ve read and reread the script at least as many times as you have over the last week.” All the notes he’d made in the margins, and all the time he’d spent putting himself in that character’s head—they weren’t going to waste. “What sets our characters apart is our choices, and those are grounded in the script. I’ll be as gay as the character demands. Brian’s a lot like many of the gay guys I know. If you’re not going to tell Brian to be less gay in a gay movie, don’t try telling me that, either.”
He stood and headed for his trailer. Technically their trailer—it wasn’t a big-budget production, so he and Brian shared it.
And right now, he needed it more than Brian. Surely he had a few minutes to keep him from blowing his top. Stefan had to finish blocking and determining the camera positions before he and Brian were called back out. And he didn’t want to be this pissed off when they actually shot the kiss scene.
He hadn’t pulled a diva moment on set before, and it utterly terrified him to try it now, but he didn’t see much choice. If he didn’t put his foot down now, Stefan would try to dictate his choices to him. Not only would it piss him off, but it would ruin his own craft, and make it look like his choices. And maybe screw with the whole damn movie.
Tristan’s confidence in his own choices was high. He—his character—didn’t owe anyone an explanation for his mannerisms, and he wasn’t going to apologize for it.
When real life and art collide.
Once he was alone in the trailer, he collapsed onto the couch and took deep breaths to calm himself down. Then, he dialed Bobby’s number.
“Hey, kid.” Bobby sounded surprised. “You on set today?”
“Yeah. They told me to dial down the gay… again. My character isn’t going to apologize, and neither am I.”
“Oh. Oh, yeah. I figured this might be a problem,” Bobby said slowly. “You’re handling it well, though? Do I need to come there?”
“Did you tell the directors I’m gay?”
There was a long pause, during which Tristan’s heart sank. He hadn’t expected this man of all people to let him down so completely.
“Bobby?”
Finally, Bobby answered. “I never said you were, in so many words.”
Nobody knew better than Tristan that there were all kinds of ways to say something without words. He scoffed. “Yeah, but you’ve let them believe it. So you can cast me easier in roles.”
“You’ve gotten more work lately than you did for—what, six months before? And this is a big opportunity,” Bobby told him. He sounded strangely defensive. Like he was feeling guilty.
“You still had no right to make my private business part of my job,” Tristan hissed. Then, he paused. “When did you start telling people?”
Again, no answer.
“Is that why I wasn’t getting bookings last year? Because you took that risk for me, and it didn’t pay off? So then your only choice was to submit me for gay roles and play on my natural strengths? Does everyone already know?”
Nothing.
“Bobby?” Tristan’s voice rose. “Does everyone already know about me?”
“Look. It’s a dog-eat-dog world in Hollywood. They gotta know what box to put you in. They’ve got an idea of what they want, and if you fit that stereotype, they don’t have to imagine—“
“An actor doing his damn job? They don’t have to imagine me pretending to be someone I’m not, as if I’m not already doing that?” Tristan was hot under the collar. He’d never argued with Bobby this seriously, but it felt like all his trust had been swept away.
Like the blindfold had been ripped off, or maybe the bandaid, because the betrayal ached.
“I’m not gonna defend this to you now,” Bobby told him. “I did what I thought was right.”
Tristan scoffed. “I can’t trust you, man. All this time, I was trying to keep it under wraps because that’s what I thought you wanted me to do. You know how my personal life suffered? All the fear of… of, hell, being seen out with my best friend at gay clubs?”
“And I did want you not to flaunt it. And I still do,” Bobby told him, his voice rising. “It’s like jumping through the eye of a needle to make this work, Tris. You can’t be openly gay for this to work. Or you’ll be stuck doing indie shit for the rest of your life. You gotta be just gay enough to get the role, but straight enough that you get awards for it.”
The harsh truth stung. Tristan opened and closed his mouth a few times, and then pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead. “Things are changing.”
“No, they’re not. Go do your damn job and let me finish doing mine.”
Just then, the trailer door opened, so Tristan hit the “end call” button. God, he wished telephones still had receivers so he could slam it down. Cutting it off didn
’t seem like enough of a fuck you right now.
It was Brian. Though Tristan tried for a smile, it felt fake.
“Hey, man.” Brian came to sit next to him and punched his shoulder in an equally forced display of cheer. “I hate to tell you, but we might only have a couple minutes.” He spoke low and urgently now. “I overheard Stefan saying something that sounded kinda like he’s looking at… at replacing you.”
Tristan couldn’t feel his fingers for a few moments. His heartbeat pounded in his ears. “Because of what I said?” Sure, there were protections, but those didn’t keep him fully safe. Actors got replaced over creative differences all the time.
“I don’t know. He wants me to talk to him in a minute. I don’t think he meant me to overhear what I did.” Brian didn’t sound apologetic about it, though. Had he been deliberately listening in?
Tristan rubbed his face and sighed. “Thanks for telling me. Apparently my agent’s been spreading stories about me. God knows what Stefan thinks of me.”
“You got anything else lined up after this?”
Tristan snorted. It would be dumb to try scheduling anything too soon after a production of this size. If production ran late, he’d have to pull out of the other one. “Not yet. My agent wanted this to be my big break. Once production’s well and truly underway, he can use Stefan’s name to shop me around.”
“Yeah.” Brian shook his head. “It would be a dick move to pull you at this stage. Career-wise, money-wise.”
God, that was right. “I can’t afford to lose this,” Tristan murmured, rubbing his cheeks and bracing his elbows on his knees. “Not with a baby on the way, when I’m the only one of us working.” Jake had never specifically asked for his support, but that was typical of him. Tristan only wanted all the more to offer him that support and take one big worry off Jake’s mind.
Getting fired after a week on set would not ease Jake’s mind and stress.
Brian sucked in a breath, not answering for a few moments. Then, he squeezed his shoulder. “Yeah. I’ve been there. Look, let me talk to him, man. I’ll be back in a bit.”