“Not in a bad way,” Pete clarified. “And I don’t even necessarily mean that you changed me. It’s more like you encouraged me to make changes I’ve been wanting to make.”
“Like what?”
“Actually leaving my room, and being more gregarious.”
“I suppose that’s true. You’re certainly not the same tentative man I vetted on Joyce’s porch.” He winked. “Though the vocabulary hasn’t changed.”
Pete knew he had a whole speech to get through, but he couldn’t stop himself from arguing, “Hey, I had reasons for being tentative.”
“Really now?” He smirked. “Please share with the class.”
Pete opened his mouth only to shut it again. This was not the conversation he wanted to have right now. “I don’t want to get into it. It’s in the past.”
“Oh come on, you can’t leave me hanging like that. When we first met, I thought you were just shy, but now it sounds like there’s a reason you were so skittish around me. What is it?”
Pete sighed. “You’re not going to let this go are you?”
“Nope. Spill.”
“Fine. This is really embarrassing, but”—Pete looked at his shoes—“when we first met, I, um, was so attracted to you, it actually freaked me out. I thought I had to be imagining the chemistry between us, and when you were all over me, that freaked me out even more. I assumed you were just doing your job, you know? Acting like you were into me. I was determined not to fall for it. Which, of course, I did.”
“Aw,” Evan cooed, “you liked me so much it scared you. That’s charming.”
Pete turned red and grumbled, “I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”
“I’m glad you did. I felt the same way.”
Pete peeked at him. “You did?”
“Oh yeah. And for the record, there was never a time, not even a moment, when I had to pretend to be into you.”
Pete’s chest swelled with emotion. He cupped Evan’s face and was about to segue back into his speech, when Evan leaned back and asked, “Is that really all it was, though? I remember you being more resistant than lovestruck in the beginning.”
Pete thought about it. “Oh yeah. There was the ex thing too, but that was only in the very beginning. I got over it.”
Evan cocked his head to the side. “Ex thing?”
“Yeah, you kinda look like this ex-boyfriend of mine. Or at least, I used to think so. On the day of the audition, Colette texted me a photo of you.”
Evan chuckled. “Do you have a picture of him? I wanna see.”
Pete shook his head. “I blocked him on Facebook.”
“Ouch. He must’ve done a number on you.”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
“You don’t have a physical photo of him?”
“Um.” For a second, Pete’s mind was blank. Then a lightbulb went off above his head. “Actually, I do. It’s one of those wallet ones from high school. He gave it to me forever ago, and I stuck it in my desk. I think it’s still there.”
Evan held out a hand. “Fork it over.”
Pete hesitated. It seemed like a bad omen to talk about Christopher when he was supposed to be telling Evan he loved him. He crinkled his nose. “You really want to see a photo of my ex-boyfriend? There are more fun things we could be doing.” He lidded his eyes and leaned in for another kiss.
Evan turned his cheek. “Don’t you use your porn-star face on me. I’m withholding sex until you show me the picture.”
“If I took my pants off right now, you’d crack in under a minute.”
Evan frowned. “Probably. Just get the damn picture, okay?”
Grumbling under his breath, Pete opened the top drawer of his desk. He riffled through it and extracted a wallet-sized photo stuck in a corner beneath a pile of old essays. He placed it in Evan’s outstretched hand.
“There now. Was that so hard?” Evan teased. He glanced at it. His smile froze on his face. Then it shifted into a grimace. “Pete . . . what the hell?”
“What?” Pete studied the photo. An olive-skinned man with dark brown eyes and shiny black hair looked up at them. As far as senior photos went, it wasn’t the worst, but his smile was forced, and he’d gotten one of those horrible cloud backgrounds. The photo was the only keepsake that had survived Pete’s postbreakup bonfire, which had also cost him part of his left eyebrow and a good chunk of his dignity.
When Evan failed to speak, Pete nudged him with his elbow. “What is it?”
“This guy looks a lot like me,” Evan said slowly. His voice sounded strange.
“Eh, not really,” he replied. “There’s a resemblance, no denying it, but just at first glance. You’re nothing like him.” He tried to take the photo back, but Evan had a death grip on it.
Pete craned his head down until he could see Evan’s face. He looked a little pale. Pete frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Evan stood up, forcing Pete to back away from him. “What do you mean ‘There’s a resemblance’? This guy could be one of my brothers!”
Icy panic crept into Pete’s veins. “Are you mad at me?”
“No!” Evan yelled. He flinched. “Pretend I said that at a normal volume. I’m just trying to process. It’d be one thing if he had my eyes or smiled like me or something, but this is more than that. When I’m famous, this guy should enter my celebrity-lookalike contest. He’d win hands down.”
“Okay,” Pete said, unsure of how to approach this. “I’m sorry I upset you. I didn’t mean to.” In fact, that was the opposite of what he was trying to do.
“I’m not upset. I’m . . . I don’t even know.” Evan rubbed his temples. “Obviously this isn’t your fault, and I swear I’m not the jealous type, but now I’m thinking back on the night we met—which was a really significant event for me—and I keep remembering how you looked at me. At the time, I thought . . .” He trailed off and glanced at the photograph again. “And now I realize you were looking at me like that because you were seeing him.”
“It’s not like that,” Pete argued. “I mean, it sort of is, but I swear, I haven’t thought about him around you in forever. I don’t want to think about him. You’re completely different people.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that, and that you don’t see the similarities anymore, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to believe you when I see it.” He sat back down on the bed. “You didn’t . . . you didn’t try out for Heat Wave because of him, did you? Like, was that why you wanted to fuck me?”
“Of course not!” Annoyance made Pete’s skin prickle. “Seriously? After all the times you tried to fuck me, and I said no, that’s what you think I was doing?”
Evan’s agitation cleared a bit. “Hmm, that’s a good point.”
“It certainly is!” Pete made an exasperated noise and wiped his mouth with a hand. “I can’t believe you think I would do that. What about me screams evil mastermind to you? Is it my imposing figure or the way I hyperventilate when I have to call to schedule a doctor’s appointment?”
Evan held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Look, you said me and him are different, right?”
“He and I,” Pete corrected just to be contrary.
“Right, that. Maybe if you explain to me what happened between you guys, it’ll help me understand. You said he burned you, right?”
Pete stared at him. He hadn’t told anyone about that night, not even his mom. “I don’t want to talk about Christopher.”
Evan favored him with a small smile. “If it’s any consolation, I’m sure I’ll take your side.”
Pete didn’t share his mirth. “It was ugly, okay? And really painful. I’ve been doing my best to block it out.”
“I don’t want to force you to talk about it, but it really sounds like you haven’t moved on, and that doesn’t make it easy for me to believe you when you say you have. Burying it and getting over it are different things.”
Pete sighed. He was right. “Okay, but it’s really upsetting. Be pre
pared.”
Evan patted the bed next to him. “Just call me Scar.”
Pete took the seat, fiddling with the photo in his hands. “Christopher and I dated for a semester.”
“That’s all? You made it sound like you guys were serious.”
“How long have we known each other again?”
Evan shut his mouth with an audible click.
“Anyway, it was an intense semester. We were both freshman, and we thought we were so adult. We went to museums together and drank fancy coffee and talked about books, the whole pretentious college kid experience. He was on a full scholarship, and he was living it up. I was paying my own way, however, and had just started doing porn. I thought about quitting when I met him, but I really needed the money, and I thought he’d understand.”
“Let me guess,” Evan said, “he didn’t understand.”
Pete shook his head. “One night, we were sharing a bottle of wine in his dorm room, and it became clear he wanted to have sex for the first time. I get tested regularly, and I’d only been in a handful of films at that point, but in the interest of full disclosure, I decided to tell him about my side job. I thought . . . I don’t even know. I thought maybe he’d feel special. I was trusting him with my big, shameful secret, after all. I thought maybe he’d think it was cool that he was dating a porn star. Back then, I had actual fans, and I was riding this self-esteem high.” He laughed bitterly. “That didn’t last.”
Evan put an arm loosely around his waist, not holding, but showing that he was there. “What’d he do when you told him?”
“He threw the wine bottle at me.”
Evan gasped, but Pete continued before he could comment. “It missed, but it scared the shit out of me. There was glass everywhere. He started yelling that I was disgusting, and he couldn’t believe he’d touched me, and how he probably had all these diseases now. He called me a whore.”
Pete’s throat tightened. His voice came out tinny. “And you know what? As he was screaming, I wasn’t even thinking about losing him. I was thinking about his neighbors, worrying that they would overhear him. It was only after the fight that I thought ‘my boyfriend just dumped me.’ I guess that shows where my priorities were.”
Pete took a shallow breath. “Needless to say, that was the end of that. I was certain he’d tell the whole school, but I guess he was too mortified, because I never heard anything. I also never saw him again.”
“Would you have wanted to?”
“Back then? Maybe. He was more or less my first love. I tried to call and explain myself a couple of times, but he’d reject my calls and then text horrible things to me. I mean, really nasty, degrading stuff. Eventually I realized he was a judgmental asshole, and I blocked him on everything. Good riddance.”
Pete sighed, expecting to feel terrible, but he oddly felt better. Lighter. He glanced at Evan. “Well, that’s the whole sordid tale. Thoughts?”
“You’re right about him being an asshole.” Evan kissed his shoulder. “I’m glad you told me about him.”
“Does that mean you believe me when I say you’re nothing alike?”
“Yeah, but that’s not why I’m glad. Did that make you feel any better?”
“Yeah, actually. I should have talked about it sooner, I guess, but I couldn’t have given anyone else the full story. So, thanks for that.”
“It’s my pleasure, believe me. I feel like I understand a lot of your complexes way better now. After being rejected like that, I can see why the idea of coming out is terrifying.”
“Yeah, to say the least. I had nightmares for a month afterward where instead of Christopher, it was my mom screaming at me.”
“Yikes.” Evan brushed his side with his thumb soothingly. “If you don’t mind my asking, why’d you keep doing porn? I would think that would totally turn you off of it.”
“I still needed the money, and I have a stubborn streak. I knew I didn’t deserve what he’d said to me, so I started to get angry. By continuing to be in porn, I was proving a point to both myself and to him. He was small-minded and wrong, and I wasn’t going to let him control me, whether we were together or not.”
“That’s a relief.” Evan pivoted toward him on the bed and took his hand. “Tell me again, and this time I’ll believe you. You don’t see him when you look at me?”
“No,” Pete said. “There was a tiny part of me that wondered in the beginning if my attraction to you was so strong because of him, but it only took meeting you twice for me to realize that wasn’t the case. My feelings are for you, not for him. If you’d been anything like him, I never would have given you the time of day.”
Evan nodded. “Okay, I’m convinced. Sorry I overreacted.”
“You didn’t really. I should have told you forever ago.”
“Maybe, but there’s never really a right time to bring up evil exes.” He held out his arms. “We good?”
Pete tucked himself into them and snuggled up to his chest. “We’re very good.”
Evan kissed his hair. “I’m proud of us! As far as first fights go, that was a breeze.”
Pete laughed. “Especially given my track record.”
“Definitely. I say this one wipes your record clean. Though I have to say, I’m a little surprised. I wasn’t expecting this to go so smoothly.”
“Really? Why?”
“Nothing in particular.” He seemed to consider it. “I guess because you’ve always been a bit of a flight risk, so I thought our first fight would involve more drama.”
Pete sat straight up and twisted around to look at him. “Why would you think that?”
“Just like you said before: we had a bumpy start. But you came around, and that’s what matters.” He smiled, probably to show he was joking, but Pete found it not the tiniest bit funny.
If you wanted drama, you’re about to get it. “Maybe I was a flight risk in the beginning, but you were just as bad.”
Evan looked affronted. “How the hell did you come to that conclusion?”
Pete struggled to keep his irritation in check. “You did this whole confusing back-and-forth dance with me. You were so hot and cold, I couldn’t even tell if you liked me or not.”
“What?” Evan asked, incredulous. “You’re accusing me of dancing around? I even told Colette I felt like you were gonna bolt at any second. We had to have a backup on standby.”
“You weren’t exactly upfront either. The day we met, you laid the seduction on thick and then disappeared back into Joyce’s house. You literally left me out in the cold.”
Evan sniffed. “That was different. I didn’t know you back then. I thought I was auditioning potential coworkers.”
“And then,” Pete continued, as if he hadn’t spoken, “the first time we kissed, you ran off like you couldn’t get away from me fast enough. Joyce told me later you looked terrified. What the fuck was that all about? I spent the next week thinking I’d hurt you somehow.”
Evan pressed his lips into a thin line and didn’t respond.
Sensing victory, Pete went in for the kill. “And to top it all off, when we finally got past that and had our first date, you said all these things about how you’d liked me from the start, but then you didn’t ask me to go home with you. In fact, you left me out in the cold again. You’ve done this over and over: you get close to me only to pull away, and then you wonder why I’m too anxious to make a move.”
Pete folded his arms over his chest. A vein stood out by Evan’s jaw, like he was grinding his teeth. Pete waited for a snappy comeback.
Instead, Evan sighed. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“What?” Pete’s arms dropped to his side. “Really?”
“Yup. I admit it. I jerked you around a bit in the beginning. I had my reasons too, but I won’t ruin my apology by trying to justify myself. You have every right to be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad,” Pete clarified, “and I accept your apology. I only brought it up because you called me dramatic. You are dramatic,
Evan Darko, and if you hadn’t done your whole dancing-around thing, I might have realized sooner that I’m in love with y—”
Pete cut himself off with a gasp and clapped his hands over his mouth. He stared at Evan in horrified, postapocalyptic silence and mentally begged the words to crawl back into his mouth.
Evan’s dark eyes got huge. “You . . . you what?”
“Nothing,” Pete mumbled through his fingers, knowing it was to no avail.
Evan grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him closer. “You love me?”
Pete considered not answering. There had to be some way he could melt into the floor instead. But judging by Evan’s stricken facial expression, escape was futile.
Hands still covering his mouth, he nodded his head up and down.
Evan stared at him for a moment longer before taking hold of Pete’s wrists. Gently, he pulled his hands away from his mouth. “You mean it?”
“Yes,” Pete whispered miserably. “That’s why I invited you over tonight. I wanted to tell you, but then we started fighting, and . . .”
“How long have you known? Since we had sex?”
“Since the bathroom at the Globe. I woke up in the middle of the night and just . . . knew.”
Evan fell silent again.
Pete wished he would say something. He didn’t necessarily need to say it back, but the intermittent silence was making his skin crawl.
He got his wish a second later.
Evan brushed a finger down his cheek and looked him square in the eye. “I’ve been in love with you since almost the day we met.”
Pete’s stomach fell out through the soles of his feet. “What? You’re not just saying that, right? Because I said it?”
Evan shook his head. “I realized it the first time we kissed, corny as that sounds. That was why I freaked out and ran away at Joyce’s house. I realized I was dizzy for you—a man I barely knew—and it freaked me out.”
A memory came to Pete, as vivid as if he were watching it play out in front of him: Evan, standing outside of the Globe the first time they met there, just days after the shoot in question. He’d told Pete that he’d realized something, that it had scared him. Then he’d told him his real name.
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