The interesting thing was no one had asked him what he wanted. Which was fair, he supposed. He’d always done what they told him. Lived up to his bargain with Matty. Because up until now, he had been content to implement Matty’s version of how the Jesse Jamison narrative should be controlled.
He had gone on public dates with women they chose for him. And, hell, not so long ago, there had been groupies talking to gossip rags about being with him. He did used to be a slut. The perfect bad-boy rock star next door.
He was the brand—he’d given them no reason to believe otherwise.
Which was why the rest of the band wasn’t here. He’d asked about it, and Matty had told him they’d be briefed on the plan later.
Nicole/Nancy said, “So if we’re all agreed, this is what’s going to happen: After tomorrow night’s show in Boston, Jesse and the band will leave the venue on foot. There will no doubt be a crowd of genuine reporters assembled, but we’ll have our guy there too.” She slid a piece of paper across the table to him. “He’ll be wearing a purple shirt—you won’t be able to miss him. Everyone will be shouting questions at you. You stop, smile, and say that you’re feeling generous and will take one question. Chose our guy. He’ll ask you directly if you’re gay. Then you say that.” She pointed to the paper. “Memorize it. Practice it. If it doesn’t sound natural, it won’t work.”
Jesse looked down at the paper.
“Then you push onward, acting like everything is normal. Like you find the whole thing amusing. Ignore any other questions. You walk a block or so, laughing with the guys, and we’ll have a car there. Get in it, and you’re done.”
The room went silent. Everyone looked at him. Finally.
“I want to talk to Hunter,” Jesse said.
Matty reared back like Jesse had struck him.
“I want to talk to him first.”
“Jesus Christ, Jesse, you’re not telling me that this is actually a thing? That you’re going to make it a thing?”
“If that’s the case, we need to regroup,” Nicole/Nancy said calmly.
Jesse stood. “I’m not saying we need to regroup. I’m just saying I need a fucking hour to have a conversation.”
Matty was about to erupt again, but Ms. Calm in the Storm spoke first. “Fair enough.” She shot a quelling look at Matty. “Everyone needs to be on board for this to work. Let’s all reconvene here in two hours.”
I need to talk to you.
The text came while Hunter was on his way to his place. Beth’s place. To evict her, basically. He felt bad about it, but he would give her a lot of notice. She was already looking at apartments, anyway, since she and Gavin really needed two bedrooms. He could move into a hotel in the meantime.
But the text. I need to talk to you. He had to pull over to gather himself.
It was probably not going to be good news. If a conversation was going to end with, I love you enough to risk everything, it generally didn’t begin with the lukewarm, I need to talk to you. But what could he do? Jesse had said, this morning, that he’d be in touch, and here he was. And Hunter’s stupid, stupid heart. It held out hope.
Hunter: OK.
Jesse: Are you back in town? Can you come here?
Yes, you asshole, he wanted to type. Even though you fucking abandoned me in Buffalo this morning, I’m not still sitting in that hotel room pining after you.
Hunter: Where’s here?
Jesse: The label – Queen West, north side, just west of Spadina.
Hunter: OK.
Jesse: I’ll send a car for you.
Hunter: I’m actually still in the rental. I have it until tomorrow. I can drive.
Jesse: No, I’ll send a car. Where are you?
He was willing to talk to Jesse. He was willing to get his hopes up one more time. But only if there was a chance, however slight, that they wouldn’t be trampled on again. Pride was a funny thing. It was possible it was leading him to be oversensitive, but he had to check.
Hunter: What kind of car? A black one with tinted windows? One that will drive in some sort of secret back entrance?
Jesse: Don’t be like that.
Hunter: Don’t be like what?
Jesse: Can you just do this one thing for me?
Hunter: What thing?
When he didn’t get an answer, he typed another text. Hide? I think the word you’re looking for is “hide.” And no. No, I will not.
Fuck. That. That was not happening. Never again. And fuck Jesse. Jesse knew that.
So much for hope.
He threw the phone on the passenger seat. Then picked it up again immediately to finish this shit. I’ll have my stuff out of your house by the end of today.
Then he got out of the car and walked up the porch to his place to go evict his ex–best friend’s sister from his apartment.
The next evening, he was glad he had. Because when he saw a clip of Jesse, strolling along the street with the guys after a show, what he saw made him thank his lucky stars he’d ended things on his own terms.
Jesse didn’t even seem bothered by the phalanx of reporters hanging on him. “Okay, dudes, one question!” he laughingly said, calling on a reporter whose name and outlet Hunter didn’t catch.
“I’m just going to go ahead and ask the big question,” the guy said. “Are you gay?”
Jesse grinned. “Nah, man. But everyone’s allowed an experiment or two, right?” Then he winked. He fucking winked.
And then, laughing, the band made its way out of the picture, cheerily ignoring everyone shouting after them.
An experiment.
The dried-out halves of Hunter’s broken heart splintered into about a million fragments.
After Jesse looked at the stupid purple-shirted fake reporter and told the biggest lie of his life, there were only two weeks left of the tour.
They had been the longest two weeks of his life.
On paper, everything was fine. Everything was more than fine, because eff him, but the “controversy” regarding his sexuality had caused a spike in sales. Matty was crowing about how the crisis communication people had been right—what had looked like a potential disaster had actually turned into an opportunity.
“But no more,” he’d laughingly told Jesse. “I’m not as young as I used to be. My heart can’t take it.”
Jesse’s heart couldn’t take it, either.
Of course, he’d tried to contact Hunter. But his texts were going unread, and Hunter had an autoreply on his email saying he was “away from email for the foreseeable future.” What the fuck did that mean?
But could he really blame Hunter for cutting him off? He’d known Hunter’s deal from the beginning, was aware of how much Julian had hurt him with his failure to acknowledge their relationship.
And, really, a man like Hunter shouldn’t have to hide. It felt like a crime against nature.
So, yeah, Hunter had his bottom line, and ultimately, Jesse had his. They’d come to an impasse.
That was the rational interpretation.
The real interpretation, the truth, was that his heart was broken, and he was pissed. He knew he was supposed to be angry at himself. And he was. If any crimes against nature had been committed, he was the guilty party.
He’d had a glimpse of . . . everything. Of how life could be. And then he’d traded it away.
But he was also angry at . . . fucking everyone else. At the whole world.
Stepping outside the terminal at the airport, he spied his sister’s car. She’d insisted on picking him up.
It was just as well. He was spoiling for a fight, and she would give him one. She’d been riding his ass since she found out what had happened with him and Hunter—from Hunter, he assumed, since he hadn’t told her about any of it.
“Why does Hunter’s email autoreply say he’s away for the foreseeable future?” he said, after he’d thrown his bags in her trunk and climbed in the passenger side.
“Hello to you too,” she said, her tone clipped.
The back seat was empty. “Where’s Gavin?” He’d been looking forward to seeing his nephew. It was the one bright spot in the shit storm his life had become.
“Babysitter,” she said curtly as she pulled away from the curb.
“Is that safe?”
“It’s one of the teachers from his after-school program.”
“Not at my house, I hope.” Not that he didn’t want his family at his house, but he didn’t trust Russell. Somehow, the legal A-Team that Matty had assembled for Beth had resulted in Russell finally signing divorce papers and a court awarding temporary full custody—pending a trial that was scheduled for next week—to Beth. But just because Russell had signed his name and suddenly expressed a desire to play fair didn’t mean the motherfucker wouldn’t turn on them.
“No. At my place. Hunter’s place. Which is back to being my place.”
He whipped his gaze to her. She remained impassive, calmly checking her mirrors as she merged onto the highway as if she hadn’t just detonated a grenade in his lap. “I thought you were moving.” That was the last he’d heard from Beth. Hunter had asked her to start looking for a new place, and of course she’d agreed.
“We were going to. Hunter was going to take his place back. But then he . . . didn’t need it. We’re formally subletting it for the next nine months.”
“Where is Hunter?” He had tried to keep his voice controlled. He had not succeeded.
She pressed her lips together. He waited her out until she finally spat, “Don’t you think you’ve given up the right to know the answer to that question?”
“Yes!” he shouted. “Yes, I bloody well have! But I don’t fucking care, Beth!” Why wouldn’t she answer the goddamned question? “Where is Hunter?”
She flinched. Physically cringed away from him.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. What a dick he was. Of all the people to subject to an unhinged roar. “I just . . . Please. Please tell me where he is.”
“He’s in Syria.”
What. The. Fuck.
“I’m sorry, Syria?” Like, probably the most dangerous place in the world right now, Syria?
“Yeah, with Doctors Without Borders.”
“Jesus, Beth, why didn’t you tell me?”
“He asked me not to!” It was her turn to get loud. “And it’s none of your damn business anymore! The only reason I am telling you is because you can’t go chasing after him there.”
He put his head in his hands. He was going to throw up.
“He said he’d come to Toronto to start over, to do things differently. Said he thought for a minute there he’d succeeded because he’d found—” Her voice hitched and she cleared her throat before continuing. “Said he’d found the love of his life here. But in the end, it was no different than Montreal. So he needed to go somewhere else. To do something radically different. Something that mattered. He had a friend running a field operation there who pulled some strings and got him deployed really quickly.”
Jesse rolled down the window and retched.
It must have awakened her maternal instincts because she said, “Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry.”
“Is he coming back?” His voice sounded small, defeated. Scared.
He was scared. He was so fucking scared. Jesus Christ, people were leaving Syria by the thousands. Risking everything to escape the violence there. And Hunter had walked directly into it?
“I don’t know. He said he’d be in touch toward the end of his placement and we’d talk about the lease. I’m paying the landlord directly now, so I don’t even know how to get ahold of him. He . . .” She took one hand off the steering wheel and grabbed one of his. “He wanted it that way.”
“What do I do, Beth? What do I do?”
“What can you do? Say your prayers.”
In the next month, Jesse learned a lot about Syria.
Civil war, local politics, munitions—he was an expert at all of it now.
The problem was, he had no idea where in the country Hunter was. He thought about asking someone at the hospital. Andrea Bingham, maybe. But in the end, he decided he couldn’t be that much of a dick. Beth had been right. He’d given up his right to know what was going on with Hunter.
Officially.
But like hell was that going to stop him from poring over maps and setting up macabre google alerts: Syria + airstrikes, for example.
He even got wi-fi at the cottage, because God forbid he be unable to ingest the news every moment of the day.
The band was taking a break before work started on the next album. The tour had been followed by filming the stupid Kylie video, and everyone was exhausted. Jesse had been holed up at the cottage for a month, and he’d created an obsessive routine of sorts centered on repeatedly checking various outlets for any news out of Syria. Coffee, news, more coffee, news, breakfast, news, a punishing swim, news, lunch, news, dinner, campfire-and-brood, news, bed. Rinse and repeat. He hadn’t been able to write. He wasn’t even trying, really. Couldn’t rouse himself to care that they would need a pool of potential songs ready to go when they started recording the next album in a few months.
The only deviation from his routine so far was when Beth and Gavin had spent a week. The divorce had been finalized, and Russell, given his past threats of violence, had been granted only supervised monthly visits with Gavin. As much as he hated to see Beth having to haul Gavin back and forth to Montreal once a month—as much as he hated her having any contact at all with that asshole—it seemed like a decent outcome. The court had also okayed Beth staying in Toronto permanently, the judge ruling that the Toronto-based family support system would benefit Gavin.
“Family support system” being Jesse. Ha. Poor Beth. Hunter had been the real support system. In addition to giving them his apartment, it sounded like he’d really stepped up while Jesse was on tour, helping them with court dates and generally being the great guy he was. Beth wasn’t saying it in so many words, but he got the sense that she and Hunter had become genuine friends. So in pushing Hunter away, not only had Jesse lost him, his sister and Gavin had too.
The sound of a car crunching over the gravel out front plucked Jesse from his reverie. He closed the book he was reading—Syria: A Recent History—and prepared for the onslaught.
It was the guys, arriving for the weekend. He hadn’t seen them for a while. He should be looking forward to their visit.
He sighed. Except for Beth’s visit, he’d been alone for a month, and honestly, he wanted it to stay that way.
“Dude! The final cut of the video is done!” Billy cavorted his way inside, his sprawling enthusiasm feeling as out of place in Jesse’s life as a lion in a library. “It looks amazing!”
Jesse opened his computer. “Okay. Let me download it. Did they email it?”
“You got wi-fi?” Colin asked. The others looked at Jesse in bewilderment.
“I did.” The notion of the cottage as a creative haven had gone right out the window as soon as the whole Syria obsession had begun.
“Well, we didn’t know that, so we have it on a memory stick,” Rob said.
Jesse took the thumb drive, stuck it in his computer, and they all huddled around to watch.
It was great. He’d known it would be. With the combination of song, director, concept, and Kylie, there was no way it couldn’t be.
It was also all wrong.
“What’s the matter?” Ash asked when it was done. “You don’t like it?”
They were all looking at him expectantly.
“It’s . . . fine,” Jesse said. It was. It would achieve its aim. It would sell records, and it would keep the buzz around the band going.
“It’s not fine,” Billy declared. “It’s fucking amazing. It’s the best video we’ve ever done.”
“What’s wrong with the video, Jesse?” Colin’s tone bordered on aggressive.
“Nothing.” Jesse wanted this conversation to be over. “The video is great.” He scanned the bags they’d brought. “Did yo
u guys bring any booze?” His month of solitude had been dry, except for a bottle of wine he’d shared with Beth, and he could do with a drink right about now. He could do with many, many drinks.
“You wanna have lunch first?” Billy asked. “We brought pizzas from town.”
“No,” Jesse said. “No, I do not.”
That night after dinner, the rest of the guys went for a moonlight swim, and Jesse settled in by the fire for his nightly torture session. He would stare at the fire and replay the night he’d kissed Hunter here. That buoyant feeling that anything was possible. The joy of having his favorite person visit his favorite place.
The wonderful shock of Hunter’s lips. The life-changing shock of him.
And then his mind would move on from the fire. To the gala and the explosion of exhilaration he’d unleashed in himself as he’d bid on Hunter. To that charged embrace outside the ramen restaurant. To running in the rain. To the incredible, utter rightness of being allowed inside Hunter’s body.
He knew it wasn’t healthy, to obsess like this. And yet, he did it every night. Exactly the same.
Except tonight was a little different. Tonight, Jesse was drunk, so he was extra maudlin. He actually felt like he might cry.
Well, that would be a new addition to the routine.
“Hey.”
It was Colin, wrapped in a towel, shivering. He came to stand by the fire. “It’s a cold night.”
Jesse hadn’t noticed. He didn’t notice shit like that anymore. Hot, cold, day, night: it was all the same. “You got any pot?” he asked, suddenly feeling like maybe a few tokes would deliver the oblivion his day of drinking had not.
“No. And if I did, I wouldn’t give you any.”
“Well, thank you very much for that.”
“What’s up your ass lately?” Colin pulled up a camp chair and settled in.
Now he was supposed to have a big heart-to-heart with Cranky Colin? No, thanks.
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