I shook my head, looking back out at the yard. "One thing you should know right away is that Ella only sees the best in me. Or she only talks to people about the best of me."
Jamie nodded, the expression on his face truly sympathetic, and suddenly I felt like I was in a therapist’s office.
"I want the biography written. But I'm scared of what it might say," I said, turning away from him and starting down the hall. "Come on. The next room is the best."
I walked down the hall and into my favorite place in the house. It was originally meant to be a dining room, I think; I had long ago started using it as a catch-all space for every musical instrument I owned, recording equipment, and nostalgic memorabilia.
"Oh my god, the windows in here are insane," Jamie said, stepping in. They really were—they covered an entire wall, looked out to the yard, and let in tons of light. The room was spacious, with high ceilings, and was the most impressive thing about the house.
"You play piano?" he asked, eyeing my baby grand.
I nodded. "I can't afford one this nice anymore, but I'm sure as hell not about to sell it." I ran my hand over the sleek black side of the piano.
"Wow, I didn't even know you still played music," he said.
"Yeah, most people don't. I haven't recorded anything or put anything out since the band.”
“Do you write songs? Or just jam out?”
“I write songs every day, but the problem is none of them are any good.”
“I seriously doubt that,” Jamie said.
I shrugged. “It's just a hobby. No one wants to hear my shit anymore. Somber piano music by former boy band members isn’t the hottest selling genre."
Jamie smiled, his face almost glowing in the afternoon light pouring through the windows. "I'm sure a lot of people would. Adele is somber piano music and look how famous she is."
“Yeah, but it’s got Adele’s voice on top of it. It ain’t about the piano.”
I squinted at him. How was he still being so earnest, so optimistic? Hadn’t he gathered by now that it was pointless?
I shook my head slowly. "Listen—are you sure you want to go through with this?" I said, eyeing him warily.
He nodded. “Oh, hell yeah. I'm loving the tour, I had no idea there was a room like this in here—"
"Not the tour, the job. It's just... you seem sweet, kid, and I'm really not—”
"I have a name, it's Jamie, so you can stop calling me ‘kid.’" His gaze changed again, like it had when he'd been pummeling me with questions. "And to be honest, no, I don't know yet if I want to continue. But if I do stop, you can rest assured it won't be because of your charming personality."
I blinked at him. The whole time he'd been at my house, I'd been trying to think of who Jamie reminded me of—his face was familiar but new, his eyes sympathetic and yielding one moment but intensely passionate the next.
But I was starting to think he didn't remind me of anyone but himself. I realized I'd never met anyone quite like him.
"Okay,” I said finally.
His gaze softened. “Actually, I think this is probably one of the coolest jobs I’ve ever had.”
“What, cooler than your job at the knitting store?”
It was too satisfying seeing the look on his face. “How did you know about?… Oh. Right. Jesus, I forgot I put that on my resume.”
I smiled. “Yeah, it kind of stood out after all the college newspaper-related jobs.”
“You should see the jobs I left off my resume,” Jamie said. He crossed the room and bent over slightly, examining my hollowbody guitar. His shirt pulled up a little out of the back of his pants, and the light-blue waistband of boxer-briefs peeked out of the top. Above it was a strip of skin, and I swore I almost blushed just from seeing it. Pathetic. I looked at the ground.
“How many jobs have you even had? You’re so young.”
He looked up at the ceiling, counting on his fingers. “I think 10? Yeah, 10 now.”
“Ten jobs? And you’re 22? You get fired a lot or something?”
He shook his head and stood up straight. “Never been fired. Just started working when I was, like, 14 years old.”
I cringed slightly. “Ouch. Why so young?”
“Well, the first job was just helping out my dad, so I don’t know if it counts.”
I felt a twinge of envy. “Always wished I could be one of those kids who helped out at my dad’s company. But… as you apparently already know, my dad wasn’t that kind of dad.”
Jamie looked at the ground. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it a company… my dad just runs a junk store in a small town. I helped stock shelves.”
“Junk store?”
“Yeah, like… a secondhand store. People donate all their old clothes, furniture, dishes, knickknacks. My dad ‘hired’ me and my ninth-grade girlfriend and our payment was that we could take whatever we wanted from the store.”
I suddenly felt strange. A mix of relief and disappointment. And something possessed me to spew out a string of words that I had no place saying, especially not to someone I had a brand-new business relationship with.
But I fucking said it, smiling like an idiot at Jamie: "Oh thank God—I’m glad to hear you're straight. Last thing I need is to develop some kind of interest in my biographer, what a cliché that would be. But I'm really not into straight guys."
Jamie stared at me, his mouth slightly open. For a second, I worried I had offended him. I immediately realized my mistake: who was I to give a shit about whether a business partner was straight?
But his face changed slightly, giving way to what might be described as a bashful smile, complete with a blush.
“Well….” Jamie said, looking to the side and rubbing his hand on the back of his neck.
I felt a pit growing in my stomach.
"Actually, I..."
Shit. Shit, fuck, what the fuck had I just done?
As I realized what Jamie was probably about to say, I began considering how much it would hurt to hurl my body through the glass windows nearby. Would it be better or worse than banging my head against the solid wood of the piano? If I went through the glass, would I stumble and fall into the pool outside? Maybe a far less violent option would involve just melting into the floor.
Jamie was still talking.
"…I'm totally and completely gay. Like, gay for days, 6 on the Kinsey scale, men only, please and thank you. The high school girlfriend was just a cute little ‘I’m-not-ready-to-come-out-yet’ thing.”
He was grinning at me again, wide and crooked, as if he’d never heard of the word shame.
I held up a finger in the air, signaling to Jamie that he could stop talking. I walked out of the room and back to the kitchen, reached in the cabinet and got the gin, and poured myself a shot.
By the time Jamie entered the kitchen a minute later, I was on my second shot.
I held up the bottle. “You want some? I figure things can’t get any worse from here, so… mi casa es su casa. I better just tell you everything. I’m a total asshole, which I know you’ve gathered. There’s three family-size bags of pizza rolls in the freezer. There’s photos of my ex in the drawer of my bedside table that I alternately cry over or shoot darts at. And I’m scared shitless about my career.”
His eyes were therapist-sympathetic again, and this time I couldn’t blame him.
I sighed heavily and spoke again. “I’m so, so sorry Jamie. I was trying to be professional… I mean, I’m always an asshole, but I was trying to be a professional one, and what I said in there was out of line. But, there you have it, I’m shitty to work with, and you can walk out if you want to.”
Jamie’s face twisted into a confused half-smile. “Seriously? Dude, I don’t care at all. You can relax. And if you want to make some pizza rolls, that sounds pretty damn delicious, to tell you the truth.”
I eyed him, incredulous. “So it’s not weird as fuck to you that I just said all that shit?”
He shrugged. “Yeah,
it’s fucking weird. But you have no idea what a high tolerance for weird I have.”
He paused for a moment, then walked over to the freezer, opened it, and pulled out the bag of pizza rolls. “Alright. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.”
I stood there staring at him like he was some sort of alien.
He sighed heavily, meeting my eyes. “It’s fine,” he said, his voice sincere. “I swear, I don’t care. It’s refreshing, even. You weren’t holding back. I’m glad you finally said something that wasn’t all cagey and stoic. And I’m not looking for hook-ups or relationships or anything right now anyway. It’s off the table. Things won’t be weird. We’re cool, Leo.”
Did anything bother him?
“How would you react if I threw a crumpled up empty In-N-Out bag at you?” I asked, already feeling the gin.
Jamie gave me an odd look, but smiled. “I’d throw it back.”
I made a mental note to send Ella a furious email for proving me wrong. She’d been absolutely goddamn right about him.
Four
Jamie
I was still young, but even at 22 there were bound to be some corners of your sexual history that you weren’t proud of. To put it delicately, let’s just say that arousal can have a mind of its own, and yes, there were times in college when I would get hard just from the way a certain guy walked past me, or the way a professor’s forearm looked when he rolled up his sleeve.
But by far the most baffling hard-on I had ever been bestowed with was the one that hit me when Leo had walked out of that room, blushing red after discovering I was gay.
Gay indeed, very much so, considering the state of my cock after seeing my teenage celebrity crush go all bashful because of me.
Of course, I’d immediately felt awful about it, and started thinking about Antarctica and tax laws and the queen of England—anything to get my mind off of Leo and get my cock to behave and go down again. So that I could go out there and inform him that it was fine, and nothing was weird, even though it kind of actually was totally weird.
I went home and tried to remember what normal life was like. I didn’t eat dinner, after having a bunch of pizza rolls with Leo at about four o’clock. All we’d done was watch some TV and eat, and then I’d left after Leo made some vague reference to the “things he had to do” that night.
I was alone in the apartment, since Chelsea was on a night shift, and I had nothing to do and no one to yell at about how strange yet fascinating my day had been.
Of course I wound up in bed, thinking about the one thing I shouldn’t think about someone who was essentially my boss—how attractive he was, and how obvious it was that despite his claims of being an ‘asshole,’ he was a hilarious and sensitive person.
How did the sweet, young Leo in his early 20s become such a raw nerve? I mean, I knew why—the tabloid scandals of 10 years ago, followed by career decline and things like the Never-Shall-We-Name-It Blade-Chopper. But he was clearly still so passionate, still driven; he just didn’t know where to go next.
And God, why—why had it been a turn-on to see him finally being genuine, blushing and embarrassed? I felt like I had won, somehow, like I was finally seeing a version of the real him, after all his attitude had fallen away.
Actually, I knew why I was turned on by it. I just didn’t want to admit it.
It was because it had never gone away.
My teenage crush, the eyes I’d stared into through the pages of glossy teen magazines, had been there right in front of me, and they were so much more captivating in real life.
I thought of what his face might look like flushed red for different reasons. His looks, his physique, his former-celebrity status all meant that he probably hooked up with whoever he wanted, all the time; for all I knew, he was off right now getting hot and heavy with someone or multiple someones.
But for a second, I just let myself pretend he was any other guy, not my difficult boss, not Leo Stone of 5*Star—just Leo, a guy I had met today.
So I went for it, pulling my cock out, unzipping hastily and wrapping it in my fist. As I stroked myself I pictured him blushing, him smiling. But I knew I was truly doomed when I pictured his hard gaze, his defiant stare, and it made me even harder.
Leo was a challenge, and that fucking turned me on.
I liked that I had the power to irritate him as much as I had the power to embarrass him. Which Leo would he be in bed? Firm and dominant, telling me what to do and when? Or yielding and compliant, opening for me and giving up control?
Both options seemed to short circuit my brain. My whole body grew hot as I gripped myself, working my fist around my cock and pretending that Leo’s mouth was right above it, ready and willing to take whatever I gave him.
His lips were pretty and they’d be prettier wrapped around me. I let myself slip into the fantasy and pictured that my hand was him instead. Pictured how his eyes would look staring up at me as he took my cock in his mouth—angry at me, wanting me, or angry that he wanted me.
In my fantasy Leo wanted me to come for him, and so I did, giving over fully to the sensation and losing myself, coming onto my own hand and stomach, breathing heavy in bed. I was warm, and covered in a thin sheen of sweat. I pressed my head back into the pillow and laid there for a while, not allowing myself to even acknowledge what I’d done.
When I returned to normal I cleaned up and forced myself into some mindless internet browsing for a few minutes, but unsurprisingly it didn’t last long. Facebook was a travesty. My friends from college were all doing intense, accomplished things with their lives: getting into medical school, getting engaged, getting jobs on Wall Street.
I’d spent two hours at a washed-up pop star’s house, come home to my dingy apartment, and subsequently jerked off to the thought of him.
I thought if I gave in and just let myself come to him, come to the thought of Leo, that I’d get it out of my system and, done and dusted, I’d leave it in the past. My sick urge would be sated and I could move on, thinking of Leo only in the strictest business sense from then on.
And it hadn’t really worked that way. What had I just done on day one of the job? Asked him questions, embarrassed him, eaten some pizza rolls, and dreamed of coming in his mouth?
I realized that I needed, and maybe even wanted, to actually get some work done. I turned on the two lamps in my room, saving myself from the sole harsh blue glow of my laptop screen. I moved the laptop from the bed to my desk and forced myself to sit down properly and do some actual research.
Google was the most obvious starting point.
A search for “Leo Stone” came up with hundreds of thousands of results, and the top one was naturally his Wikipedia page. I knew that. I’d pored over it, nearly memorizing it the second I’d gotten the job.
The next result was Leo’s Twitter page, which was less exciting than it could have been. He didn’t really tweet much; only two appeared from the past year. The first had been him congratulating Chandler Price, the member of 5*Star who had found solo superstardom, on winning a Grammy award, and the second said, “Got some exciting projects in the works! Can’t wait for you all to see, xxoo Leo.” It had been posted months ago, with no further updates. I had no idea what it was referring to.
The next article that the Google search pulled up was even more depressing: it was a blog post called “Got Your Back? Chandler Price vs. Leo Stone, and why 5*Star Only Produced One Superstar.” Got Your Back was the title of one of 5*Star’s old hit singles, and the article speculated about whether the two men were still friends.
The rest of the Google searches were variations on similar things—articles asking where Leo Stone was now, a few about the Blade-Chopper, a couple about his scandals in 2007. I discovered that he was originally selected to be a judge on a season of American Idol a couple years back, but the deal had fallen through at the last minute; there were no further details in the article about what had gone wrong.
As I searched I wrote things in my small notebook
, jotting down every little tidbit that caught my interest. I figured if I wanted to know what the details of something were, I was sure the rest of the world would be interested too. Or, at least the ones who were as curious about Leo Stone as I was. I even found out why the band was called 5*Star even though there were only four members: the 5th star was a tribute to Chandler Price’s beloved dog, who died right before the band recorded their first album. Every time the band members were asked about the band name on TV, Chandler would pull out a small photo he had of the Labrador and show the cameras.
The most interesting article to me was probably something that no one else had read or cared about in years. It was on the 23rd page of Google results, buried deep behind pages of monotonous articles. It was a short interview he’d done with a teen magazine years and years ago—back at the height of 5*Star’s success. A young girl had written into the magazine explaining that Leo was her favorite member of the group, and asked him five questions. One of them had been “What’s your favorite candy?” Leo had responded effusively that he loved any gummy candies—gummy worms, gummy bears, gummy peaches, sour gummies. It was absolutely adorable on every level, and I stared at the laptop smiling like an idiot, slouching in my chair, picturing the gruff 36-year-old Leo waxing poetic about gummy candy.
When I heard the sound of a key rattling in the front door I jumped, realizing how silent it had become in the apartment. I checked the time and was shocked to see that it was 3 in the morning—I’d gotten completely engrossed in research, and Chelsea was already home from her shift at the hospital.
I sauntered out into the living room.
“Jesus! You scared me,” she said with a laugh. “Why the hell are you still up?”
I rubbed at my face, yawning. “Got down an internet rabbit-hole full of Leo Stone.” I plopped down on the couch and already felt myself pulled toward sleep—it was comfy and I realized I’d been awake for nearly 20 hours at that point.
Your Fallen Star: Under the Stars Book 1 Page 3