I was speechless and wide-eyed for a second, looking out through the blinding lights to the audience, unsure of what to say about a video I’d hated or just misunderstood.
“I mean,” I finally said, looking to Agatha, “To me that video just seemed kinda like a documentary. I don’t, like, make potato chip bags explode with my mind, but I end up covered in them at the end of the day anyway.”
Thank God the audience laughed. Agatha, Wimby, and August chuckled.
“You’re so cute,” Agatha said, giving my wrist another little squeeze.
“Now Leo,” August said, fixing me with a piercing blue stare. “I’ve got to ask—what have you been up to lately?”
“Yeah, I feel like the last time I saw you, I was graduating kindergarten,” Wimby said with a huge, toothy smile.
I blinked, raising my eyebrows. “Well, I’ve got a lot of projects in the works,” I said, giving my usual bullshit answer to questions like that. “I actually have something really exciting that will probably be coming out later this year.”
“Well, that all sounds very mysterious, but I’m excited to see what you’ve got coming up,” August replied.
“Now—dude—Leo. I was really excited when I found out I was gonna be on the show with you,” Wimby said, turning to me emphatically and smiling.
Funny, I wanted to say, because you sure as hell didn’t look excited when I shook your hand backstage.
I nodded at him, allowing him to continue.
He sprung up out of his chair, his pristine white hi-top sneakers squeaking on the floor.
“When they taught you how to do that dance move in Got Your Back, did they know what it looked like?” Wimby started to do the famous, ridiculous dance move from our most famous song, and the audience erupted in laughter.
I nodded, but I was somewhat unable to pretend to smile.
“I see you’ve picked up on it,” I said, biting down sarcasm. “No one has ever made the comparison of that dance move and a chicken before.”
Since the song had come out over 15 years ago, people had long compared the silly dance move that we’d been made to perform in the video to the funky chicken dance. It had probably been funny the first time I’d seen the comparison made. This was probably the eight-thousandth time.
Agatha seemed to appreciate my sarcasm, though, and make another grab for my wrist. I quickly pulled my hand up to my neck, feigning that I needed to give myself a quick scratch on the back.
“Now, we all know that you were in 5*Star with the one and only, the inimitable, Chandler Price,” August said, turning to the audience.
Tons of applause.
Seconds later he turned back to me. “Now, what I wonder is, do you two still keep in touch? Are you friends with Chandler?”
“He’s got to be a true friend if he is still sticking around after the drama back in ’07,” Wimby said. “He wasn’t afraid you’d jump on him naked on a beach somewhere?”
The audience laughed again.
So Wimby latched on to another totally obvious, awful thing about my past—tabloid photos of me naked on the beach with my ex. Somebody give the man a gold star.
“Uh, yeah, actually, I am still friends with Chandler. He’s very busy, of course, and with his schedule I don’t see him often, but when I do it’s always good. I miss him. He’s not in L.A. as much anymore.”
“Well that’s good to hear, Leo.”
The program devolved into the Agatha and Wimby show again, and I hung back, because I honestly didn’t give a fuck anymore. The plan had been to announce the biography on this show—at the end, after building up tension, but I wasn’t going to do it now. Ella would be pissed, but there was no fucking way I was talking about the biography here.
Nothing felt right. The lights were searing into my skin, onto the thin layer of makeup they’d plastered onto my face, and the sound of Wimby’s voice was starting to grate on me.
Finally, mercifully, the show ended. A producer rushed to me and asked if I was alright.
“Huh? Yeah, I’m fine other than the fact that it’s hot as fuck in here,” I said.
Her eyes were big and sympathetic. “Yeah, the camera kind of picked up on the sweat on your shirt. But before the show airs tonight, I’ll see if our guys in post-production can do some Photoshop magic and make sure nobody at home can see it, okay?”
Great. Fuck. So I’d look like a lame duck on TV, and also be covered in sweat.
I sighed, nodding at her as politely as I could. “Thank you.”
I gave her back my microphone and bolted to the back of the building as fast as I could. I had to get the hell out. It had been a big mistake coming on the show.
It was hot in there, and it was just as hot outside. Los Angeles. The sun burnished the heat back into my skin and my shirt clung to me like glue.
I drove home in silence. I usually listened to sex podcasts in long car rides, because it was much nicer to have some idiot talking about butt plugs fill the space in my head rather than hearing my own thoughts, but I couldn’t even deal with that at the moment.
Home. I grabbed the mail from the mailbox. Mr. Ginger Boots was nowhere to be seen. For the better, probably, because now was not the time. I stripped off every article of clothing I was wearing and left them strewn throughout the hallway. I turned the shower on cold, tried to step in, and realized it was too much and turned it closer to cool.
Breaths. Centering myself. Trying to move past it instead of heading straight to the bottle of gin.
After the shower I felt marginally cleaner and no less upset. It was probably a bad idea to open the mail at a time like this, but I did, discovering a paltry royalty check from a TV show I’d done a few years back, along with three bills, countless flyers, and an ad for a dentist’s office.
I had no fucking clue what I was supposed to do.
I laid down flat on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling, and then closing my eyes, trying to will the anger away from me.
Fucking Wimby. I wanted to gut him. But I knew the truth was just that I was ashamed of myself, as always; Ridiculed by the Millennial, the Leo Stone story. He was just a kid, really, trying to make it and probably attempting some form of mini “roast” on me in the middle of the talk show.
I breathed deep, and after 20 minutes I jumped as I heard a knock at the door. I realized I’d almost been dozing off, but woken sharply by the knock.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I said, realizing what time it was and who it must be. I was hesitant, not knowing if it was a good time to do an interview, or a good time to see Jamie at all.
But then I remembered how he made me feel, and realized that maybe it was the perfect time to do an interview. He was the only person who could really make me forget myself, lately; he always surprised me, and I never knew what he’d do next.
Finally, something good on this shitty-ass day.
Ten
Jamie
I should have rescheduled the interview with Leo that day.
But I wouldn’t do something like that; I actually didn’t know if I was capable of it. Somewhere along the line I had gotten it drilled into me that a deadline is a deadline, and an appointment is set in stone. I didn’t want to inconvenience, didn’t want to disappoint.
In other words, I wanted to put other people before myself.
Things had been fine until yesterday, when I’d gotten the first rejection from one of the studios I’d submitted my screenplay to. Then that night, the second one.
I didn’t even know that they could review the damn things so fast, but the truth was that they probably never even looked at the file at all. The email was clinical: “Thanks so much for your submission, JAMIE SHEFFIELD. We thank you for your interest, but there is currently no room for more films in our budget.”
Of course, I totally understood. It had been fine. I didn’t expect that cold-emailing studios would really be the best tactic anyway.
But today, I’d gotten four more rejection emails, a
ll written in similar ways. It was like the companies had automatically set the emails to send out a few days after submissions were made, to let people build up some false hope.
So while I knew it was to be expected, and I had set my expectations low in the first place, it stung. And all I really felt was the echo of everything my college friends had said, and all the unsolicited advice I’d gotten from adults: that I would never succeed, that I’d be a fish out of water in Los Angeles, that there were just too many movies and mine would never make a dent.
Somewhere in my brain I agreed with them, but the naïve part of me still wanted to try.
And to top off the whole shit sundae with a piss flavored cherry? I wallowed in my shame on Facebook for a few minutes, checking out the Porsche my friend who worked on Wall Street had just bought, and then I made the grave mistake of going on my ex’s Facebook page.
I know, I know, dumbest fucking move of the century. But I was already in a spiral, and I was going to indulge.
There were pictures of him gallivanting around the globe with the man he’d started dating just after me. I clicked through photo after photo, seeing their grinning faces and white chiclet teeth, wondering exactly how many palaces they could stand in front of before it just became tacky. Apparently no less than ten. As I clicked on, though, I stumbled upon something that I probably never should have seen.
A friend of his had uploaded a photo that was a few months old. It was from back in March, St. Patrick’s Day, and I could tell by the silly green hat with a clover on it that he was wearing.
He’d come home that night wearing that hat.
But in the photo, he was kissing his new boy toy. As in, kissing him, actually more like making out with him, before he and I had broken up.
Well isn’t that just fucking peachy.
But despite my god-awful disappointment of a day, when it came time for my appointment with Leo, I chucked on the last clean clothes I had in my closet and got out to his house.
He opened the door with something almost like a smile on his face.
“Wow. You look different,” he said, eyeing me up and down.
I looked down at my clothes. “What?”
He shrugged, opening the door wide and letting me in. “I dunno, you’re always in, like, a button up shirt. You look casual, is all.”
“It’s just a hoodie,” I said, stepping inside and making a beeline for the couch. “It’s all I had clean.”
He sat down on the other side of the couch and he gave me a strange look. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”
I paused for a moment, considering unloading on him, but there was no point. “Not a great day, to be honest, but it’s no big deal. We should get started,” I said, pulling out the voice recorder and placing it on the glass table.
“O-kay,” Leo said, “but if it’s not a good time you could just tell me. Also, do you need something to drink? Water?”
“It’s fine,” I said, probably a little too quickly.
“Jesus, okay, Jamie. I was gonna say I bought some herbal tea, but now I’m not sure you deserve it. It’s lemon verbena. The good stuff.”
I tried to give him a small smile. “Thanks. Feel free to get a drink if you want one but I’m fine. If you’re good to go, I think we should just get started.”
He nodded in assent, crossing his arms and lifting his feet up onto the couch, laying back.
I opened my laptop and navigated to the document that I’d been taking notes on. I turned on the voice recorder.
“Alright,” I said, “So I guess we can start off with a fairly easy question today—what are your relationships like now with the rest of the 5*Star members?”
Leo puffed out a small laugh. “Second time today I’ve been asked that,” he said, shaking his head a little. “Chandler is very famous and busy, but has remained as kind and as good of a person as always. I don’t see him much because he’s busy, but when I do, it’s always good.”
I nodded, amazed as I realized that Chandler Price—one of the most megafamous musician/actors of the last century, to Leo, was just a friend like anyone else.
“And Eric Ronson?”
Leo nodded. “Eric and I have stayed very good friends. He lives in San Diego doing his food-related stuff, but visits here from time to time still. I had lunch with him last week. We still talk on the phone, which I don’t do with nearly anyone else, and he’s like a brother to me.” Leo paused for a moment, then added, “I’m sure you’ll meet him at some point.”
“Good. And Adam Fara?” I said, letting him continue.
“Adam’s a wild card, as I’m sure you already know. We never really know where he is, or what city he might turn up in next, but every once in a while one of us will get a call from him. He tells us randomly that he’ll be in Los Angeles and then we see him for one night. He’s… kind of a lone wolf, always has been. But I like him. He’s a pretty deep guy.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
Leo let out a long sigh, looking up at the ceiling. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe two years ago?”
I navigated back to my document of questions, and got ready to fire off the next one. My neck ached, and I wanted to just get through this.
But Leo groaned, then, sitting up and turning off the voice recorder.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“I don’t know. This is boring. Can we go outside and sit on the pool chairs, or at least talk about something more interesting? And God, seriously Jamie, why the hell do you look so irritated? That’s my wheelhouse, not yours.”
“So you’re the only one who’s allowed to be cranky sometimes?” I said, meeting his eyes. When I looked at him, I remembered the photoshoot I’d looked at the other day, and a small wave of lust moved through me, despite everything.
Then I remembered that if I didn’t make this biography happen, I would be just another loser in L.A. who didn’t crack success. If my screenplay didn’t get anywhere, this book at least should. I had to get on with it.
“We can’t go outside. The ambient noise will mess with the recorder,” I said. “But… if you want, I can try to get into some more meaty questions. Are you okay with that? Is now really a good time?”
He shrugged. “Can’t be any worse than what I dealt with earlier today. Go ahead.”
I made a mental note to ask Leo about what happened earlier, but right at that moment, I needed to move fast. I had a feeling he wasn’t always going to be in such an accepting mood, and I needed to make sure I asked him the tough question before he stopped being so open.
I turned back on the voice recorder.
“So. It’s very well known what happened in 2007—the scandal where paparazzi caught photos of you naked on a private beach with rock musician Damien Jarvis wrapped in your arms.”
I’d expected Leo to stop me, to say he didn’t want to talk about it, or to turn off the voice recorder. Instead, he just fixed me with an unwavering gaze, the smile obliterated from his face.
“You know we have to talk about this at some point,” I said, keeping my voice soft. “I figured we should get it out of the way.”
He looked away from me, out the window, but he didn’t say anything.
“At the time neither you nor Damien were known to be gay or in relationships with men at all. But the photos depicted acts that were unmistakable—kissing, and more than that. I know you’ve already been asked at length about the subject, but I’m not interested in the fallout. I’m aware that Damien, in my opinion, threw you under the bus, denying any sexual involvement, and that you were essentially forced out of the closet. But what I’m wondering is how that experience affected your willingness, or your reluctance, to continue a career in the public eye.”
I paused for a moment, watching Leo’s steely eyes, the light from outside reflected onto them.
I continued. “To have your personal life thrown out there, on sharp display, without your consent. Did you still even want to be in the pu
blic eye? Do you now? Or would you prefer a life that didn’t attract the type of attention that was brought upon you in 2007?”
There was a very long pause, during which I didn’t even know if Leo was still aware I was in the room. He appeared to be lost in thought, and I couldn’t tell if he was deep in anger, sadness, or regret.
Just when I was about to consider turning off the voice recorder, he looked at me, his gaze icy, and spoke.
“It took years for me to accept what had happened. I was fine being outed—I didn’t like that the tabloids ran the stories as ‘Leo Stone is Gay,” though, because how the fuck did they jump to that conclusion? Why not say I was bi? I’d been with women throughout my career in 5*Star, publicly, at least. A couple of those relationships really did mean something to me. But I did know, deep down, that I lean more toward men when it comes to romantic and sexual relationships. It got to the point where I didn’t care anymore—I’d fallen so in love with Damien, and even though part of me knew there was a risk of paparazzi at that beach, I did it anyway.”
I swallowed, trying my best to stay silent, not to move. I was a little amazed that Leo was even telling me all of this.
“So no, the fact that my personal business got laid out to the world wasn’t the part that bothered me. Let ‘em have it. I’d spent too long pretending to be straight. But yes, Damien’s reaction cut me to the bone. We’d been together on and off for a year at that point—and he kept promising and promising that he’d come out about it publicly—but when the tabloids happened, he froze, and I didn’t hear from him. I called him, I showed up at his house, and nothing. He wouldn’t talk to me. And then weeks later he did that stupid interview, where he said that I’d taken advantage of him while he was drunk, and that it was a huge mistake, blah blah blah, all the denial in the world. And then he married his wife six months later.”
I blinked, speechless.
“Damien had promised me the world, and that all crumbled away. And no, before you ask, I do not still speak with him.”
Your Fallen Star: Under the Stars Book 1 Page 9