“I really am sorry,” I said to Giselle.

I’d rushed over, expecting her to be furious. Instead, I found her, glumly sitting in front of one of her garment bags, her closet half-empty.

She wouldn’t look at me. “It’s my fault. I don’t know why I expected you to show up.” There was a clothes hanger on the floor, and she nudged it with her toe.

“I fell asleep,” I said. “It wasn’t on purpose. Not targeted at you or anything, I promise. I was just tired.”

“Alarm clocks do exist,” she said. “There’s one on your phone. Or, you know, maybe one of your many many other employees could’ve woken you up to remind you we were going to meet tonight.”

I slumped in a chair near her suite’s bed. “You’re not really leaving, are you? You should stay. How are you going to get a flight tonight, anyway?”

“Maybe I’ll take a train. Or...or a bus!”

I shuddered. “Come on, we both know you’re not going to take a bus.”

She picked up the hanger, and for a split second I thought she was going to attack me with it. “Why not?” she asked. “If you can do crazy, badly-thought-out things, why can’t I?”

“You know, I would think you’d be happy for me,” I said. “We’re friends, after all, and usually friends are happy when their friends fall in love.”

She gave me a pitying look and shook her head. “Oh, Ransom, really. This is the reason I should stay? Because you’re in love?”

“Look, we already talked about this, didn’t we? We already hashed it out back at the lodge!”

“Did we? Did we? Because I thought so, too. I thought everything was going to be fine between us again. Then I saw this.” She pulled out her phone and brought up a pic site. Almost ten thousand people had looked at a picture some fan had posted: Cave’s house, me in the doorway waving at the crowd outside.

I took the phone from her and flipped through the other pictures from that fan. No captions. No comments that would indicate anyone knew what had been going on there. Just the endless silent documentation of my life.

I handed the phone back. “I don’t see the problem.”

“Of course you don’t. Because you’re not thinking of anyone but yourself.”

“Do we have to fight about this? Look, we’ll go out tonight. We’ll find a nightclub, make sure we get seen. Tomorrow we’ll--”

“God, Rhody was right about you!”

“Rhody? What the fuck does she know about me?”

“She knows all you think about is yourself. We had some long, long talks about the danger you’re putting me in, believe me. Nightclubs, you say? Making sure we get seen? We are way beyond all that, Ransom. Look, this isn’t about how boring it is here. It’s not about the sacrifices I’ve made to stay. Forget how tedious and soul-crushing Oceanside is. Have you considered what’s going to happen once people realize who Cave is to you, and why you’re spending so much time at his house?”

“Of course I have. What, you think Toby hasn’t lectured me five million times about it? That’s the whole reason you’re here. We’ll deflect attention away from Cave, and then once there’s a new album--”

“You moron, I’m not talking about what’ll happen to you! I’m talking about what will happen to me!”

I stared at her. Oh, shit, I thought. I honestly hadn’t even thought about it, I’d been so absorbed in Cave, but she was right, she--

“I am going to be ruined,” she said miserably. “The minute people think you’re seeing a guy, they’re going to wonder what on earth I was doing on your arm all this time. They’ll either think poor dumb Giselle, she can’t tell a gay guy from a straight one, or worse, they’ll know this was all just a ploy, and they’ll think I’m nothing but a shallow little pawn.”

My realization of my own stupidity weighted down my heart. “God, Giselle, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s why I’ve got to leave, right now. Because you know they’re going to find out, Ransom. They’re fans. They want to know every single thing about you. You can’t keep a secret from them, not something like this. It’s one thing to sleep with one of your random guys back in LA. But it’s so obvious this is a real thing for you.”

I couldn’t say a word. I watched her walk back to the closet and yank more clothes down. She shoved them in the bag.

“The worst part is, I can’t even really be mad at you,” she said. “I don’t see Cave’s appeal, but Rhody says he’s one of the best guys she knows. And I know you. You never give your heart away. So there must be something special about him. At least, I hope to god there is, because we’re going to pay, once everyone finds out.”

There was a soft knock on the door, and Toby came in. I saw him taking in the scene, Giselle’s half-finished packing, the distressed look on both our faces.

“Dare I even ask?” he said. He came over and picked up the sleeve of one of the shirts jammed into the bag. “Are you leaving us already?”

“I have to,” she said. As she explained her thinking to Toby, his face fell, and he looked over at me.

“Look, I know I have no right to ask this,” he began.

“And yet you’re going to anyway,” she said.

“Stay for the parade, at least,” he asked her.

“How can I?” she said. “It’s dangerous for me to be here now. Not just dangerous for my career, but dangerous for my...for my soul. Because what kind of people are we, to ask Ransom to hide the fact that he’s in love with Cave?”

“Pragmatic people? Sensible people? People who find it a little odd that Ransom can so completely fall in Big Permanent Love with someone over the course of a week?”

I was instantly offended. “That is a really gross thing to say, Toby. Love doesn’t come with an on-off switch, you can’t control it.”

Raising his voice, he said, “You literally stole that from one of your own songs! Don’t you remember Powerline?”

“Just because it’s a song doesn’t mean it’s not true!”

“Guys!” shouted Giselle. Then, once we had settled down: “Look, you two can argue about Ransom’s on-off switch when I’m not here. But Toby, I need you to get me on a plane out of here.”

The actual arrangements didn’t take long. Soon her bags were at the door, ready to be loaded. She stood next to them, looking small and defeated in a way that broke my heart.

What kind of life was this, where my falling in love would hurt people?

“I know this hasn’t been easy,” I said, “but I want to thank you for standing by me.”

“Technically I’m doing the opposite right now.”

“I know. But you stuck it out longer than you needed to.”

“What are you going to do now, Ransom?”

“Toby will figure it out. I don’t know. He always knows what to tell people. He’ll have settled on a story before you even get on the plane.”

She gave me a hug. “I hope you wind up happy,” she whispered into my ear.

“I hope so too,” I said.

Then they came to take her bags. A brief wave, a smile at me and Toby, and then she was gone.

Later, when I told Cave about it, he said, “She just walked out of your life,” and he said it with such simplicity, like abandonment was a normal part of life, that I felt a pain in my heart, a pain that I hadn’t felt when she first walked out. She was my friend, she’d come to do me a great favor, and I’d pushed her out. Maybe it wasn’t strictly my fault that I pushed her out--after all, I hadn’t asked to fall in love--but I was still responsible for it.

Right now, though, I didn’t feel that pain, that sadness; as much as I hated that I’d complicated her life, I was congratulating myself that we had parted on good terms. I went back to my suite, wanting to clear my head, and really wanting to talk about things to Cave. What a strange new instinct, to want to talk to him about everything. Although, when I’d left him earlier, Jojo had been crying, woken up unexpectedly from his nap, and I still had some residual guilt from leaving them like that.

I wished I could pack a bag and go spend the night at Cave’s. I knew I couldn’t. I settled onto the couch and started to call him. Hopefully, it wasn’t too late to do that.

“What do you think you’re doing?” asked Toby.

I hadn’t even heard him follow me in. “Calling Cave,” I said.

“Are you kidding me? Dude, put the phone down. We have to think, we have to plan. Everybody in the world is going to wonder why Giselle is suddenly gone, and--”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to be mean, Toby, but isn’t this what I pay you for? I don’t want to sit here and figure out some way to lie to people. I’ve got a real live person who loves me in this town, and all I want to do for a while is be with him. You know, like normal people do.”

“Normal people. Normal people. Aren’t we a little beyond that by now, Ransom?”

“Is there ever going to be a time you don’t fight me on this?”

“You’ve worked way too hard--”

“Yes. Yes, I have. I’ve worked way too hard. And now I need a break. And you’re going to accommodate that because I pay you an obscene amount of money to make my life smooth and peaceful, placid as a mountain lake. If you need to remember how placid that is, I saved some pictures from the lodge that you can look at.”

I could feel him bristling. Worse, I could feel him distancing. Toby was too important for me to push aside like this. Without him, I wouldn’t even have a career right now, certainly not this career.

How was I supposed to act, though? All I wanted was to see Cave again, and he wanted to prevent it.

Finally, something shifted in his glare. It wasn’t quite an admission of defeat, but as his shoulders slumped, I knew I’d won this strange little battle between us.

“Okay,” he said. “I guess I’ve got a lot of thinking to do, for both of us. Suppose I’ll just go to my room and earn my keep.”

I should’ve said something conciliatory, I know. Just something to keep the peace. But the moment the door closed, I already had my phone out. I was so wired, I had to talk to the one person who would understand everything.

I sent Cave a text, but he didn’t answer. When I looked at the time, I was shocked. I’d had no idea how late it was, and was suddenly glad I hadn’t called, possibly waking up Jojo yet again. Thinking of Cave and Jojo sleeping made me long to see them so much. They were a little island of peace. But I could wait.