For the last two weeks, things seem to be going perfectly. Blake and I fall into a companionship that could look to the casual observer like a relationship, but I try hard to remind myself we’re not a couple and he’s not ready for a relationship. But sweet Jesus, do I wish he was.
Because the thing is? It’s so damn easy.
Every engagement I go to, Blake is there. Blake follows me wherever I go, and where there used to be slightly awkward silence, there’s now curiosity and ease. We’re friendly, which is something we weren’t quite making it to before. Before, Blake and I could sit together, but we couldn’t talk like we do now. I ask him what made him want to be a bodyguard, and he asks me what made me want to be a Broadway actress.
“I’ve always liked playing pretend,” I tell him. “And Broadway is so exciting. It would be like a new show every night.”
“I trained with the Marines, but I never liked the combat,” he tells me. “I prefer having something to protect, rather than going out and trying to take things from someone else, and that’s really what combat is.”
He was so cold and aloof when we met, and now that he’s finally warming up. It’s like a bright light has been cast over the two of us. We trade jokes in the wings of the shows and interviews I go to. When I hate my wardrobe, he leaves Magnus to sort it out while he kisses my cares away. We’ve become a lot more comfortable with touch, though there is an unspoken agreement we never touch or kiss somewhere where there could be cameras.
I find out he has a younger brother who’s training to be a teacher, and he’s desperately proud of him. I tell him about my small-town parents who are so excited I’m doing well, even though they’re not really sure what YouTube is or how I can make money from it. He tells me he would have liked to be a chef if he could have been anything else. I tell him I would have liked to have been an astronaut.
“It would be fun!” I’d told him defensively when he’d snorted.
“You’ve got an adventurous side, you know that?” he’d replied, a wry smile on his lips.
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Good thing I’ve got such a great bodyguard to keep me safe.”
He still doesn’t laugh much, but I’m working on that.
We fall into a pattern that, on anyone else, could definitely be considered a relationship. He kisses me when he sees me, we talk and share details about our personal lives as often as we can. Blake stays over at my dorm. He kisses me to sleep every night and gives me the best orgasms of my life.
To be honest, I hadn’t expected us to be this great so quickly. It doesn’t make sense, really, but it seems the lust I felt for him is starting to blossom into something else and that terrifies and thrills me in equal parts.
In hindsight, I think it might have been inevitable, and that caring for Blake and feeling him inside of me on a regular basis would make me like him more. The fact he is a genuinely good person—the kind who would run into a burning building to save puppies, the kind who prefers to defend instead of attack, I mean, how could I have resisted that?—only makes things worse.
We talk sometimes. I’m slowly breaking through the wall he’s built up since Sadie left, but a lot of the time we just sit in silence. We’re together so often, going to interviews and appearances, I feel almost like I’ve had him with me for years like he’s always been there and always will be. When I look at him now, I’m less distracted by his biceps and his chest and more interested in the way his eyes will light up when I make a good joke or a daring pun. I want to see him laugh—that’s my goal.
At the end of two weeks, I’m able to admit to myself I want more from Blake than excellent sex. The only problem is finding a way to bring it up with him.
While all of this is happening, I’m frantically trying to plan my tour. My idea is to act out my YouTube career, using Shane and a couple of my other friends as characters. A musical I write and direct myself—it’s something I’ve done over and over for school, but this time it’s deeply important I don’t fuck it up. There’s more than just a grade on the line. Magnus has made it clear this could be the thing to make or break me.
No pressure or anything.
I spend hours huddled up in my dorm while Blake is sleeping on my bed or reading quietly. I type away, put together a mood board, try to map out every inch of what I want the stage to look like. Because it’s so personal for me, because I’m in charge, every detail has to be perfect. I can’t allow for anything else. The stress of the looming tour, plus the two videos a week—videos I have to plan out, rehearse, shoot, and edit myself—leaves me with little time to be worrying about a potential relationship with my bodyguard, but somehow I manage.
Blake seems to instinctively know when I’ve had too much. When I need a break, he takes me for a run or guides me to the bed for a few hours of blissful, mind-blowing sex. Sometimes, he can make me forget my name—making me forget I’ve got a tour to plan is child’s play. Blake can play my body with the same finesse I reserve for my music, and I love it.
Shane pretends to tut when he sees the bruises Blake leaves on my neck before he’s climbing all over me and demanding details. His own sex life is looking better and better. He and Magnus have been on a couple of dates, though Magnus did give Shane the courtesy of finding a different manager to cover Shane’s career—“To avoid conflict of interest, he’s such a sweetheart,” Shane had told me. So Shane only ever sees Magnus in the personal setting.
Maybe that’s the problem with Blake and me. We’re professional colleagues first, lovers second, and friends third.
After two weeks, though, it all falls apart.
Shane scored a role in a TV pilot. It’s the type of thing that could launch a career if the pilot gets picked up. We spent a good two hours squealing about it. I wanted to run and tell my Instagram followers who love Shane as much as I do, but he quickly swats the phone out of my hand.
“NDAs, woman,” he says. “We can’t tell a soul until the pilot season is over!”
I am so damn happy for him. When he invites me to the set to help him run lines before the first shoot, I’m ecstatic, and I agree immediately. My tour and videos can wait. I need to support my friend.
Blake drives me. The limo for the red carpet was a one-time thing, and I’m not pulling in enough to hire a full-time driver. Ordinarily, I would have split an Uber with Shane, but he’d had to be on the set at 4:00 a.m., and I’m not about that life. Instead, Blake picks me up from the dorm.
“So what’s your friend doing on the show?” Blake asks as we merge seamlessly into traffic. He’s wearing a blue Henley that hugs his biceps deliciously. I’d told him once, after a particularly delicious round of sex, that I think the tight shirts are sexy. Since then, he’s worn nothing but tight shirts. He is clearly trying to drive me insane. It’s working.
“A small role,” I tell him, leaning my head against the window. I can’t get my grin off of my face, I’m just so proud. “But it’ll be something big, I can tell. There’s too much talent there.”
“As long as the pilot gets picked up.”
“Well, even if it doesn’t, a reputation will build up, won’t it? It certainly can’t hurt a career?”
Blake shrugs, but I take that as a positive reaction. I realize we’ve never really talked about Shane so much. In fact, I don’t think Blake has even met Shane. Shane always makes himself scarce when Blake comes over, like a true friend. I think I’ve been holding off on introducing them properly. Shane has always been my litmus test for men. If he likes them, then the relationship is worth pursuing.
I’m worried, on some level, that Shane will like Blake because I already know how Blake feels about relationships.
Blake drives us to the studio. I’ve seen a few studios in the last month or so, but this one is big. The building is an imposing, sand-colored monolith with people scurrying around it like ants. Many of them are wearing headphones or Bluetooth earplugs, talking loudly and checking things off on their clipboards. There’s a group of men unloading a catering truck as Blake, and I pull into the service parking lot. Blake drops me off there, and I walk inside while he looks for a place to park his car.
“See you,” I say, leaning over to give him a brief kiss on the lips.
He returns it without hesitation. It’s so damn domestic. Like we’ve been together for years.
I walk past the caterers who are unloading, frankly, an irresponsible amount of food. The studio is smaller on the inside than it had looked from the outside, and I find a harried PA who can guide me to the trailers parked on the other side of the building.
Walking through the organized chaos, gazing around at the many plywood outsides of sets, the green screens, and the camera equipment which puts my tiny Nikon to shame, I think I would definitely prefer the stage. Not that there’s anything wrong with this environment, I just know from experience that plays are more… intimate, for the want of a better word. Backstage, there’s only so much space. You’re squeezing between people to get your makeup on in a tiny mirror, you’re sorting through other people’s costumes to find your own in the wardrobe chaos, and there’s a feeling of comradery that comes from knowing it’s you against the audience.
Here, even though the room is small, there seems to be a place for everything and everything in its place. There’s no sense of muddled confusion that makes the stage feel so alive. When I find the trailers at the back of the studio, the feeling that I don’t quite like this environment is reinforced. There are over two dozen trailers all in a row. Each looks sadly solitary. Even though there are probably hundreds of people on set today, the actors are isolated, not just from the crew, but from each other. I think if I worked in film and TV, it might get a bit lonely.
I find Shane’s trailer and knock.
The door flies open, and I find my best friend beaming down at me. “Thank the good Lord you’re here,” he says in his thickest Southern drawl. “Honey, I need to practice kissing a girl, and you’re the closest thing I’ve got.”
“I thought your character was supposed to be from Alaska?” I say, following him into the trailer.
“They made the change last minute, darlin’.”
Inside, the trailer is almost spartan. There’s very little personality beyond the Red Bull cans in the trash and the smell of Shane’s sandalwood cologne. There’s makeup on the dresser and script pages strewn all over the table from where he must have been feverishly trying to learn his lines.
He guides me over to the table and sits me down, straight to business.
“So, I didn’t think I’d have to do this scene today,” he says, his accent reverting back to his usual one as he shuffles through the script pages. I’m so glad there are page numbers—seeing them in a pile like this is giving me anxiety. “But I’ve got to kiss a girl, and I realize now I’ve never actually done that?”
“Never?” I ask.
“Nope. All the roles I’ve ever had at school were either second lead or the gay guy.”
I’d never realized that, but now that I think of it, I really can’t remember a time when he had to kiss a girl for a part in one of our student-run productions.
“Not even when you were a teenager?”
“Honey, I’ve been queer as a rainbow since I came out of the womb.”
I laugh at him. “Well, I’ve kissed girls, and I don’t think it’s that different.”
“Still, give me some practice?”
“Of course,” I say easily.
Grinning, he hands me a page from the script. His lines are highlighted in pink, which I think is adorable.
“Okay, you read for Tiffany.”
“Tiffany?”
“Yeah, the name makes me sad, too.”
Shane clears his throat, and his voice immediately drops a few octaves switching to smooth southern with an ease that would have been astonishing if I hadn’t worked with him for hours to perfect it. We learn accents the way math majors learn equations. I could switch from French to Greek to Czech in my sleep.
“Tiffany, I don’t think I can keep this up,” Shane says, with all the sincerity of a man who is talking to the love of his life. It’s convincing. I tell myself I’ll let him know that when we’re done with the scene. “Your daddy is never going to stop hunting my brother, and I can’t keep pretending your family doesn’t have it out for mine.”
“It was the fire that started everything,” I reply, reading off of the script with an accent to match his.
“She’s New Orleans, babe.”
“Oh, sorry. It was the fire that started everything,” I repeat. “And I know you hate my father, but I don’t want that damn blaze to be the thing that defines us. Can’t we make our own destiny?”
“This ain’t about destiny,” Shane says sternly. “This is about your daddy wanting revenge, and my brother wanting to stay alive. I’m gonna have to make a choice.”
“Choose me,” I say, as desperately as I can without seeming cheesy. “We can run away together.”
“And leave my brother?” he asks. “No, Tiff. I can’t leave him. I won’t.”
“So you’re choosing to throw us away?”
Shane reaches up and cups my chin with his thumb and forefinger. His hands are smaller than Blake’s, and I could easily pull away if I wanted to.
“You have no idea how badly I want to keep you,” he says.
His tone is earnest, and I’m so proud of him at this moment that I nearly break character. He’s going to be great in this role. I only hope the pilot is picked up.
“But I don’t think I can. You’ve got your scholarship. You’ll learn to live without me. And when your father gives up his vendetta, then maybe…”
“I’m going to find out who started that fire,” I tell him, my eyes flicking from the man in front of me to the script in my hand. “And when I do, I’ll put this feud to rest. Will you wait for me?”
Shane’s lips quirk up like he’s trying to fight a smile. “I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.”
And then he’s kissing me. It’s a bit… hard. Like he’s trying to go for passionate and has gone a bit too far. I think of the way Blake kisses me and pull away from Shane.
“Okay, just a thought? Start gentle and go rough.”
“It says passionate,” Shane says, frowning at the script.
“You can be passionate and still be gentle. I think it’s more in the body language.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s stand up.”
So we stand. Shane cups my chin again and presses his lips to mine. I can feel his concentration in every movement, which isn’t exactly sexy, but he clearly knows what he’s doing because his technique is damn near flawless. He tilts his head so his nose is pressed into my cheek, and his fingers move up to my hair. It’s close to how Blake usually holds me, but Shane’s hands are the wrong size, and his chest isn’t as broad when he pulls me to him.
Still, the body language helps. In this position, he can move his hands and press himself as close to me as possible, as though he’s trying to occupy the same space as me without hurting me. His lips and tongue are urgent like he’s worried we’ll run out of time, but his teeth and tight jaw are no longer an issue. I grip his shoulders, not wanting to draw him out of the kiss or distract him as he decides how he’s going to move.
When it’s over, we pull apart, and Shane winks. “You’re welcome, darlin’,” he says.
“Much better. You should probably practice with the woman you’re doing the scene with, though.”
“Yeah, maybe later. You’re more fun.”
He dips his hands down to my hips and swats me on the butt. I laugh at him as he pulls me into a hug.
Then I look over his shoulder, and my eyes are drawn to the window of the trailer. There’s a face there. I yelp, startled until my mind puts the features together into Blake’s face. Shane spins around, and together we watch as Blake, looks furious. I’ve never seen that expression on his face—he turns and walks away from the window.
Shane and I share a look. “You don’t think he—”
“Was that…”
I quickly rush over to the door and pull it open. “Blake!” I shout.
I can see his back as he marches away from the trailers, fury in every line of his muscles, his hands in tight balls at his sides.
He saw me kiss another man.
He doesn’t know that Shane is gay.
He’s angry and walking away without waiting for an explanation.
I climb down from the trailer and chase after him, watching as he disappears around the corner. My shoes crunch against the gravel, and my hair flies behind me, but by the time I get to the end of the line of trailers, Blake has disappeared.