“This has nothing to do with Ruben and Zach being together,” he says, his voice finally rising. He quirks his head to the side, like his emotions surprised him, and he needed to wrestle them back into submission. “This is business. You signed contracts agreeing to boundaries we set, and one of those boundaries was that you would not defame us. People are already calling us homophobic and the media is already running stories falsely accusing our company of homophobia due to your words, when we never said either of you couldn’t come out. You have proven you can’t be trusted. You went against us, have shown you are unreliable, and have done huge damage to our brand. This is the consequence.”
“You can’t be serious,” says Angel. “You know this is going to look like you truly are the homophobic assholes everyone is calling you, right? Because that’s exactly what you’re being.”
“I repeat, we at Chorus have always prided—”
“Oh, don’t give me that!” says Jon. “Ruben told us everything. He told us you pressured him to stay closeted for years.”
“We did no such thing. We simply advised Ruben and he agreed to wait for the ideal time—”
“Which never came! Dad, do you even see how messed up this is? You made him deny who he is, and then you tried to do it to Zach!”
Geoff clenches his fist, and then releases it. “I won’t argue with you about this, Jon. By saying what Ruben and Zach did on live television, in what was clearly a premeditated ploy, you have defamed us, and we will be seeking compensation.”
We have a five-album contract with Chorus, with two remaining. That means, for our next two albums, they will get their huge commission no matter what, and we can’t get new management, since the new team would need to take us on for free. So Chorus can make our lives a living hell while suing us for everything we have. And from the sound of things, Geoff is planning on doing all of that.
“You can’t do this,” says Ruben. I can hear the defeat in his voice, because he’s smart, and he knows that’s not true.
Geoff grins. “You’ll find that we can.”
I look around the room.
Geoff is backed by an entire team of the best lawyers in the world. Jon, Ruben, and Angel all look so young compared to them.
We lost.
And we’re trapped with the very people who are going to break us.
TWENTY-NINE
RUBEN
“What were you thinking?”
I raise tired eyes as Mom greets me at the door with a red-faced glower. “I don’t know,” I say, truthfully. The only answer I can give is a useless one. I wasn’t thinking about our contract terms, or being sued, or what finally standing up for myself would mean for the band. If I had, I would’ve stuck to the script, and simply announced my relationship with Zach.
Instead, I’ve ruined everything. I’ve destroyed us.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“You’re sorry. You’re sorry? You went up on that stage and you recklessly…”
Her words fade into muffled humming. My eyes trail past her to take in the living room while she shouts. It’s empty. Dad’s not here. Not that he’d step in if he was.
So, who will?
Who’s going to have my own back if my parents won’t? If management won’t? If my friends aren’t here?
I drag my gaze back to Mom. She’s sneering at me, throwing her arms up while she bellows loudly enough for the neighbors to hear.
The words bubble up.
Then the dam bursts.
“STOP IT!” I roar, snapping back into focus. “I know, okay? I know I did something stupid, but it happened, and it happened for a reason.”
“You stand there and you dare to—”
“I don’t need this,” I cut her off. “I need support right now. I’m not a fucking idiot. I know what happened! The last thing I need is to hear it again from you!”
“Well, guess what, Ruben, this isn’t just about you—”
“Today it is,” I yell over her. “Today I just came out to the world and I’m getting sued by my management team, which means today it’s all about me.”
“Just like the rest of your life is, huh?”
Three things strike me simultaneously.
One: it feels wonderful to say what I’m really thinking, for maybe the first time while my feet are planted on these floors.
Two: shouting back at her hasn’t made things worse. She barely seems to notice I’ve fought back. The room didn’t catch aflame. She isn’t going to physically hurt me. She’s simply screaming, exactly as she always does. Terrible, but no more terrible than it was when I didn’t stand up for myself.
Three: I don’t need to stand here and be screamed at if I don’t want to.
So, I turn on my heel and go right back out the front door. “I’m going for a walk.”
I slam the door in the face of her reply.
* * *
I sit in the park for a while, watching the sun slowly set. As the darkness creeps in, fear starts to scrape at my chest with shadowy fingers. Maybe yelling back only went okay because she was so shocked. Maybe you’ve made it worse. Maybe when you go back, she’ll have something planned to make you regret what you did.
But if that’s the case, I can leave again. I can go to a hotel, I can go to Jon, I can even go to Zach in Portland.
It’s okay for me to leave.
So, psyching myself up with this mantra, I walk back home.
Mom and Dad are both on the couch watching TV when I enter. There’s no yelling. Mom looks up at me with a cloudy face, but all the redness is gone. Dad places a hand on her arm, and neither of them speak.
“I’ve been wanting to come out publicly since I was sixteen,” I say, by way of a greeting. “Chorus never let me. Whenever I tried to push back, they pushed me further into the background in the band. They make me dress plainly. They won’t give me any good solos. They never wanted me to be too big, just in case people saw too much of who I really am. When we got overseas, it got bad. They didn’t let us leave the hotel. They stopped allowing us to have visitors or speak to friends. They didn’t make time for us to eat every meal. Then, when Zach and I happened, they turned on us even more. They basically told us we could never make it public. They lied to the media about our personal lives, and forced us to lie, too. They separated us in public, and they punished us if we even looked at each other onstage.”