The lines we’re crossing are making things complicated. I was high and drunk when I went to Matt’s hotel room and spilled the truth for the first time. I’ve never told anyone else about my past. No one. What was it about Matt? Maybe it was the image I couldn’t get out of my head. The way he smiles at me. He didn’t react the way I’ve always thought others would. He didn’t look at me with disgust and say there must’ve been something I’d done. That I deserved what happened. Since the night I went to his hotel room and lay down with him for hours, and with the romance we’re playing in and out of work, it’s getting a little hard to remember what the lines between us are supposed to be.
We still do the public shit. Holding hands so that photos can be snapped. Eating together at restaurants for lunch. Something’s different between us now, though. There was a silent comfort when we lay down beside each other in Matt’s hotel room. The safe sort of quiet that doesn’t need to be filled. The sort of easy calm where the two of us can meet each other’s eyes and don’t feel the need to immediately look away, holding the stare, seeing curiosity glint in Mattie’s eyes before he reaches for my hand. Yeah. I don’t think this is just an act anymore.
We start getting invited out all the time. All of the fucking time. Jesus Christ. Willow Grace reaches out to me for the first time in months, saying she wants me and Mattie to hang out with her and her new boyfriend. She just wants the attention Matt and I would bring her.
Matt’s game, because he’s too fucking innocent to know when he’s being used, so I pick him up and drive him to the club in WeHo. One of those places where everyone’s in tight dresses and heels and thousand-dollar jeans, and you’ve probably got to be a model or an actor or something to even get in. I hate it already. Matt winces at me. “We can always leave early, right?”
“We shouldn’t have come at all.”
He’s been gentler with me since I told him the truth. It pisses me off. I’m not so fragile that I’ll crack and break. “We’re supposed to be convincing people that we’re together,” he says.
“You take shit too seriously.”
The bouncer lets us in, and the music is loud, smell of sweet alcohol and perfume and conditioned air making me remember the days before rehab. I’ve fallen off the wagon, obviously, but I’m doing better than before. A couple of years back, I’d be on so much coke and Adderall when I came to a place like this that it’s a wonder I’m still alive. Maybe that’s partly why I haven’t been going out so much. I know it’d be easy to get swept back into that old life of mine, and I’m trying not to. Really, I am.
Mattie takes my hand and we wander through the crowds, toward the VIP section where Willow said she would be. She’s always been good at figuring out how to find the spotlight. Her golden dress shimmers when she turns to us with a squeal. She immediately hugs me, squishing herself against me, fingers against my ear. Probably purposeful. We had sex a few times, and the memory twinges through me, making me a little hard as she pulls away with a fuck me smirk.
She hugs Matt next. “It’s so good to meet you!” she says loudly over the music. “I’m such a fan!”
Matt grins sheepishly. “Thanks.”
Willow turns, introducing us to her boyfriend, a model named Ryan. He’s hot, of course, in that white-man-with-chiseled-jaw way. He does the head nod with a smirk and eyes me in a way I recognize. A quiet invitation to follow him into a bathroom stall later, maybe. I forgot how obsessed everyone is with sex. But who am I to judge, right?
I sit down beside Matt, while he sits beside Willow. “Do you want anything to drink?” she asks him.
“Mattie’s sober,” I say, bored. I lean against him, arm behind his back. I realize as I’m doing it how protective it looks. Maybe that’s okay.
Willow makes an annoying that’s weird expression. “Oh!”
Matt meets my eye. I try not to laugh at how painfully uncomfortable he looks. “What’ve you been up to, Willow?”
“Oh, you know, auditions everywhere, but nothing’s been good enough for me just yet.”
She probably hasn’t been offered any roles. Ryan leans forward. “You two look hot together.”
Matt stiffens beside me. I don’t think he’s used to how straightforward this culture can be.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I know.”
Willow frowns, not happy to be left out of the conversation. “I’m one of the few people who can say what Logan Gray is like in bed.”
Ryan laughs. “Personally, maybe, but half of this country knows what he’s like in bed.”
I don’t like this fucking guy. Matt can probably tell. He speaks up. “Maybe Logan wouldn’t want anyone to know without his permission…”
“Right. Maybe he shouldn’t have leaked his own sex tapes three times.”
I meet Willow’s eye. So she told Ryan it was my idea, huh? Her forced smile is on the edge of threatening. “You should enjoy your time with him, Mattie,” she says.
I’m pretty sure she’s being sarcastic, but if Matt picks up on that, he doesn’t show it. “I already am.”
The music’s too loud to keep shouting over, and Willow and Ryan eventually fall into their own conversation, her leg rubbing against his. We’ve only been here for half an hour, but I’m regretting coming. Matt’s quiet, looking around, and completely out of his element. I nudge him with my shoulder. “Dance?”
“Huh?”
“Do you want to?”
He looks terrified. “Oh—no, that’s…”
“You’re so bottled up. Fuck.”
Mattie clenches his jaw. “Yeah. I know.”
“Let loose. We’re here anyway, right?”
“I—I think I’m afraid I don’t know how to. Let go, I mean.”
“The only way to know how is to actually do it.”
I sit there, waiting for him to make his decision, until finally he gives me a determined nod that makes me want to laugh. I take his hand for good measure as Willow and Ryan watch us get up from our seats. I guide him through the crowds of people grinding and tossing hair to the electro-pop beat. Matt looks scared. He’s so afraid of what people think.
“What do you believe is going to happen if people start to judge you?” I ask him. “You think you’re going to be killed or something?”
“It feels that way sometimes,” he admits.
I laugh. “Come on.” I loved dancing when I came out to clubs like this. Not something a lot of people expect out of sullen Logan Gray, but there’s something about letting loose and just thinking fuck it, something about the beat of the music and all these bodies, the sweat and the touching. The energy feels like it’s a piece of clothing away from an orgy. The only problem is, usually I’d be dancing with someone like Briggs, pressing my ass against them, or moving back and forth with their leg in between mine, before they invite me to the back of the club for a good time. I don’t think Matt would appreciate that.