I nod. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
Dave claps his hands together. “It’s decided, then. It’ll need to look organic, of course. Natural. We can’t have the PR team too tied up in this—too many hands and eyes, too many potential leaks—so everything stays between us. I’ll moonlight as a publicity manager on this.” Gray snorts, but Dave ignores him. “You’ll need to convince your co-stars and everyone else on set, too. Don’t worry about it. We’ll plan it all out.”
I don’t know if he means to look as excited as he does.
Logan
LA traffic isn’t so bad when you’re high as fuck. AC and IC3PEAK blasts, shades saving my eyeballs from melting. This city is too fucking sunny. I read some article that the traffic is actually due to racism, shitty highways created specifically to cut off certain neighborhoods. Everything in this country eventually returns to racism, huh?
My apartment is on the edge of WeHo, what should be about fifteen minutes away from the studios’ headquarters in North Hollywood turning into a forty-five-minute jam of stop, start, stop, start. I park in the apartment building’s garage and head to the elevator and up to my apartment on the top floor. It’s still trashed from when Briggs came over. That was, what, three weeks ago? The housecleaner my dad hired, Sandra, has been calling, asking if she should come by, but I’m ashamed to let her see my place like this. Used condoms stuck to the bedroom floor, rotting food in the sinks, piles of clothes everywhere with no clue what’s clean, a baggie of cocaine forgotten on the living room’s central table. Fuck.
This is my dad’s apartment. He bought it for me. It was only a few months in that I noticed the security camera. It’s small as hell, in the corner of the living room, with full view of everything that happens. I have no idea if my dad watches me, or if he just has it there for control. But I checked the camera out, got access to the website where I can see the footage, and decided that this will be a separate film that I act in for my dad privately. I do the most fucked up shit imaginable to piss him off. To prove to him, and me, that he can’t control me anymore.
My buzz is wearing off, and my head is starting to throb, so I pour some vodka to help ease me out of the hangover and fall onto my sofa, turning Spotify onto the FEVER 333 station. Just loud enough to almost drown out my thoughts. I can’t remember the last time I watched TV or a movie for pleasure. It’s hard to watch actors play roles when you know them personally. It gets in the way of suspending the disbelief and makes it hard to get into the story when you know the main character’s a pain in the ass in real life, or when you know what the love interest’s dick looks like.
My phone rings over the speakers. I hit answer. My father’s voice wipes away my smirk.
“Logan,” he says. “You’re a fucking disgrace.” I lean my head back and close my eyes, swirling the vodka around in a circle. “Are you fucking kidding me, Logan, with that fucking tape? You’re twenty-four. You’re not a child. Stop acting like a piece of shit. Get yourself the fuck together.”
He hangs up. I sigh and drain the glass. This might be my last chance to relax before filming begins. Filming’s from August to November, according to the schedule I was sent. Twelve-hour workdays. At least it’s here in LA, but I’m going to stay at a hotel in Studio City so I don’t have to bother driving back and forth. I’ve been stressing about this character. Quinn Evans. He’s me, basically. A fuckup. Arrogant. I read the book. It was fucking awful, but that doesn’t matter. Studying his character for the last few months has forced me to look in the mirror a lot more than I usually would. I don’t think about it very much, how much I hate myself, but it’s been a good fact to focus on and pull me deeper into my role.
I haven’t been in a film for the past couple of years, after my last time at rehab. It’ll take me a second to get back into the flow, remember what life is like on set. I feel an extra pressure to prove I haven’t lost it. I’m still fucking talented. The stress of all that, plus this bullshit relationship with Matthew Cole. Fuck. At least Willow had enough of a personality to keep things interesting.
I pull out my phone and head to messages. I text Willow. A simple hey. We used to text all the time, when we were pretending to date. Nothing serious. Sarcastic banter at how social media was reacting to our relationship. I see the bubbles appear and disappear. Left on read.
I scroll through messages until I find Briggs. I try again. Hey. Bubbles appear. His response is quick. You all right? Kinda in the middle of something. I spin the phone around and around. Yeah. If only the blogs could see me now. Even worse, I think, that I actually fit the overprivileged asshole stereotype, feeling sorry for myself.
Willow’s response buzzes. No point in continuing to text, right? We’re not pretending to be together anymore.
I take another sip.
Fuck it. I’m bored.
I look up Matthew Cole on my phone and begin to scroll.
Happily Ever After: A Memoir
by Matthew Cole
By the time I was twelve years old, I had some inkling that I was interested in other boys, though I was afraid to acknowledge this fact even to myself.
One memory that stays with me to this day is the moment I sat with my father and we watched a queer film together for the first time. I’d scoured the LGBTQ+ section in Netflix, but I had never watched a film with queer characters with another person before. My father and I weren’t close. We struggled to communicate, to find ways to hold conversations. If I said something, he would only be silent. “I had fun at school today.” Silence. “I joined the drama club.” Silence. I didn’t know how to talk to him about anything that really mattered. I couldn’t tell him about my fears, my dreams. And if he ever said something, it was only an instruction. “Don’t walk like that, Matthew. Don’t talk to adults unless they speak to you first. Stop laughing so loudly. You’re embarrassing yourself.”