Selfie (33 page)

We watched as she stepped into the brightness of the meadow, and then Noah tightened his hold on my hand and hauled me behind a tree.

“Wha—”

He kissed me hard and thoroughly—deep and carnal, backing me against the tree and shoving his groin up against mine in a show of no-bullshit that almost shocked me out of my happy little round of self-deception.

I moaned, breathless and growing harder by the second in my shorts, and bucked up against him. He pulled back, biting my lip sharply enough to sting, and tangled his fingers in my hair.

“What. Is. Wrong?” He made each word distinct.

I swallowed and looked away.

“Connor—”

“Please,” I said, smiling but not looking at him. “Please. I haven’t been able to play make-believe in so long . . . let me just . . . believe that life can be this easy, okay?”

Connor—

Not you too.

You don’t need to make believe with him.

Just— Can we just not? Do we have to talk about everything?

You can be real with him.

I don’t remember how.

Because, God help us both, Vinnie and I had spent an awful lot of goddamned time in the kitschy house,
his
house, pretending we lived together, and that we had a future as a couple. We planned—and sometimes even took—vacations together, and talked about families and children.

But we weren’t out, not to his parents, not to Hollywood, not even to friends.

It was all make-believe.

I was so good at it, I’d forgotten how much of it I’d done.

“It’s real,” Noah said, and for a moment he looked stricken.

I framed his face with my hands, the stubble teasing my palms, bringing me back to myself as I hadn’t been since that morning, when I’d stared at the piece of burnt bacon and wondered how this had become my life.

“Yes,” I lied. “Sure.”

He shook his head, his eyes shiny. “Connor, I am going to prove to you that—”

“Shh—” A weekend. Friday I’d lost my shit. Saturday I’d found it. Couldn’t I have a day just to hold it and figure out what made it mine?

“No,” he snapped. “I will not hush. Did you just hush me?”

Oh God—he was just so dear. I kissed him because I had to, and when I pulled away my eyes were shiny too. “Well,” I said, “you’re bossy.”

“You bet your tight white ass I’m bossy,” he muttered. “And this is not the end of this conversation.”

“Course it’s not.” I smiled at him, grabbing his hand and tugging, feeling oddly capsized because my heart was light and heavy at once.

“When we get home alone—”

“Yeah?” I grinned cheekily. “Do you have plans for us home alone? ’Cause I’d like to hear those plans, oh yes, I would!”

He growled and lunged, probably to haul me up against him and have another forceful little talk, but I dodged out of his reach and into the light.

“God, you’re slow for someone so young,” I taunted over my shoulder, and this time he
did
catch me, but by now we were playing, and I turned my laughing face up to his for another kiss.

“Oh my God. Noah, you’re
gay
?”

We both froze, and Noah’s face assumed the countenance of a stone mountain.

“I told you that when I was fourteen, Annette,” he said, swallowing. I rubbed his cheek again, softly, betting he wished we could still make believe. Then I turned to meet his mother.

“Well, I told you—”

“No son of yours would be gay,” he said, voice hard. “I hear you. I’m not your son. Didn’t want to be then, still don’t want to be now.”

The woman scowling at him must have been stunning once. She had a round face with round, limpid eyes and full lips. She’d skull-trimmed her hair—but I could still see the occasional gray stubble—and worn lipstick bright and red, which she could get away with since her skin tone was more dark than light. Her lashes were long and black and curling, and her makeup was perfectly Egyptian, highlighting those eyes and making them look sleepy and seductive—from a distance, she might have been thirty.

Close up, I could see the deep lines by her eyes, and the ones around her lips. I could smell the cigarettes, and her mouth had that drawn-in look that smokers get when they smoke too much for too long.

The skin under her chin was a little saggy, as though she’d been dried out by life.

“Well, maybe that was a little harsh,” she said, pulling the corners of that once-lush mouth up into what looked to be a conciliatory gesture. “It’s just a bit of a shock.”

“Annette, this is Connor Mazynsky,” he said.

“I thought the girls said his name was something else,” she muttered to herself. “Something famous. Connor—”

Her eyes widened, and her mouth made a little O.

“Good try,” I said, because it had been.

“I was so hoping this wasn’t going to be an issue,” he said.

But I knew, even as she focused on my face with a patently false smile, that it would be.

And that I would have come anyway.

“Connor
Montgomery
,” she said, looking like she’d seen the holy angel of avarice himself. “
That’s
who you are. And you’re gay too, like my son?”

“I hope so,” I replied cheerfully, “given we were just necking in the woods!”

“Oh my.” Her lips pursed in a feline smile. “The things you know that other people wish you didn’t.”

I shrugged and made my plan right there. “Who’s not going to know? I’m interviewing with a major blog next week—my agent and I have planned my coming out for months.”

Noah’s grip on my hand tightened painfully, but I couldn’t look at him or she wouldn’t buy it.

“Really,” she said, incredulity dripping from her tone.

“Ma’am, if I’m sleeping with your son, making him keep our relationship in the closet would be a really shitty thing to do to him, wouldn’t it? I mean, you never know when some unscrupulous slime-bag is going to come around and try to pressure his family into giving up the secret, or put the screws to Noah and me to pay up to keep quiet. I mean, there are
so many
unpleasant people in the world who would take a nice family like this and just fuck them over because of who little Connor Mazynsky likes to kiss. That would be a real fucking shame, wouldn’t it?” My voice grew harder by the second; make-believe time was officially over.

“Yes, sir,” she sneered. “That would be a real shame.” She summoned up a bright smile for her son. “I mean, I’m trying to get back in with the family, aren’t I? I wouldn’t want anything to hurt them, right?”

“I certainly hope not.” I kept my eyes locked on hers until she dropped her eyes resentfully. She was wearing a tight shirt—much like Viv’s, actually, but hers was whiter and thinner, and she was wearing Daisy Dukes to go with it. Her sandals were the flashy kind with the bright baubles on the toe strap, and she studied those twinkling bright stones and her bright-red toenails for a moment while the silence lingered.

“Annette,” Noah broke the silence—but not her absorption in her feet. “Did you have anything else you wanted to say besides, ‘Oh my God, you’re gay!’ and ‘How can I blackmail your boyfriend?’”

The mutinous set to her mouth softened, and she looked up at him with what seemed to be an earnest desire to connect. “I . . . I honestly just wanted to say hi,” she murmured, as though wondering how it could have all gone so wrong.

“Maybe start with saying hi.” He was so angry. “Try that if you come back in another fourteen years.”

He grabbed my hand then and pulled me around her and through the waist-high grasses that flanked the path.

“Noah!” she called out, and the desperation in her voice made
me
stop, so I jerked on his arm hard enough that he turned around in irritation.

“
What
?”

“I . . . I’m coming next weekend too.” Her voice quavered. “Can you give me another chance?”

“That depends on if you can keep your mouth shut long enough for Connor to come out in his own time,” he snarled, and the look he cast me was so remorseful I shrugged. I’d been thinking about it anyway, right?

“Look, I’m sorry. I’ve been living hand-to-mouth for so long. I mean, I thought I could make a living singing, but it’s hard—”

“So you figured a quick and easy grift would be the way to go?” he asked, still outraged.

“I’ve done worse,” I reminded him, sotto voce, and he gave me one of those Connor-so-help-me looks that I was coming to treasure.

“Well, he’s got money, hon!” she protested. “Man, look at his shoes—he’s
rolling
in that shit, and all he does is stand up in front of a camera and—”

“
Don’t
you even
talk
about what he does!” Noah shouted. “Not another fucking word. I’ve
seen
what he does, and how
dare
you walk into my life after fourteen years and just start casting judgments and making these lame-assed assumptions—”

“I’m sorry,” she said through ugly tears. “I’m sorry, Noah, I’m sorry. I’m trying here—”

“
Well go try somewhere else
!”

His words shocked us all, maybe me the most, because he’d been yelling so loud his voice cracked. I hadn’t seen him lose control—not once. Not
ever
.

But now, he was lost, adrift in his own turbulent ocean, and maybe now, he needed me.

“Noah,” I said softly, grabbing both hands.

“We gotta—”

“Shh,” I mocked, smiling just a little.

“Connor, what she said about you—”

“Doesn’t matter.”

In the following silence, we could hear her sobs—contrite, I think, but then how should I know?

“How am I supposed to—”

“Just don’t leave it like this,” I said. “You never know when it’s the end. If you’re lucky, you leave it good.”

Vinnie’s kiss on the cheek as I settled in to a long jet-lag catnap. His hand in my hair, stroking. “God, it’s good to have you home, Con. No more movies for a while, okay?”

“
Yeah, Vinnie. I’ll come to your next shoot if you want.”

“
Yeah. I really need you around, you know?”

I took his hand and kissed the knuckles. “Me too.”

“
Back soon.”

Noah closed his eyes, and I could see the dampness on the lashes. “Yeah,” he said, voice thick. “You’d know.”

He looked up. “Annette?”

“Y-y-yeah?”

“Connor’s going to be with me next Sunday too. If you’re coming back then, you’d better figure out how to make a better impression.”

We all heard a broken engine with a bad muffler pulling up along the rutted road in front of the driveway. Annette looked to the beat up F-150 and then back at us.

“That’s Angus. I need to—”

“Annette?”

“Sure, okay,” she agreed, flashing a confused, angry glance at me. “I’ll . . . I’ll learn how to get along—”

“And?” he warned.

“And I’ll keep my mouth shut,” she finished, obviously resentful as fuck. “But I can’t promise much, Noah—”

“There’s some fucking news.”

“I mean, I’ve got friends, I’m going to talk—”

“Go to the press, and you’ll never see me, or Viv, again. Ever.” Viv had been long gone by the time we’d come out of the woods—I wondered if her encounter had gone any better.

“If nothing else,” I added, “their jobs are on the line. They signed nondisclosure agreements, and Noah is technically on the clock.”

That was a total lie. He’d told me he got to keep the car because it made being at my beck and call easier, but he billed them his hours and showed them his mileage from when he was actually on duty.

But Annette must have bought it, because she nodded, looking vulnerable and put-upon, and then dashed through the fields for the driveway.

Noah and I watched her go, and then Noah wrapped me up in his arms tight, so tight, for a moment I didn’t think I could breathe, but that was just fine.

He let go and grabbed my hand. I followed him, but with my other hand I pulled out my cell phone.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think?” I stared at him, surprised he’d have to ask. “Calling Jillian.”

“Baby, no.”

“Jilly?”

“Con?” Jilly slurred over the phone. “Everything okay?”

“Were you
napping
?” I asked, horrified. Jilly didn’t nap like I didn’t do my own roots.

“Yeah. Well, me and my kids had a long talk last night. You get to nap when you don’t sleep until dawn.”

“Oh. As long as it’s important,” I said, meaning it. Noah steered me around a rock, and I glanced at him gratefully.

Then I tripped as he tried to steer me around another one, and decided to stand still. “Go,” I told him, but he shook his head no.

“What was that?” Jilly asked, sounding like she was waking up.

“Look, Jilly—you know that interview I’m doing for
Vogue
?”

“Yeah?”

“Do they have a blog?”

“Uh, yeah . . .”

“And can they be here tomorrow?”

“Connor, are you—”

“Yeah. Make sure they’re at the studio tomorrow, where we held our press conference. We’ll do a quickie interview in there, and we can do the longer magazine spread when they’re ready. Could you tell the producers too? I mean, I don’t think it’s a furry deal—”

“No,” she assured me. “It’s not. It’s your dream setup if you really want to do this.”

I studied Noah, whose eyes were still red from an encounter with his mother that nobody could have prepared him for.

“I’m terrified,” I admitted honestly, because I owed him that. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders, and I leaned. “Scared shitless. But . . . but Noah’s family could be under a whole lot of pressure if I don’t handle this right. If I come out, make it a small announcement, have it hit the internet through one legitimate news source, it could be like Quinto and Bomer and everyone else who came out way the fuck before I did, you know?”

“Yeah, baby. It’s time. It’ll be . . .”

“Don’t say easy,” I warned. After years of hiding? No.

“No,” she conceded. “And not painless either. But it’ll be better, Connor. I hate to make promises about this shit, you know it, but—”