23 Baz
23
Baz
While Dorian is putting away the portrait, I unlock the bedroom door and return to the living area. I wander to the fridge, planning to get a drink.
The click of a lighter startles me, and I whirl around.
Vane is sitting on one of the sofas, flicking a lighter with his thumb while he stares balefully at me. He’s wearing a low-cut shirt of black mesh and bright blue bracelets that match his artfully rumpled hair. He’s hot in a different way than Dorian—a bony, cocaine-fueled beauty that frightens me even while it makes me pity him. Above the neckline of his shirt, I can see the bones of his chest jutting through his skin.
He is another picture of Dorian Gray. A destruction in progress, a by-product of Dorian’s careless life.
“You scared me.” I press a hand to my heart. “When did you get back?”
“A little while ago.”
“Oh.” Did he overhear anything Dorian and I were saying? “How’d your audition go yesterday?”
“I came. I saw. We’ll see what they decide. My chances would have been better with Dorian along.”
“That’s not how it should work, though, is it?” I open the fridge and select a bottle of sparkling water. “You want to get the role based on your talent.”
“That’s not how the world works, Baz,” he spits out. “Do you think anyone would have taken another look at your scraps of teeny-bopper emo art if Dorian hadn’t told them you were the second coming of Ivan Albright?”
Stung, I slam the fridge. “I would have found my clientele eventually.”
“No, you would have gotten desperate, given up, and gone to work at some greasy restaurant or depressing superstore. You’re not a genius. You’re nothing special.” He flicks the lighter again, passing his fingers over the flame. “I have no fucking idea what he sees in you.”
I bite my lip, resisting the urge to tell him about the one way I am special.
“See this?” Vane lifts the lighter. “Dorian gave it to me. It’s engraved with my initials.”
“It’s nice.” I sip my water, and the fizzing bubbles burn over my tongue, down my throat.
“One day, you’re in with Dorian, and the next day, you’re out. Like fucking Project Runway .” He vents a strained laugh, then pushes himself up off the couch. “I’m going to my room to get high. Well…higher.”
He slouches past me, then turns so abruptly I back up a step.
His dark eyes screw into mine, a painful, desperate glare. “Just remember—he can make you feel like an angel. I’ve been there. But he’ll set your wings on fire, and you’ll fall. And after that, you’re always the whore swaggering on the sidewalk under the red lights, begging for his attention. Having to endure that look—that damn look on his face—like he despises you now. Like you’re beneath him. It’s hell.”
Still gripping the lighter, he disappears down the hallway toward his room.
When Dorian comes into the kitchen area a few minutes later, I stop him with a hand on his arm. “I think you should check on Vane. He seems pretty depressed.”
“He’s depressed for at least a few hours every day. He’ll pull out of it.” Dorian opens the fridge and grabs a bottle of water. “Vane is a slut for attention.”
Disappointment stabs through me, sudden and sharp. Dorian can be so selfish, so callous… How much of it is the portrait, and how much of it is him?
“You know what? Never mind. If you talk to him, you’ll probably just make things worse.” I march away from Dorian and throw myself into a chair just as Sibyl enters the penthouse. “Now there’s someone who might actually be able to help.”
“Help with what? I already helped with your demon cat.” Sibyl holds up her arm, where pink scratches are sharply etched into her brown skin. “I think I’m done helping people for today.”
“It’s Vane,” I tell her. “He seems really down. Like seriously fucking depressed. I would talk to him, but I think I’m part of the problem. And this one is most of the problem.” I nod at Dorian.
He shrugs.
“That’s what I’m talking about!” I exclaim. “The sheer apathy.”
Sibyl slings her purse onto a sofa. “He was drunk and high for that audition, Dorian.”
“Same fucking story,” Dorian says. “And he expects me to put in a good word for him or pay someone off to give him the role, just so he can shit himself onstage like he did in New Orleans.” He snorts derisively. “He used to be absolute fire in front of an audience.”
“And then you happened.” Sibyl faces him, hands on her hips.
Dorian halts, his eyes widening. I’ve never heard Sibyl use that tone with him.
“I told him I’d pay for rehab,” Dorian begins, but she cuts him off.
“No. None of that. I’m done listening to your excuses. I’ll talk to Vane in a minute, but first, I need to talk to you, Dorian.”
He props a hip against the kitchen island. “I’m listening.”
Sibyl glances at me, and I move to stand. “Do you want me to go?”
She hesitates, then shakes her head. “Nah, it’s okay.” She turns back to Dorian. “You and I have been hanging out for, what, three years now?”
“Three years since the orgy at Coachella.” A faint smile plays over his lips. “Good times.”
“Yeah. And after that night, you gave me a job and a place when I needed it,” she says. “Thing is you needed me, too, to curate your online image, maintain security, all that jazz. That’s what I liked about this gig. You needed my skills. But I’m in a better place now than I was then. I’ve got job offers, decent ones. Won’t be the same kind of life for me, but I’m thinking that’s a good thing. I guess I’ve stayed this long because I thought I was protecting you. Holding you back from being the worst you could be. But you’ve got someone else for that now.” Sibyl glances at me.
“What are you saying?” Dorian’s face hardens with apprehension.
Sibyl walks around the island and puts her hand over his. “I’m leaving.”
“The fuck,” he says quietly.
“I have to. It’s best for me. I can’t be hanging around in some gorgeous white man’s shadow all my life. I got things to do.”
I want to stand up and cheer for her. But I stay put, because this moment is not about me.
Dorian steps back, pulling his hand away from hers. He clears his throat. “Go, then. I’ll give you six months’ severance pay. Good luck.”
“You’ll have to find another manager for your security and socials. I’ve made a list of recs.”
He gives her a single nod. “Kind of you.”
“And you listen to Baz, okay? She’s got a good head on those skinny-ass shoulders.” She throws me a wink, and I grin back.
“You’re a pair, the two of you,” Dorian says hoarsely. “Thinking you can boss me around.”
“You have Lloyd for that,” Sibyl replies dryly. “Take my advice—listen to that bastard less. You’re a smart man, Dorian Gray, and a better one than you think. Don’t screw this up, you hear me? Or I’m gonna have to come back and teach your ass a lesson you won’t like.”
“Are we talking spanking or pegging?”
She smacks his arm lightly. “I mean it. I will beat you.”
“Promises, promises,” he murmurs with a faint smile.
Sibyl heads for Vane’s room, and I come over to the island again, standing across from Dorian.
“You said people don’t see past your prettiness to the real you,” I tell him. “But she does.”
“She does,” he admits.
“You care about her.”
“I suppose I do, as a friend.”
“You suppose you do?” I roll my eyes, exasperated. “You have the emotional insight of a gnat.”
He slams down his bottle of water. “It’s not that I can’t care about these people, Baz. It’s that I know I’ll have to separate myself from them sooner or later, when a decade has passed and I still look the same. I’ve left or outlived more friends and acquaintances than I can count. If I refuse to care about too many people, it’s out of self-preservation, so the pain when I lose them won’t be as great.”
I knew that, of course. But the way he’s saying it, the emotion in his voice—it strikes home, and I hurt for him. It thrills me, too, because once again, he let me in. Once again, he’s allowing himself to be angry and sad and wild, and it’s so good for him. He’s becoming more human because of me.
“I still have to experience those feelings before I can push them away,” he says curtly. “Shoving them into the portrait isn’t a perfect system. When I truly care about someone and I lose them, the pain wells up again and again, so I have to push it away over and over. I hate it. So instead, I’ve trained myself to care only a little, for a very few people.” He rounds the island with sharp, quick steps. “Let’s go. Maybe you’ll understand once we pay a visit to the place I want to show you.”