26. Chase
CHASE
“Busiest shift of my life,” I tell Logan as I enter the room, already thumbing the buttons at the front of my shirt to slide it off. “I heard a group of women talking about your shoot, by the way. The whole table loved it.”
I walk over to where Logan is sitting on the couch and lean over to kiss him.
I pull back and look down at him, noticing something different in his expression.
“I’m so glad you’re finally here,” he tells me. “Can we turn off our phones and computers for the night and just… exist?”
“I haven’t even been able to check my phone since my break. I need to get back to a couple of texts—”
“No texts,” Logan says, and after I pull off my shirt, he squeezes my hip. “They’ll still be there tomorrow, won’t they?”
I hum, sitting down next to him on the couch. “Fine. You’re right. Come here.”
I drag him over my lap on the long end of the couch, just wanting to feel his body against mine in every possible way. My whole body still feels lit from within, like I’ve accessed some new level of existence.
“How are you?” Logan asks me.
“I’m good. Really good, actually. I can’t remember the last time I felt so much possibility for my future. Maybe I’ve never felt that way. When I started getting serious about my art, I felt hope, and I was proud of it. But… it was nothing like this.”
Logan’s expression seems far away. He’s gazing out toward the windows instead of turning to look at me.
“Be careful trying to get too much validation from the rest of the world, Chase. They can flip on a dime.”
“I know, I know.”
“I’m serious,” Logan says, finally turning toward me. He leans over, putting one hand onto my chest as he holds my gaze. “Don’t get caught up in any of it. Can you promise me you won’t?”
I frown at him. “Logan, are you okay?”
“Yes. No. I don’t fucking know.”
“That’s an obvious no,” I tell him. I sit up a little straighter, but I keep one arm around his waist as he leans forward on the sofa. “What’s going on? What happened while I was at work?”
He’s burying his head in his hands now.
“Chase, at this point, you know me better than almost anyone ever has. But there’s one thing I haven’t told you, because I don’t talk about it. I don’t tell anyone.”
Something shifts in my chest.
I bite the inside of my cheek.
“Should… I be worried?”
“No.”
I bring my palm to his back, rubbing over the soft fabric of his shirt. He’s in a simple grey cotton long-sleeve, and I watch the muscles in his back tense a little, then loosen as he exhales.
He turns and meets my eyes again.
“I had a childhood best friend who I spent all of my time with,” he tells me. “To say we were best friends even feels like an understatement. We were always together. It wasn’t ever just Logan, or just Daniel. It was Logan and Daniel. A unit. Inseparable.”
I nod, just rubbing his back as he speaks.
He swallows, his lashes flicking downward, then back up again.
“Daniel was the first man, and only man, I’d ever been with before you,” he reveals.
“He was in the closet, and wanted it to stay that way, so no one else ever knew. We never fucked, and we never kissed. But… everything else. Anytime we spent a night together. Daniel and I were both certain that we were going to pursue acting, but he got cast in a role much, much quicker than I ever did. Right at the beginning of our twenties, he got on a show. Ironically, a show about gay men.”
“Wait,” I murmur softly. “It wasn’t Field of View, was it?”
Logan’s eyes dance over my face. “It was.”
“I watched that show. When I was a young teen, it was one of the only gay things that blew up and got kind of popular. I remember my friend making fun of me for watching something gay. I didn’t even get it. I had no idea I was bi yet, but the show just felt… interesting.”
Logan nods. “It was a good show.”
Something falls in my chest as I realize something dark.
I don’t speak a word of it, because I don’t want to assume.
But I remember hearing that one of the main actors from Field of View died. And now I’m dreading hearing the rest of Logan’s story.
“You may have been too young to have been hearing about these things, but Daniel didn’t react well to fame.
The media started to dig into him. Lots of people speculated about his sexuality, but he kept it firmly secret.
He had always struggled with depression, and some substance abuse, but I didn’t know about his cocaine use until it got to be a big, obvious problem. ”
My heart sinks. “Shit.”
There’s a reason I never touched coke, even when I would do just about anything, back in the day.
I’d only ever heard ugly stories.
“When I told Daniel he needed help, he dropped me faster than I ever could have imagined,” Logan says.
“A lifetime of friendship just evaporated. He wanted to be around the people who told him yes. And yes, and yes, and yes. There was a time I went over to his house and I literally saw bag of white powder, on his front doorstep, completely unhidden. Like he’d dropped it there and didn’t even know. ”
“I’m so sorry, Logan.”
“When Daniel died, I knew it must have been from too much coke, or a bad combination, or a bad batch. But it was also because he couldn’t take it.
Before our friendship ended, he would buy stacks and stacks of tabloids and newspapers, anything that might mention him, and he would pore over the negative headlines about him.
He would fucking print out articles from online that said shit about him and keep it in a pile on his table. It makes me sick.”
I reach over and grab Logan close, gathering him in my arms and holding him as I see a tear break off onto his cheek.
I don’t say a word.
So many things are falling into place, like heavy weights, all at once.
This is why Logan was petrified of fame.
Why he always said he’d seen it kill people.
And it feels like my heart is cracking in two.
“I never knew how bad it was,” Logan says in a shaky, broken voice. “I never knew. I should have known.”
“It’s not your fault.”
His voice is just a whisper as he inhales. “I know.”
“It’s not your fault, in any way, for any reason. And beneath it all, I can fucking guarantee you that Daniel still loved you. He was lashing out, but he was your lifelong friend. He had to have loved you. Through all of it, Logan.”
He exhales in my arms and I hold him tightly. I can feel a couple of his tears drop onto my shoulder, but I don’t move an inch.
A wave of emotion wells up in me, too.
I must have worried Logan so much last year, when I would toss back tequila like it was nothing and talk about all of the pills I used to try. I was tapping on an iceberg that I didn’t even realize Logan had inside him.
He deserves so much better.
There haven’t been a lot of times I’ve felt all that proud of being sober, but I’ve never felt it like I do right now.
This is a better reason than I’ve ever had.
I need Logan to see that I will continue to be stable. That I’m here. That no amount of notoriety or fame could ever make me cut him off like his best friend did.
“Let me paint you,” I murmur against him, holding him through all of it.
“You don’t even have your paints.”
“Yeah. I’ll just do it with my hands.”
I start to trace two of my fingers along his back, as if they were brushes, moving underneath his shirt so he can feel the warmth of my touch. I move slowly, laying on the strokes like I’m painting right onto his skin.
I help to guide him down until he’s lying on the couch, and I don’t force anything more out of him.
And I lose track of time as I continue on, using my fingers all over his body as if he were a piece of art. I stop occasionally to knead his muscles, massaging him. Grounding him in his body. He gently closes his eyes, but I can tell he isn’t close to falling asleep.
It must be at least thirty minutes before he speaks again, gently opening his eyes.
“I’m so worried about you,” Logan murmurs, looking up at me. “All the time.”
I nod down at him. “So is my brother. And my mom, I’m sure. Everyone around me always has to feel like they need to fix me, at least a little bit.”
“Don’t say it like that. You’re everything you need to be already.”
I lean over and kiss him, because he always says such perfect things. I’ve somehow fallen more in love with him just from him saying that to me, too, which makes my skin feel hot.
We stay up the whole night talking.
First, I start telling him about my own childhood friends, to try to get his mind off of his own past. I tell him about the girl I befriended at five years old, who would pretend she was a princess and I was her prince.
Then he tells me more about his childhood, too.
How it used to be, before everything went wrong with Daniel.
I learn that they used to collect stones from a park by their neighborhood, and Logan had a little rock polishing machine to make them gleam.
We talk about first times. His, with Daniel, and later on with women. Mine with girls at my school, fumbling and exploring and realizing how to make other people feel good with touch.
It’s already nearly sunrise when Logan asks me about how I got into painting, and by the time I’ve gone on long enough about oil paints versus watercolors, I look over and see him drifting off on the couch, right as purple-blue light starts to emerge from the horizon outside.
I lay down beside him, tucking my head near his shoulder on the couch.
I feel like I could never sleep.
Like I’m wired, and I’ll be laying there watching the sunrise, wondering how I got lucky enough to know him.
But I do fall asleep.
With his warmth radiating onto me and breathing in his scent.
And I don’t know I’ve slept too long until it’s too late.
I wake up as a cloud passes through the sky and a bright pillar of sunlight hits my eyes directly.
I’m on the couch alone.
I blink as I look at the coffee table and see a note from Logan:
Had to get to set by 9am. Decided to let you sleep.
You are perfect, by the way. And this is *my* note, so you can’t argue with me on it.
Perfect.
In every way.
Dinner later?
Xx
L