Chapter 17
Joel
Life settled into a strange new rhythm for Joel.
He didn’t mind his new routines. He liked to be busy, and now he was busier than ever.
The Northern Sun tour resumed in the new year.
He performed every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, traveling to a new city every week.
On his days off, he rested his voice and either traveled to the next city or flew to wherever Quentin was for a secret rendezvous.
When he wasn’t flying, singing, or fucking, he was writing.
Joel was always working on new material, and he had recently been inspired to write a new set of songs.
He didn’t yet know if he had enough to make an album, but he thought he could see the makings of something interesting, even good, in the songs that he was writing.
They were deeply personal, almost confessional.
They were his most personal songs yet. None of them spoke directly about queerness or about coming out, but a listener wouldn’t need a degree in literary analysis to figure it out.
He wasn’t sure if he would ever release these songs, but they were good to write.
He brought new energy to each of his performances.
The tour was highly praised. It was receiving fantastic reviews and raking in lots of money.
Even Alexander Braun, the ornery tour director, was happy, and Joel got into fewer disagreements with the man.
Harlan helped him coordinate his flights to wherever Quentin was, and Shivonne helped him prepare statements when needed.
If either of them suspected what he was doing, they kept their mouth shut and said nothing. They were discreet and trustworthy.
The media was loving the newfound friendship and support between Joel and Quentin.
The tabloids called it a legendary bromance.
Joel watched a few of Quentin’s games, but not all of them, and Quentin made an appearance at another one of Joel’s concerts, though he didn’t come onstage.
They didn’t do any interviews together, but they were asked separately about their friendship on multiple occasions, and both gave statements that their teams had prepared.
The best moments were the stolen hours together.
They were hungry for each other, and Joel felt like he was making up for lost time, exploring himself as a relatively free sexual being.
It was refreshing to be with someone consistently who knew his name, and whom he didn’t have to buckle into an NDA.
They respected and understood each other’s need for secrecy, and they didn’t argue about it.
Neither of them wanted anything more than what they shared, and they gave to each other freely of their bodies and sexualities.
Joel was happy and considered himself lucky.
He didn’t see Quentin every week, or even every other week, but they saw each other as often as they could.
When they weren’t together, they were texting almost constantly, both sexual messages and then, gradually, messages about their days and their lives.
Joel began to learn more about Quentin and found himself intrigued the more that he learned.
He learned that Quentin was originally from Colorado and had grown up in a military family.
He wasn’t close to his family, but largely supported them financially, and didn’t begrudge them for it.
He considered it his way of giving back.
Quentin considered his team more of a family than his biological family.
He cared deeply about his teammates and spoke of them with affection.
They were his brothers, and he loved them while often being infuriated by them, in the way that brothers often are.
When Joel had first met Quentin, he’d mistaken Quentin’s passion about hockey for a one-note obsession. He had thought Quentin was a mindless jock who just liked to hit a puck and ram into other guys on the ice.
The truth was far different.
Quentin was a true athlete. He valued his sport and his body, and treated both with respect. He was incredibly disciplined and careful, and had the highest regard for the value of his game. He looked at it as his job and told Joel he considered himself lucky to play the game.
Joel shared about his own life, too. Over text messages, and sometimes when they lay together after sex, he shared about his upbringing in New Mexico, about his early interest in music, and how his parents had encouraged it, until his interests became clearly secular.
His parents were devout members of the Church of Latter-day Saints, Mormons, and they expected the same of their son.
He was no longer a practicing member of his parents’ church, and his decision to leave their faith had been difficult for them.
He wasn’t sure they’d ever gotten over it, and he told Quentin he had a feeling they hoped he’d eventually “return to the fold.”
He told Quentin about his time in Good Treble, the boy band that had made him famous.
He was still friends with the guys from the band and saw them when he had the chance.
They understood each other in ways that other young men their age wouldn’t.
They’d gone through the same unique and sometimes traumatic experiences in their adolescence and early adulthood.
Experiences like that bonded people together, tying them through shared understandings that other people would never comprehend.
Joel found himself hoping that Quentin could one day meet his friends from Good Treble and his other friends in Los Angeles and New York.
It was a frightening concept, and one he tried to ignore.
He didn’t want to imagine an impossible future where he and Quentin could act like a couple.
They weren’t a couple. They weren’t in a relationship.
They were just having sex, very good sex, and developing a friendship along with their physical relationship.
They trusted each other and had an understanding.
There was no expectation of exclusivity, and no talk of a future together.
Joel, however, didn’t sleep with anyone else, and he knew Quentin wasn’t, either.
The strange new rhythm of their situation eventually became a comfortable sort of normal for Joel.
He was used to keeping things in his life private, and what he shared with Quentin was just a more dramatic example of that.
He hid it from Shivonne and Harlan. He was sure they both had suspicions, but they never shared them, and he appreciated that.
There were times when he wondered if he should want more, but he didn’t want more.
Not yet, at least. A mutually-fulfilling, secret sexual relationship with a consistent partner was more than he had ever thought he could hope for.
It wasn’t a romance, but it wasn’t about romance.
For as often as he wrote about love in his songs, it wasn’t something he thought he had time for, or even something he thought he was allowed to experience.
On some nights, when he wasn’t with Quentin and he was exhausted from the tour, his mind threatened to unpack the reasons he didn’t think he deserved real love, but he always quickly shut the doors to that area of thought.
Whatever secret traumas or scars he had from his childhood, or from the world at large, could stay secret, as far as he was concerned.
The only person who knew about his clandestine relationship was Ariadne.
She had been instrumental in encouraging him to pursue something with Quentin, but now Joel sensed that she didn’t fully approve of what the relationship had become.
It wasn’t judgment that he felt from his best friend; if anything, it was a sort of vicarious longing or yearning for more.
She wanted something more real for him, though he had told her he was satisfied with his arrangement.
It fulfilled the needs he was used to addressing.
If there were other needs, emotional or relational, that weren’t getting fulfilled—or which were getting fulfilled without being named—he was fine with that.
He wanted sex, good sex, and that’s exactly what he was getting.
Ariadne had made her opinion quietly known because she wanted more for him, but they never argued about it or even dwelled on it that long, because early in March, when Joel was doing the Midwest section of his tour, Ariadne dropped a bomb.
She was breaking with their record label, and she and her producer, Troy Whitman, were suing each other.
It looked like it was going to be a messy situation, and the tabloids immediately descended on it.
The stories made Ariadne out to be some sort of villain, a selfish, capitalistic diva who wanted things to go her way, and her way only.
She kept her mouth quiet and didn’t say anything about it.
She didn’t do interviews and didn’t speak to anyone in the media.
Joel knew the truth was that Troy Whitman had been abusive—not physically or sexually, but the psychological tactics he’d employed in his business were predatory and wrong.
He’d taken advantage of Ariadne creatively and professionally, and threatened to do more, and Joel was just glad she’d gotten out.
He called her every night while he was on tour, asking if she needed anything.
Shivonne volunteered to do some work for her for free, but Ariadne’s publicity team was handling everything.
It wasn’t a pleasant situation, but Joel had hope that the judge would favor Ariadne’s case, or maybe they would be able to settle out of court.
Ariadne just wanted her artistic and creative freedom back.