Chapter 8
“Hey, Marshall,” Kirk says from across the room. “Your rock star friend’s everywhere lately, huh?”
I don’t look up right away. I tell myself it’s strategy. That I’m choosing not to engage. That I’m protecting something.
It still feels like freezing.
“What rock star friend?” someone asks.
Kirk snorts. “You know, the one with the eyeliner and the crowds full of screaming dudes.”
A few guys laugh. While it’s not super loud or even malicious, it’s enough to let the comment land and linger.
I keep my hands moving. Lace. Pull. Tie. My jaw tightens until it aches.
“Steel Saints,” Kirk continues, like he’s doing everyone a favor.
“Saw them all over my feed last night. Guess being… artsy really brings out the freaks and enthusiasm.” He makes a vague gesture with his hands that doesn’t mean anything specific and still manages to mean exactly what he wants it to.
The word queer hangs there without being said. My lungs feel smaller. I should say something. I know I should. Every instinct in me knows it. This isn’t subtle. This isn’t ambiguous. This is someone testing a boundary and expecting no one to push back.
Including me.
“Dude,” Marco says before I can. His voice is calm, but there’s an edge under it now. “You sound like an asshole.”
The room shifts. Not dramatic, but just enough for me to feel it. A few heads turn. Someone lets out a low whistle.
Kirk straightens, eyebrows lifting like he’s amused. “Relax. I’m just saying. Guy’s famous, and Marshall keeps being photographed with him. Good for him.”
“That’s not what you’re saying,” Marco replies evenly.
Kirk shrugs. “You’re reading into it.”
Marco doesn’t smile. “No. I’m listening to it.”
The silence stretches. My pulse is loud in my ears. I can feel the weight of everyone’s awareness pressing in, waiting to see how this resolves. Waiting to see what I do. I say nothing, and fuck if I don’t hate myself for it immediately.
Kirk laughs it off, turning back to his locker. “Whatever, man. Just don’t get all sensitive about it. That’s just what we need in the locker room.”
Marco shoots me a look. There’s no accusation in his expression, but he’ll have seen the photos of us online as well, and while I’ve never mentioned Rafe’s name aloud to anyone here, it’s obvious I’m friends with him and the band that’s blowing up the music industry.
Steel Saints, whose members are unapologetically queer.
I nod once, knowing he’s checking in. It feels like a lie.
The conversation moves on the way locker room conversations always do. Someone talks about last night’s game between the Eagles and the Penguins. Someone else complains about traffic. The speaker gets turned up a notch.
Life resumes, but something in me doesn’t. I finish changing and leave without lingering, the guilt already gnawing at my ribs.
Marco catches up to me in the hallway. “You good?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say automatically.
He studies me for a second. “You don’t have to let him talk like that.”
The words land gently, which somehow makes them worse. “I know,” I say.
He hesitates, then nods. “If he pulls that shit again, I’ve got it.”
I want to tell him he shouldn’t have to. That it’s not his responsibility. That I’m the one failing here. But saying any of that will tell him more than I’m prepared to tell anyone. Instead, I say, “Thanks.”
The drive home is quiet. The city moves around me, indifferent and loud, and all I can think about is the way I stayed silent. The way it felt easier in the moment to let someone else step in. The way that ease curdles into something ugly the second I’m alone with it.
I tell myself I did it to protect Rafe. That saying something would draw attention. That it would invite questions. That it would make everything harder.
I tell myself a lot of things. None of them make the guilt go away.
My phone buzzes at a red light. A notification.
Another article.
Another photo.
Rafe’s name is everywhere lately. Steel Saints’ first music video drops next week, and the hype machine has shifted into something louder, more relentless. This time the speculation isn’t about him alone. It’s about who he’s standing next to.
The headline is just suggestive enough to do damage without committing to anything.
I recognize the actor immediately. Elliot Hale. He’s everywhere too—award buzz, magazine covers, the kind of face that looks sculpted rather than grown. Out. Confident. Effortlessly adored.
I know the truth. I know Elliot’s starring in the video.
I know this is publicity adjacent at best, coincidence amplified by algorithms at worst. It doesn’t matter.
The comments are already rolling in. My sternum feels too tight as I scroll.
I lock my phone and toss it into the console like it burned me.
At practice the next day, it’s worse.
“Hey,” Smith says, clapping me on the shoulder. “Congrats, man.”
I blink. “On what?”
He grins. “Your friend’s dating a movie star now?”
Laughter ripples through the group, and I force a smile. “They’re not dating.”
“Sure,” another guy says. “Still counts.”
Counts as what, exactly? I want to ask. Instead, I nod and move on.
The congratulations keep coming. Jokes. Nudges. Easy assumptions. No one asks how I feel about it. Why would they? To them, I’m adjacent. Peripheral. A footnote in someone else’s narrative.
I laugh when expected. I deflect when needed. I play my role. By the end of the day, I feel hollowed out.
Rafe video messages me once I’m home. He’s excited, breathless, telling me about the music video, about how surreal it feels, about how nervous he is to see it out in the world.
Once we say goodbye, he sends a photo. It’s blurry, taken too close.
It’s of him and Drew pressed shoulder to shoulder, both of them flushed and grinning like they’ve been running.
There’s a lime wedge in the corner of the frame. A shot glass. Then another. Rafe looks… bright, like he’s laughing from somewhere a little higher than usual. He’s currently in New York where they filmed the video, and they’re in the last stages of production.
Me: The clips look incredible. I’m so proud of you. You look… right. Like you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.
The response comes quickly.
Rafe: That means everything coming from you. I wish you were here.
Heaviness settles behind my ribs. I lean back against my pillow, phone warm in my hand, the sounds of the TV fading into something distant and hollow.
Me: Soon. I can’t wait to see it properly.
There are three dots. They disappear, then come back.
Rafe: You good?
I stare at the screen longer than I should.
This would be the moment. The opening. The easy honesty we keep telling ourselves we still have.
I could tell him about Kirk—about the way Rafe’s name gets twisted into something sharp and cheap in other people’s mouths.
I could tell him about the laughter that follows, the silences I let stand.
I could tell him how it feels to sit there and hear the man I love reduced to a joke while I stay quiet to keep the lie intact.
I could tell him how strange it is to be congratulated for nothing. For proximity. For association. For being adjacent to a life I’m not allowed to claim.
I could also tell him how small it makes me feel. How thin. How easy it would be to disappear entirely if I’m not careful.
Instead, I type:
Me: Yeah. Just tired. Practice was a grind.
The reply is almost immediate.
Rafe: As soon as I’m home, I’ll take care of you.
I close my eyes.
Me: I know you will.
And I do. I believe him completely.
The speculation doesn’t crest all at once. It builds the way pressure does—quietly, incrementally, until the air feels thinner and I can’t remember the last time I took a full breath without thinking about it.
By the middle of the week, Elliot Hale’s name is everywhere.
Not because he’s done something new—he’s always everywhere—but because now his image is threaded through Rafe’s in a way the internet can’t resist pulling apart.
Photos from the music video shoot surface first. Blurry, long-lens shots that suggest intimacy without confirming it.
Then clearer stills follow: Rafe laughing between takes, Elliot’s hand resting casually at the small of his back like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Which, for them, it probably is.
At practice, it becomes background noise.
“You see the new pics?” someone asks during warm-ups.
“Damn,” another replies. “That dude pulls.”
“Good for him,” someone else says. “Living the dream.”
Marco shakes his head and calls out, “You’re all a bunch of gossips. What’s with all the celebrity stalking?”
I stretch, breathe, focus on my body, on the familiar burn in my calves and the rhythm of movement. I tell myself this is nothing. That this is just the cost of proximity to someone whose life is louder than mine.
But proximity without acknowledgment is its own kind of absence.
Marco catches my eye once during drills. His expression is careful, checking in without asking. I give him a small nod. He accepts it, for now, and I try not to think about how he knows something is off with me.
Later, in the locker room, Kirk brings it up again. “Guess your rock star friend’s really leaning into it,” he says, voice pitched for the room. “Can’t open my phone without seeing his face.”
I don’t respond. I don’t even pretend not to hear this time. I keep my head down, methodical in the way I move through my routine. Shoes off. Socks rolled. Hands steady. If I stay precise enough, maybe I can outrun the way my pulse is starting to thud in my ears.
“That actor’s hot, though, apparently. My wife won’t stop going on about him,” someone adds, careless, like it’s just commentary. “Can’t blame him.”
A ripple of laughter moves through the room.
Kirk smirks, leaning back against his locker like he’s settling in. “Yeah. Guess that explains the fanbase.”
Something sharp twists in my chest.