Chapter 23
“Karaoke is straight culture,” Jordan announced as they filed into the lift on the ground floor of the Grand.
“Is not,” said April.
“You think everything is straight culture,” said Margo, looking up from her phone. “Some things are just embarrassing no matter what your identity. Karaoke is one of those things.”
“And yet you are a serial murderer of ‘You’ve Got the Love,’?” Will pointed out. “I’m surprised Florence hasn’t sent her machine after you by now.”
Margo shrugged, firing off a text and dropping her phone into her bag. “I’m a thirty-something single mum. I reserve the right to be embarrassing.”
“Fine,” said Will, “just please don’t be too embarrassing tonight? That goes for all of you.” He was rewarded with a round of shocked, offended stares. “I just mean…”
“We know what you mean,” said April, rubbing his arm affectionately. “We’re all about to go out with your secret boo and his fancy friends. You’re nervous.”
“But there’s no need to be a dick about it,” cut in Jordan.
“Fair. I’m sorry.” Will took a deep breath as the lift took them higher and higher. Patrick had been the one to suggest he bring Margo and his friends tonight. He’d thought it might make the whole evening feel more normal, and as they were all technically in on the secret already, nobody was violating any nondisclosure rules. The gag remained firmly in place.
So to speak.
The sliding doors opened onto the top floor of the hotel, which housed only two suites: one belonging to Patrick—with which Will was already intimately familiar—and the other to Audra Kelly, who appeared in the doorway as they all exited the lift.
“Welcome, welcome!” she shrieked gleefully, tugging Will into an embrace. “You must be Will. Patrick’s told me absolutely nothing about you. Isn’t he just the worst? Honestly. Come in, come in, everyone! Help yourself to anything. Liquor, sushi, weed gummies.” She pulled Will by the hand into a suite that was the mirror image of Patrick’s and bathed in pink and purple lights.
“Bisexual lighting,” she explained. “I discovered it while playing a woman called Joy who discovers her husband is trying to frame her for her girlfriend’s murder in the erotic thriller Two for Joy. Doesn’t it just make my hair pop?”
“It sure does,” said Jordan, heart emojis practically bursting from his eyes in the presence of TikTok’s current favorite actress. “You were so fabulous in that one.”
“Oh my god, stop!” Audra dropped Will’s hand and took Jordan’s, leading him over to a sofa, where he could continue to praise her filmography.
“We’ve lost him for the night,” said April, picking up a napkin from the main table. “Ooh, unagi!”
“Is that the Rock’s tequila?” Margo swiftly scooped ice into a glass and poured herself a large blanco on the rocks.
“I thought you were anti-tequila,” said Will.
“I am anti–cheap tequila,” said Margo. “Which heretofore has been the only variety available to me.” She took a sip and closed her eyes in pleasure. “Still kind of minging, but definitely an improvement. I can work with this.”
“There you are,” said Patrick, emerging from Audra’s en suite and sidling up to Will and enveloping him in a hug. He kissed Will on the cheek, and Will almost flinched before remembering that this was allowed and they were among trusted friends.
“I know, I guess they’ll let anyone in here,” he said, wrapping his arms around Patrick’s waist. “You should really have them tighten up security downstairs.”
“Nah.” Patrick kissed him again, this time on the forehead. It seemed he was savoring the novelty, too. “I told them Grace Anatomy herself was coming and they should roll out the red carpet.”
“Pour moi? You shouldn’t have.”
Will tried not to grin too idiotically as Patrick took his arm and walked him around the room, introducing him to his stunt double, Corey, and his trainer, Hector, both of whom he had already met, albeit as Grace, and some others he hadn’t: makeup artist Estelle, whose beat was so flawless she seemed to literally glow; Audra’s stand-in, Honor, whose neat blond ponytail and hoodie put Will in mind of someone who would ruin your life on the hockey field; and a tall, thin Swedish actor who was playing the supervillain Omega in Kismet whose name Will didn’t quite catch but who sounded like he might be a minor Skarsg?rd.
He couldn’t get over how good this felt. To be held by his boyfriend, in something approaching public. For the other people in the room to know they were together and treat it like no big deal.
It really wasn’t a big deal, of course. Will tended to get carried away with these things, but even he knew that a few weeks of hanging out and having admittedly incredible sex did not constitute a world-changing romance. He hadn’t even called Patrick his boyfriend out loud, apart from that one time when he’d been half asleep from rage and Rioja.
“Patrick!” Audra barked from across the room. “You’re up.”
Patrick groaned. “Can’t someone else go before me?” he asked.
“You’re our leading man,” said Audra. “I insist.”
“As do I!” added Will, his eyes mischievous. “What are you going to sing? Oh god, don’t choose Joan Armatrading. Please. I’d swoon and everyone else in the room might commit suicide.”
“Laugh it up now,” said Patrick. “I’m making you go next.”
“Oh, you mean I’m going to be the center of attention? Don’t threaten me with a good time, Mr. Lake.” He gave Patrick a playful shove toward Audra. “I only get stage fright when I’m Grace, remember?”
Audra pushed a microphone into Patrick’s hand.
“I’ve taken the liberty of choosing for you,” she informed him, and seconds later the room was filled with the larger-than-life overture of “Livin’ on a Prayer.”
“Come on, Jersey boy,” Will crowed. “Show us what you’ve got!”
His mockery did not last long. The moment Patrick knew he wasn’t getting out of this embarrassing ritual, he committed fully, strutting with a hypermasculine swagger from one end of the room to the next while belting into the microphone, barely even looking at the screen to check the lyrics. It was like looking momentarily into another timeline, Will thought. One where Patrick headlined a Broadway show or movie musical, something where even a fraction of his sheer warmth and charisma could be channeled effectively.
“Woo!” Audra squealed. “OK, now me!” She snatched the mic from Patrick, having already queued up her own choice, and launched into a straight-faced, deeply sincere cover of “Lucky.”
She butchered it. Audra’s singing voice was flat, nasal, and seemed to change key every other line. It was, quite possibly, the worst thing to happen to Britney Spears since the conservatorship, but Audra was clearly connecting with the material and having a great time, and Will found himself liking her all the more.
It made her a pretty easy act to follow.
He tried not to overthink his own song choice, ignoring the conversation Jordan and April had been having earlier about how your go-to karaoke song is even more telling than your zodiac sign, and just went for the first pop song that came into his head. He tried not to look directly at Patrick as the song began, but felt his eyes on him, as warming as a spotlight.
“You think I’m pretty without any makeup on…”
They were under a dozen people in a hotel suite, but it was hard not to fall back into performing mode, and by the second half of the song Will was adding riffs and runs. As the final chorus dropped, so did he, right into a split. The crowd—all ten of them—went wild, and Will stayed on the floor as he finished the song, rolling around until he was entangled in the microphone cable and Patrick had to help him extricate himself.
“You’re unbelievable,” Patrick said, once they had moved aside to make room for Jordan and April’s “Elephant Love Medley.” “I stan you.”
“I should’ve stretched first!” Will groaned, rubbing a sore adductor. “Still. Far from my worst gig.”
“And here I am, without a single to tip you.”
“Oh, honey.” Will leaned in closer. “I want more than just the tip.”
“Harlot.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“I’m starting to get a pretty good idea.” Patrick pulled him closer. “I’m low-key obsessed.”
“Careful,” Will whispered. “You’re starting to talk like a little F-word.”
“You’re a bad influence. I’m clearly spending too much time with you.”
“Not much time left now,” said Will, focusing all of his attention on a wisp of fluff that had drifted onto Patrick’s shirt. “Two more weeks, right?”
Patrick’s expression sobered. “Yeah,” he said. “Will, I—”
“Let’s not talk about it.” Will forced a smile. “I don’t want to think about you leaving just yet. This is a party. Let’s just enjoy each other for as long as you’re still here, OK?”
Patrick returned the smile. “Deal,” he said. “But how about we ditch these guys and have a party of our own? Say, in my room?”
Will’s grin broadened. “Race you there,” he said.
Sneaking around wasn’t so bad, Will thought. It was actually kind of fun, like the two of them were playing some kind of game against the rest of the world and only they understood the rules. For the last week of filming, Patrick procured a key card from the hotel staff that granted Will access to the building from the rear—he was proud of himself for only making one crass joke to that effect—and use of the staff lift, enabling him to reach Patrick’s room with little to no interference. When Will raised the idea that this was a pretty big breach in hotel security, Patrick had simply shrugged and said, “People don’t like to say no to me.” Will had thought this an uncharacteristically arrogant thing for him to say. He also found it incredibly hot.
Evading the paparazzi had also become a lot easier now that they had willing accomplices. Corey was a game enough ally: If he wore a large pair of aviators and smoothed his scruffy hair into a side parting, his resemblance to Patrick went from passing to, well, passing. He was more than happy to play decoy for them, donning his Patrick drag and going for public walks around the Jewellery Quarter and Brindley Place, stopping for dumplings in Chinatown, tailed by photographers like he was in a really low-stakes spy thriller.
Once they’d succeeded in their subterfuge, though, Will and Patrick enjoyed relative freedom. The search for the Omega Issue had been called off without either of them actually saying as much, almost as if they both accepted it had only ever been a pretext that they no longer required. Instead they hunted for time: gaps in Patrick’s schedule where they could steal half an hour together, nights when Grace wouldn’t be missed from the Village and Will could use his misappropriated key card. He feigned illness to Faye to get out of a story hour and eat craft services in Patrick’s trailer between takes. Skipped movie night with Jordan and April so he could be waiting in Patrick’s room when he finished a night shoot. The end of production loomed ever closer, and Will’s old life would still be waiting for him when his time with Patrick inevitably came to a close.
Will never ceased to be surprised by how completely ordinary their time together felt. At some point when he wasn’t paying attention, he had stopped being quite so dazzled by Patrick’s good looks, and that awe had been replaced by something else, sublimated into a kind of loving familiarity. He smiled at the very thought of Patrick’s face, not just because it was so pleasing to look at, but because of the way he jutted out his bottom lip when he was trying to be cute, for the intensity of those blue eyes when he was really listening, because now he knew the real man in all his complexity, and that goodness shone brightly through the surface, only making him even more handsome. It was like Will’s affection had painted Patrick in newer, richer colors, and that in being so seen and known, he opened up even more, a flower in full sun.
Now Will’s favorite pastime was charting the parts of Patrick that the rest of the world didn’t see. There was a smattering of freckles across Patrick’s shoulders that he hadn’t immediately noticed but that he was now obsessed with. He liked to trace over them with his fingers in those moments before sleep. He wondered if he were to take a Sharpie and play connect-the-dots what kind of constellations he might make, what kaleidoscopic patterns would dance out across his lover’s skin.
On one such night, fingers tiptoeing from one freckle to another, Will whispered: “Tell me something the magazines don’t know.”
Patrick grunted, an amused kind of hum, which Will had recently learned meant he was on the edge of sleep. He was silent again for long enough that Will assumed he had drifted off, then said: “I used to have a stutter.”
Will didn’t reply, his fingertips’ continued exploration of Patrick’s freckles confirmation enough that he was listening.
“Not a terrible one,” Patrick continued. “I mean, I could make it to the end of a sentence fine. But the way I’d trip over certain words, get all flustered and short of breath, made everything I said sound like a question. My dad hated it. A perfectly natural speech impediment, but I knew he thought it meant something more. About me. Or maybe about him, and the kind of son he’d produced.”
“So what changed?” Will asked.
“Performing in plays at school. I sucked at first, obviously. Couldn’t muster the breath to project, stumbled on my lines. The more serious drama kids found me incredibly frustrating. But this one teacher, Mr. Banks, gave me a bunch of reading to take home. Told me to practice by myself, when nobody was around, so I wouldn’t feel self-conscious. Monologues from Shakespeare and Chekhov and Williams. And poetry! Something about the way stanzas were ordered, letting you know exactly when to breathe. He said I had to get to grips with the language, live in it, that way I wouldn’t be afraid of it. God, I loved it. I’d recite speeches and sonnets over and over and over, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and even when I didn’t fully understand every single word, I felt like I knew exactly what these people were saying. Like they were talking through me.”
“And that helped? With your stammer?”
“My parents finally shelled out for a speech therapist my senior year of high school. But the confidence to speak? That came from Mr. Banks.”
“Well.” Will’s fingers ceased their foxtrot, and he laid his palm on Patrick’s chest, nestling into the crook of his arm. “Here’s to Mr. Banks.”
Two nights before the shoot was due to wrap, Corey, Hector, and Audra all went for a very public dinner at a restaurant on the twenty-fourth floor of a building that was immensely popular among visitors to the city. At the same time Patrick, decked out in a hoodie and baseball cap, used Will’s Uber account and took a car to game night at Margo’s house.
“I think you’re the killer,” Will said, looking Dylan square in the eye.
“Nope,” Dylan said, barely even moving their face. I should teach them poker, Will thought. We’d make a fortune.
“OK, then I am officially clueless,” he said. “If it’s not Dylan, I don’t know who it is.”
“That figures,” scoffed Patrick.
“Excuse you?”
“Come on, Will. I mean this in the nicest way, but…you’re not great at reading people.” Patrick reached out and twirled one of Will’s curls around his index finger. “It took you how long to figure out that I liked you?”
“In fairness, it’s not every day that a movie star takes a liking to you. And you could have just asked me out,” Will said.
“I did!”
“Sending me on a treasure hunt for a mythical comic book and then inviting yourself along is not a date, Patrick. And besides, I thought you were dating Audra.”
“Audra? Are you kidding me?”
“The way you were with her!” Will protested. “All those photos of you two cozying up behind the scenes on her Instagram Stories.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Patrick. “But you’re starting to sound like a stalker. Maybe you are creepy after all.”
“I’ve figured out what it is,” April announced. “You’ve got resting boyfriend face.”
“I’ve got what?”
“Resting boyfriend face!” she continued triumphantly. “Like, when everyone said you were going out with Emma Roberts because you looked so good on the red carpet together. Or that photo at a pool party with a supermodel on your shoulders. I sometimes click on Mail Online links. I know, I’m part of the problem.”
Still met with a roomful of blank looks, April rolled her eyes and steered Margo by the elbow toward where Patrick was seated. “Here,” she said. “Perch on the arm of the chair like that. OK…and…say cheese!” She took out her phone and took a quick picture, then turned the screen around to show everybody. “See?”
The result was uncanny. Margo, all five feet ten of her, looked positively dainty next to Patrick’s strapping frame, and the pair of them were smiling serenely, as if they had just announced their engagement.
“Bloody hell,” said Margo. “I might have to send this to Owen. His head will explode.”
“That’s just a fluke,” Will protested.
“Fine.” April shrugged and stooped down right next to Patrick so that the side of her face was squashed against his, and snapped a rapid selfie. When she offered up the phone as evidence once again, the photo looked like it had been taken in the middle of a particularly fantastic date, April’s round cheeks dimpled gleefully against Patrick’s as if they were sharing a private joke.
“Oh, this is fun,” said Jordan. “Do me next! Move!” He practically shoved April out of the way, plonking himself down next to Patrick and arranging his narrow legs just so. Patrick, for his part, merely smiled and blinked placidly as yet another photo was taken.
“Oh my god.” Jordan’s eyes lit up as he saw the picture. He thrust it in Will’s face. “This is beyond. Can’t you just imagine the two of us adopting an inbred little Pomeranian together?”
“OK, OK,” Will said. “Enough now. Jordy, can you please get out of my boyfriend’s lap. And for the record, it would never work between you two. An ash blond and platinum blond? Gauche.”
Jordan tutted and obliged, swinging his legs off Patrick’s and sauntering into the kitchen, presumably to plunder what remained of the wine.
Patrick reached out to Will, who took his hand and allowed himself to be pulled down into an embrace on the sofa.
“You and your slutty face,” he muttered.
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous.” Patrick grinned.
“I’m not,” Will said with a pout, and Patrick’s chest shook with laughter beneath him. “I’m not,” he insisted, his mouth twitching involuntarily, threatening to break into a smile of his own. “I’ll have you know that people mistake me and Jordan for a couple all the time, actually. Come to think of it, so did you. It’s just…” The smile vanished. “Nobody’s ever going to see us together and assume we’re dating, are they? Not the way they would with you and April, or Margo, or Emma bloody Roberts.”
“Emma is actually really nice when you get to know her,” Patrick began. “She—”
“I’m never going to be allowed to stand next to you on the red carpet, am I?”
Patrick’s grin softened. “No,” he said. “Probably not.”
“And even if I were, you’d tell people I’m a good friend, or your flatmate or something. Because we both signed several pieces of paper saying that as far as the rest of the world is concerned, that’s all we will ever be to each other.”
Until next week, he thought. After then, we won’t even be that. Will had done his best to avoid broaching the subject of Patrick leaving, playing the part of someone who was just along for the ride for as long as it lasted. He kept his eyes fixed on an abstract point on the wall behind the armchair, and so he felt but did not see Patrick’s hand slip into his.
“Do you regret it?” Patrick asked softly. “The NDA?”
“I didn’t have much of an option, did I?” he said.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Will laid his head on Patrick’s chest, and Patrick enclosed his free arm around him.
“If the choice is between getting to be with you in secret and not being with you at all…No. I don’t regret it.”
He felt Patrick kiss the top of his head, felt what he said next rustling into his hair.
“I’m glad you feel that way,” said Patrick. “Because I do, too. I know for some people, this wouldn’t be enough.”
“It is,” Will said. “You are.”
It was the right thing to say in the moment. It was what Patrick needed to hear, he knew. Will even thought that he might mean it, at that very second, with the solid warmth of Patrick pressed against him. It was all the other moments that bothered him.