Chapter 26
When Will got back to his apartment, shredded costume balled up at the bottom of his bag like a dirty PE kit, he immediately ran himself a steaming bath and opened a bottle of Malbec. He could feel the fat, hot tears coming any minute now and figured he might as well lean all the way in, like ritualizing the act of crying would somehow lessen how wretched he really felt.
I’m not really upset, he could tell himself. I’m doing a bit.
He thought getting it all out, however dramatically, would be cathartic. But sniveling under the bubbles struck him as merely childish, and as he lay in the long-cold water, fingers wrinkled and eyes puffy, Will felt no cleaner or lighter than before. It was far from the first time he’d been practically marched out the door after a hookup—knowing when to grant one’s host a speedy exit was all part of carrying oneself through life with a semblance of dignity—but this was the first time it had happened with someone he was seeing. Even Ry would’ve had the social grace to make Will a cup of tea or allow him to shower before calling him a taxi.
He had misjudged the idea of the costume, clearly.
Or had he? Patrick had seemed so into it, had thrown himself into the role-play with vigor, had almost become a different person entirely in the process. Maybe that was it, Will thought. Patrick had stepped so entirely out of himself that when he came back, he hadn’t liked what he’d seen.
That must be it. Why Patrick had acted so coldly, so suddenly keen to be alone when the person Will’d first met had been so deprived of touch that he would hold on to Will like a life raft.
Patrick would call in the morning, Will reasoned. He would apologize.
Or, he countered himself, he wouldn’t.
Tomorrow was the last day of filming, after all. What if that had been Patrick’s plan all along? To not talk about what might happen after he no longer had a reason to stay in Birmingham, to not even say goodbye, to ghost?
But that is so not Patrick, Will argued back. He’s so guileless—does he really have it in him to play such a tacky game? He’s too up-front.
Up-front?the other Will parried. From the man who, as far as the entire world is aware, dates women?
Touché.
This battle of Wills continued throughout the night, in which he desperately clawed at sleep in fitful ten-minute spells before snapping awake again, and into the morning, so that by the time he arrived at Gilroy’s for his shift, anxiety and exhaustion had teamed up to turn his stomach into a roiling, intricate Celtic knot.
He went through the motions of opening the shop, pulling up the shutters that covered the window display, turning on the till, things he had done hundreds of times before but which felt distant and alien today, performed by somebody else’s hands.
He sold a clothbound edition of Emma to somebody who thought it was a real find and didn’t have the heart to explain that it was actually a reprint that came out three years ago. He took three messages for Yvonne over the phone and then afterward couldn’t make sense of what he had written down. When April arrived at ten a.m. with their usual coffee order, his tasted both bitter and sickly sweet. Three sips were enough to give him painful indigestion, and he poured it down the sink when April wasn’t looking.
Jordan dropped in at noon as he did semi-frequently, at a loss for lunch plans, and the three of them ordered gyros from the Greek place next to the train station. Will stared into space, picking at a stray piece of onion, until finally Jordan and April ceased their conversation and Jordan asked, “What the hell is wrong with you today?”
“Nothing,” Will said instantly.
“Bollocks.” Jordan delicately dabbed tzatziki from the corners of his mouth with a serviette. “You are never this quiet. Ninjas are never this quiet.”
“I’m just tired,” said Will. “I didn’t sleep very well.”
“Oh,” said April. “I see. You didn’t sleep well, because…” She winked.
“Because you were getting dicked down!” Jordan said. “Dicked all the way down to Chinatown!”
“Yeah,” said Will, weakly. “I was. I mean, we did.”
“You don’t look happy about that,” said April. “It has been a while for me. I don’t know whether it’s different for us straights, but I would be happy.”
“I am,” said Will, even less convincingly. “I mean, that part was good. Great. Top-notch. I mean, fucking hell, you have no idea.”
“Then why the long face?” Jordan’s eyebrows contracted slightly, doing their best to furrow despite the paralyzing agent between them.
“It’s nothing.”
“It seems like something.” Jordan leaned closer, as if he might be able to sniff the truth above the onions. “Was it chem sex?”
“Pardon?”
“Did you two take a load of drugs and shag until dawn and now you’re dealing with friction burns and the existential dread of a comedown?”
“Fucking hell, Jordan, no! Patrick doesn’t even vape.”
“Then what?” Jordan looked to April, then back at Will. “Something’s up. Our bestie senses are tingling. It’s a real thing, it’s basically a superpower all of its own, don’t question me on that, April knows what I’m talking about. Now spill.”
Will was too tired to protest, and so he told them both what had happened the night before, eliding the more graphic details and focusing on the way it had ended.
“He’s under a lot of pressure at work,” he said. “And maybe I’m being overly sensitive, but…it’s not on, is it?”
Neither April nor Jordan spoke for a moment.
“Oh god. Am I making a big deal over nothing?” Will asked.
April reached out and touched his hand.
“We’ve all been involved with someone who makes us feel like we’re overreacting, like we’re imagining problems where there are none,” she said. “It’s one of the many downsides of dating men.”
“I hear that,” Will said glumly.
“I like Patrick, you know I do,” she continued. “But I know what I’m talking about when I say: He is acting like a wasteman.”
“Really?”
“Pure fuckboy behavior. Not becoming of America’s sweetheart at all. I’m very disappointed.” She speared a stray piece of feta with a fork and popped it into her mouth.
“Jordy?” Will asked, turning to his suspiciously silent friend.
“I’m going to kill him,” Jordan said calmly. “I am going to actually kill him. I’m going to have my own Netflix documentary after I murder Patrick Lake and chop his body into tiny little pieces.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” said April.
“How dare he? How dare he!” Jordan’s voice level rose to a screech. “So he fucks you, this man who has been controlling the last month of your life—”
“I wouldn’t say controlling,” Will interjected.
“He makes you sign that insane document and basically frog-marches you back into the closet, forces you to sneak around like thieves in the night—”
“Again, he didn’t force me.”
“And then, when you do this thing for him, something special and secret and just for the two of you, in other words exactly what he wanted, something that sounds bloody hot, by the way—”
“It really was.”
“He has the audacity to go cold, kick you out afterward? No.” Jordan began to shake his head vehemently, the gold cross that dangled from his left ear swinging like a blade. “Nope. I do not think so.”
“I think he was just stressed,” said Will, suddenly regretting saying anything. Sharing this kind of intimate information, even with his two closest friends, was technically violating the NDA. God, why couldn’t he do anything right?
“Don’t you dare start making excuses for him,” Jordan snapped. “I don’t care that he’s famous, or a superhero, or that he has a dick like a draft excluder. He’s your boyfriend, and he made you feel like shit.”
“I don’t even know that he is my boyfriend,” said Will. “We haven’t exactly defined the relationship.”
“Are you joking?” Jordan huffed. “You’ve been spending every available minute together.”
“He’s met your sister,” April pointed out.
“He’s been chasing you ever since he first saw you as a redhead in a black cocktail dress, for heaven’s sake,” Jordan added, slapping the counter. “And he hurt you.”
“I…” Will paused, as if considering crucial new evidence. “You’re right. You’re totally right!”
“As per.” Jordan blinked slowly, as if tired by the burden of always being right.
“He made me feel really shit right after having sex with me. That’s so not OK.”
“Literally what I just said.”
“So…what do I do?”
“Talk to him about it,” said April.
“Hmm.” Will nodded noncommittally.
“What have his messages been like since last night?” she asked.
“Hmm.”
“He hasn’t even texted you?” Jordan animatedly began gathering his phone and his keys from where he had discarded them on the countertop earlier. “Right. April, hold down the fort. Will, you are coming with me.”
Jordan insisted on driving him across town to the set to confront Patrick there and then. It all felt very empowering and get-up-and-go until they ended up getting caught in traffic on Digbeth High Street because they forgot that half the city was in a perpetual state of being dug up and repaved.
Will would have thought that sitting still behind a car blaring “Despacito” would kill any sense of momentum his outrage had acquired, but instead his anger simmered in the passenger seat, poisoning the air.
“Go,” said Jordan eventually. “We’ll be here ages. You go and have it out, and I’ll catch up with you when I find somewhere to park.”
Will thanked him, got out of the car, and walked with a fiery urgency, cutting through increasingly quiet side streets until he reached the vast warehouse that had been turned into a soundstage. He had been here only once before, accompanying Patrick to work one morning behind the blacked-out windows of a car. This time, he marched straight toward the gate.
“Can I help you, buddy?” A security guard the approximate size of a telephone box stepped into his view, obstructing his path.
“Jesus,” said Will. “Where did you come from? You’re enormous.”
The guard, an American presumably flown in along with the rest of the production, did not look amused.
“Can I help you, buddy?” he repeated, tone so empty that Will wasn’t entirely sure he understood the meaning of the word “buddy.”
“Yes, please,” he said. “I…”
Fuck. He had not thought this far ahead. He’d simply envisioned storming onto the set, flinging open the door to Patrick’s trailer, and letting him have it. Except of course he wouldn’t be allowed on set. Will wondered how many random fans had made their way down here over the last several weeks, hoping for a glimpse of their favorite actor. He couldn’t exactly say, I’m here to see my boyfriend, we’re about to have a massive row, and I think you’d take my side if you heard all the gory details.
“I have an appointment,” he said, finally.
The guard looked him up and down, probably wondering who he could possibly have business with, and then asked: “What kind of appointment?”
“The really important kind?” said Will, defeat already creeping into his voice. This was humiliating. He was losing before he even got a chance to have the fight.
“Will? Is that you?” a familiar voice called across the lot. Will saw the Captain Kismet suit, and the snakes in his stomach began to squirm once again before the figure removed the flight goggles, and he saw that it was Corey.
“It’s OK,” Corey said to the guard. “You can let him in. He’s with me.”
“You’re a stuntman?” the guard asked, appraising Will once again.
“What, like it’s hard?” Will said, indignantly, swanning through the gate.
Corey waved him inside and pointed him toward Patrick’s trailer.
“Gotta run, mate,” he said. “Big day for the ol’ crash test dummy here. Good to see you!”
“Thanks,” said Will. “Good luck with your…erm…crashing!”
He entered the trailer, planning to sit and wait and plan how to carefully explain his feelings to Patrick. But sitting was beyond him, and so he paced, taking in the script pages and bottled water and tastefully packaged black tubs of creatine and whey and collagen and god only knew what else, trying to calm down, until he heard the door open behind him.
“What are you doing here?” Patrick asked. He wasn’t wearing his costume, but rather a black bodysuit covered in neon green dots, which Will guessed would later act as a canvas for all manner of CGI wizardry. Right now, however, Patrick looked mildly ridiculous.
Will suppressed a laugh. “It’s nice to see you, too.”
“You can’t be here.” Patrick’s voice was steady and cold. “You know you can’t be here.”
“I needed to talk to you.” Will put his hands on his hips in what he hoped was a power stance, and not a pose that made him look like a little teapot.
“We’ll talk later.” Patrick turned to go.
“I think the ever-loving fuck not,” said Will. “We are going to talk now because I am your boyfriend and I am upset.”
“Will.” Patrick pinched the bridge of his nose and drew in a sharp breath. “I am at work. This is my job. You can’t just show up here. Every minute we get held up costs a lot of money.”
Will was being spoken to like a petulant child, and he wondered now if that’s how he was behaving.
“I’m sorry,” he began. “I should have thought…” The words died on his lips. “No. I’m not sorry, actually. I want to talk now.”
Patrick sighed. “Fine,” he said. “What about?”
“Are you serious?” Will frowned. “About last night.”
Patrick pursed his lips and folded his arms.
“No, don’t do that,” said Will. “Don’t act like you’re above talking about sex.”
“Now is not the time or place.”
“You’re right. The time and place to talk was last night, in your hotel, but you kicked me out. You made me feel so used, Patrick. It was horrible.”
“I made you feel that way?” Patrick’s lip curled up. “There was fucking cum on my work stuff, Will. Do you have any idea how inappropriate that is? All of it? What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that I wanted to make you happy,” said Will. “And I’m pretty sure I did. And then you just shut down. Froze me out. I thought we were beyond that. I don’t know, I thought that you’d—”
“God, you’re so convinced you know everything, aren’t you? So sure you know me better than I know myself. It’s condescending. It’s annoying. Because the truth is”—Patrick pointed at him, jabbing the air furiously—“you don’t listen. Not really. I tell you, over and over, I have to keep my work separate from the rest of my life, and you show up. I set a boundary, and you come prancing right over it.”
“That is bollocks,” said Will, “and you know it. I have done nothing but try to respect your boundaries. This entire relationship has been on your terms. Your bloody lawyers made sure of that.”
“You don’t get to throw that in my face. You knew the score when we started seeing each other. You agreed to it.”
Will felt a lump in his throat at Patrick’s cold words. “I did. But you should have known how unfair you were being. How impossible it is to be with someone when you can’t really be with them.”
“I am with you! I am with you all the time!” Patrick yelled. “I met your family, I brought you to Audra’s party, I even put on a fucking dress and a wig so we could go out together. I have given more of myself to you than anyone else in my life, Will, and god, it’s never enough! You need so much! I can’t handle it!”
The words hit too familiar, fresh and sharp.
“If I’m so difficult to be with, then why are you even bothering?” Will asked.
“I’m starting to ask myself the same thing,” Patrick said calmly, which was worse somehow. It was a sad fact, like he had just noticed it had begun to rain.
“You don’t get to treat me like an inconvenience, Patrick.”
“You’ve always known exactly what I was able to offer. It’s not my fault if you thought that would change.”
“I can’t help it. I want more. I deserve more. We both do.”
“Then I don’t know what to tell you.” Patrick cleared his throat. “I should have known you wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
“You act like things are the same for us. They’re not. How you move through the world is very different from the way I do.”
“I know my work comes with some advantages—”
“I’m not talking about your work,” said Will. “I’m talking about how nobody takes issue with your sexuality because you keep it private. And that is your choice. I don’t know that I ever had a choice. The first person to call me gay was my PE teacher. I was eight. He knew before I had even figured it out for myself.” He flapped a wrist pointedly. “I’ve never been able to hide anything.”
Patrick looked down, then back to the trailer door. Will could feel the seconds he had left with Patrick slipping away, knew that this was maybe the last time they would ever be in the same room together, his last chance to get Patrick to understand how he felt.
“I—” he began.
“You really need to go,” Patrick said.
There were no magic words, Will realized. No spell he could cast that would reverse the flow of time or change the reality of their lives. This was it. This was all they would ever get.
“Fine,” he said. “Bye, Patrick.”
He walked numbly out of the trailer and back out across the lot toward the exit. Digbeth looked the same as ever, which felt incorrect. The graffiti and cigarette butts and broken bottles from overturned bins had not changed. But hadn’t everything changed?
“Will?” He felt a hand on his shoulder.
“I finally found a place to park,” Jordan said when he turned around. “Are you OK? What happened? What did he say?”
“It’s over,” said Will, almost flinching as he heard his own voice. “It’s over,” he repeated, and Jordan pulled him into a tight hug.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, rubbing Will’s back. “That bastard.”
“I don’t understand what happened,” he mumbled into the side of Jordan’s bleached buzz cut. “I went to talk. I just wanted to talk…”
“Bastard. The absolute bastard.”
“Jordan. I…I think I…”
“It’s OK. It’s going to be all right.” Jordan’s hand made a soothing circular motion on his back. “You’re better off without him. Good riddance.”
“What?” Will lurched away from Jordan. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, he really upset you,” said Jordan. “It’s probably for the best that it’s over.”
Will had been upset. But he hadn’t intended to go to the set and start a huge argument. He’d wanted to wait for Patrick to cool off so they could talk properly. That had been his plan. Until…
“Why did you make me come here?” he asked. “You always think a big, dramatic confrontation is the right thing to do.” The more he thought about it, the more this felt like typical Jordan, inserting himself into everything. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.” He turned to walk away, hearing Jordan’s footsteps following soon after.
“OK, first of all, I didn’t talk you into anything,” said Jordan, catching up to him again, “other than standing up for yourself.”
Will stopped in his tracks and turned to face him. “You don’t understand what’s at stake.”
“Some cishet wet dream’s reputation? Who cares, Will? He’s leaving anyway.”
“Were you trying to sabotage me?”
“What?”
“It makes sense,” said Will. “You’ve always been the little star. Lording it over everyone at the bar. And you love how people recognize you from your videos. I wondered, when I started doing drag, if you might get a little sour at me getting attention.”
“You sound crazy.”
“I didn’t want to think it,” Will continued, taking a step toward Jordan, his rage gathering momentum and his thoughts racing to keep up, “but you’re jealous. Aren’t you.” He brought his face right up to Jordan’s. “That my world suddenly got so much bigger than yours? That I’m the one getting us into parties with movie stars?”
Jordan took a step back. “Parties that you’re not legally allowed to talk about because your boo is a massive closet case. I’m not jealous, Will, I feel sorry for you.”
“It’s none of your business, Jordan! It’s my relationship.”
“Oh, sure, and when you get treated like shit, I’m supposed to just not say anything. That’s not how this works, doll.”
Will paused. “Are you in love with me? Is that it?”
“I was wrong before. Now you sound mental.”
“Then why can’t you stand to see me happy with someone else?”
“You’re not happy, Will! You’ve been fucking miserable, and too dickmatized to see it!”
“How the hell do you know?”
“You’ve been changing, Will. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about, because I won’t believe you. You’ve been dimming your shine. Making yourself smaller, quieter. To fit in with him.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? I’m not the only one who’s noticed, you know. April has, too. I bet even Margo has. And as for everyone else…”
“What do you mean, everyone else?” Will could hear his voice getting higher and higher, but he couldn’t stop it. “You’ve been talking about me? Who have you been talking to? This is a secret, Jordan.”
Jordan flicked his wrist scornfully. “Oh, calm down, nobody has mentioned Patrick by name. It’s not about him. It’s about you. You’ve been taking fewer gigs. Not showing up for the story hour. Faye is worried about you. All the girls are. It’s like now you’ve found your straight-acting fantasy, you don’t care about your community anymore.”
Will bristled. “Maybe you want to ask yourself why,” he said coolly, “after all these years of being such a beloved hero in our community, you still haven’t found anyone to love you.”
He knew he’d gone too far before the words even left his mouth, but out they tumbled, and he saw the hurt blossom like a bruise across Jordan’s beautiful face, a wound that had already been right under the surface. A pain Will had known was there.
“Fuck you, Will,” said Jordan. “And fuck your coward of a boyfriend, too.”
He turned and walked away, and Will let him go, too ashamed to even try to apologize. His tendency to shoot from the hip was nothing new. Unfortunately, he’d always had terrible aim.