Chapter 8
eight
. . .
For the first time in years, Lee slept in the day after the concert and afterparty.
It wasn’t surprising, since it was also the first time in years he’d had that much to drink.
By most people’s standards, he hadn’t had much, but he’d certainly had enough to end up making out with Drew in the middle of a ballroom filled with celebrities and celebrity-adjacent partygoers.
The kiss was still very much on Lee’s mind, along with what felt like a load of bricks, when he finally woke up midmorning on Saturday.
He squeezed his eyes shut against the ache in his head and the harsh light of the real world and tried to hold on to everything he’d felt in the moment when Drew’s mouth had invaded his and their bodies had pressed together.
He imagined he could still feel the firmness of Drew’s body against his, maybe certain parts in particular, and taste him.
Which explained why, despite the hangover, he woke up half hard.
“Not a good sign,” he moaned to himself, then pushed away from his pillow and dragged himself out of bed.
The whole thing was supposed to be fake.
Rent-A-Boyfriend was a way for him to get ideas for future books so his career would take off the way he wanted it to.
Drew was actually a nice guy and interesting to talk to.
He was not supposed to be a boner-inducing, fantasy-sparking, genuine love interest.
Especially since he was straight.
Lee laughed out loud at that thought as he turned on the shower, then stepped into the spray before it was fully warm to shock himself out of bleariness. He would have bet money on the fact that Drew Oberlin was about as straight as a bowl of soggy noodles.
That analogy had Lee laughing even more, which did nothing for the pounding in his head. He finished showering, dressed, and ambled into the kitchen to make tea, picking up his phone and scrolling as he did.
That was when he saw the posts.
He stopped dead with the kettle held under the tap, nearly overfilling the thing as he blinked at the first social media app he’d opened. He had dozens of notifications, but what snagged his attention were the pics.
Drew looked sizzling hot, of course. Strangely enough, he didn’t look all that bad either. But what arrested him the most was that he and Drew looked great together. So much that his eyes nearly bugged out, like he was looking into some sort of alternative reality instead of his own life.
Right there, on the sacred screen of social media, he and Drew were kissing like they would never come up for air.
“Holy shit,” he mumbled, finally putting the kettle on to boil.
Once he had both hands free, he sped through all the other apps, finding more of the same pictures and a hell of a lot of commentary to go with them.
“Who is Drew Oberlin kissing like he’s trying to fish his keys out of the guy’s throat?”
“Is this for real or is it AI?”
“No way. Drew would never cheat on Nikky like this.”
“They look so unbelievably hot!”
“I told you Drew was gay. Isn’t this what I’ve been saying all along?”
The more Lee scrolled, the more intense the comments got. Sure enough, people had identified him, naming him in a bunch of the posts. A few people mentioned they’d read his books and loved them. A few others said his books were stupid and trashy.
Lee was used to his work being reviewed and didn’t think much of the nasty comments. What did give him pause was that he’d somehow gained over a hundred thousand followers to his account overnight.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He put his phone down when the kettle clicked off and quickly made his morning tea. Once that was done, he carried his mug and his phone over to his computer and sat down to investigate further.
What he discovered absolutely blew his mind.
Drew hadn’t been kidding when he said the two of them would get a lot of attention once the story broke.
For some reason, Lee assumed Drew would be the one getting the attention and he might get a mention here or there.
But everywhere he looked, on every social media app where he had a presence, Lee had exploded.
It wasn’t just social media followers either. When Lee checked his sales from the day before, like he did every morning, he nearly fell out of his chair.
He’s sold more books in the last twelve hours than he had in a month.
“This is….” He couldn’t even think of a way to finish the sentence. He almost couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Never in a million years would he have guessed that being caught kissing a multi-mega-star would do anything to his career. Other than give him something to write about.
Unsurprisingly, nearly everyone he knew had messaged him overnight and wanted to know the full story. He had about twenty variations of, “What the hell is going on, Lee? Did you kiss Drew Oberlin?” waiting in his inbox.
And one message from Diana saying, “You’d better message me back RIGHT NOW to tell me what’s going on.”
When Diana messaged, Lee obeyed.
“So I take it you saw the pics?” he typed into Messenger.
Literally three seconds later, the whirring, ringing sound of Diana requesting a video call blared through his speakers.
As soon as he clicked accept, Diana’s face filled his screen with hilarious intensity. “You kissed Drew Oberlin,” she said with overdramatic seriousness.
Lee laughed. It was the only thing he could do. “Looks like it,” he said. “We’d both had a few drinks and were caught up in dancing.”
Diana leaned back, waving her arms in front of her. “Whoa, wait. First, you were dancing? Second, this was all just some drunken make-out session?” She sounded disappointed about that possibility.
Lee was a little disappointed, too. “We weren’t that drunk,” he defended himself and Drew. Mostly because he wanted it to be true. “But we were having fun.”
“I’ll say.” Diana’s eyes went wide. “Wasn’t this whole thing supposed to be fake so people would assume Drew is gay and leave him alone?”
“That was the original plan, yes.”
“Babe. That kiss doesn’t look fake. There’s a video.”
Lee hadn’t seen the video yet, only the stills. He wasn’t sure he could handle the video. His insides were already doing flips just remembering the taste of Drew’s mouth.
“It was one hell of a kiss,” he said with a sigh, smiling despite himself.
“Lee!” Diana shouted, gesturing like she would climb through her computer to throttle him. “You’re doing this to get ideas for romance novels, not to turn into a romance novel yourself!”
“I know, I know!” Lee replied, matching her intensity, then laughing. “But seriously, Drew is a great guy. He’s so open and free, and he’s a lot of fun. Everyone was dancing with him last night.”
“Was everyone kissing him?” Diana asked, one eyebrow arched.
No. Drew hadn’t kissed anyone else. He hadn’t pulled anyone else into his arms and looked at them like he wanted to take a bite out of them either.
“What are you doing up so early?” he asked Diana instead of answering. “Isn’t it, like four in the morning where you are?”
“Insomnia, and don’t you dare dodge my question,” Diana replied in a flat tone. “Is this fake or real?”
Her question reminded him of the people asking if the pics were AI.
The thing was, Lee didn’t have an answer.
Under different circumstances, if Drew had definitely been gay and just a normal guy he’d met at a club, Lee would have been swimming in happiness and convincing himself the two of them had sparks that could lead to a fire.
But that wasn’t part of the arrangement. They were just pretending because they each had something to gain from the ruse.
Drew’s lips against his and his tongue in his mouth hadn’t felt like pretend at all, though, even if it was a fantasy.
He was about to answer Diana, who was staring straight at her camera to make it look like she was peering right into his soul instead of looking at her own image on her screen when Lee’s phone rang. The name Javier Rivera showed up on his screen.
“Hold that thought,” he told Diana as he picked up his phone. “This might be important. Hello?” he answered the call.
“Hey, Lee. It’s Javier.”
“Hi, Javier.” He said the name aloud so Diana would know who he was talking to.
“I just wanted to check in to see how you’re doing,” Javier asked, amusement in his voice. “I saw the posts all over social media this morning.”
“Yeah, it’s been wild,” Lee said, grinning at Diana on his screen. “But it’s pretty much what we were aiming for, right?”
“Right,” Javier said, laughing. “But are you still okay with it?” he went on. “It looks like this might blow up, and if you’re not comfortable with things—”
“I think I can handle it,” Lee said when Javier left his sentence open-ended. “I mean, it’s wild, but so far, so good, right?”
“If you consider a ton of social media attention so good, then yeah.”
“I think it’ll be fine,” Lee reassured him. “This is exactly what Drew wanted.”
Javier hesitated for a second before saying, “Looks like it. I just want to make sure you feel safe and that you’re good with the attention you’re starting to get. Whatever happens next, you’re still our client, and we want to make sure you’re taken care of.”
“Thanks,” Lee said, bolstered by the idea that he wasn’t going through everything alone. “I really appreciate it.”
“Okay, well, I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing,” Javier said, winding down the call.
Lee said his goodbyes, then put his phone down and grinned at Diana through the computer.
“This isn’t real,” Diana said. “There is no way that you’re actually doing any of this.”
“It’s really real,” Lee said. “All except the relationship itself.”
Immediately, he felt bad saying that. Not because he and Drew were, in essence, deceiving the world, but because a larger part of him than he wanted to admit to didn’t want the whole thing to be fake after all.
He liked Drew.
And that kiss….
“That’s it, then,” Diana said, throwing up her hands. “You’re going to need to get an agent to shop your books around to traditional publishers.”