21. Logan #2
The bartender slides his drink over and he takes a big swig.
“I feel like… I’m faking it, or something.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Ever heard of impostor syndrome?”
He exhales. “Yeah, but I didn’t think I fucking had it. Everything I’ve ever made, I do it because I have to. I don’t know who I would be if I couldn’t paint. It’s so personal. It’s always just been for me.”
“It feels different when other people are observing it, you mean?”
He meets my eyes. “Yes. That. Exactly that.”
I nod. “That’s how I felt when I first started getting seen on Yard Line. I was doing theater and tiny plays no one knew about for years and years, and I got used to that. I really was just acting because I loved doing it. And then suddenly everyone knew me from one big role, and…”
“And it felt fucking weird?”
“Very weird.”
Chase shakes his head. “I don’t know why it should even matter. So what if some rich dudes want my photos on their walls? That’s what I’ve always wanted. But I don’t feel like I deserve it. Their money, or the fact that they actually enjoy my work.”
“Well, that’s bullshit. You deserve it.”
He nods, looking down at the bar top. “Yeah. I fucking do deserve it. What the hell is wrong with my mind tonight?”
I laugh, and he finally cracks a smile too, looking up at me.
“Damn right.”
“God, I really am fucking crazy.”
I shake my head. “No. You’re just feeling what it’s like to be perceived for your talents. And I know it makes you question everything, but I can tell you with full certainty, you are talented, and everyone can tell.”
He looks up at me with something blooming behind his eyes. “You are too nice to me.”
“I’m not nice enough.”
I reach out and squeeze his forearm.
“Excuse me, Mr. Stone?” someone asks from behind me, and I drop my touch from Chase as I turn to look.
“Hello,” I say, seeing a formal photographer behind us.
“Pleasure to meet you. I’m the event photographer,” he says, shaking my hand. “Could I take a few photos of you and Mr. Cameron? I’m also a fan of Yard Line, I must admit.”
“You are so much more polite than paparazzi. Of course, go ahead.”
The photographer snaps a few shots of us smiling in our seats. We’re not touching in the photos, and I’m sure we don’t even look like we’re close. At an event like this, people get their photos taken with all sorts of people, who are friends, fans, and strangers.
But something tingles inside me knowing it’s the first time I’ve been publicly photographed with Chase.
After the photographer gets his shots, more artists come over to talk to Chase about his work. Over the next half an hour, a few more fans of mine come up to me, too, asking for selfies and autographs, but there’s no wild mob or gathering storm of attention.
I feel calm here, actually.
The event starts to wind down, and the food trays are cleaned up as the bar closes down for the evening.
Chase finds his way back to where I’m sitting at the bar, and he still seems dazed, like he can’t quite believe what happened.
“Thank you for coming,” he tells me again. He has the same removed look in his eyes that he had when I first came over for the photoshoot, looking all professional. “I’m going to be heading out soon.”
“Do you have a long trip home?”
“Not too bad. Depends if the subway has any delays,” Chase says. “Getting here was a bitch, though. I had all of my framed photos in a rolling suitcase. At least the suitcase will be empty now, going back.”
“Grab the suitcase. My driver can give you a ride home.”
“It’s okay, Logan. You don’t have to do that.”
“Well, I’m going to,” I tell him. “We can head out the back. I’ll tell my driver to loop around, and if we’re fast enough, there won’t be time for the paparazzi to figure it out.”
Something keeps shifting inside me the longer I see Chase act the way he’s been acting.
The entire time I’ve known him, he’s worn his heart on his sleeve so loudly it intimidated me. Where is any of that now?
Where did Chase go?
It’s like I have a sudden urge to reach into the darkness and pluck him back out, to find the Chase I’d gotten used to.
“Okay,” he finally says, after glancing around the gallery. “It’ll be an easier trip back. I’ll wait in the alley?”
I nod. “Give me two minutes. I’ll tell him to loop around.”
Chase gives me a salute. I call my driver and tell him to do his best to ditch any lingering paparazzi, and to take a route around to the back of the building.
Outside, I find Chase leaning against the brick exterior. His suitcase is there beside him.
A deep ache hits my chest.
I suddenly remember how I saw him that first day at the bar last year.
He was such a mystery to me back then. That ghost of darkness always used to haunt his eyes, but it had seemed to fade away this year.
At some point I’d come to know that Chase was a kaleidoscope of vivid color inside, just like his paintings.
But for a split second, as he’s leaning in the shadowy alleyway, I feel that same sense of mystery now.
Darkness that I can’t really reach.
All I want to do is pull him back to me.
His eyes scan over to meet mine and he stands up straighter, giving me a nod. Something grips the inside of my chest and I quickly look across the alley, making sure no one else is out here yet.
I step closer to Chase and grip his hand, pulling him to me. My other hand gently moves below his chin, tilting his head as I lean in to kiss him.
My lips burn against his.
I kiss him hard, and he opens for me easily, kissing me back with just as much need.
Thank God.
A bright flash hits the corner of my eye and when I pull away from Chase, I see that it’s the headlights of my driver’s car.
“Logan,” Chase murmurs.
“You going to tell me that I shouldn’t be kissing you?”
His green eyes seem to deepen in the light of the headlights. “Isn’t it a bad idea?”
“Maybe it’s not,” I interject. “Maybe I’m not as afraid of some things as I used to be. Maybe I’m starting to trust that you really wouldn’t crumble if the world discovered who you are.”
He casts his eyes downward as the black car pulls up right beside us. “You should really stop saying things like that.”
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t.”
“Because if you trust me, I’ll find some fucking way to ruin it,” he says, his eyes alighting. “If you give me an inch, I won’t just take a mile, I’ll take way more—”
Another car’s headlights shine against the edge of the alleyway.
I nod at the SUV.
“Get in.”
He shoves his fingers into his hair and shakes his head. “I should just take the train home.”
“Get in the car, Chase.”
“Fuck,” he whispers as he grips the door handle, yanking the door wide and stepping in.
I grab his suitcase and right as I’m opening the back trunk, two other cars pull in behind us and paparazzi jump out.
I turn into the flashes, giving the cameras a smile and a wave.
“Did you enjoy the art show, Logan?” one guy yells over.
“Were you meeting a woman? Was this a date?”
“Have a good evening, gentlemen,” I tell them as I shut the trunk and walk over to the door to get in, shutting out the noise of the world.
I saw the angle they had. They didn’t know anyone else was in the SUV, and they only saw my face in the pictures. My driver takes off down the alleyway, and we lose the paparazzi in traffic on 2nd Ave.
My driver has music playing in the car, and it fills the space as neither of us talk.
My hand finds its way to Chase’s before we’ve even been driving for a minute.
He holds my hand loosely at first, and when I grip him harder, he relaxes a little, letting his thumb roam in circles over the edge of my hand.
Every word I blurted out to him before he got into the car echoes in my mind. I said so much, but I also didn’t say nearly enough. My words were left hanging in the air, and now I’m unwilling to continue the conversation in a car with no partition.
But I keep touching him.
Every brush of his skin on mine is like a question I wish he would answer. Like we’ve swapped entirely, and now I’m the one wishing he’d open.
I keep glancing over at him, trying to get a read on him as he looks out through the front windshield, his eyes only sometimes visible past the lock of dark hair falling in front of his forehead.
His shirt has come open a little further at the collar and I can’t stop staring at the tattoo that loops out to his collarbone, where I now know he loves to be kissed.
I keep inching my body closer to his, bit by bit, until the edge of my leg is pressed up against his.
You hold all of the power.
Please, give me something.
Give me anything you offered so freely until now.
“This is it,” Chase says as we pull up to a spot on the street that doesn’t possibly look like it could contain someone’s home.
It’s the corner of a street that has a little bodega selling fresh fruits and beverages and an old watch repair shop. The rest of the street is lined with restaurants and bakeries that are long since closed at this time of the evening.
Chase releases my hand and it feels like I’m losing a part of myself.
“I’ll walk him to the door,” I tell my driver as Chase already steps out onto the sidewalk.
I follow him to the door and he turns around, nodding at me. “Thank you. Oh, hold on, I didn’t grab my suitcase.”
“Leave it in the trunk,” I say, waving him off. “We can get it later. Is this really where you live, Chase?”
He gestures at a narrow door. “That leads up to the third-floor of the building. It used to be a garment manufacturer up there, but they turned it into a few apartments in the early 2000s.”
Something stretches out from inside my chest, like I’m trying to hold onto this moment before he disappears.
“And you live with your brother?”
“My brother and two of his friends.”
“Are they home?”
His gaze holds mine. “No. They’re out at an arcade in Brooklyn for someone’s bachelor party.”
“Then I’m coming in with you.”
His expression is blank.
He doesn’t say a word as he turns to open up the door, and I almost think he’s going to shut me out.
But then he holds the door open for me after he walks in.