Chapter Thirty-One. Riley
Chapter Thirty-One
Riley
Dancing with Luna at the Box is the first time things have felt normal since Greece.
It’s amazing just getting to spend time together in public without worrying about getting photographed kissing or holding hands.
All of my worries from the past week fade away, and I relax against her, enjoying the feeling of her hands on my hips as we dance.
Eventually Rhia, James, and Anya make their way over to us and we all dance together, and it feels a bit surreal that I’m here as her partner like this.
We stay out until the early hours of the morning, then exit through the back door of the club so that paparazzi can’t get photos of us sweaty and drunk.
When we get back to the hotel, I’m so tired that I can barely take my makeup off, and I collapse into bed next to Luna, holding her tightly to me as I drift off.
When I wake up in the morning, my head is pounding and the bed is cool and empty next to me. I sit up, groggy and more than a little hungover. “Luna?”
I lie back down, my head pounding. A moment later Luna walks out of one of the other rooms in the suite, her hair wet from the shower, phone in hand. “Come back to bed,” I mumble once I see her, only to be interrupted by a knock on the door.
Luna answers it and returns with two giant coffees, which she places on the nightstand before crawling back into bed. I pull her close to me and press my face into her cool wet hair. She kisses the arm I have snaked across her chest. “Last night was so fun,” she whispers.
“Maybe too fun,” I mumble.
She laughs, evidently not as hungover as I am. “Drink your coffee, you’ll feel better.”
I sit up just enough and she hands me my coffee, which I drink half of in about three giant sips, before lying back down on my side.
She takes a sip of hers, then lies down, mirroring me so that our faces are a few inches apart on the pillow.
I study her, taking in the curves of her cheekbones, each of her eyelashes, the faint acne scars on her cheekbone that are impossible to see under her stage makeup.
“You’re really beautiful, you know,” I whisper.
“I’m the right amount of beautiful,” Luna corrects. “The perfect amount, for a singer.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m prettier than average. And beautiful in combination with my makeup, my costumes, my voice.
But also not so pretty that I look like someone you couldn’t be friends with.
Not too perfect.” Luna’s eyes never leave mine as she talks, and it sounds hard, having to construct every aspect of herself like this.
“I think you’re perfect. This moment, this is perfect.”
“Except your hangover.”
“Except that,” I agree.
“Do you ever think about who you’d be if you weren’t a chef?” Luna asks.
I tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear and let my fingers linger on her cheek.
“I’m still figuring out if I am a chef. But even the past few years, when I thought I wouldn’t be able to work in a kitchen at all, I couldn’t imagine any other specific thing for me.
It was just something. Did you ever think you wouldn’t be a singer? ”
Luna smiles. “I worry every day that I won’t be able to be a singer anymore.
I wanted it so badly, for so long, that it still feels like it could get ripped away at any moment.
I didn’t think that when I finally got here, it would still feel so fragile.
And I don’t know if there’s any me without it. ”
“Of course there is,” I whisper. “It’s just one part of you.”
Luna’s quiet for a moment. “I think you’re the first person who’s ever said that to me.”
“Well, I love every part of you. Not just your singing.” I flush, realizing what I’ve said. But before I can open my mouth to walk it back, to apologize, to say I must still be drunk, Luna is answering me.
“I love you too,” she says. And she closes the inches between us and kisses me.
I still feel torn about delaying my return to P-town, but I tell my dads I’m just going to New York with Luna for a few days and join her as she flies private back to New York.
We spend the day in bed, talking and cuddling, and it’s not until we’re at the airport sitting in the lounge with plates of food and champagne that Ashley calls to burst this perfect bubble.
I can’t make out what she’s saying to Luna, but from the tight expression on Luna’s face, I can tell it’s something stressful.
She holds her phone away from her ear for a moment while she opens links Ashley sent her, and I see they’re videos of us dancing last night.
And the thing is, we look incredible. Luna looks more carefree than I’ve ever seen her, and the way her arm snakes across my chest, pulling me close, is so hot and protective.
I look happy, and both of our outfits look like a million bucks.
In the paparazzi photos of us walking into the club last night, I barely recognized myself because we looked so good.
Some of the videos are positive, people setting the edits of us to Luna’s love songs, while others are homophobic and negative, slut-shaming us, and basically boiling down to saying that Luna is no longer America’s sweetheart.
“Guess NDAs don’t mean anything anymore,” Luna mutters when she hangs up the call. “I hate that I can’t have anything for myself.”
I take her hand, and as soon as I do I feel hyperaware of the stares and whispers from other lounge-goers who have recognized Luna. She doesn’t drop my hand, but she doesn’t really take it either. If I let go right now, hers would just fall away.
“I’m sorry. It seems really hard. Was it like this with Hudson, too?”
Luna finally interlaces her fingers with mine, and relief courses through me.
“With him it was never so negative. People wanted us to work, really badly. This feels like … like most people are rooting against us. The loudest people, anyway.” I know what she means.
One aggressively nasty and targeted comment feels a lot bigger than ten people commenting with a heart-eyes emoji.
But before I can tell her that I understand, she continues.
“We need a plan. We need to make sure we’re presenting our relationship in the most opportune way so that people see it’s just like any other relationship I’d have.
That we’re wholesome and nice. I need to stick to my image so that everything is on brand for the Grammy.
The new music is doing well, so I can’t slip up on this.
I need everything to feel cohesive. My clothing, my hair, my social media …
every appearance needs to support these new songs to give me the final push I need. ”
It’s not like any other relationship you’ve had.
It’s on the tip of my tongue, but then I bite the words back.
Queer love is so much more expansive than the straight heteronormative love Luna’s known before, where everything was slotted into strict boxes and gender roles.
I want our relationship to just be us, not be a performance to make homophobic people feel comfortable.
I want to say something, but I also still feel so exhausted and hungover and we’re not in private and it just doesn’t feel like the time to try to explain that acting like we’re in a straight relationship probably isn’t the answer Luna’s searching for.
My dads and I have watched it go down over the years.
A queer celebrity will strive to make their relationship so palatable to the masses that people almost forget they’re gay.
But then the moment they remind everyone—by getting married or talking about LGBTQ+ rights or doing anything that shows that they’re proud of who they are—they’ll suddenly get undermined.
A lot of the time it won’t be people explicitly saying something homophobic, but they’ll hunt for any skeletons in their closet.
Disgruntled former employees, angry exes, a tweet from childhood that was off-color.
Something to cancel them over without having to say the real motivation to cancel is because they’re queer.
It’s insidious. And invisible to people who don’t want to notice it.
I hope Luna doesn’t have any skeletons.
“Let’s talk about it tomorrow, after we’ve slept,” I suggest. “For now, just try to enjoy the flight. In half an hour you’ll be in your happy place, telling me all about the plane.”
Luna nods. “You’re right. Nothing we do now will change anything.”
She goes back to her phone, probably texting Ashley, and I open my own Instagram and see I’ve been tagged in countless posts with the video and pictures from last night.
There are the kind posts. But there are also more posts than I can count ripping us to shreds over things that shouldn’t matter.
Criticizing my outfit, which I was so happy with, my lack of makeup beyond mascara, people complaining that Luna opened my door instead of the other way around, because they don’t like her taking on the traditionally male role in that moment, or by standing behind me at the club.
Seeing all of the focus on us and knowing that Luna wants us to find a way to play into it all makes me feel sick.
I don’t want to hide. But I also don’t want her to hurt, not at all.