The best part was his hands #2
He waited by the window until his Uber arrived and then was assaulted by flash bulbs as he crossed the broken sidewalk to get to it.
There was a lot of the typical “Over here, Colby!” and “How was your night, Colby?” Which he ignored, but when someone in the small group yelled “You and Hunter Law ever still hang out?” His step faltered, and his head swiveled to find the source.
It was a short, balding dude with an unexpectedly friendly smile. “Were you roommates by choice or by circumstance?”
“Started as circumstance and changed to choice, I guess,” Colby had answered, too shocked to not be honest. “He’s a great guy, but we have different lives now.”
“Sure, but like you still like him?”
I love him.
Colby had clenched his jaw and shrugged. Fucking shrugged.
That had made all the gossipy bullshit sites. Colby Keaton Won’t Say What Went Wrong with Friendship was the headline that pissed him off the most. But none of them were good. Hunter had been doing a better job when he was assaulted with questions, but he was an actor after all.
“Who has a crisis?” Colby found himself asking as he followed Knightley to his front door.
Knightley didn’t answer in words. He just fixed his dark eyes on Colby and flattened his mouth into a line. Briar pushed past both of them and opened the door for Knightley. “Do me a favor and text me a photo of his hair? He tends to fuck it up when he’s spiraling.”
Knightley nodded, and as Briar closed the door behind him, Colby stared at her, his jaw unhinged. She cupped his cheek. “I do this for a living, remember? It’s a new business, and I take all the work I can get.”
“He should find his own stylist and groomer!” Colby snapped, fully aware he sounded like a petulant child. He was also shamefully aware it wasn’t a new sound from him. It was common lately, and he hated it as much as everyone else.
Briar walked down the narrow hall, past the living room and toward his bedroom. “Knightley was his stylist first, and his normal groomer just had a baby. Besides, I love Hunter, just like you, and I wanted to help.”
“I don’t love him,” Colby blurted out. It was a reflex like your knee twitching when it’s hit just right.
“I know you’re not a college graduate, but we learned the difference between don’t and can’t in grade school, love,” Briar replied softly as she reached for the pants Knightley had left on the bed. “Put these on.”
Colby snatched them from her and stormed into the bathroom to change.
He came out shirtless but with the pants on and the belt buckled.
They worked in comfortable but angry silence as they dressed the rest of him.
When Briar turned him toward the full-length mirror on the inside of one of his open closet doors, he had to admit he looked good.
Briar went to her purse on the rocking chair in the corner and dug out her phone.
She snapped a couple pics of him, for Knightley Colby assumed, and then he wondered if Hunter would get a peek at them, so he said, “Don’t send those. Do them again, and I’ll try this time.”
Briar nodded and retook the photos. Her wide mouth tugged upward approvingly at them as her fingers worked over her keyboard. “He asks about you. Every time I see him.”
“Do you see him a lot?” Colby asked even though he was already jealous of the answer.
“We’ve hung out a couple of times,” Briar replied, her tone low and soft like that would soften the blow. “He loves you, so I love him, Colby. That’s how family works.”
“Not in my neck of the woods,” Colby muttered and tucked his fingers into the cuffs of the sweater. And then her words hit him, hard, like that fucking tree that crushed his van. “You think he loves me?”
Briar’s brown eyes caught his in a hard, certain stare. “I know he does. And I want a happy ending for you both so bad it fucking aches.”
“We’ll both have one if our careers keep going the way they are. It’s what we’ve both always wanted,” Colby replied.
She nodded. “I know. But fuck this industry for making it be either or.”
Colby walked into the bathroom to brush his teeth rather than respond.
Agreeing with her wouldn’t change a fucking thing.
He was late. Almost. So close to late that the handler for the event was pale and hissing urgently into her walkie-talkie, asking for his ETA every two seconds.
Colby stared at his phone and leaned against the table set up with a variety of nonalcoholic drinks in the small tent behind the wrapping station.
Hannah chatted happily with the other celebrity who had been invited from the studio, an older actress from one of their television shows.
She seemed delightful, but Colby only smiled briefly and shook her hand before disappearing into his funk.
Colby knew Hunter was about to enter the tent from the wave of screams that filled the air.
Clearly, the waiting crowd had seen him sneak in.
A security guard pulled back the curtain, and there he was.
He looked great, dressed a little fancier than Colby in a leather blazer and a cashmere sweater with a nice V-neck that showed off the swell of his pecs.
He must be working out more than ever because in the fourteen short days since Colby had seen all of him, Hunter seemed to have grown larger.
Of course, Hannah commented as she walked over and pulled him into a hug.
“You are going to look so good in my video with all this muscle.”
Hunter smiled. “Superheroes are girthy.”
Colby’s eyes snapped up from his phone at that like they were a trained puppy reacting to a command. Hunter was looking right at him. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
Hunter broke the impromptu staring contest first by turning to the actress. “Darla, right? I love your show. Been watching it since the beginning.”
He walked over to her and shook her hand, and she gushed about his performance in everything he’d done so far. Even his credit card commercial, which the company was re-airing morning, noon, and night since Hunter’s breakout.
The stressed-out handler and the charity representative started giving directions and explaining procedures.
Colby listened extra hard, making sure not to focus at all on how Hunter looked absolutely drop-dead beautiful or how he’d just said girthy, and Colby’s brain had flashed to a saved memory of Hunter’s bare cock, and it made his asshole spasm.
Nope. He was not concentrating on that. What did the woman with the walkie-talkie say about placement? Hunter was shaking his head. “I think it would make more sense if, like Hannah and Colby, wrapped and maybe I collected the donation, or Darla and the other did the bows.”
“Why?” the woman asked.
“They sing together. We act for the same studio.”
It was the lamest of rationales, but Colby nodded like it was undeniable scientific fact.
The organizer, wrangler, handler, whatever-the-fuck wasn’t buying it.
“You guys are all over the news for your newly revealed friendship, and most of the people already out there are women who want to see you two, no offense Hannah and Darla.”
The women shrugged, like they were used to it, and the walkie-talkie woman went on.
“Plus, it’s always comical to watch men wrap, and trust me, this is my third year doing it.
People want their presents to look like shit.
It’s part of the charm. Okay, let’s head out, and don’t forget to relax and have fun. This is for charity.”
So they stood in a single line, like the woman told them to, and waited as she went out and announced the charity gift wrapping would begin.
Colby was directly behind Hunter, and he couldn’t help but inhale that sweet and spicy cologne he wore now.
Not the one he wore when they were nobodies trying to pay rent and working shitty side jobs, but since.
It brought him right back to filling his lungs with it as he rode Hunter’s cock.
Oh fuck, thank god his pants were mostly covered by this stupid cardigan in the front. He was chubbing up. Today was hell.
It didn’t get better once they were out there, elbows bumping and fingers brushing as they passed tape back and forth because no one thought to buy more than one roll.
People were genuinely ecstatic to see them, and like the woman had predicted, they were delighted when their packages looked like complete trash.
So weird. A videographer for the participating online magazine spent a good half hour asking Colby and Hunter questions together, and Colby couldn’t even be paranoid about it because she’d asked Darla and Hannah questions together at the end of the work line as well.
Hunter answered everything with ease—his favorite part of his newfound fame?
Impressing his parents. His least favorite part?
Traveling a lot. What was he doing for Christmas?
Going to Montreal. His favorite Christmas gift of all time?
Hockey skates when he was seven. Colby bumbled through his answers with less grace.
He chewed his lip a lot and created awkward pauses because he was monitoring his thoughts to make sure they didn’t make it to his mouth.
His favorite part of fame? Financial security.
He could and did say that, but the rest was lies he took too long to formulate.
Least favorite part? Losing Hunter. But he mumbled out, not being able to browse at his favorite music store.
What was he doing for Christmas? Sitting home alone in his rental house because he didn’t talk to his family anymore at all.
But he said he was taking a vacation somewhere hot instead.
His favorite Christmas gift ever was the old, easy, and honest answer—the record player his grandma gave him when he was twelve, along with an Eagles Greatest Hits album.