9. Will
NINE
WILL
Shrill beeps that are too reminiscent of Ari’s heart monitor from the hospital drag me roughly from a deep sleep. I fumble for my phone on the nightstand, silencing it before looking at the name flashing across the screen. My heart jumps into my throat when I see Blake’s name.
As quietly as I can, I extricate myself from Ari’s sleeping form and slip out of bed, easing the covers back over him.
We’re going to have to deal with everything that happened last night, but for now at least I have a reprieve.
I can gather my thoughts rather than have him watch me process as I’m bombarded with guilt over my actions.
I’ve just stepped out onto the back porch when Blake calls a second time, and I know for sure that I’m in trouble.
“Good mo?—”
“Is it true,” Blake says without preamble, “that you and Ari went to some hole in the wall bar and threatened the owner?”
I stop short of even taking a breath, searching for a way to explain myself.
“Threatened is a strong word,” I say carefully. “The bartender was being inappropriate, tried to get Ari to go to the bathroom with him. I was worried about it ending up on TMZ or something.”
“That bartender was the owner, and he said you accused him of giving Ari drugs and threatened to shut the whole place down.”
I clear my throat. “He was the owner? I didn’t know that. But it doesn’t change the fact that, at the time, I thought he was dealing poppers and trying to lure him into the bathroom to videotape himself getting a blowjob from a rockstar or some shit.”
Blake is quiet for a moment. “ Dealing poppers? ”
I can’t tell if he sounds amused or just very unimpressed with me.
“I didn’t know what they were.”
I hear a little snort in the background of the call, followed by a faint muffled voice saying something about me being a “sweet summer child.”
“Is that Emmy?”
“Hi Will!” a perky voice chimes in. “And don’t worry about Julien.
He’s the owner of the bar you threatened last night, by the way.
But he doesn’t want any trouble. He really seemed like he was just making sure he didn’t need to worry about you actually having the resources to shut down his business once he realized who you were. ”
I scoff. “I assumed he knew exactly who we were, considering the way he was drooling over Ari.”
“Yeah, couldn’t be because Ari is gorgeous and smart and funny or anything like that…”
“Emmy,” Blake chides.
“Sorry boss.”
He doesn’t sound very sorry.
I know he’s right, though. That guy couldn’t take his eyes off Ari because no one ever can. It has nothing to do with fame or being rich. It’s because Ari is… Ari. He’s luminous and impossible to ignore and effortlessly magnetic. He doesn’t have to try to be sexy. He just is.
And if he does try? Lord have mercy on us all.
Last night, up on that platform, not one person in that club could look away. Everyone, no matter their gender or who they came with, was watching him with desire in their eyes.
For a while, I let myself pretend he was dancing for me. I got so lost in it I almost forgot to keep to the shadows and moved towards him like he was physically pulling me in.
Then I saw Ari take that hit, and everything snapped back into focus. We’d promised no hard drugs. Not after Jesse and everything else. But doing it in front of people like that made something hot and irrational tear through me.
Because he was doing it for him. And it was working.
The bartender couldn’t wipe up his drool fast enough when he gestured for Ari to go behind the curtain, and I almost lost it.
I followed Ari automatically, then stopped, remembering what we’d talked about earlier. If I did this, I’d have to explain myself. I started to back away, feeling sicker with every step I took. Until I heard the bartender call for someone to cover the bar. Be right back.
The fuck he would.
I saw some version of red where I rationalized what I was doing, once again, as protecting Ari. I stepped in front of him, got in his face.
“What did you give him?” I growled.
To tell the truth, I never saw him give Ari anything. He’d pulled it directly from his pocket, and I know after last night that it was something he brought from home. I think I’ve even seen the little container before, I just didn’t know what it was for.
“Relax, I didn’t give him anything!” The bartender sounded annoyed as fuck, and kept trying to look over my shoulder to where Ari had disappeared. “It was just poppers, man, fuck off.”
I didn’t know what the fuck that meant, but it didn’t matter. It was the only ammunition I had. And I maybe went a little overboard threatening to report his bar for distributing illegal drugs, that I’d get the whole damn place shut down if he so much as laid a finger on Ari.
Whoops.
“Maybe I went a little overboard.”
“You think?”
“Look, Blake, I'll apologize if that’s what you want me to do. I didn’t mean to cause trouble. I was just protecting Ari.”
“Maybe you should apologize to Ari,” Emmy calls from the background. “He sounded hot.”
The phone gets muffled, and I hear Blake’s low timbre admonishing his assistant, but can’t make out the words.
“Will, I’m going to let you go now. But for the love of a single moment of peace, do you think you could rein it in a little?”
“I’ll try,” I say, trying to force some humor into my voice even though I feel sick. The tight smile on my face is more of a grimace, and I’m sure they can probably hear that too.
Blake hangs up, and as soon as I turn around, any semblance of a smile falls from my face immediately.
Ari is standing just outside the open patio door, arms crossed tight over the crop top he was wearing last night.
His face is drawn, a cross between astonishment and horror pulling all his features down.
He doesn’t look at me directly for several long moments, but when he finally meets my eyes, I see more than the menacing glare of rage staring back at me.
I see heartbreak. And that is so much worse.
“How could you?”