25. Gerard #2
But he did have an idea. There were thousands of ideas right there on his phone in black-and-white text. Cautionary tales. Harrowing tales. Tragic tales. He liked Toby, but he didn’t think he could risk losing everything for something he wasn’t even sure was love.
In hindsight, it was love. The worst part of traveling all over the world was that when he was not doing press or playing a show, he had a lot—a lot—of downtime to replay the tapes, set them to slow motion, and dissect what went wrong.
“Lived-in is one way to describe it.” The song seemed to speak to his present self.
If he flipped back, reread his own history, then it was his job to learn from it.
Feelings weren’t facts. Fear was what had clouded his choices then, and despite the self-proclaimed “monster” sitting in front of him currently caked in makeup, he hadn’t felt fearful at all over the idea that he could see himself falling in love with Emory Griffin.
“Are you proud of this?” Emory asked.
“I’m not done yet,” Gerard said.
“I was talking about the album.” The song had switched by then to a ballad with a lot of warbling strings.
Oh. Without stopping what he was doing, he thought about this.
Using the most natural color in the small palette, he swiped the eye shadow brush along Emory’s lids, giving them proper depth, the sort of depth this album had in comparison to the last one.
“I am,” he declared. “There are glimmers of the songwriter I want to be in this one if you listen between the production.”
“How do you mean?”
“Don’t move.” Gerard sounded a lot like Ravina when he’d sat in her chair backstage at some awards show, and she’d get him going about one of his special interests.
The talking she didn’t mind; it was the enthusiastic gesturing that got in the way of her work.
“Like this makeup I’m doing on you, songs have layers.
If you stripped away some of the more radio-friendly elements, I think the songs here would sound closer to the way I envisioned them.
I gravitate toward the acoustic, the folksy, the simple. I always have.”
Emory gave a closed-mouth sound of assent.
As he finished up with the blush, lipstick, and setting spray, it occurred to him that he didn’t care all that much what Emory looked like, which was inconvenient timing.
A person’s looks could draw you in, but they couldn’t often keep you hooked.
In most ways, Gerard was already wriggling in wait inside Emory’s tackle box.
But, well, he’d had a hypothesis, had done the experiment, and at least needed to go over his results.
They were not as expected.
Somehow, Emory looked less like a person than he did when he was completely see-through.
The foundation was gloppy, and the overdone blush and eye shadow came across clownish.
Not just that, but when Emory opened his eyes, there were no eyeballs underneath his painted lids, and when he opened his mouth, there were no teeth or tongue.
This living, breathing Halloween mask—this personified jack-o’-lantern—Gerard had inadvertently created made him scream.
“What’s wrong?” Emory asked, concerned. “Am I that ugly to you?”
“Sorry! It’s not you. It’s—I can fix this.
” He raced to get his own sunglasses and hat, but they only covered the missing eyes and the top part of Emory’s head where his hair should’ve been.
It did nothing to resolve the gaping maw of his poorly made-up mouth.
Emory was a grotesque blob of beige, brown, bronze, and pink.
No more humanlike than Jeanie’s bad drawing. “I’ve made an error.”
Emory shook his head. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve seen our makeup artist do this a million times; I just thought…” He clapped a hand over his mouth.
“You thought what?”
“I—” Gerard couldn’t help it. His bubbling laughter overflowed like smoke from a witch’s cauldron. “Just go see for yourself.”
Emory rushed to the bathroom, flipped on the light, then let out his own scream. “Gerard! What the fuck! Did you have your eyes closed when you did this? This is the creepiest sight I’ve ever seen. I’m taking this off,” he shouted. “I’m taking this off right now!”
The sound of running water filled the apartment along with the slap of hands rubbing vigorously on skin. “Why isn’t it coming off?! It’s like cement.”
Gerard yelled for him to wait, told him that he had makeup wipes. Somewhere … Gerard searched the apartment for the bag he’d carried with him that afternoon; all the while, Emory struggled and cursed.
“Found them!” Gerard rushed the blue pack to the bathroom, where Emory had gotten water all over the tiled floor.
“Here. Come on. Let me.” He instructed Emory to sit on the closed toilet lid.
Then, he gently wiped away the muck. “I’m sorry.
I don’t know why I thought this was a talent of mine. It really wasn’t that bad.”
“I think even a rodeo clown would disagree,” Emory said, but there was no bite to it.
Gerard laughed and got the faintest of smiles—which Gerard could see thanks to the last traces of lipstick—out of Emory. “You’re right. It was bad. I didn’t think about the eyes and the … teeth.”
“Don’t even dare say you’ll get colored contacts and white strips for next time.”
“No,” Gerard said, cleaning Emory’s surprisingly large ears. “No, I promise there won’t be a next time. I won’t torture you anymore with this.” And he meant it, because the realization he’d had earlier was true—he didn’t care what Emory looked like. All he knew was that he cared a lot about Emory.
“Yeah, right,” Emory said sarcastically, cheeks rising.
“At least for a few days. Cross my heart.” He rubbed the last of the foundation off Emory’s neck.
“Nobody with a heart would’ve done this.
” Judging by the bend of his sleeve, Emory was pointing up at his face, but Emory didn’t have gloves on, so Gerard couldn’t be sure.
Still, those last hints of lipstick Gerard had yet to scrub showcased a closed-mouth smile Gerard was certain Emory tried and failed to suppress.
That mouth was pale pink and pouty, wide and welcoming.
Time slowed, and he leaned forward and kissed Emory.
Clearly startled, Emory almost toppled off the toilet seat, but he clutched Gerard’s arms, never breaking their lip-lock. Gerard kept this infuriatingly intelligent and surprising invisible man upright.
As soon as Emory slipped him some invisible tongue, Gerard was a goner. He hauled Emory up to standing, wrapped an arm around his sweatshirt-clad torso, and tugged him in. Seeing Emory was a silly quest when he could hear him, feel him, taste him, know him.
Damn, he wanted to know Emory Griffin. Every little bit of him, and that was terrifying.
Emory pulled back first with a shaky breath and a light laugh. “You’ve got a little something…” An invisible finger traced the line of his mouth, which must’ve been smudged silly with desert taupe.
“So do you,” Gerard said. Emory’s “face” was nothing more than a single gash of grayish brown, so he used the wipe still balled in his fist to clean his invisible roommate up the rest of the way.
When he leaned in again, this time, even without the visual marker, his lips directly met their aim.
Bull’s-eye.