Chapter 32
Patrick had seen his fair share of soulless conference hotels doing press tours and junkets over the years, but the venue for this year’s LGBTQIA VIP Awards, a Ramada near the airport, was one of the sadder contenders.
“I’m still not entirely sure what I’m doing here,” he said, trailing Simone into the ballroom, a vast white space that had been spruced up with a handful of potted plants and rainbow banners. “Isn’t this just going to start even more rumors?”
“Think about it,” said Simone. “Would a guy who’s in the closet attend such a high-profile LGBTQ+ event? No, of course he wouldn’t, it would draw way too much attention. But a straight guy who’s comfortable with his sexuality and believes all people deserve love and respect?” She patted him on the back. “That guy buys a plate.”
“So I can’t walk down the street with another man,” Patrick said slowly, trying to follow Simone’s logic, “but I can attend a queer awards ceremony?”
“We’re playing 4D chess here,” Simone told him. “Here! This is our table.”
Simone waved a hand and took a glass of champagne from a passing tray while Patrick poured them each a glass of water from the bottles on the table.
“I usually wouldn’t dream of putting you in the same room as this many Netflix-tier celebrities,” she said, disdainfully side-eyeing the table next to them. “But you’ve been so down lately, I thought it would do you good to get out of the house. Be around the community.”
“That’s…sweet,” said Patrick. He understood that Simone meant well. And even if nobody else here knew the real him, being in the room was enough to make him feel just a little less isolated. He took a sip of water and grabbed a program from the table.
“Wait a minute.” He frowned. “It says here I’m up for an award.”
“Hmm?” His manager’s lack of a reaction was, in itself, a reaction.
“Simone. What did you do.”
“I may have put you forward for something.”
“Simone.” Patrick prodded the piece of paper in front of him. “You have nominated me for Ally of the Year.”
“And?”
“And…I didn’t do anything!”
“You’re hot, and you haven’t tweeted that you hate gay people.” Simone shrugged. “Apparently that’s enough.”
“Simone, this is so fucked up!” He leaned in to whisper in her ear: “I can’t win an award for being a gay ally when I’m actually gay but not doing anything to make life better for other gay people. It’s perverse.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, you probably won’t win anyway,” Simone replied. She took a tiny sip of champagne. Patrick didn’t see a single smudge of lipstick on the rim of her glass.
“I won’t?”
“Unfortunately, you have some rather stiff competition,” she said, pointing to the name below his on the program. It was a singer whose second album had recently been released, the lead single of which had been a ballad accompanied by a music video featuring couples of all gender configurations embracing on a beach. His fan base, comprised largely of the same young women whom Patrick’s team had been courting, were just this side of feral.
“I swear that guy can’t stand on a stage longer than five seconds without draping himself in a Pride flag,” Simone continued. “His manager is Adrienne Schmidt. She’s a genius. And you should see her legs, Patrick.”
“I need a drink. Excuse me.”
“Nothing with bubbles,” said Simone. “That photoshoot with Esquire tomorrow, remember? You’ll bloat.”
“I…Fine.” Patrick left the table, fists clenched at his side. Simone was, he reminded himself, in many ways, one of the best things to ever happen to him. She had seen his potential, taken his career to an entirely new level. They enjoyed a close working relationship, and he sometimes forgot that it was a relationship predicated on her feeling free to comment on any aspect of his life, including his body. As if there weren’t enough people doing that already.
It was a strange thing, to know without a doubt that you were handsome, because the world told you so. On the one hand, Patrick’s looks were a matter of genetics that he could neither change nor take credit for. On the other, his appearance was a part of his livelihood. The greater the scrutiny upon him from all angles, the more he felt like an insect being watched through a magnifying glass until it inevitably burst into flames. Every pimple that broke out on his trademark jaw, every starchy carb he ate, every unflattering photo angle captured by an asshole paparazzo, took on inordinate significance in his mind, the tiniest detail a potential thread that could unravel his entire image.
There had been a story that did the rounds a year or so ago, during the press tour for the first Kismet movie. Patrick had been wearing a fitted off-white T-shirt, doing interviews on a voluminous sofa that seemed to sink a little more each time he moved, enveloping him until he was practically horizontal. The footage, while not terrible, did him no favors, either. And nor did the headlines, which speculated that his weight was spiraling out of control, as if a few rumples and a visible tummy were the end of the world.
“I wasn’t fat,” Patrick had told Will while recounting the story. “I was hydrated!”
The thought of Will made him want to pick up the phone. Or, failing that, a bottle of vodka. Maybe a cheeseburger. He settled for a tequila on the rocks at the bar and lingered there for a moment, reluctant to return to Simone.
“Don’t you just hate these things?” The voice next to him was gravelly and familiar. It was the voice of a bodyguard who had taken a bullet for the first female president of the United States after falling in love with her in the romantic action drama These United Fates. A grizzled former marine in the Netflix movie Attrition. An American everyman fighting to keep his family safe during an alien invasion in Ultra-Terrestrial. All projects Patrick had auditioned for and for which he had been ultimately deemed too “boyish.”
Reece Mackenzie. If Patrick were the sort of person inclined to make vision boards, Reece Mackenzie would be at the very center. He’d used that career trajectory as a blueprint for his own, and now Reece Mackenzie stood just feet away from him sipping a Modelo in this place where corporate activism went to die. Patrick had been in the same room as him on a few previous occasions—a Vanity Fair party and a SAG lunch—but had never gotten close enough to take in just how handsome he was in the flesh: russet hair that had been combed back but that was now springing down in a fetching swoop over thick eyebrows; slightly unkempt stubble flecked with white; that trademark scar on his chin that lent verisimilitude to his many action roles.
“Um…Hi.” Patrick laughed self-consciously. “Wow. It’s been a while since I got starstruck.”
Reece frowned and smiled at the same time and shook his head. “Way I see it,” Reece said, “we’re all just clowns in the same circus.”
“Circus is damn right,” said Patrick.
“To the clown show,” said Reece, holding up his beer. Patrick raised his glass, and they both drank in silence.
“There you are!” A beautiful woman with beachy mermaid waves in a tiny blue dress under a blazer approached them both. Patrick had loved her on her season of The Bachelor and had thought that she should have gone further in the competition (a sentiment he had expressed to precisely nobody), but clearly Cupid had had other plans: She’d met Reece shortly after the reunion aired, and the two had gotten hitched the following summer.
“Has he been complaining that he had to come?” Brianna Schlesinger, now Brianna Mackenzie, said to Patrick. “He always does this! Says yes to the invitation, then spends the whole evening sulking by the bar or the coat check. I swear, he’s this close to taking up smoking just so he has an excuse to go loiter outside.”
“Not at all,” said Patrick. “Although I have to say, I didn’t expect to see you both here.” An action star and reality dating show sweetheart power couple tended to appeal, Patrick had learned, to a very large segment of the population—just not necessarily one that cared much for queer people.
“LGBTQ+ issues are very close to our hearts,” said Brianna, earnestly sounding out the acronym in a staccato, like a kid at a spelling bee.
“Oh?”
“I have a cousin who’s bi,” she said, by way of explanation. “Or is it pan? I forget. Anyway. We’re huge allies, aren’t we, baby?”
“Huge,” said Reece, and Patrick couldn’t tell if his smirk was one of amusement or derision.
“Well, it’s so nice to meet you both,” he said. “Would you please excuse me?”
Patrick swiftly abandoned the Mackenzies at the bar as the opening speeches began. Rather than returning to his table, he opted to take a lap of the room, walking with intention and pausing only occasionally to take a thoughtful sip of his tequila, doing his best to look like a man who was on his way somewhere, or otherwise preoccupied and not to be approached or interrupted.
He passed the majority of the ceremony this way, circling the venue with more pit stops at the bar. Drinking in America, he decided, was nowhere near as fun as drinking in England. The quality of the booze at this event was undeniably superior, but the resulting feeling was one of woozy lightheadedness, with none of the giddy pleasure he so missed.
When a brand ambassador for a Palm Springs luxury resort took to the stage to talk about the importance of vocal allies in the fight for queer rights, Patrick ducked into a semiprivate bathroom. He thought for a moment that he might throw up, but after he leaned against the sink and splashed water on his face, the worst of the fog passed. What was he doing here? He had no right, had done nothing to deserve being welcomed like this. His people deserved better heroes.
He didn’t hear the door to the bathroom open and was only made aware that there was someone else in here by the sound of the lock being turned. He looked up. In the mirror, Reece Mackenzie was approaching him.
“Hi,” said Patrick. “I should get be getting ba—”
Reece grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around, and for one wild instant Patrick thought he was going to hit him, that Reece had somehow figured out what he really was and it had made him sick with anger. Patrick’s fingers were curling into a fist when Reece pulled him forward and kissed him forcefully, almost violently, his tongue hungrily prying apart Patrick’s lips.
Patrick did not resist, or shove him away. He simply marveled at what was happening, and it was like reliving his first excruciatingly nerve-racking visit to a gay bar, when a delicious, terrifying possibility finally entered his head for the first time: Am I not the only one?
And then he began to kiss Reece back, bringing one hand up to caress his rugged jaw, using his other to pull him closer. The longer the kiss went on, the more they grabbed at each other, desire fueling desire. You never really knew how hungry you were until your first bite.
Finally Reece drew away, just long enough to guide Patrick by the hand into the nearest stall and shut the door behind them.
“I’ve wanted to do this ever since I first saw you at that Vanity Fair party,” he said.
If Patrick’s face hadn’t been flushed already, it would be now.
“You’re kidding,” he said. “But you’re…you.”
“Shut up,” Reece leered, and kissed him again. Reece’s breath was hot in his mouth, slightly sour from the beer, and Patrick didn’t realize the pants of his suit had been unzipped until he felt Reece’s hand sliding inside his briefs.
“Fuck, you’re big,” Reece breathed. “I knew you would be.”
Reece shoved him back against the wall, cupping his face firmly with both hands. He kissed him even harder, forcing his mouth open with his fingers. It was rough, needful, and Patrick recognized that fervor. Had felt it in a hotel room in Birmingham when he signed a piece of paper finally allowing him to crack open the door of his own cage.
Reece understood him. Reece was him. Maybe—
Metal clanged against Patrick’s teeth, an unpleasant jolt.
“What—” he began, at the same time that Reece said: “Sorry, I usually take it off—”
Oh. Of course. Reece was wearing a wedding ring.
“One sec,” said Reece, pulling at the platinum band on his finger.
“No, hold on,” said Patrick. What had felt outrageously hot just seconds ago now struck him as…What was the word for hooking up with a married man in a bathroom stall while his wife was in the next room? He imagined Will would call it something like “clapped” or “minging.” Never mind the word for the plummeting sensation Patrick felt right now.
“Brianna,” he said. “She’s next door.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Reece, closing in again.
“No,” said Patrick, reaching down to pull up his pants. “Your wife is next door, I’m not OK with that.”
“Fine,” said Reece. “Let’s get a room. We’re in a hotel.”
He was willfully missing the point, Patrick thought, and it suddenly made him a lot less attractive.
“What would your wife say,” he asked Reece, “if she knew about this?”
Reece shrugged. “Probably that she’ll take the car and expect me home in an Uber later.”
“What?”
“Well, I can hardly ask her to take the cab, can I?”
“You mean…she knows?”
Reece looked at Patrick like he was brand-new. “I love Brianna, she’s my partner, but…well, she’s a business partner. Our brands work well together, we respect each other, and we’ve built pretty great lives and careers as a team.” He frowned. “I thought you got that. Simone said—”
“Hold up.” Patrick felt like a glass of ice-cold water had just been thrown in his face. “Simone said? Simone said what?”
“That you’d be open to something…” said Reece. “Discreet, mutually beneficial.” His fingers began to inch along the waistline of Patrick’s pants again. Patrick squirmed away, opening the stall door.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “There has been a pretty major misunderstanding.”
“Oh. Oh.” Reece’s eyes widened in alarm. “I…shit…”
Again, so like looking in the mirror. The rage Patrick felt building toward Simone was tempered by a deep sadness.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone.”
He tucked his shirt in, took a deep breath, and unlocked the door to the bathroom, heading out into the ballroom just in time to hear the silver-haired exec onstage reach the climax of his address.
“Nothing says ‘Gay rights!’ like doing poppers with a drag queen,” he laughed. “Which is why I am thrilled to announce that this year’s LGBTQIA VIP Ally of the Year, in association with Hulu and Absolut Vodka, is Captain Kismet himself, Patrick Lake!”