Grey took a breath. “Well, we—”
“Does it matter if they’re more?” Dae cut in vehemently, surprising me.
Martin rounded on him. “Of course it fucking matters. Grey is a lead singer in a band that we are trying to launch. In case you were unaware, the best way to launch a pop band with a bunch of twenty-something guys in it is to market it in a way that deludes teenage girls into thinking they have a shot with the members. Grey being outed with another guy ruins your chances before they even start.”
Everyone sat there for a moment. I couldn’t tell what the others were thinking, but I was too busy picking apart the ways Martin had been an asshole to worry about them. All symptoms of my hangover vanished as cold flowed down my spine. Sure, Martin might be correct about the marketing side of things—I knew fuck all about that—but the band, and more importantly Grey, were actualpeoplein a relationship. Not products to be sculpted to fit whateverplanMartin had for them. I opened my mouth to tell Martin all the ways he could get stuffed when Grey spoke.
“What do you suggest, then?”
His voice was low, defeated, and that surprised me.Isn’t he just as pissed off as I am? Isn’t he going to fight Martin’s stupid opinions?
“I don’t suppose I can convince you two to never see each other again,” Martin mused, and I gave a short, derisive laugh.He rolled his eyes. “So, you’ll just have to keep this under wraps during our launch. A picture of you holding hands is one thing. It’ll disappear, and if we’re asked about it later, we’ll have a story ready about you comforting Ethan over his grandmother’s death or something.”
“Well, that’s awful,” Dae said.
“It doesn’t matter. We need to focus on the band. So cut the PDA. That’s all I’m asking. I don’t care what you do when the cameras aren’t around—but you better make sure there are no cameras. Got it?”
“And if we don’tcomplywith your demands?” I asked, hoping he understood just how much anger was coursing through me.
“Simple. I stop representing Dreamscape,” Martin said. “I won’t help those who refuse to help themselves.” The finality of his tone made it clear there was no room for discussion.
I chewed my bottom lip to keep from cursing the man out.
“Okay,” Grey said. “If that’s what it takes, we’ll keep things discreet.”
Now I had a new person I was fighting the urge to swear at.How is no one as indignant as I am?It might have been because I was so new to thinking of myself as anything other than straight, but the amount of casual prejudice I’d witnessed in this conversation was staggering. And what made it more frustrating was the fact that, other than immediately rolling over, Grey had been completely silent.Daehad pushed back more, and it wasn’t even his relationship Martin considered a problem.
Martin turned his attention to me. “I’d like to hear that from both of you.”
Am I imagining it, or does he look smug?One thing was for sure, his face was extremely punchable in that moment.
I grimaced. “Yeah, sure, whatever.” I glared at Martin defiantly. He wasn’t the only one who could use the facial expression.
My comment—and possibly my face—clearly pissed Martin off, but he had the wherewithal not to respond. Instead, he collected his tablet along with a few papers scattered across his end of the table and stuffed them in his bag. “I’ll see you at rehearsal tonight.” He paused to point at Grey. “No more slipups.” Then he left, seeming to suck the air out of the room when he did.
I groaned and rested my head on the table, depleted of energy, with no authority to challenge anything. Grey’s hand squeezed my arm. I assumed he was trying to comfort me, but I pulled it away.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I gave him a sidelong look. Honestly, I wasn’t thrilled with him. He hadn’t stood up for me—or us, for that matter—but then, he’d been just as blindsided by all of this as I had. I could cut him some slack.After all, would the results have been any different if hehadput up a fight?Probably not in any positive way. Likely, Dreamscape would’ve lost a manager and been back to square one, and who knew how that would affect them finding representation going forward. No, there wasn’t much of an option. We had to toe the line.
“It’s just bullshit,” I said.
He nodded. “My thoughts exactly.”
The next few weeks were,in fact, bullshit. Our schedules finally clicked, and we could see each other more than before, but it somehow felt worse. We couldn’t spend time together that wasclose to what one would call “quality time.” Instead of dinners and dates alone, we were always accompanied by at least one band member in public. To make matters worse, Martin had made it clear after my next attempt to join the band in the studio that I wasnotwelcome—so I stopped going despite everyone insisting that I should just ignore him. In public, Grey and I played the perfect part of just friends until we were behind closed doors, and those moments were few and far between. Somehow, us seeing each other managed to make me feel more isolated—like a starving person sitting in front of a feast they couldn’t touch.
Even with Grey in Martin-approved settings, I was constantly on edge, waiting for something to happen that would ruin everything. I overanalyzed every touch or glance Grey and I shared, worried that each one would last for a fraction of a second too long and then we would be all over social media again.
“It sounds like you’re experiencing something referred to as ‘the closet,’” Kellan said one evening when I complained to my roommate.
I lay upside down on the couch, my legs over the back and my head dangling near the floor—a good physical representation of what my life had become.
“I’m not in the closet,” I said instinctively. “I was never in it. Unless you count when I didn’t know I liked guys. But as soon as I figured that out, I told anyone who mattered.”
“Yeah, but now you can’t show that you’re into guys in public,” Josh said. “Say hello to the closet.”
“How do people stay sane living like this?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.
