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joystick
There wasa hell of a lot of nothing between California and Utah, and it was called Nevada. But I’d known that when I chose to make the drive, rather than fly.
I needed the perfect place for my first restaurant, which I’d planned as much as I could without acting after a couple of months in Italy with my new friends, Raul and Diego, and learning from them. I was pretty sure I’d either put it in L.A. or Salt Lake, because both had their own reasons for being the perfect place for the gimmick, but I had to check the places in between, too. Just in case.
Also, I was in the mood to drive. When I was younger, I had a plan. My best friend—the first boy I fell in love with—and I were going to drive across the country. As soon as the studio admitted we were old enough to go off on our own without becoming a publicity nightmare, we’d planned to take the first of many road trips to see the world on our own terms, not on a tour docket for the TV show.
I still liked the impromptu road trips, and most of the time I convinced myself I didn’t miss Eli when I took them.
This one had an additional goal, though. I was hoping once I reached my destination, I’d run into Kandace again. Possibly on purpose. I’d never had a one night stand I couldn’t get out of my head, and she’s earned that spot. The entire trip to Italy, regardless of the fucked-up way it started, had been a blast. Once in a lifetime kind of experience, because of the way it all unfolded, but Kandace…
She was brilliant and shy and bold and smart and incredible. Sure it had only been one night, but I was hooked and wanted to know more.
There wasn’t much traffic on this stretch of road, and I was miles from anything in either direction, when I noticed a car on the other side of the freeway pull over.
Sucky place to break down. It’d be easy to ignore them. Keep driving. They probably had a phone, everyone did, and it may be something as simple as a flat tire.
You’re selfish. Self-absorbed. Why did you think they fired me?
That voice was from so many years ago, but it barked in my mind every time I thought about passing someone who looked like they needed help.
God damn it.
There was a police turn around a little further down the road, and yeah, I wasn’t supposed to use it, but who would care? I flipped a U-turn and headed back to the car that had pulled over. If they didn’t need help, I’d be on my way, and if they did, it would be a good thing I stopped. It wasn’t as though I was on a schedule.
I pulled over several yards away and backed up to get closer. As I got out of my car and approached theirs, they stepped out to greet me.
My breath caught and my brain stalled. Holy shit. “Elijah?” It had been more than a decade, but I knew those eyes. The messy dark hair and the penetrating gaze. The scowl.
“Austin.” His voice was flat.
It had been years since anyone but bankers and my mother called me that. “Hi. And it’s Joystick now.”
“I’m not calling you that. Why would you call yourself that?”
A far better response than him spitting in my face. “I don’t want people remembering Donovan.” The TV show we’d grown up on together. The series that made me a household name and destroyed me for any future chance of being myself if I clung to the character.
“That makes two of us.” Eli’s voice was flat.
Speaking of… “Flat tire?” I nodded at his car. My mind was starting to catch up. To figure out I was talking tohim. He’d refused my calls for years, and I finally gave up. He blamed me, and I understood why, though it wasn’t my fault.
When he and I gave our virginity to each other, word had gotten out. Of course, because nothing was quiet in Hollywood. But the showrunners were determined that their shining star, the teenager millions of boys wanted to be and just as many girls wanted to fuck—me—wouldn’t hit public gossip pages as some sort of queer boy.
They told me Eli left. They told him he was a danger to my career and fired him. I never considered the possibility I’d been lied to until I ran into him a few years later and he let me have an earful.
“Out of gas,” Eli said.
A lot of things had felt like fate over the last few months. Random, awkward things I couldn’t possibly have planned on my own. This had to be one of them. Finally, a chance to talk to him again. To actually apologize. There’s no way he was holding a grudge still, fifteen years later. “I’ll give you a lift to the closest town, to grab some.”
He didn’t answer. We were in the middle of nowhere, his car was on empty, and he was fucking hesitating.
I hated that we’d become this. I looked at him and I couldn’t help but see my former best friend. My first lover.
Eli’s nostrils flared, and he nodded. “Sure. A lift would be nice.”
I motioned to the car. “Hop on in.”
