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Thankfully, my apartment was easy to maintain. Not that I really maintained it. I had a house cleaning service and grocery delivery once a week. No pets, no plants. It was more like a hotel than a home. Lock the door and leave.
The condo was situated in the heart of the District in downtown Nashville and it was never quiet, not like Forest Hills, where Brodie lived.
When I first moved here, I preferred the noise. Living alone felt lonely enough. At least when I looked out my window or went for a walk, there were people everywhere—talking, walking, and doing their errands during the day. Drinking, laughing, and partying at night. No matter the time of day, it was an endless loop of activity.
Now, though, the endless noise outside was irritating, and the haunting stillness inside unnerving.
It was the events of the past week finally hitting me.
Did facing my sexuality mean that everything else in my life was fair game?
The writer in me yearned for a space to call my own and something that would inspire my work. Maybe the apartment had in the beginning, back when I wrote angrier, edgier stuff. But not lately. And I wondered why I continued to stay here if the place didn’t serve me anymore.
I’d never had people over. Not family, not friends. Well, maybe a few times, but I could count them on one hand. Most of my friends were people I worked with. When we did socialize, it was usually at a bar or a club.
And I was either at the office, in the studio, or at one of the band’s homes. I came back to my apartment to sleep and shower, and that was it.
There were no memories attached to it.
Unlike Brodie’s house. I’d been there many times. But he’d never been to my place.
That made me wonder, had that been me acting professionally, or did I do it to keep him at a distance?
Instead of sitting around asking questions I didn’t have answers to, I got my ass up off the couch.
The apartment was seven hundred square feet, small by most standards, but enough space for one person. My idea of decorating was to install my prized guitars on display throughout the living room. And photos of the bands I’d worked with and places I’d traveled to, pics of my family back in Montreal, and, of course, photos of Wayward Lane.
As I walked through the space, I realized just how many photos of the band—and Brodie in particular—lined the walls of my living room.
And my hallway.
And my bedroom.
There, on the wall directly across from my bed, sat a massive picture taken from Wayward Lane’s first international tour.
The stunning black and white photo was focused on Brodie at center stage, wearing only his kilt, his body drenched in sweat as he kneeled before the audience.
Brodie was kneeling before me.
Had I been jerking off to him all this time?
Holy shit, I was like a teenager with a poster of my celebrity crush. He’d tease me to no end if he were here right now.
How could I have been so dense about my interactions with him for so long?
As if we had a psychic connection, my phone pinged.
Brodie: I miss you already. I can’t wait until tomorrow.
Instead of replying to him, I took a photo of his photo and sent it to him with the caption “my place.”
Brodie: You’ve got a life-size picture of me in your condo? OMG that’s hot!
It’s not the only one.
Then I video-called him.
“If there was an award for being totally oblivious, I would win it,” I said when his gorgeous face popped up on screen.
