None of his plans involved his doorbell ringing at nine in the morning.
He immediately stopped kissing Ilya and shot him a quizzical look. “Did you order more dog toys?”
“No.”
Anya was barking, and then the doorbell rang a second time. Shane sighed and rolled off of Ilya. “I’d better see who it is.”
He pulled on some pajama pants and a T-shirt and jogged downstairs, Anya at his heels. He was surprised to find Hayden when he opened to door.
“Hi?” Shane said. Then he noticed how ashen Hayden’s face looked. “What happened? Is everyone all right? Come in.”
Shane carried Anya into the living room, and Hayden followed close behind. Ilya was standing at the top of the stairs, wearing only sweatpants. “Hayden?” he said.
“Sorry to show up like this, but um...can we sit, maybe?”
Shane sat immediately on the couch. “What’s going on?”
A moment later, Ilya sat beside him. Hayden sat in an armchair opposite.
“Have you guys been online at all today?” Hayden asked. “I’m guessing not.”
“No,” Shane said. “Why?”
Hayden blew out a breath and scratched the back of his neck. “Okay. So, um, you know how I did that FanMail video yesterday?”
“Yes,” Shane said impatiently. This was sounding less important by the second.
“The thing is. I was in a room that I kind of use as, like, a trophy room. Nice room. Big windows, lots of shelves, mirrors. Really looks good in the videos.”
“Very interesting,” Ilya said flatly.
“So the windows look out to the side of the house with the trees. And I wasn’t standing in front of the windows, because that always looks a little weird to be backlit like that...”
“Hayden,” Ilya said with a hint of warning. “What happened?”
“I was standing next to the trophy wall with the big mirror and the angle was, like, you could see out the window, in the mirror. I didn’t notice when I was filming, or, um, after I sent the video. But in the mirror you can see...”
Shane’s stomach plummeted. “What can you see?” he asked faintly, already knowing the answer.
Hayden scrubbed his face with one hand. “You guys. Kissing. Like,reallykissing. A lot.”
Shane swallowed with difficulty. “Is it obvious? That it’s us?”
Hayden nodded. “Very.”
Fuck.Fuck.There had to be a way to fix this. “You only sent this video to one person, right?”
“Yep,” Hayden said. “And that one person posted it on Twitter.”
Shane couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t swallow. He was going to die from choking on his own saliva.
“I’m so sorry, Shane,” Hayden said. “I don’t really watch the videos before I send them. I never would have sent it if I saw, but I really fucked up.”
Shane couldn’t react. He didn’t knowhowto react. Eleven years of keeping this a secret andthiswas how they got discovered. A fucking FanMail video.
Jesus, was Ilya going to punch Hayden? Ilya was being oddly silent, but there was no way he wasn’t furious. Shane wanted to pre-emptively defend his friend, but he couldn’t. He was choking on rage and fear and humiliation, and trying to remember how to swallow.
They’d been so close to telling the world on their own terms. A few months.Fuck.
