Prologue
The Live Show
Something virtually unprecedented wasoccurring:Theater 9, the world-famous stage that hosted the popular live late-night comedy show,Friday Comedy Live, was completely silent. The live audience stared, frozen in their seats, at the stage, unsure if their eyes had just collectively deceived them.
Because, if they weren’t experiencing some form of mass hallucination, that meant they had just seen the show’s musical guest, world-famous pop star Joel Beckett, punch the celebrity host, Quentin Hartley, in the face.
At least, that’s what it looked like.
Quentin, who was an attractive twenty-five-year-old with thick brown hair and a roguish smile, and who had charmed the audience all night with his comedic timing in the sketches, stood stock-still on the stage, his hands clamped to his face. Blood seeped through his fingers.
Beside him was Joel Beckett, also attractive, also twenty-five, with sandy hair and startling green eyes. His arm was still raised, frozen, and his bright eyes were wide, shocked.
No one in the audience knew what they were supposed to do. Was this a part of the show? they all wanted to ask their neighbors. They thought the sketches were done. Quentin and Joel had been performing their final monologues when it happened.
Surely it was fake!
Ithadto be fake, because there was no way thatFriday Comedy Livehad just broadcast an act of physical violence to 5.1 million viewers.
Oh boy,some of the audience members thought,the network isnotgoing to be happy.
Backstage, producers and production assistants were frantically trying to figure out what had just happened. Should they cut the broadcast? Should they call for a medic? Was Quentin’s nose broken?
If it was…surely he could handle it, right? After all, hewasa hockey player. It was a violent sport.
Everyone was waiting for someone else to act first. Quentin stood there, blinking, more blood starting to run through his fingers.
Joel hadn’t yet lowered his arm, though it was starting to shake.
Backstage, a production manager made the call to cut to a commercial break early.
And onstage, Joel finally broke the silence. The singer-songwriter’s famous lips, which had sung so many eloquent songs into countless microphones, parted, and he said, “Oh, fucking shit.”
Part 1
Chapter 1
Quentin
Quentin Hartley tried to avoid scandals as muchas possible. He was a popular hockey player for the Boston Minutemen, one of the most popular players in the league, which was why he had been brought in to hostFCL, something that had never happened for a hockey player before. They’d had other celebrity athletes, but never a hockey player. Most celebrity hosts were actors, musicians, models, influencers, and the occasional politician. He’d only been invited onto the show because he’d recently crossed the threshold from professional athlete to celebrity athlete when he went viral on social media last year. His fans liked the videos he had posted with one of his teammates, Henri Bellancourt, of them doing trendy dances while in their hockey gear. He’d gone viral and was an instant Internet celebrity. He hadn’t asked for it, hadn’t wanted it, but couldn’t change it. Fame like that invited scrutiny, and that was the last thing he wanted. Quentin wanted to avoid any scandal, any rumor, and any chance for people to dig up dirt in his life. There wasn’t any dirt to find, but there were secrets, and he wanted those secrets to stay hidden.
Quentin Hartley was gay. Or, at least, he was pretty sure he was. He’d not had many sexual experiences in his life with people of any gender, but he’d enjoyed his experiences with other men much more and had only ever found himself romantically attracted to other men.
He had had a short-lived relationship with one of his teammates, Drew Moreau. They were both closeted, and they had had a sexual relationship for a while, which had ended more than a year ago, when Drew had suggested that maybe they could explore a deeper relationship, one that involved emotional and romantic connection, not just physical. The suggestion had scared Quentin, and he had ended things. If he had taken more time to think about it in the moment, he might have chosen differently. He had liked Drew, a fact that scared him, and which he didn’t want to acknowledge as the truth.
Drew had left Boston for the summer, spending the next few months in a small town in northern Michigan, where he had met someone and fallen in love. Quentin hadn’t known that, and when Drew came back to Boston, Quentin had told him that he’d spent a lot of time thinking and was willing to give a relationship a shot. He hadn’t known yet how he identified, but he had known that the feelings he’d had for Drew had been real and important. Drew had told him about Gabriel, the man he’d met and fallen in love with, and Quentin realized it was too late for him. Soon, Drew had been traded from Boston to Chicago.
Quentin’s sexuality was his biggest secret. He didn’t want to come out because he hadn’t yet figured out his identity, and that was a personal thing, and he didn’t want to have to figure it out publicly. He didn’t want the public to think he owed them his sexuality, and he feared the judgment he might face from his fans if he came out. Hockey had become more progressive recently, as had all sports, but there was still a deep history of old thinking, conservatism, and downright homophobia baked into the sport and its locker room culture that made Quentin wary.
So, he kept his head down as much as possible and tried not to invite any scrutiny into his life.
After last night, onFriday Comedy Live,someone might as well have dropped a bomb in the carefully constructed narrative that was his public life. Scandal had reared its offensively ugly head, and now Quentin would have to deal with it.
He sat in a large, air-conditioned conference room on the fortieth floor of 15 Madison Ave, a massive Art Deco skyscraper near Madison Square Gardens in Manhattan. The building belonged to Steelmont Media, a mass media conglomerate that ownedUBC, United Broadcast Channel, which producedFriday Comedy Live.
Also in the room were Quentin’s lawyers, who’d come up from Boston that morning, and who were on the Minutemen’s payroll. There were two of them: Chad Jankowski and Jason Caselli. They were good lawyers, and they looked very stern.
Joel Beckett, the world-famous pop star who’d hostedFriday Comedy Livewith Quentin yesterday, and who’d (accidentally) punched him in the face during their closing monologues, sat across from Quentin, looking down at the table. He was flanked by his PR manager, a woman named Shivonne Sharpe, on one side, and two lawyers in dark suits on the other side. One was a Los Angeles lawyer, with a bad tan and a gaudy suit, and the other was a more professional-looking New York-type guy.
