I blink. “On what?”
He grins. “Your friend’s dating a movie star now?”
Laughter ripples through the group, and I force a smile. “They’re not dating.”
“Sure,” another guy says. “Still counts.”
Counts as what, exactly?I want to ask. Instead, I nod and move on.
The congratulations keep coming. Jokes. Nudges. Easy assumptions. No one asks how I feel about it. Why would they? To them, I’m adjacent. Peripheral. A footnote in someone else’s narrative.
I laugh when expected. I deflect when needed. I play my role. By the end of the day, I feel hollowed out.
Rafe video messages me once I’m home. He’s excited, breathless, telling me about the music video, about how surreal it feels, about how nervous he is to see it out in the world. Once we say goodbye, he sends a photo. It’s blurry, taken too close. It’s of him and Drew pressed shoulder to shoulder, both of them flushed and grinning like they’ve been running.
There’s a lime wedge in the corner of the frame. A shot glass. Then another. Rafe looks… bright, like he’s laughing from somewhere a little higher than usual. He’s currently in New Yorkwhere they filmed the video, and they’re in the last stages of production.
Me: The clips look incredible. I’m so proud of you. You look… right. Like you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.
The response comes quickly.
Rafe: That means everything coming from you. I wish you were here.
Heaviness settles behind my ribs. I lean back against my pillow, phone warm in my hand, the sounds of the TV fading into something distant and hollow.
Me: Soon. I can’t wait to see it properly.
There are three dots. They disappear, then come back.
Rafe: You good?
I stare at the screen longer than I should.
This would be the moment. The opening. The easy honesty we keep telling ourselves we still have. I could tell him about Kirk—about the way Rafe’s name gets twisted into something sharp and cheap in other people’s mouths. I could tell him about the laughter that follows, the silences I let stand. I could tell him how it feels to sit there and hear the man I love reduced to a joke while I stay quiet to keep the lie intact.
I could tell him how strange it is to be congratulated for nothing. For proximity. For association. For being adjacent to a life I’m not allowed to claim.
I could also tell him how small it makes me feel. How thin. How easy it would be to disappear entirely if I’m not careful.
Instead, I type:
Me: Yeah. Just tired. Practice was a grind.
The reply is almost immediate.
Rafe: As soon as I’m home, I’ll take care of you.
I close my eyes.
Me: I know you will.
And I do. I believe him completely.
The speculation doesn’t crestall at once. It builds the way pressure does—quietly, incrementally, until the air feels thinner and I can’t remember the last time I took a full breath without thinking about it.
By the middle of the week, Elliot Hale’s name is everywhere.
Not because he’s done something new—he’s always everywhere—but because now his image is threaded through Rafe’s in a way the internet can’t resist pulling apart. Photos from the music video shoot surface first. Blurry, long-lens shots that suggest intimacy without confirming it. Then clearer stills follow: Rafe laughing between takes, Elliot’s hand resting casually at the small of his back like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
