WILL
We’re back in New York and in the studio, doing my favorite thing—improvising. It starts from nothing. Jesse is easily distracted today, his eyes constantly flicking up to the glass, to where Luc is sitting with Blake and the studio engineer. We’ve just finished recording one of the songs we’ve been working on during the tour, and the room is mostly quiet except for some shuffling around.
Jesse bends over his notebook and jots something down, humming a little tune that crawls into my brain like the steam from a cartoon pie.
“What’s that?” Naz asks.
Jesse sings a short line, nothing solid, but I feel that excited tingle in the back of my brain. My fingers immediately start moving across the strings of my guitar. The rest builds from there, Ari joining in, followed by Naz, until we have a good tune and rhythm going. Jesse and Ari go back and forth with lyrics, Ari rushing excitedly to round out the chorus. It all just falls together.
Everyone is too deep into the process to notice the way Ari looks directly at me when he sings, “You make me feel alive,” but I can’t look away. The words and their meaning awaken every nerve in my body, making me tingle all over as though he’s touched me with more than just his eyes and his words.
The song is fire, and we can all feel it. There’s an energy that feels right, an awareness that we have something good here. It’s a bit like when we first worked on the song Jesse wrote that shot us into superstardom,Remember My Name. That day in the studio, it felt big. There was something about it, something behind it, that made it special.
Turns out, those lyrics were written with one person in mind, and what made the song special was the connection between Jesse and Luc. Jesse had fallen in love at first sight or some shit.
Bending forward to share Ari’s microphone, filling out the backing harmonies for this new song, it occurs to me that this is both different and the same. I’ve always loved him, but it’s different now.
I think maybe this song marks the moment I realize that I’m in love with Ari Silvan. I’ve always loved him, and obviously things have been a bit intense lately. We’ve been getting into entirely new territory with our relationship. But I think this moment, the words he’s writing and singing while looking me so deeply in the eyes, have sparked a new realization.
Keep watching me like you do,
You make me feel alive.
It’s something more than ever before,
I can see it in your eyes.
By the time we’re done laying down all the layers of the track, we’re all buzzing. Jesse has been eyeing Luc like a starving man at a buffet, and I’m worried that Ari and I might be giving off too-obvious vibes ourselves. I’ve resorted to tying my flannel around my waist to hide just how much this is affecting me.
I’m so ready to get out of here. I want nothing more than to get back to the hotel suite and feign exhaustion so we can spend the rest of the night in bed together.
But on the way out of the studio, things get dicey.
We’re surrounded by a mob of press unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. We almost always have some cameras following us, and if they get wind of us recording, there’s almost a guarantee they’ll be waiting outside the door to ask about hints for our new album. It’s always the same kind of questions about the vibe of the new album, or whether we feel like we’ve got any bangers coming up, or if we’ll be collaborating with any other artists. We usually take a few minutes to answer what we can and maybe tease about what we have coming up, and the interactions are almost always pleasant.
But this is different. None of these reporters and paparazzi are familiar, and they’re aggressive. We’re jostled and pushed as they clamber to get close to us—to Jesse in particular. They’re getting in our faces and yelling personal questions rather than anything about our time in the studio. We’re boxed in and forced to push through the crowd. I keep one hand on Naz’s shoulder and another firmly pulling Ari into my side. It takes our entire security team to surround us and forge a paththrough the chaos. Even once we’re finally in the car, they don’t stop. The crowd surrounds the car, beating on the roof and windows, shouting our names and other things I can’t make out. Despite knowing they can’t see through the tinted windows, I let go of Ari’s hand. He looks back at me with scared blue eyes.
“I didn’t?—”
“Shh, I know,” he whispers back, gesturing for me to shut up. He doesn’t think it’s in our best interest to come clean about me tipping off paparazzi back in Dallas, but at least he doesn’t think that I had anything to do with this mess.
Cory jerks the SUV forward and lays on the horn to try to force the horde to make room for the vehicle to move. I vaguely make out the sound of a police vehicle and a voice over an intercom, warning the crowd to stand back, helping Eric, Zane, and Scott clear enough space for us to pull out into the busy New York traffic.
It’s almost as scary as the hotel mob I caused, but then my heart catches in my throat when I notice Jesse shuffling nervously.
“Where is he, Cory?” Jesse barks, and it’s only now that I realize Luc isn’t in the car with us. He left before us with Cory to get the car, but he’s not here. Did Cory send him back a different way to avoid attention? When did he have time for that?
Jesse looks like he’s about to lose his shit, edging on a full-out panic attack. His breaths are too short and too fast, and he looks pale and sweaty. He gags as Naz places a hand on his chest and one on his back. I’m about to wrap him in a bear hug when he snaps at Cory again. Finally, Cory calls out that it’s clear, and a figure pops up out of nowhere behind us.
“I’m here, baby, I’m here,” Luc says in a low, soothing tone. I get a full presentation of just how firm the big football player’s muscles are as he basically crawls over all of us to wedge himself on the other size of Naz, pulling Jesse into his arms. His rock-hard ass actually hits me in the cheek as he passes. Ari moves to the back seat, and I consider joining him to make more room for Luc’s larger frame, but I’m still worried about being too obvious, even in a situation like this.
Jesse is still struggling to come down from his panic when Blake calls, and Cory puts him on speaker. True to form, he makes sure we’re all okay before he gets down to business. He thinks the safest bet is for Luc to head home immediately and be seen in public far away from where we are. There’s already been too much speculation about whether they know each other or could be friends, and the press is getting rabid, especially the conservative press that would love nothing more than to tear down an American football hero and say it’s Jesse’s fault for turning him gay or defiling him or something stupid like that. I feel terrible for Luc, who seems like a genuinely good guy. He’s terrified of becoming a headline, which is the only reason he hasn’t come out publicly. I worry that today is going to freak him out, and that it will hurt Jesse enough to cause him to make bad decisions, or worse.
I don’t disagree with Blake, but something is nagging at me.
I wasn’t the only one to notice that aggressive crowd of paparazzi was far from the usual people. None of them were familiar, and nothing about that interaction felt normal. It felt like they were purposefully trying to provoke us, which I voiced during the conversation with Blake, but what I can’t figure out is why.
I know that we pissed off some people with our charity protest concert, and how vocal we’ve been since then. Hell, even my comment to the press after the concert in Seattle made headlines, especially because of the reactions it got from not just the talk radio haters, but politicians and even the president. They were big mad, which I’ve admittedly gotten a lot of joy from, but are a couple of comments from celebrities really enough for them to retaliate by invading our personal lives? What exactly does hiring a bunch of agitators accomplish that could ultimately discredit us? Surely they don’t think that exposing Jesse’s relationship could hurt us that much.
