Well, if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.
“I hate to inform you, darling, but you are not exactly the most well-adjusted individual. You’re a narcissist through and through. Even now, you care more about your face than the fact that a man is dead. A man that you, yourself killed.”
“I’m not a narcissist,” he proclaims.
“Aren’t you? The reason you enjoyed blowing the Pirates’ batting lineup was because you liked the attention—good, bad, humiliating—you don’t care. You’re addicted to the praise. And not only mine but your friends and your fans, even strangers in the street. If there is truly a monster in the room, it’s your insatiable ego. You’ve never once asked me how my day was or how I’m feeling unless it relates back to you, because deep down, Adam, you don’t really care. Nor do you care all that much about your moral character, only the way in which people perceive you.”
“That’s not true,” he protests, but I think some part of him must agree with me.
“You once told me you’d rather be beautiful with terrible morals than good and plain.”
“You can’t hold that against me,” he snaps.
“When I found you in the pool house, you seemed far less concerned about Elliot than you were about people finding out what you’d done. That’s why you let me take the blame, and that’s why you let me ruin your face, because you didn’t want anyone to think badly of you.”
“I didn’t want to go to prison,” he insists.
“My mother was the same way. She cared more about what her public thought of her than how her own son felt. I bet you’ve never had close friends because you’ve always been too focused on yourself—how much you weigh, how you look, what other people are saying about you, whether they like you or not. And that’s what I’ve come to realize in all this. I love you, Adam, despite your flaws. I love you as only the sociopathic son of a narcissist could.”
He huffs with indignation but doesn’t offer any rebuttal. How could he? It’s all true.
“But how could you turn on me like that, Cassius?” he says with tears pooling in his baby blues. “You’ve always been my number one ally. How could you… ruin me like that?”
“What did I ruin? You’re still the lead star on a hit television show and now a trending hashtag. You’re about to give an exclusive interview on par with the scandals of Hollywood royalty. People who never knew you existed now know you by first name. And do you know what’s going to happen next? Offers are going to come flooding through the door. So many that you won’t know which one to choose, which is again why you need me. And as a bonus, you won’t have to play a poorly scripted hetero action figure, you can play literally anyone you want.”
He swallows and stares at me, still with a wounded look in his eyes. I really do hate hurting his feelings. “What else have you lied to me about?” he asks.
I rub my temple because I feel a tension headache coming on. “Do you really want to do this now?”
He crosses his arms, making himself look even more menacing. “One hundred fucking percent.”
I take a deep breath in through my nose and out through my mouth. Where do I even begin? “All right. First off, I paid my PI to run Kyle Ritter off the road.”
“Your what?”
“My private investigator.”
“What does Kyle Ritter have to do with anything?”
“He was bullying you. And I didn’t like it.”
“Cassius, that’s… that’s insane.”
His eyes are wide but there are other tell-tale signs of arousal—flushed face, open mouth, dilated pupils. For as much as he hems and haws, Adam likes it when I take control. Emboldened by this, I continue, “Rey Pavo-Real means ‘King Peacock’ in Spanish.”
His mouth is agape, which reminds me of its many better uses than to argue with me, but alas the makeup sex will have to wait. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he says.
“You said you needed motivation, someone to despise, so I gave you that too. Haven’t you ever wondered how Rey Pavo-Real seems to know exactly what insults will spur you into action?”
Adam turns a small circle in the middle of the room, tugging at his hair, and I figure, why stop there? “When you were recovering from your nose job, I replaced your pain meds with sugar pills.” I watch him closely for the murder face, just in case I need to flee.
“What the fuck, Cassius? I knew you were a sadist, but that is just cruel.”
“I wanted you to feel the pain, so you didn’t electively ruin your face in the future. And, as an aside, your nose looks exactly the same as it did before.”
“Oh my god, what? It looks sooooo much better now. You even said my nose looks royal, like a Roman fucking emperor.”
“It looked like that before, dove, only you can’t see it because you have crippling self-esteem issues. You’re perfect, Adam, as you’ve always been. And when you don’t listen to me, I have to take matters into my own hands.”
