“That’s an obviousno,” I tell him. I sit up a little straighter, but I keep one arm around his waist as he leans forward on the sofa. “What’s going on? What happened while I was at work?”
He’s burying his head in his hands now.
“Chase, at this point, you know me better than almost anyone ever has. But there’s one thing I haven’t told you, because I don’t talk about it. I don’t tell anyone.”
Something shifts in my chest.
I bite the inside of my cheek.
“Should… I be worried?”
“No.”
I bring my palm to his back, rubbing over the soft fabric of his shirt. He’s in a simple grey cotton long-sleeve, and I watch the muscles in his back tense a little, then loosen as he exhales.
He turns and meets my eyes again.
“I had a childhood best friend who I spent all of my time with,” he tells me. “To say we were best friends even feels like an understatement. We were always together. It wasn’t ever just Logan, or just Daniel. It was Logan and Daniel. A unit. Inseparable.”
I nod, just rubbing his back as he speaks.
He swallows, his lashes flicking downward, then back up again.
“Daniel was the first man, and only man, I’d ever been with before you,” he reveals. “He was in the closet, and wanted it to stay that way, so no one else ever knew. We never fucked, and we never kissed. But… everything else. Anytime we spent a night together. Daniel and I were both certain that we were going to pursue acting, but he got cast in a role much, much quicker than I ever did. Right at the beginning of our twenties, he got on a show. Ironically, a show about gay men.”
“Wait,” I murmur softly. “It wasn’tField of View, was it?”
Logan’s eyes dance over my face. “It was.”
“I watched that show. When I was a young teen, it was one of the only gay things that blew up and got kind of popular. I remember my friend making fun of me for watching something gay. I didn’t even get it. I had no idea I was bi yet, but the show just felt… interesting.”
Logan nods. “It was a good show.”
Something falls in my chest as I realize something dark.
I don’t speak a word of it, because I don’t want to assume.
But I remember hearing that one of the main actors fromField of Viewdied. And now I’m dreading hearing the rest of Logan’s story.
“You may have been too young to have been hearing about these things, but Daniel didn’t react well to fame. The media started to dig into him. Lots of people speculated about his sexuality, but he kept it firmly secret. He had always struggled with depression, and some substance abuse, but Ididn’t know about his cocaine use until it got to be a big, obvious problem.”
My heart sinks. “Shit.”
There’s a reason I never touched coke, even when I would do just about anything, back in the day.
I’d only ever heard ugly stories.
“When I told Daniel he needed help, he dropped me faster than I ever could have imagined,” Logan says. “A lifetime of friendship just evaporated. He wanted to be around the people who told himyes. And yes, and yes, and yes. There was a time I went over to his house and I literally saw bag of white powder, on his front doorstep, completely unhidden. Like he’d dropped it there and didn’t even know.”
“I’m so sorry, Logan.”
“When Daniel died, I knew it must have been from too much coke, or a bad combination, or a bad batch. But it was also because he couldn’t take it. Before our friendship ended, he would buy stacks and stacks of tabloids and newspapers, anything that might mention him, and he would pore over the negative headlines about him. He would fuckingprint outarticles from online that said shit about him and keep it in a pile on his table. It makes me sick.”
I reach over and grab Logan close, gathering him in my arms and holding him as I see a tear break off onto his cheek.
I don’t say a word.
So many things are falling into place, like heavy weights, all at once.
