“Had some meetings.”
He shifts so that he can glance over at me, raising an eyebrow. “Damn. Good talk, Logan.”
“You want to know about my meetings?”
He shrugs. “I know what you do for a living now. So it’s not like you have to keep a bunch of deep, dark secrets from me, right?”
I hum. “The first meeting was about a potential brand deal with a health food company. They’re making these seltzer drinks that have supplements in them, I think? They wanted to know if I’ll accept the deal.”
“Fancy.”
I snort. “It wasn’t very interesting. But it’s probably worth what they’re paying.”
“How much?”
I glance over at him. Chase doesn’t seem to think it’s at all too personal to ask a virtual stranger about money, and I kind of appreciate how different he is from the actors I know in LA.
“Four hundred thousand for three commercials.”
“Fuck, man,” Chase says. “Yeah. Um. Maybe you should do that.”
“We’ll see.”
He’s silent for a while. I look at the two little tattoos on his finger as brings a hand to my leg, trailing his fingertips up the inside of my thigh. “You had other meetings too?”
“The next one was with a playwright. He wanted to cast me in a small show they’re doing here in the city, but we had to decline. Then the last one was with some actors who were visiting from LA.”
“Doesn’t sound like a bad day.”
Something else swirls around in my mind and I wonder if I should say it to him at all.
“Something weird happened, too.”
He pauses for a moment, seeming to sense my hesitation. “Weirdgood, or…”
“Weird bad. Uh, there was a YouTube video of me shared around the internet a couple of days ago where I said some things that upset people. Only a small portion of them were upset, but this person outside was one of them.”
Chase hums. “I can’t imagine you saying a single thing that would ever upset someone.”
“I talked about how fame has been difficult for me to adjust to, and I said that sometimes it can feel like a golden cage. Most people understood what I meant, but some people said I’m an ungrateful asshole for it.”
“Fuck them. One of them was outside today?”
“A woman flipped me off and saidif you’re not grateful for your fans, you’ll stop having them soon enough.”
“Jesus.”
“I tried to tell her that I’m deeply grateful for my fans, and that’snotwhat I was saying in the video, of course, but… sometimes people just decide they don’t like me. I have to get used to the fact that I can’t do anything about that.”
My chest tightens.
“Awful,” Chase murmurs.
“Things can get so misconstrued. IknowI could convince that woman that I’m a grateful person if I could just talk to her, one-on-one, but I can’t do that with everyone. It’s just… it’s… sorry. I am really bad at talking about this stuff. I’m not used to attention at all, let alone negative attention.”
“It’s okay. I understand. I’ve had negative attention my whole life.”
I frown. “You? How could anyone ever be negative toward you?”
