You're a Mean One, Matthew Prince, page 16
He’d written the title theme for Mom’s TV series. It became a big hit, and they’d gotten him to come and play the acoustic version as part of the celebration.
I’ll admit I had stalked him once or twice, watching his music videos and scrolling through his Instagram. I knew he was married to a very handsome, wealthy, White, Jewish businessman. Also that they both looked exquisite in matching Speedos.
His first glance turned into a long chat over the state of the music business, the benefits of connecting with fans over social media, and the even better benefits of an open relationship. Obviously, the last one was why he’d come over, and as soon as he performed and I joined Mom up onstage to accept her award, we slipped out the back doors and rushed to his place for a nightcap and a night of uninhibited fun.
We exchanged numbers and when we moved on from a one-night stand into two-night sleepovers, it seemed like the logical next step was to meet his partner. Spencer was returning from a meditation retreat in Bali that night. Over bottles of Bordeaux, we all got to know each other in the kitchen, in the dining room, in the living room, and finally, and quite climactically, in the bedroom.
I was violating so many of my own rules. I say my own, but I do mean rules Bentley laid out for us over a long and turbulent friendship. We weren’t supposed to get into anything serious. Serious was for old people. Serious was for status.
But with Baz and Spencer, I was getting status, so with that box checked, I gave myself the green light. Our relationship was like driving a Corvette on an open road with the top down. That is until I missed the yellow light and they suddenly flashed me the red.
“You okay?” Hector asks.
“Totally,” I say, even though I don’t believe it. It’s not a feeling I’ve sat with in a while without making a joke of the whole thing. Now it’s almost suffocating.
“What happened?”
I go back and forth over whether to tell him the version Sarah Pearson sold or the truth. We’re in pretty deep at this point. The truth seems like the better, kinder option. “I got very drunk and very high at a Fire Island party. The three of us had been fighting earlier in the month over Baz’s latest music video. His team had been having difficulty casting his love interest for the shoot, and Baz got the idea that one of us could do it. I suggested both of us could be in it to avoid any hurt feelings and put some positive polyamory-representation out into the world.
“Well, Spencer made this whole case about how he’s been around the longest and how he fit the casting breakdown better and how he was the only reliable one. He made me feel worthless. Like I meant nothing in the relationship. Jump forward to our trip, and it comes out that they’d decided without me and filmed it behind my back. Completely betrayed my trust. And, well, I spiraled.” I clear my throat. “The way I did the other night…”
“You had an anxiety attack?” Hector asks in plain language that shocks me. Nobody in my circle says it outright.
I hesitate, but ultimately nod, words like marbles in my mouth. “I have a…um, generalized anxiety disorder.” He doesn’t flinch. For some reason, I didn’t expect him to. It confirms something unnameable for me. “Confrontation of any kind can set me off. Neither of them felt they did anything wrong. My mind was tunneling. I was sweating. It sucked.”
“Did they know?” Hector asks, totally calm.
I shake my head. “No, I never told them. It’s not something I talk about with anyone except my therapist.”
He half smiles. “Thanks for telling me. You don’t have to say any more if you don’t want to.”
“No.” I press on. “It’s fine. I was feeling mad and impulsive, and the ecstasy I stupidly took to combat the anxiety was really kicking in. So, while wearing only a white jockstrap and matching harness, I got up on the DJ dais and stole a microphone.” I imagine myself back on that stage, vision hazy, hundreds of eyes cast upon me in confusion.
“This can’t be going anywhere good.” Hector’s enraptured by every word.
“Hold on for this story. It’s going to be a bumpy one,” I say. “I called everyone to attention and then announced to the crowd that the sausages in Spencer’s family’s breakfast sandwiches were made of baby horsemeat. Out of nowhere. No pretense. No context. Just me, cross-faded, shouting a bold-faced lie: ‘The sausages are made from baby horses!’” I sigh, realizing that the boy I’m talking about is a different iteration of myself from a separate past life, removed from who I am here. All the previous me’s have been chunked off, lopped into little figurines in a Dickens-style display that represent old hurts. Oh, how I want to take a bat to the table and smash them all to smithereens.
“How did this not get out online?” he asks, trout-faced.
“The saving grace was that it was partially a sex party, so they made us check our phones with our clothes in locked pouches at the door. Nobody was able to record it and make it go viral, but word of mouth still spread, and Spencer was pissed.”
“That’s some seriously messy shit.”
“I know.” I palm my face. “Thankfully, Spencer’s family did not sue for defamation. Instead, my parents paid Sarah Pearson, our publicist, to make the story go away. She planted an article about our three-way mutual parting, and I begrudgingly moved back in with my parents.”
“And what happened with the music video?”
“It was a moderate steamy hit on gay Twitter.” I crack an uncomfortable laugh, remembering a time when I wouldn’t have thought twice in engaging in that kind of online exposure. “It’s funny because I swore I’d finally gotten something right. That we three were meant to be.” I force a feigned smile. “So, as you can see, we’re sitting in the same sinking boat. Can’t get home. Can’t fix our past relationships. Can’t figure out a goddamn theme for this goddamn gala. I could use some movie comfort right now.”
“All right, let’s do it then,” Hector says before helping me get my laptop connected to the Ethernet cable and the movie rental pulled up. The cable still doesn’t reach far enough to situate the screen anywhere for us both to have a good view. We end up pulling the rocking chair in front of my bunk and placing the computer on the seat. That means Hector and I will have to both sit in my bed to see.
“Is this okay?” Hector asks, taking the end opposite my pillow. I nod, curling up into a ball so none of our extremities touch. If we make any kind of contact while in a bed, I might go full Frosty the Snowman and melt. My hot and heavy fantasies of him and me together can only be quelled by firmly maintained physical distance.
The opening song brings back memories of Christmases past. Of parents bracketing me in on a comfortable couch. A refrigerator door covered with holiday cards from all over the map. A world that felt small at the edges but infinite in possibility.
As the movie plays, Krampus threatens to rip through, but I beat him back. Not now. Not next to Hector, who’s looking at Kermit with so much childish glee. I hope he can’t see that I’m looking at him the same way.
Except the side of his mouth hitches, and his eyes flick over. He’s caught me. “Thanks for telling me that stuff. And for tonight in general. I, uh, yeah. Just thanks.” Scrooge appears on screen again and my miserly ways fall to pieces.
There’s a hint of bashfulness on full display in Hector’s expression. It’s the same hint I saw after Natalia kissed him. Do I have that effect on him too?
“Of course. And if you ever want to talk about anything—related or not—I’m willing to listen,” I say. He nods, but it’s long and languorous, like he’s contemplating even more.
“Was staying with those dudes really what you wanted?” he asks suddenly.
Want. Another wishy-washy word with too many meanings to know for sure.
“I don’t know what I wanted. I dropped out of NYU first semester because I didn’t know what I wanted. I started dating them because I didn’t know what I wanted. I bought that island because I didn’t know what I wanted.” It hadn’t occurred to me what a pile of untended-to feelings I’ve been hoarding.
“I’m sorry, dude, but it’s still wild that you bought an island,” he says with only a little judgment. “Can you please tell me what you were going to do with it?” He’s asking in earnest, I can tell.
I press my head into my hands. “Throw a music festival called Prince-a-Palooza.” Saying it out loud magnifies my utter misjudgment. It was supposed to be my special thing. How had it all backfired and turned me into the family menace? I feel meek and dumb.
“That name is pretty fire, at least,” he offers, which incites me to go on. Getting this all out, finally.
“I thought with the right investors and musical acts, it could be the next Coachella. I wasn’t thinking of the work that would need to be done. Nor had I done any research into the field, but my intentions were good. I swear.” I hug a pillow to my chest. “Baz and Spencer had conceptualized it with me. It was this running conversation we had, but the problem is that I didn’t realize it was a running joke. I was taking it seriously, coming up with all these wonderful ideas and reaching out to contacts. I was knee-deep in yurt styles. Then when we broke up they made it clear how naive and stupid I was about the whole thing.”
“That’s shitty of them,” Hector says, coming to my defense. I nod in appreciation.
“A new LGBTQ club opened in Midtown last week, and I went to the opening with my friends. Baz and Spencer were there. I didn’t go over and say hello or anything, but I saw them flirt hard with and take home another guy. Cooler, fitter—if you can imagine—richer. Something inside me splintered. I felt full of wood chips.” My voice trembles as I tell it, the emotions still fresh. “So, in the heat of the moment, high off my ass, I called my real estate contact and told him to pull the trigger on the island purchase. The next morning, I woke up the proud owner of an entire piece of land surrounded by water.” That’s exactly how I feel right now. Drowning in a sea of my own making.
“I mean, dude, don’t get me wrong, that’s an extreme reaction, but sometimes people hurt us and then we hurt ourselves as some twisted form of punishment for not seeing it all sooner,” he says. The words wash over me in lapping, salty waves. I was trying to soothe him, and here he is doing it for me. And I know he means it, which means a lot.
“Thanks.”
“Making a bad decision doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“It was more than one bad decision,” I confess. Most days, I’m a teetering trash tower of them.
He shakes his head, hair swishing. “You know what I mean. You might not want to own up to it, but you’re human. Humans make mistakes.”
His sweet words assuage some of the hurt. If only for tonight. If only while he’s next to me and his presence can ward off the unhealthy thoughts. I’m beyond grateful for that.
“You’re right,” I say after a beat. “And I never like admitting someone else is right, so…” My joking smile morphs into an appreciative smolder so intense it ripples heat straight down to my toes.
The movie is but background noise now. He’s got his eyes trained on me, watching like I’m more interesting than any film could ever be. “Even if they didn’t know what you were struggling with, you didn’t deserve to be treated like that.” Hector’s declaration is firm; his protectiveness blankets me. Rarely has someone defended me unless it was Sarah Pearson, someone paid to do just that.
Hector’s saying this out of kindness. Not obligation. It’s sad, but it’s a first for me.
“Thank you,” I say with heart-stuttering breathlessness. I’d say it a million times if I could, which hits me square in the heart.
I watch him swallow, his throat bobbing. His eyes dip to my lips, and I take that as my cue to thank him in a different way. A way I’ve wanted to for a while now.
Boldness broadens my chest as I inch closer, lean in, let my flights of fancy come to fruition.
Except the sound of rattling chains and ghostly roars from my computer speakers make me realize: these are only flights of fancy. His eyes landing on my lips might’ve been a trick of the flickering screen. I was just seeing what I wanted to see.
I stop before I make an ass out of myself.
Only then he surprises me by whispering, “Please?”
And I don’t dare second-guess this Christmas miracle.
One hand finds his face. The other finds his waist. Our lips find each other’s for the very first time in a kiss that can only be described as overdue and yet still right on schedule.
Those thank-yous pass from my lips to his—for listening, for caring, and for, fuck, for kissing me back with so much enthusiasm. He tastes like peppermint gum and Yuletide cheer. His hands are big and rough yet warm and reassuring as they move from my neck to the sides of my face, tenderly cupping my cheeks. Somehow, cradled, I’m both breakable and indestructible. I want this feeling to last forever.
It goes on for minutes like that, the intensity rising. Silken locks slide effortlessly between my fingers. His scent is clean shampoo mixed with a heavenly musk. I harden with each brush of our eager bodies. His flannel rides up a tad, revealing that tantalizing line of skin, and my pulse jolts into my core.
Abruptly, I realize what those drunken rebound kisses on club couches were missing: connection.
That’s what I’ve been holding out hope for.
And here it is. Miraculously. In the flesh.
I lean back, slightly overcome and afraid he’s not willing to go farther.
Am I willing to go farther?
He looks stunned, but euphoric in a rumpled way. It would be so easy to push him back on the bed, to consummate this in the way I so desperately want to, but a creak upstairs caused by shuffling footfalls brings the reality forward. It’s probably Gramps getting a late-night snack—leftover cookies from the other day.
Our eyes lock once more, but the passion has fizzled, and understanding settles.
This isn’t the place to do anything more. As much as I wish it were. I could use the release to de-stress and let those old hurts ripple out of me at least for a hundred hiccupping heartbeats, but—
“Sorry, but we should probably stop,” I say, disheartened, training my eyes onto the movie. It’s a sad part—thank God—that snuffs out the mood entirely.
“Yeah,” he agrees, doing the same. “For sure.”
But neither of us moves away. Instead, we sit there on my bottom bunk, hands touching, shoulders brushing, energy sparking between us, until the credits roll.
Chapter 19
The house is empty when I emerge the next morning. There’s something striking about the silence here. Back in the city, I’m lucky if there’s a moment when I don’t hear someone shouting down the avenue or a siren blaring in the distance or a dog barking a mile a minute. Living on top of Central Park, there’s plenty of foot traffic, and no matter how high we are, the world down below always seems to creep inside.
Here, I could drown in my own thoughts. If I were as hell-bent on getting out of here as I was a few days ago, that would be dangerous. Now, I’m still holding on to last night’s calm, admiring the tree in the corner with a full heart.
My lips still tingle from last night’s kiss as well. I can almost feel the phantom prickle of Hector’s stubble against my cheek and his hot breath ghosting up the side of my neck.
I hope he doesn’t regret it. Even if I’m unsure of where I stand on the regret continuum myself.
I turn on the teakettle and grab a mug. I find some instant oatmeal packets in the pantry, deciding that this is the best my nonculinary self is going to get for breakfast without Oksana here to whip me up one of her homemade sausage-and-spinach omelets.
Once I’m settled at the kitchen table, I open one of the Moleskine notebooks I brought with me and uncap the fountain pen I got as a gift from Nan, Dad’s mom, a few years ago. I’ve been known to doodle. I’m good at it. I could never be an artist, but I do have a designer’s eye.
I flip fast past the pages covered in notes for Prince-a-Palooza. After talking to Hector, I realize how childish that whim had been. Just because I know a lot of people doesn’t mean I have the connections to enter a thriving market. Yet another poor decision born of a bad bout of the look-at-mes!
To scrub myself clean of it, I take the next hour to envision the Great Hall in a few different ways. All of them feature the promised tree at its center, circular tables spiraling out so everyone can get a good view. I draw in garland centerpieces with gold-embossed candles. Winter floral arrangements sit on stands near the doors.
I think up a clever way to hide the projector in the winter wonderland display that’s been a decorative staple for decades. You can tell just by looking at it, all that wear and tear, but I’m not about to argue with tradition. Not anymore, anyway.
Maybe we can fashion it into a living art installation, a video photo op with virtual snowfall and a snowman that winks back at you. We could merge the physical elements with the technological ones.
That’s when the idea strikes me: the theme should be Past, Present, and Yet to Come. Like the ghosts in A Christmas Carol. The My Favorite Things theme felt too tacky, but this could have real emotional resonance with the guests. I’m sure plenty of them have connections with the story like Hector and I do.
My hand can’t quite keep up with how fast my thoughts are spilling out of me. It’ll be a miracle if I can decode this gibberish when I’m finished.
We do a Past section where we dig up old guest ledgers and photo albums from galas past. We have a Present exhibit, which is the centerpiece tree surrounded by literal presents with platitudes about living in the moment and breathing in the now. (Suburban women love that shit.) The last would be Yet to Come, the technological wonderland where we lead people into the silent auction to remind them that they’re giving for the future good of the community.
