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“I’ve never wanted something this badly in my life, Oscar, and I’ve wanted a lot. I’ve gotten a lot. I just haven’t had you.”
“Meu raio de sol, let me give you some positive affirmations.” What’d he call me in Portuguese? My lips rise and I look him over.
“You know, if I really sat down with my feelings for longer than a few minutes, I think I’d know that I’m attracted to people. Flat-out. No matter the sex or gender. It’s probably always been like that, but I cut myself off to anything outside of my narrowed frame of what I thought my life would look like.”
“I’m trying to hold onto what you told me about my sexuality having nothing to do with where I’ve been or what I’ve done. It’s just who I’m attracted to. But sometimes I feel like if I call myself pansexual, I’d just be a fraud. Like I don’t serve the label well enough.
“You were making me toast?” He says it like I got down on a knee.
“It’s so much easier creating perception than to change it, Os. When people believe a lie, they will cling to it with all their fucking might. You know why?” I turn to him, wiping my hands on my sweatpants. “Because if they admit it was a lie, it means they were wrong.” I laugh bitterly. “People don’t want to be wrong.”
He glances at Jack. “Congratulations. You were trending for a solid hour there. Homewrecker Highland.” His sardonic tone is noted. He skims a hand through his hair, messing the strands. “I hate people.”
“Luna’s our best friend, if something of hers was stolen, we’re going to help retrieve it.” Eliot tucks his shirt into black slacks. “It’s our duty.”
“Story of our lives, bro.” I switch lanes and pull into a parking garage. “Yeah.” Charlie nods slowly. “So it goes.”
“Eliot’s fans are my favorite,” Charlie says. “They’re mostly theatre nerds who send him Shakespeare love letters and dead ravens.”
“Fuck you,” he sneers. “Oh my God, Charlie, can you say that to me too?!”
“Wishing you had your camera?” Jack shakes his head. “No, not really.” We stop next to the stage’s exit. “That’s not something I’d show.” “Why not?” Charlie asks. “It’s who I am.”
The weekly Cobalt Wednesday Night Dinner is something Charlie tries his absolute best not to miss. Whatever goes down on Wednesdays drives him back to Philly like an obsession. No clue what actually happens. No one but the Cobalts and Thatcher Moretti are invited. Already tried to get that lucky bastard to spill details, but he wouldn’t break.
“Tell me, bro, would you date me?” “No,” Farrow says slowly, “because I’m married to Maximoff Hale.” I clap, almost grinning. Donnelly claps too.
“Midnight.” He leans a hip against the railing. “It’s called a midnight sun. It only happens during the summer in places around the Arctic and Antarctic Circles.”
“The brightest light shining during the darkest hour,” I smile. “That’s pretty good.” “I’m only doing my best work with you, Long Beach.” I smile, but my lips fall gradually. “What happens when the light dims? You’ll still be interested then?” “Oh yeah.” Oscar nods. “I’m every star circling around you. You need a spark, I’m there.” He says it like a promise.
I will let him fuck me again. He can tomorrow, even. And the next day.
I know way too much about Charlie’s sex life. He’s told me countless times, “I cum on women. Not in them.”
A Secret about Akara Kitsuwon: my college-friend raved about Akara for four weeks after they hooked up. He restrained her to a headboard with rope and made her come five times.
Charlie smiles bitterly. “The one who wants to be alone is always wanted.” He finishes off his champagne. “Too bad I can’t be wanted by someone interesting.”
A Secret about Charlie Cobalt: He told me that he’s the one who introduced Beckett to cocaine, and he’s regretted it ever since.
Beckett frowns and gracefully one-eighties to face her. “What are you doing?” He has that iconic what the fuck face that has been meme’d to death on Reddit.
“Oh sorry,” Joana says like she’s not sorry at all. “I was looking for the mattress that’s always attached to your back.” Charlie chokes on his champagne. I stop breathing.
“Estou apaixonado por voçê.” I translate, “I’m in love with you.”
he was pissed in the way that Donnelly gets pissed at friends. He sighed really hard. And then he let it go. He even offered Jack a beer.
“Basta ikaw,” he says in Tagalog, and translates again, “Because it’s you, as long as I’m with you.”
“Mmah…Lun…Luna…” Jack and I exchange a confused look. Why is my best friend muttering Luna Hale’s name in his sleepwalking haze?
“…Lun…yeah…lemme help you, babe.” He’s about to run into the pull-out couch. I try to block him. He bumps me, then turns back towards the hall. “…best pussy…”
Either way, all signs point to bad. So fucking bad. Luna Hale’s dad is a recovering addict. Donnelly’s entire family are meth addicts. No way will Loren Hale ever want him involved with his daughter. Too late.
“Because,” I tell him, “sometimes people grip so hard onto the concept of hate that they can’t let go for two seconds to even try to love.” They want to hate something. Someone.
A Secret about Oscar Oliveira: He’s in love with me.
He never even brought it up. Like it was insignificant. All that mattered were my actual feelings and what I was dealing with. That’s…sexy. I’m attracted to emotional maturity in people, I guess.
I’m not weak for needing help. It’s not a badge of shame. It’s a tool to take my life back, and I feel that today. After seeing a new therapist, after taking anxiety meds this morning, that overwhelming sense of incompletion has been hushed.
Kinney created the Rainbow Brigade to feel included among trusted family members and bodyguards who are LGBTQ. What better space for her to come to in a crisis than the one she built?
Maximoff blinks like his brain just malfunctioned. “I’m sorry, I just realized we have way too many Slytherins in this group.” “Eh, could use one less dork,” Farrow says, smiling a smartass smile on his husband. “Continuing on,” Maximoff ignores him. We all laugh.
“And I confess that I might’ve had a small, tiny…like so small you can’t even really see it. Is it there? I don’t think so. Yeah, that kind of crush on Farrow—waaaay before you two ever banged.” His face turns into a wince. “Ahhhh, that didn’t feel as good as I’d hoped.”
“You never told me that.” “Kin,” he says. “You were eight.” “Oh. Right.”
Fucking shit. A billionaire. It doesn’t change how I feel about him. It might change who’s picking up the bar tab.
He swallows, pops the sucker out, and smacks his lips. “Nutty with a little aftertaste of citrus from the hills of Napa. Stellar. Five golden stars. A truly revolutionary taste.” He grins. “And that would be my review for your cum.”
“He said ‘what’s not to love?’ And that is a prime example of a non-answer from our man Charlie Keating Cobalt.”
He gasps air. Silent tears slide down his cheek. His eyes flit from me to Oscar and back to me. “What does love feel like?”
He swipes tear tracks off his cheeks. “I sometimes think that maybe it’ll stop one day. This feeling inside me…frustration…all the fucking time.” He blinks into more tears. “But it never really goes away, and…it has to be drowned out by something stronger. Either…pain or love.”
After filming Charlie for so long, I’ve realized he calls his dad any time he’s feeling off. Like someone would call a therapist. It’s almost a daily phone call. Oscar passes Charlie the phone. “Dad?” Charlie says, his voice controlled. “Can you just talk to me for a second?” He slides down the wall and tucks his head between his knees.
“So we probably shouldn’t tell anyone what happened.” “Would you be okay with that?” Jack asks. “Because I know you’re close to Farrow and Donnelly—” “They’ve kept so much shit from me, bro. Farrow dating Maximoff. Donnelly hooking up with Luna.” I laugh softly. “It’s my fucking turn.”
“Meu raio de sol, we’re married. For tonight at least. I’m your husband.”
We just made love, and emotion still strings between us like a lit flame. His head buries against the crook of my neck. I am so in love with him. And I’m so fucking scared of losing him.
One thing people never get right when they first meet Donnelly: he’s a smart motherfucker. He plays dumb too well.
“Cobalts who slay together, stay together,” Donnelly says as he leaves, throwing up a hand gesture that means love you.
He’s about to jog off, but he stops for a second and turns to me. “Senti sua falta.”
Because he doesn’t give a shit if he gets hurt. Pain, right? It’s greater than the frustration he feels on a daily basis. I don’t know how to help him other than making sure he keeps talking to his dad. All I can do is try to protect him, even if he doesn’t want it.
