Page 87 of Hittin' the Right Note
He was tempted to hang up the phone, but instead he took a deep breath. He was going to tell Deirdre exactly what he thought of her and her boss. At least it would delay having to think about Mikey’s betrayal.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t know what you’ve been told, and I don’t really care who told you. Whatever happened between Mikey and me is in the past, and it’s going to stay there if I have anything to say about it. And you can take that straight to Gina LaBun.”
And then he really did hang up the phone. Not for the first time, he regretted having a cellphone in these situations. It would’ve been infinitely more satisfying to slam the phone at home in her ear.
Fuck,he thought.What am I going to do now?
He needed to have it out with Mikey right away. The sooner he had this fight, the sooner he could go back to the cabin and forget about everything.
He fired off a brief, terse text to Mikey saying they needed to meet immediately and, when Mikey responded asking him whatwas up, he just reiterated they needed to meet. He then drove right to the hotel and parked, waiting for Mikey to show himself.
When Mikey came to the parking lot, Luke panicked a bit at the look of panic on his face, even though it was exactly what he’d wanted to see. He wanted Mikey to know something was up but not to know what it was. He’d been lying to Luke this whole time, so why shouldn’t he suffer a bit, too?
Distantly, Luke was aware he wasn’t being at all fair. After all, he hadn’t even given Mikey a chance to defend himself. Instead, he’d just leapt to conclusions. Still, if he knew anything about the way journalism worked, he doubted the producers of Gina LaBun’s show would’ve bothered reaching out to him unless the story had substance.
Unfortunately, Mikey was also looking just as handsome as he’d been when Luke dropped him off—dressed in what Luke thought of as his “pretty boy” clothes—and though it was a bit messed up, something about the vulnerable look on his face made him even more attractive.
Damn it,he thought.This would be so much easier if he wasn’t looking adorable.
Mikey got into the car, his usual smile flickering like a lightbulb about to go out. Luke thought about driving off somewhere else but then decided against it. He wanted to get this out of the way as soon as possible.
“So,” he said, lips numb, “I got a call just a little bit ago.”
“Oh yeah?” Mikey asked. “Who from?”
“Deirdre from that stupid show with Gina LaBun,” Luke said, and he could feel his blood pressure spiking. His pulse was pounding in his ears, and it was all he could do not to start shouting or something worse.
No, he wasn’t going to do that with Mikey. The two of them could have an honest conversation.
“So,” he said, “did you or didn’t you tell the reporter I was gay? You know, back in the day? You know, back when someone found out, somehow, I had a secret thing going on and somehow managed to take photos of me kissing a guy? Was it you, Mikey, was it you?”
The words were falling out of his mouth so fast he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to put them into any kind of order. He wanted to shake the truth out of Mikey, make him tell him everything that had happened and, just as importantly,why,why he’d betray someone he’d once said he’d loved.
Mikey’s incapable of loving anyone but himself,he thought.
“Look,” Mikey said, and now it was his turn to start gabbling, to ramble on in the desperate hope he might get to something vaguely resembling coherence. “It wasn’t the best time in my life, and there were a lot of things going on, and I was afraid of getting outed myself, and my team said I should probably try to do something to control the narrative, and they said since the press were already sniffing around you it wouldn’t be so bad, you had less to lose, and so I just went with it and called the reporter and then things just spun out of control, and now here we are.”
Now here we are. What a fucking stupid thing to say.
“You know,” Luke said, “I’m not even sure what pisses me off the most. That you did all of it, or that you knew you did it and haven’t said a word, despite the fact we’ve been together all this time. You could’ve told me at any point, and yet you didn’t.”
He paused and took another breath.
“Honestly, I don’t even know how you could fuck me, how we could share all we shared, and all the time you were carrying around this secret.” He shook his head, as if by doing so he could shake out the terrible thoughts cascading through it, shake off the pain of being betrayed–again!–by the man he had finally accepted he’d always loved and always would.
“Why does it always have to be like this with you, Michael?” he asked, for the first time in their long acquaintance actually calling Mikey by his real first name. “Why does it always have to be so much trouble with you? Why does it have to take so mucheffortjust to make things work? Why can’t the two of us just get together without all of the bullshit?”
He hated the way his voice sounded so plaintive, like he was begging Mikey to take the pain away. He knew it wasn’t going to happen, knew Mikey was never really going to change, wasn’t going to become the person he wanted him to be just because he said all of this. However, Luke had learned just how much power there could be in talking, and he now understood why everyone had always told him to do this. He also found he couldn’t stop. Words had power, and he wanted to use them to hurt Mikey, to make him feel as much like shit as he’d managed to make Luke feel by his continued betrayal.
And, indeed, looking at Mikey’s face right then he could see the pain he was causing, could even see what he was pretty sure was regret in the other man’s eyes. It wasn’t enough to make him come even close to forgiving him, of course, because he wasn’t sure there could ever be any forgiveness, or even if he was capable of such a thing. Knowing there was at least a shred of decency left in Mikey’s soul, however, gave him some comfort, even if it would never be enough.
“I’m so sorry,” Mikey said. “And I know it doesn’t change anything, but I honestly don’t even remember doing it. It wasn’t until I was talking with Damian just a bit ago it all started to come back to me. And…I’m just so sorry, Luke. I promise it wasn’t all just some scheme, and I promise that, as far as I knew, I wasn’t lying. Now it’s all out in the open…maybe we can just start over?”
Luke didn’t even know where to start. Something about Mikey’s explanation didn’t ring true to him, but he couldn’t puthis finger on just what it was. Regardless, it was infuriating to sit here and listen to Mikey try to justify himself and, of all things, ask him to start over.
God I hate him,Luke thought, even as another part of him said,No, I love him, and that’s what makes all of this so terrible.
These two competing thoughts kept fighting with each other, and he knew he wasn’t going to know any kind of peace, at least not as long as he was sitting here looking at Mikey, looking at him and seeing how handsome he was and being reminded of what they’d almost managed to make it together.
