Page 88 of Conquest

Brandon had been in the middle of rehearsal, but claimed a family emergency and left to come to him. To his surprise, Brandon didn’t push for details. Quietly, they collected his belongings, which true to Evan’s words were meager and mostly clothes, and crammed it all into the Cayenne. As for the F430, taking so expensive a gift not only felt wrong, how could he keep it? Every time he’d drive it, he would think of Evan, of the places they’d gone in it, the things they had done.

After they unloaded his belongings at Brandon’s new apartment on North Dearborn, he drove the Cayenne back with Brandon following on his Suzuki. When they left the mansion for the final time, he sat behind Brandon on the motorcycle, punching the code into the keypad to close the gates. As they shut, the finality of it made it seem all his and Evan’s time together had been nothing more than a surreal dream.

That night, Brandon didn’t make pathetic efforts to cheer him up. He sat beside him on the couch in his apartment, not saying a word. Maybe it was the silence that did it, but he broke down. Brandon had wrapped him in his arms as he cried and told him what happened.

The next day, he couldn’t bring himself to go into the studio, there wasn’t anything important to do besides going over tour stuff and rehearsing, and rehearsing he felt was pointless until they would be able to get into the Auditorium Theatre where their kick-off concert was going to be held, so he ended up calling Kenny, told him everything, and that he wouldn’t be coming in.

Wednesday morning came, and once again he refused to go into the studio. In the evening, Kenny showed up at Brandon’s apartment with Julian and Trish, but to his relief, Brandon blocked them at the door and spared him from having to deal with the cheer-up brigade.

Thursday, he didn’t get out of bed except to go to the bathroom and take a long shower, where he stood under the water more than washed. Brandon brought him a pizza from Uno’s, but he only managed to get down half a slice before feeling like he would be sick.

Unfortunately, that morning after Brandon left for the theatre, Kenny came pounding on the door. He had no choice but to answer it and didn’t have the will to fight him when Kenny demanded he come to the studio. Evan hadn’t been there when they arrived, but he knew without seeing him he was there now.

As he finished the thought, Evan walked into the room.

Jesse kept his eyes focused down. The others silenced their conversation as Evan stopped in front of him.

Evan tossed the Ferrari F430 keys on the couch beside Jesse. “I thought I told you not to leave anything behind.”

“I don’t want it,” Jesse mumbled. “Keep it.”

“What do I want with it? It’s your little toy, it’s not my style. It’s parked near the guard booth in the garage.” Evan turned to walk away.

All his anger, all his pain, rose faster than Jesse could control. He leaped up and whipped the keys across the room. They crashed into a picture hanging on the wall, shattering the glass. “That’s all you care about, isn’t it? Your fucking image! What’s the best car to drive! The best clothes to wear! The best fuck buddy to have in your bed!”

Evan walked over to the broken picture, picked up the car keys, and walked back to Jesse, stopping inches from him. “Is that what you think? That you were just some fuck buddy?”

“What else would you call me? You kicked me out the door like I was nothing just because of some goddamn pictures!”

Evan grabbed Jesse’s upper arm, his grip firm, but careful to not hurt him. “Don’t ever…EVER…mock the feelings I have for you!”

He threw the keys down on the couch and spun for the door. Greg, JJ, and Jeremy stood by the door, looking trapped by what they had witnessed. Evan rammed his shoulder hard against Greg’s as he passed.

Jesse stared at the floor for a long moment, the phantom of Evan’s rough touch lingering on his arm. He picked up the car keys with trembling fingers and walked toward the door. His shoulder brushed lightly against Greg’s as he turned down the hall and headed toward Studio B, alone.

  

Jesse glanced up at the clock in the control room. He had been at the studio all day, all night, refusing offers to go to his band members’ apartments or out to dinner with them. Now the studio was empty save for the security guard. He turned off his music and sat listening to the silence.

He felt numb. It was as if all his emotions, all his desires, had shut down. He didn’t want to eat. He didn’t want to drink. Most of all, he didn’t want to feel. The thought of smiling or laughing seemed a concept beyond his reach and he didn’t want to try and grasp it. The only thing that sounded halfway decent was going back to Brandon’s, crawling into bed and lying in the dark bedroom. Thinking about it gave him just enough energy to push away from the control desk and leave the studio.

Walking out to the night shrouded city, he headed across the street to the parking garage. He stepped inside and stumbled to a halt. His eyes locked on the F430, its dark blue paint seeming black in the dim yellow garage lights. He clutched the keys and walked toward it. When he climbed in, he wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but he thought he caught the faint scent of Evan’s cologne lingering in the car. Despair closed his throat from air, his eyes began to burn. He pressed his forehead against the steering wheel, his body shaking with tears.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Jesse locked Brandon’s apartment door behind him and walked down the hall to the elevator. Almost a week had passed since he’d seen Evan when they had their confrontation at the studio, and during that time, he only went to the studio once to rehearse and found himself mobbed by paparazzi. Studio security held them at bay until he got in, but he found little sanctuary when he ran into JJ, who told him Evan had changed his session times and now didn’t come in until seven o’clock at night and recorded well into the early morning hours. JJ gave him the information as if it was something he should care about. He saw it as one more slap in the face from Evan, telling him Evan didn’t even want to be in the same building at the same time as him. That information pushed him over the edge.

For the past week, he spent his evenings staring blankly at the TV until the sound of it would get on his nerves and he would turn it off. But without having the images flickering in front of him to keep him still, he would pace around Brandon’s apartment. He tried reading The Iliad again, but couldn’t concentrate on it and put it down. Brandon caused some distraction when home, but rehearsals for Phantom were getting more intense, so Brandon wasn’t there much.

Tonight, he couldn’t take it anymore. He came to the conclusion that he needed to snap himself out of his depression, to force himself to forget about Evan, and there was only one way he knew of to do it.

The elevator stopped at the ground floor garage. He walked toward the F430, the smell of his body spray wafting around him. He disarmed the car alarm, climbed in, and swung it out of the parking garage, aiming it toward the Lakeview area. If Brandon knew where he was going, he’d choke him, but he was long past the point of needing Brandon to watch over him. He didn’t need anyone to watch over him.

A rainbow-striped flag hanging under a lit streetlight added color to the night and announced he had reached Boystown. He eased off the gas, cruising past clubs and bars, restaurants and stores, many places familiar from times when he and Brandon would come there. With it being a little after nine o’clock and a Thursday night, a fair number of people wandered the streets, making their way to favorite clubs or places to eat. Men eyed him from the sidewalk, some called out for him to stop, but he continued drifting. To him, they all looked the same. Blond hair or black, blue eyes or brown, tall, short, built, scrawny, they were all nameless faces.

He stopped at a traffic light, his eyes fell on a couple walking hand in hand. The two men laughed with each other, playfully shoving and grabbing. Jesse clenched his teeth and faced forward. The light turned green. He smashed the throttle to the floor. The Ferrari roared; tires screeched as it launched through the intersection. Jesse rocketed away from Boystown, not knowing where to go, but not wanting to stay there or go back to Brandon’s.

He coasted aimlessly through the city, past multi-million dollar condos to neighborhoods where he all but begged to have the flashy Ferrari jacked. He found himself going past every restaurant he and Evan had eaten at, every store they had shopped. He drove to the studio and stopped in the street, wondering if Evan was inside, but not wanting to look in the parking garage to check for his car. If he wasn’t there, his mind would flood with thoughts of all the things Evan could be doing, things he couldn’t bring himself to face. It was easier to pretend he stood at the mic working on his next masterpiece, his beautiful voice floating over his perfect lips.