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“You’re hot, and you haven’t tweeted that you hate gay people.” Simone shrugged. “Apparently that’s enough.”
“Simone, this is so fucked up!” He leaned in to whisper in her ear: “I can’t win an award for being a gay ally when I’m actually gay but not doing anything to make life better for other gay people. It’s perverse.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, you probably won’t win anyway,” Simone replied. She took a tiny sip of champagne. Patrick didn’t see a single smudge of lipstick on the rim of her glass.
“I won’t?”
“Unfortunately, you have some rather stiff competition,” she said, pointing to the name below his on the program. It was a singer whose second album had recently been released, the lead single of which had been a ballad accompanied by a music video featuring couples of all gender configurations embracing on a beach. His fan base, comprised largely of the same young women whom Patrick’s team had been courting, were just this side of feral.
“I swear that guy can’t stand on a stage longer than five seconds without draping himself in a Pride flag,” Simone continued. “His manager is Adrienne Schmidt. She’s a genius. And you should see her legs, Patrick.”
“I need a drink. Excuse me.”
“Nothing with bubbles,” said Simone. “That photoshoot with Esquire tomorrow, remember? You’ll bloat.”
“I…Fine.” Patrick left the table, fists clenched at his side. Simone was, he reminded himself, in many ways, one of the best things to ever happen to him. She had seen his potential, taken his career to an entirely new level. They enjoyed a close working relationship, and he sometimes forgot that it was a relationship predicated on her feeling free to comment on any aspect of his life, including his body. As if there weren’t enough people doing that already.
It was a strange thing, to know without a doubt that you were handsome, because the world told you so. On the one hand, Patrick’s looks were a matter of genetics that he could neither change nor take credit for. On the other, his appearance was a part of his livelihood. The greater the scrutiny upon him from all angles, the more he felt like an insect being watched through a magnifying glass until it inevitably burst into flames. Every pimple that broke out on his trademark jaw, every starchy carb he ate, every unflattering photo angle captured by an asshole paparazzo, took on inordinate significance in his mind, the tiniest detail a potential thread that could unravel his entire image.
There had been a story that did the rounds a year or so ago, during the press tour for the first Kismet movie. Patrick had been wearing a fitted off-white T-shirt, doing interviews on a voluminous sofa that seemed to sink a little more each time he moved, enveloping him until he was practically horizontal. The footage, while not terrible, did him no favors, either. And nor did the headlines, which speculated that his weight was spiraling out of control, as if a few rumples and a visible tummy were the end of the world.
“I wasn’t fat,” Patrick had told Will while recounting the story. “I was hydrated!”
The thought of Will made him want to pick up the phone. Or, failing that, a bottle of vodka. Maybe a cheeseburger. He settled for a tequila on the rocks at the bar and lingered there for a moment, reluctant to return to Simone.
“Don’t you just hate these things?” The voice next to him was gravelly and familiar. It was the voice of a bodyguard who had taken a bullet for the first female president of the United States after falling in love with her in the romantic action drama These United Fates. A grizzled former marine in the Netflix movie Attrition. An American everyman fighting to keep his family safe during an alien invasion in Ultra-Terrestrial. All projects Patrick had auditioned for and for which he had been ultimately deemed too “boyish.”
Reece Mackenzie. If Patrick were the sort of person inclined to make vision boards, Reece Mackenzie would be at the very center. He’d used that career trajectory as a blueprint for his own, and now Reece Mackenzie stood just feet away from him sipping a Modelo in this place where corporate activism went to die. Patrick had been in the same room as him on a few previous occasions—a Vanity Fair party and a SAG lunch—but had never gotten close enough to take in just how handsome he was in the flesh: russet hair that had been combed back but that was now springing down in a fetching swoop over thick eyebrows; slightly unkempt stubble flecked with white; that trademark scar on his chin that lent verisimilitude to his many action roles.
“Um…Hi.” Patrick laughed self-consciously. “Wow. It’s been a while since I got starstruck.”
Reece frowned and smiled at the same time and shook his head. “Way I see it,” Reece said, “we’re all just clowns in the same circus.”
“Circus is damn right,” said Patrick.
“To the clown show,” said Reece, holding up his beer. Patrick raised his glass, and they both drank in silence.
“There you are!” A beautiful woman with beachy mermaid waves in a tiny blue dress under a blazer approached them both. Patrick had loved her on her season of The Bachelor and had thought that she should have gone further in the competition (a sentiment he had expressed to precisely nobody), but clearly Cupid had had other plans: She’d met Reece shortly after the reunion aired, and the two had gotten hitched the following summer.
“Has he been complaining that he had to come?” Brianna Schlesinger, now Brianna Mackenzie, said to Patrick. “He always does this! Says yes to the invitation, then spends the whole evening sulking by the bar or the coat check. I swear, he’s this close to taking up smoking just so he has an excuse to go loiter outside.”
“Not at all,” said Patrick. “Although I have to say, I didn’t expect to see you both here.” An action star and reality dating show sweetheart power couple tended to appeal, Patrick had learned, to a very large segment of the population—just not necessarily one that cared much for queer people.
“LGBTQ+ issues are very close to our hearts,” said Brianna, earnestly sounding out the acronym in a staccato, like a kid at a spelling bee.
“Oh?”
“I have a cousin who’s bi,” she said, by way of explanation. “Or is it pan? I forget. Anyway. We’re huge allies, aren’t we, baby?”
“Huge,” said Reece, and Patrick couldn’t tell if his smirk was one of amusement or derision.
“Well, it’s so nice to meet you both,” he said. “Would you please excuse me?”
Patrick swiftly abandoned the Mackenzies at the bar as the opening speeches began. Rather than returning to his table, he opted to take a lap of the room, walking with intention and pausing only occasionally to take a thoughtful sip of his tequila, doing his best to look like a man who was on his way somewhere, or otherwise preoccupied and not to be approached or interrupted.
He passed the majority of the ceremony this way, circling the venue with more pit stops at the bar. Drinking in America, he decided, was nowhere near as fun as drinking in England. The quality of the booze at this event was undeniably superior, but the resulting feeling was one of woozy lightheadedness, with none of the giddy pleasure he so missed.
When a brand ambassador for a Palm Springs luxury resort took to the stage to talk about the importance of vocal allies in the fight for queer rights, Patrick ducked into a semiprivate bathroom. He thought for a moment that he might throw up, but after he leaned against the sink and splashed water on his face, the worst of the fog passed. What was he doing here? He had no right, had done nothing to deserve being welcomed like this. His people deserved better heroes.
