Page 2 of Not Your Golden Boy

“I never wanted to make it big,” Nikky insisted, all too aware that his emotions were loud in his voice. “I just wanted consistent work in a creative career. You know as well as I do that this whole thing is way more than any of us bargained for.”

Even though they were eight time zones apart, what with Drew filming in Los Angeles at the moment, Nikky could feel the mood shift.

“Are you okay?” Drew asked.

“Um, yeah, I’m fine,” Nikky lied.

“Because you sound a little, I don’t know, not okay.”

“Maybe I am still jetlagged after all,” Nikky said, shrugging even though Drew couldn’t see him. The driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror definitely saw him.

“Are you sleeping well?” Drew asked, like he was Nikky’s older brother instead of his best friend.

“About as well as usual,” Nikky answered.

“That bad, eh?”

Self-consciousness zipped through Nikky like an electric current. “Everything’s fine, really,” he said, not wanting Drew to worry. Even though he knew he couldn’t stop Drew from caring about him. That’s what friends were for, after all. “Don’t worry about me.”

Drew laughed. “Fat chance of that. It’s my job as your friend to worry about you.”

“I’m fine. You’ve got other things to worry about.”

“Yeah, and you’re one of them.”

Nikky smiled. He was incredibly lucky to have forged such a strong bond with Drew during the filming of Cooked. He’d never had a friend that felt so much like family. He’d never had family that felt like family the way Drew did. They’d bonded so tightly that neither of them even minded the silly way fans had relentlessly shipped the two of them. At least until Drew had started dating the author Lee Cresswell and they’d made their relationship public.

It was actually the way Drew and Lee had met through the Rent-A-Boyfriend agency that had inspired Nikky to do something drastic himself. Something that might give him a break from the relentless pursuit crashing down on him that had come along with fame.

Like Drew could read his mind, he asked, “What are you up to now? It must be morning in London. Are you on your way to the recording studio?”

A jolt of anxiety hit Nikky. “Um, no,” he said, scrambling to decide how much he wanted to tell his friend. “I’m on my way to, um, a different meeting.”

“Ooh, sounds interesting,” Drew said, all happy energy and lightness. “Is it with a director or a producer of some sort?”

Nikky’s hands started to go numb. “Something like that,” he lied.

“Mysterious,” Drew laughed. “You’ll tell me what it is if you book it, right?”

“Of course,” Nikky said. “But I’m not really certain about this one.”

That was the understatement of the century. He was so anxious and uncertain about the request he’d made of Rent-A -Boyfriend that part of him wanted to ask the cab driver to turn around and take him back to his hotel so he could hide under the bed for the next five years, until the fervor over his career died down.

Then again, if everything went the way he hoped it would with Rent-A-Boyfriend, he wouldn’t have to worry about parasocial fans or predatory paparazzi. He wouldn’t have to worry about Holberg ever again.

“Alright,” Drew went on. “Definitely let me know how it goes. I care about your career as much as I care about mine.”

“Thanks, but you really don’t have to,” Nikky said, face heating with an uncomfortable combination of embarrassment and gratitude.

“I want to,” Drew said. “You’re my brother from another mother.” Nikky winced at the analogy, glad that Drew couldn’t see his reaction. Mothers were a sore point. His had wanted a chemical escape from the sadness of her life more than she’d wanted him. “This film wraps in just over a week, then Lee and I are heading back to London. So we’ll be there in person to cheer you on soon.”

“Oh, great.” Nikky was genuinely glad his time in London would overlap with Drew’s and Lee’s. The two of them were trying to live their lives on both sides of the ocean, depending on the roles Drew booked, and since Nikky was usually based in L.A., they’d been missing each other as often as not lately.

“I’ll give you a call when I know more,” Drew said. He laughed, then went on with, “I’ll probably give you a call anyhow when I’m bored on set just to live vicariously through your rock star ambitions.”

“I don’t want to be a rock star,” Nikky laughed uneasily. “I don’t want to be a star at all. I just want to make music that people listen to and do some acting now and then.”

Drew laughed like Nikky had been kidding.