“Yeah,” Red said casually, taking another bite. “Because I really want you to tell me why the hell you’re ‘hiding out’ here.”
I sighed. So much for my erection.
“I’m going to tell you. But then you have to promise not to make me talk about LA again for about two hundred years, okay?”
He nodded once. “I promise.”
It was so easy to believe Red when he said he promised. I was used to protecting myself at all costs, always worried that people might be taking advantage of me. It felt good to trust someone.
I ran my fingertips along a knot in the wood of the table as I spoke.
“Things hadn’t been good in LA for… a while,” I said. “I always feel stupid saying that, because on the outside it looks like I had so much money and like every gay guy worshipped me. But Instagram doesn’t give the full picture.”
“Of course not,” Red said.
“NaughtyBoyz was so good to me at first. They gave me choices as to what I wanted to do. You’d think it would have gotten easier as I got more popular, but it didn’t. Eventually when they looked at me, they only saw dollar signs. They never forced me to do anything I didn’t want to, but they didn’t really care about my schedule or my mental health. And… then I started dating Colin.”
“Who sounds like an asshole,” Red said.
“I know that now,” I told him. “But when I first met Colin, he seemed amazing. He had a family history just like mine, and he was so well-connected in LA. He made it sound like he knew some actual celebrities, but that turned out to be a lie. But most of all, he was just… fun.”
“At first.”
“At first. He allowed me to forget who I really was. And I was always trying to forget who I was. But after a year of knowing him, I realized I had become an empty shell.”
Red frowned. “How so?”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Just talking about Colin was making my heart rate skyrocket. “He also didn’t really see me as a person after a certain point. He saw me as a porn star. And only a porn star. It’s amazing how quickly that happens.”
I bit my nail and Red gently reached out, pulling my fingers away from my mouth.
“Sorry,” I said. “I swear I don’t bite my nails much anymore.”
He squeezed my hand, nodding. “You don’t have to say sorry. Just don’t hurt yourself.”
I nodded, pulling in air. “Colin would ask me to introduce him to other porn stars. Then he ended up fucking one of them, a guy who I’d never really liked. That was the first time he cheated on me and told me that it didn’t matter.”
“Such a prick,” Red said, shaking his head.
“Long story short, he did that a few more times. And things with NaughtyBoyz only got worse. I fell deeper into drinking. I’d been drinking every single night, but then it became sometimes during the day. A few times in the morning, even. It reached a point where I didn’t recognize myself anymore.”
The pain in Red’s eyes was palpable. I felt like I was hurting him, just from talking about who I used to be.
I swallowed hard. “I just… I just had to get the fuck out,” I said, clearing my throat. “And now I did, and everything’s okay, and the past is behind me. Period.”
I sounded like I was trying to convince myself as much as I was trying to convince him. I wanted it to be true more than anything in the world.
Red paused for a moment, his expression fixed in a frown. “I’m so glad you got out,” he finally said.
My eyes went wide, involuntarily. “You are?”
He furrowed his brow. “Of course I am.”
“I thought you were pissed as hell that I came here.”
He took a deep breath. “I was at first,” he said. “Obviously. When you walked into the tavern I was about ready to head out front and fight you.”
“It definitely seemed like you hated my ass. Even if Sam wanted to be in my ass.”
Red laughed. “Sam is so starstruck with you. But I didn’t hate you. I was mad as hell, though.”
“I know you were.”
He shook his head slowly. “You can’t know how hard it was to build a life here. How hard it was to force myself not to run right back to you. For years, I wanted to run back to you.”
I paused, watching him, waiting for a punchline.
But it didn’t happen. Red was completely serious, his brows still knitted together as he stared into the distance.
“I thought you couldn’t stand me,” I said, my voice coming out quiet. “What you said, when you left—”
“I know what I said,” Red told me.
I could still remember every word he’d said.