Into the Colors That you Seek [2/2]
To Part 1.
Ian reads it on his expression while he’s sitting in the wardrobe doing Alex’s makeup. The pornstar won’t stop fidgeting, looking a little more than pleased with himself while Ian puts a layer of powder on his face. He rolls his eyes, dusting the brush with more of the concealer and then brushing it onto the T of his face. “Well, you clearly have something on your chest, out with it.”
“We did it.”
The look that he gives him is blank. “You did what?”
It’s Alex’s turn to roll his eyes this time, and he does it with extreme glee. “We did it.” The look on his face is so similar to the one that Ian’s nephew gets when he gets new Legos or candy or a video game that he snorts.
“Alex, it’s your job to do it?” He doesn’t do it, but Alex can practically see the quotation marks around the way Ian says it. Ian thinks what are we, in third grade? “Bro, not that you’re a slut or anything, but you’re always getting some.” He clicks the compact powder shut, puts it and the brush down on the counter and arms himself with a brush and some hairspray.
“It’s not the same,” Alex says patiently. “It’s like... Not to go around quoting chick flicks or anything,” (Ian mutters Your life is a chick flick.) “But, it’s like when life as you know it ends, and nothing will ever be the same.” He pauses, eyes squinting, just a little. “Or whatever it is that Gerard says in P.S. I Love You.” Not that he would know, because it’s not like he’s up at three in the morning eating popcorn and not wearing pants and crying over movies that are sad. Alex is a man. A very manly man.
&
Matt doesn’t tell him what he’s on about on the phone, but the words my penis and my eyes and I need bleach and one of those flashy things from MIB and my baseball bat all come into the conversation and Grieco is definitely worried by the time his best friend stumbles in through the door with a slightly crazy look on his face. The fact that he actually is holding his baseball bat does nothing to calm his nerves. He moves forwards, putting one hand on Matt’s shoulder and the other warily on the bat. It’s easier to take it away from Matt than he anticipated.
Putting it safely in the corner of the room, he pushes Matt down on the sofa and hands him a cup of tea that he’d prepared a few minutes after he called and said, “Calm down, whoever it is that you want to kill this time probably doesn’t deserve it.”
He gives him a look over the mug that’s warming his hands that clearly says You have no idea. Alex waits for him to elaborate. Matt gulps the tea down and it scalds his throat. He wishes that it would scald his memory, and wishes even more that he didn’t have to tell Alex what he’s going to because he’s been so happy lately and he’s been glowing like some blushing bride since he came back from his boyfriend’s house the other day and he really doesn’t want to think about that.
“So, like. A friend of mine, Pete, he uh, linked me to a website. A porn website?” Matt starts, looking up at the ceiling like he really doesn’t want to be having this conversation, which he doesn’t. “And he gave me his account info because he said that I really needed to see it because the guy was like. Really hot? And I did, and um.” He pauses, biting his tongue. He’s angry and he doesn’t want to tell his friend because he doesn’t want to hurt him.
Alex doesn’t push him. “It’s just that. You know, it was kind of. One of the guys in it was your boyfriend.” His voice drops in volume at the very end, and for a second Grieco thinks he misheard him. “It was... Alex, it was Alex.” His voice is gentle in a way that it usually isn’t. He stares at him like he’s crazy.
“My boyfriend isn’t in a porn video. He doesn’t do that thing.” There’s a slight pause, and then, “Anyway, it’s probably just someone who looks like him.”
“No,” Matt says, shaking his head. “There were, uh, more than one. I checked. It looks like he’s kind of... a regular.”
In his defense, Grieco doesn’t cry. His face goes surprisingly blank; he stands up and says through numb lips, “I’m going to go lie down.”
&
“I don’t care that I really don’t like you right now, but I’m just warning you. Alex knows about your videos and he’s probably going to kill you. If I didn’t love him the way I do I’d do it myself. Just a heads up.” Alex looks blearily down at his phone. It’s like two in the morning and he has insomnia so actually being asleep at this time of the morning is kind of a Big Deal and according to a number he doesn’t know (it’s probably Matt, now that he thinks about it) his boyfriend knows about the porn he makes and that’s kind of a Bigger Deal.
Fuck.
&
The worst part of everything is that he’s crying. It might have been doable if he wasn’t crying, but Grieco is looking at him with glassy eyes and tears dropping down his face and asking why in a voice that’s so hurt it feels like he’s being stabbed in the chest. It might have been doable if he was angry and yelling and screaming and throwing things, but he’s sitting on the sofa with space in between them and it feels like a million miles.
“I needed the money,” Alex tells him honestly. “It was Evan’s idea in the beginning, and then it kind of caught. I could pay for rent and food and tuition with minimum student loans. Back then it was a good idea.”
Grieco sighs. “But you didn’t tell me. And you kept doing it even after we got together.” He looks down at his hands. “We’ve been together for almost four months and there’s one from three weeks ago, Lex.” There’s another few moments of silence, and Alex doesn’t even bother telling him that that was the only the second one he’s done since they started seeing each other. It hardly matters either way. “Was it because I didn’t put out until last week?” His voice gets sharp, louder then, and his anger brushes his hurt aside like a bug. “Was it because I’m not a slut and I don’t get paid to have sex?” And then, the final blow. “You’re like a fucking whore, getting paid for sex. I loved you, Alex. I never slept with anyone behind your back.”
“It was my fucking job.” Alex bites out. “I didn’t sleep with them because I enjoyed it, I did it because I need to eat and pay my rent like any other normal person, so don’t sit there on your high horse like you’re better than me because at least I’m paying my way, you’re just sitting on your ass getting a full ride from your daddy. You have no right to judge me.” He regrets it the second he says it.
There’s a silence that stretches to infinity and beyond. He says, “I didn’t know that was how you saw it.” His voice is cold like ice, hard like diamonds. Grieco gets up to leave. “Since it’s like that I think it’d be best if we stopped seeing each other.”
He slams the door on his way out.
&
Alex skips class for five days. Evan calls him roughly sixty seven times, leaves sixty one messages on his phone and threatens to tell his mother about his “after-school job” twice. He doesn’t give up on his new life goal of becoming a hermit. In the end, he only comes out because he runs out of food and smells worse than a homeless guy. He doesn’t go very far; Evan’s apartment is the next best place to get food and continue pursuing his hermit dreams. Getting in the car in pajama bottoms he’s worn for five days and a shirt he’s worn for six is the most he’s done in almost a week. At this rate, give him a few more days and Alex’ll completely forget how to exist.
Sitting in Evan’s bed watching Sex and the City and sniffing about how Ben and Jerry are the only guys I can really trust is just about the lowest point Alex has ever gotten to in his life. Lowerst point he’ll ever get to. It’s really bad and after three more days of back to back Carrie and the girls, Evan is on the verge of an intervention.
“Alex, I understand that you’re hurting right now, really I do, but I’m suffering because my couch isn’t comfortable to sleep on and you smell like you’ve been homeless for years and, Alex, if I don’t get my bed back I’m going to kill you.” He pauses, gives his friend a sympathetic look and then says, “I say it all with love.”
They fight about it and Alex cries, which doesn’t even phase Evan because Alex has been crying so much lately that he’s surprised that he isn’t dehydrated.
What does phase him is the way that Alex gets out of bed the next day, showers, shaves and brushes his teeth, and then says point blank to Evan, “I want to do a movie.”
&
If Alex is was a mess, Grieco is train wreck meets a plane wreck a natural disaster. Think, Gerry dying and Holly being alone in their apartment slowly turning into a crazy widow. Think, Britney post Kevin-divorce, going crazy and shaving her hair off and losing custody of her kids. Except that Matt doesn’t let him shave his hair off and he doesn’t have kids to lose custody of. But either way, Grieco locks himself in his room and lets his phone die and lets his laptop die (although the latter is by choice, he just left his charger at Alex’s apartment and he’s got too much dignity to go back for it.)
It’s probably for the best, though, the fact that his laptop is dead. Otherwise, he probably would have blackmailed Matt into telling him the URL of whatever website it is that Alex was employed by and watched until his eyes bled. Not because he wanted to, but because he needed to understand what the fuck it was that Alex was doing. But since his laptop is dead, he watches reruns of Sex and the City, the same was Alex is. Not that either of them know it.
Matt finally drags him out of his room, literally by the collar. He brings him to a bar and shoves alcohol down his throat until he’s gone through the stages of happy to giddy to singing to sad to passed out. He almost regrets it, except that when he’s finally managed to get him back home and asleep in his bed, he looks more at ease than he’s been in a week. Matt goes to the store to buy more alcohol for when Alex wakes up and needs more to fix his hangover.
&
Evan pulls strings and he has something for Alex to shoot three days after he asks.
So he’s on the set and it’s some weird, babysitter/single and very horny parent comes home to find him in the bath/sex ensues kind of plot that Alex has never really understood. Not that there’s anything to understand about porn - stick tab A into slot B and thrust until everyone is a sticky mess. He’s bent over the bathroom counter and Jack is balls deep in his ass, whispering dirtyhotfilth (so tight, so hot, so good) in his ear. There’s a camera angled to catch their expressions, one inside the mirror and one hidden behind Jack on some shelf or other to catch their expressions.
There’s a camera guy kneeling on the floor next to them and he’s got a handheld camera propped on his shoulder with the lens at the same level as their junk. In a way that it never has been before, Alex is uncomfortable with it all, uncomfortable with the heat of lights placed strategically around them, uncomfortable with the guy holding the camera filming his dick and where Jack’s cock slides in and out. He’s uncomfortable with Jack sliding one hand into his hair and twisting it tight between his fingers, pulling his face around so he can lick into his mouth and say, “You like that, slut? Does it get you hot?”
By far it’s the worst thing he’s ever filmed. Alex is in a foul mood afterwards, grabbing his dressing robe and flinging it on himself. Jack touches his shoulder and asks if he’s okay, if he needs a drink or a cigarette. He just flinches and slaps his hand away, says, “Why don’t you go bother Danny since you’re too much of a pussy to tell him that you’re in love with him anyway?”
He storms out in a rage of testosterone and not enough sleep and too many self destructive thoughts. Jack looks stunned; Alex doesn’t care. Evan is waiting for him when he drops down on the sofa in his office.
“I quit.”
Evan says, “Okay.”
There’s a soft sigh, and then Alex is rolling over onto his back, looking up at the ceiling blankly. “You’re not going to stop me?”
“No.”
“But I’m your best selling... whatever. I sell. You’re not going to try and talk me out of it?”
“You’re my best friend before you’re my employee. Sure, it’s a little weird, considering I’ve known you since I was six that I’ve seen you had sex more times than I’d like to, but if you want to stop I’m not going to get in your way.”
Alex feels a rush of relief going through him, washing over him like a wave. “It’s not the same anymore,” he says softly. “It just... it feels different. It’s bigger than just a job since he got involved.” Evan offers to not post the video; Alex tells him he can, he doesn’t really care as long as it’s his last. He promises that he’ll text Evan later and he’s out the door, paycheck in one hand and car keys in the other. He thinks about finding Jack and apologizing for outing him. Instead, he sees Jack and presumably Danny making out in a parked car in front of the house and figures that he’s forgiven. He’ll text him later and send chocolates or something.
&
His calls are being screened. His messages are being deleted. Ever since he quit - or, whatever it was that he did. Agreed to never make porn again. Something. His calls are either blocked or go straight to voicemail; text messages are deleted without even having been looked at. He emails him and he writes him letters and he even calls Matt and begs him to get Grieco to talk to him. Close, but no cigar. Matt says that even if he did quit it’d take more to get him back because this was kind of a Big Deal.
Flowers are sent. So are chocolates, fruit baskets and a singing telegram. According to the guy who was dressed like a peacock, Grieco slammed the door in his face without even waiting to see what he was going to sing. Alex sighs.
It takes him a week to figure out the one and only way of getting him back. It takes him another week to plan it out, and finally at midnight on a Friday he’s standing outside of Grieco’s bedroom window. Alex is wearing a jacket that he found at some thrift store and his car is parked behind him. He pushes a cassette tape into the player and pushes play, and holds the boombox over his head.
Alex prays.
Grieco’s bedroom window is open because Matt is a perfect angel who actually wants to help them back together because he’s sick of his friend moping all over the place. The music outside of his window doesn’t mean anything to him at first. He lies in his bed, wishes he had some sleeping pills and then rolls over. It doesn’t stop and he thinks about going to the window and yelling at whoever it is that’s playing it to turn it off. That’d require energy though. A low buzz starts, the unmistakeable sound of a lot of people talking at once and the music still isn’t stopping.
He finally goes to the window to see what’s going.
He definitely doesn’t expect Alex to be standing out there like he’s John fucking Cusack.
His ex-boyfriend is standing out there looking so apologetic, staring up at him like he’s the only thing left in the world. Grieco glances to his left, to his right. There are all of the other people from the dorm, standing at their windows and watching. And then they all seem to turn at the same time and look at him. Grieco watches them all look back down at Alex, blasting Peter Gabriel from a boombox, and then look back at him and finally make the connection.
Sierra, his neighbor from nextdoor opens her window and leans out. “What the hell are you waiting for?” she asks, looking at him like he’s dumb. Which, maybe he is. “Go get him!”
Grieco gapes at her for a second, and then he jumps, grabbing a hoodie and pulling it on while he simultaneously shoves his feet into shoes and stumbles down the stairs and out onto the lawn. He trips, crashes into Alex which is actually okay because he puts the stupid boombox down while he was on his way from the second floor. “I was worried you weren’t going to come down,” Alex says. “My arms were getting heavy. So much heavier than an ipod.”
They’re both just standing there and holding each other and staring at each other. Grieco hasn’t answered him yet. He realizes vaguely that almost the entire building is hanging out of their windows to watch. “I’m sorry,” he moves his hands, cups his cheeks and makes sure that he’s looking at him. “I’m sorry, I should have told you, I should have stopped.” There’s a pause where he thinks about what it is that he’s doing, thinks about the fact that there’s between two hundred and three hundred people watching this. “I quit, you know. I quit because I think I’m in love with you and I’m going to get a normal job at Abercrombie and Bitch or McDonalds or something and I really think that I love you and I would really, really appreciate it if you would say something right now.”
For half a second, Alex is convinced that Grieco is going to deck him. Instead, he gets a kiss.
Ian reads it on his expression while he’s sitting in the wardrobe doing Alex’s makeup. The pornstar won’t stop fidgeting, looking a little more than pleased with himself while Ian puts a layer of powder on his face. He rolls his eyes, dusting the brush with more of the concealer and then brushing it onto the T of his face. “Well, you clearly have something on your chest, out with it.”
“We did it.”
The look that he gives him is blank. “You did what?”
It’s Alex’s turn to roll his eyes this time, and he does it with extreme glee. “We did it.” The look on his face is so similar to the one that Ian’s nephew gets when he gets new Legos or candy or a video game that he snorts.
“Alex, it’s your job to do it?” He doesn’t do it, but Alex can practically see the quotation marks around the way Ian says it. Ian thinks what are we, in third grade? “Bro, not that you’re a slut or anything, but you’re always getting some.” He clicks the compact powder shut, puts it and the brush down on the counter and arms himself with a brush and some hairspray.
“It’s not the same,” Alex says patiently. “It’s like... Not to go around quoting chick flicks or anything,” (Ian mutters Your life is a chick flick.) “But, it’s like when life as you know it ends, and nothing will ever be the same.” He pauses, eyes squinting, just a little. “Or whatever it is that Gerard says in P.S. I Love You.” Not that he would know, because it’s not like he’s up at three in the morning eating popcorn and not wearing pants and crying over movies that are sad. Alex is a man. A very manly man.
&
Matt doesn’t tell him what he’s on about on the phone, but the words my penis and my eyes and I need bleach and one of those flashy things from MIB and my baseball bat all come into the conversation and Grieco is definitely worried by the time his best friend stumbles in through the door with a slightly crazy look on his face. The fact that he actually is holding his baseball bat does nothing to calm his nerves. He moves forwards, putting one hand on Matt’s shoulder and the other warily on the bat. It’s easier to take it away from Matt than he anticipated.
Putting it safely in the corner of the room, he pushes Matt down on the sofa and hands him a cup of tea that he’d prepared a few minutes after he called and said, “Calm down, whoever it is that you want to kill this time probably doesn’t deserve it.”
He gives him a look over the mug that’s warming his hands that clearly says You have no idea. Alex waits for him to elaborate. Matt gulps the tea down and it scalds his throat. He wishes that it would scald his memory, and wishes even more that he didn’t have to tell Alex what he’s going to because he’s been so happy lately and he’s been glowing like some blushing bride since he came back from his boyfriend’s house the other day and he really doesn’t want to think about that.
“So, like. A friend of mine, Pete, he uh, linked me to a website. A porn website?” Matt starts, looking up at the ceiling like he really doesn’t want to be having this conversation, which he doesn’t. “And he gave me his account info because he said that I really needed to see it because the guy was like. Really hot? And I did, and um.” He pauses, biting his tongue. He’s angry and he doesn’t want to tell his friend because he doesn’t want to hurt him.
Alex doesn’t push him. “It’s just that. You know, it was kind of. One of the guys in it was your boyfriend.” His voice drops in volume at the very end, and for a second Grieco thinks he misheard him. “It was... Alex, it was Alex.” His voice is gentle in a way that it usually isn’t. He stares at him like he’s crazy.
“My boyfriend isn’t in a porn video. He doesn’t do that thing.” There’s a slight pause, and then, “Anyway, it’s probably just someone who looks like him.”
“No,” Matt says, shaking his head. “There were, uh, more than one. I checked. It looks like he’s kind of... a regular.”
In his defense, Grieco doesn’t cry. His face goes surprisingly blank; he stands up and says through numb lips, “I’m going to go lie down.”
&
“I don’t care that I really don’t like you right now, but I’m just warning you. Alex knows about your videos and he’s probably going to kill you. If I didn’t love him the way I do I’d do it myself. Just a heads up.” Alex looks blearily down at his phone. It’s like two in the morning and he has insomnia so actually being asleep at this time of the morning is kind of a Big Deal and according to a number he doesn’t know (it’s probably Matt, now that he thinks about it) his boyfriend knows about the porn he makes and that’s kind of a Bigger Deal.
Fuck.
&
The worst part of everything is that he’s crying. It might have been doable if he wasn’t crying, but Grieco is looking at him with glassy eyes and tears dropping down his face and asking why in a voice that’s so hurt it feels like he’s being stabbed in the chest. It might have been doable if he was angry and yelling and screaming and throwing things, but he’s sitting on the sofa with space in between them and it feels like a million miles.
“I needed the money,” Alex tells him honestly. “It was Evan’s idea in the beginning, and then it kind of caught. I could pay for rent and food and tuition with minimum student loans. Back then it was a good idea.”
Grieco sighs. “But you didn’t tell me. And you kept doing it even after we got together.” He looks down at his hands. “We’ve been together for almost four months and there’s one from three weeks ago, Lex.” There’s another few moments of silence, and Alex doesn’t even bother telling him that that was the only the second one he’s done since they started seeing each other. It hardly matters either way. “Was it because I didn’t put out until last week?” His voice gets sharp, louder then, and his anger brushes his hurt aside like a bug. “Was it because I’m not a slut and I don’t get paid to have sex?” And then, the final blow. “You’re like a fucking whore, getting paid for sex. I loved you, Alex. I never slept with anyone behind your back.”
“It was my fucking job.” Alex bites out. “I didn’t sleep with them because I enjoyed it, I did it because I need to eat and pay my rent like any other normal person, so don’t sit there on your high horse like you’re better than me because at least I’m paying my way, you’re just sitting on your ass getting a full ride from your daddy. You have no right to judge me.” He regrets it the second he says it.
There’s a silence that stretches to infinity and beyond. He says, “I didn’t know that was how you saw it.” His voice is cold like ice, hard like diamonds. Grieco gets up to leave. “Since it’s like that I think it’d be best if we stopped seeing each other.”
He slams the door on his way out.
&
Alex skips class for five days. Evan calls him roughly sixty seven times, leaves sixty one messages on his phone and threatens to tell his mother about his “after-school job” twice. He doesn’t give up on his new life goal of becoming a hermit. In the end, he only comes out because he runs out of food and smells worse than a homeless guy. He doesn’t go very far; Evan’s apartment is the next best place to get food and continue pursuing his hermit dreams. Getting in the car in pajama bottoms he’s worn for five days and a shirt he’s worn for six is the most he’s done in almost a week. At this rate, give him a few more days and Alex’ll completely forget how to exist.
Sitting in Evan’s bed watching Sex and the City and sniffing about how Ben and Jerry are the only guys I can really trust is just about the lowest point Alex has ever gotten to in his life. Lowerst point he’ll ever get to. It’s really bad and after three more days of back to back Carrie and the girls, Evan is on the verge of an intervention.
“Alex, I understand that you’re hurting right now, really I do, but I’m suffering because my couch isn’t comfortable to sleep on and you smell like you’ve been homeless for years and, Alex, if I don’t get my bed back I’m going to kill you.” He pauses, gives his friend a sympathetic look and then says, “I say it all with love.”
They fight about it and Alex cries, which doesn’t even phase Evan because Alex has been crying so much lately that he’s surprised that he isn’t dehydrated.
What does phase him is the way that Alex gets out of bed the next day, showers, shaves and brushes his teeth, and then says point blank to Evan, “I want to do a movie.”
&
If Alex is was a mess, Grieco is train wreck meets a plane wreck a natural disaster. Think, Gerry dying and Holly being alone in their apartment slowly turning into a crazy widow. Think, Britney post Kevin-divorce, going crazy and shaving her hair off and losing custody of her kids. Except that Matt doesn’t let him shave his hair off and he doesn’t have kids to lose custody of. But either way, Grieco locks himself in his room and lets his phone die and lets his laptop die (although the latter is by choice, he just left his charger at Alex’s apartment and he’s got too much dignity to go back for it.)
It’s probably for the best, though, the fact that his laptop is dead. Otherwise, he probably would have blackmailed Matt into telling him the URL of whatever website it is that Alex was employed by and watched until his eyes bled. Not because he wanted to, but because he needed to understand what the fuck it was that Alex was doing. But since his laptop is dead, he watches reruns of Sex and the City, the same was Alex is. Not that either of them know it.
Matt finally drags him out of his room, literally by the collar. He brings him to a bar and shoves alcohol down his throat until he’s gone through the stages of happy to giddy to singing to sad to passed out. He almost regrets it, except that when he’s finally managed to get him back home and asleep in his bed, he looks more at ease than he’s been in a week. Matt goes to the store to buy more alcohol for when Alex wakes up and needs more to fix his hangover.
&
Evan pulls strings and he has something for Alex to shoot three days after he asks.
So he’s on the set and it’s some weird, babysitter/single and very horny parent comes home to find him in the bath/sex ensues kind of plot that Alex has never really understood. Not that there’s anything to understand about porn - stick tab A into slot B and thrust until everyone is a sticky mess. He’s bent over the bathroom counter and Jack is balls deep in his ass, whispering dirtyhotfilth (so tight, so hot, so good) in his ear. There’s a camera angled to catch their expressions, one inside the mirror and one hidden behind Jack on some shelf or other to catch their expressions.
There’s a camera guy kneeling on the floor next to them and he’s got a handheld camera propped on his shoulder with the lens at the same level as their junk. In a way that it never has been before, Alex is uncomfortable with it all, uncomfortable with the heat of lights placed strategically around them, uncomfortable with the guy holding the camera filming his dick and where Jack’s cock slides in and out. He’s uncomfortable with Jack sliding one hand into his hair and twisting it tight between his fingers, pulling his face around so he can lick into his mouth and say, “You like that, slut? Does it get you hot?”
By far it’s the worst thing he’s ever filmed. Alex is in a foul mood afterwards, grabbing his dressing robe and flinging it on himself. Jack touches his shoulder and asks if he’s okay, if he needs a drink or a cigarette. He just flinches and slaps his hand away, says, “Why don’t you go bother Danny since you’re too much of a pussy to tell him that you’re in love with him anyway?”
He storms out in a rage of testosterone and not enough sleep and too many self destructive thoughts. Jack looks stunned; Alex doesn’t care. Evan is waiting for him when he drops down on the sofa in his office.
“I quit.”
Evan says, “Okay.”
There’s a soft sigh, and then Alex is rolling over onto his back, looking up at the ceiling blankly. “You’re not going to stop me?”
“No.”
“But I’m your best selling... whatever. I sell. You’re not going to try and talk me out of it?”
“You’re my best friend before you’re my employee. Sure, it’s a little weird, considering I’ve known you since I was six that I’ve seen you had sex more times than I’d like to, but if you want to stop I’m not going to get in your way.”
Alex feels a rush of relief going through him, washing over him like a wave. “It’s not the same anymore,” he says softly. “It just... it feels different. It’s bigger than just a job since he got involved.” Evan offers to not post the video; Alex tells him he can, he doesn’t really care as long as it’s his last. He promises that he’ll text Evan later and he’s out the door, paycheck in one hand and car keys in the other. He thinks about finding Jack and apologizing for outing him. Instead, he sees Jack and presumably Danny making out in a parked car in front of the house and figures that he’s forgiven. He’ll text him later and send chocolates or something.
&
His calls are being screened. His messages are being deleted. Ever since he quit - or, whatever it was that he did. Agreed to never make porn again. Something. His calls are either blocked or go straight to voicemail; text messages are deleted without even having been looked at. He emails him and he writes him letters and he even calls Matt and begs him to get Grieco to talk to him. Close, but no cigar. Matt says that even if he did quit it’d take more to get him back because this was kind of a Big Deal.
Flowers are sent. So are chocolates, fruit baskets and a singing telegram. According to the guy who was dressed like a peacock, Grieco slammed the door in his face without even waiting to see what he was going to sing. Alex sighs.
It takes him a week to figure out the one and only way of getting him back. It takes him another week to plan it out, and finally at midnight on a Friday he’s standing outside of Grieco’s bedroom window. Alex is wearing a jacket that he found at some thrift store and his car is parked behind him. He pushes a cassette tape into the player and pushes play, and holds the boombox over his head.
Alex prays.
Grieco’s bedroom window is open because Matt is a perfect angel who actually wants to help them back together because he’s sick of his friend moping all over the place. The music outside of his window doesn’t mean anything to him at first. He lies in his bed, wishes he had some sleeping pills and then rolls over. It doesn’t stop and he thinks about going to the window and yelling at whoever it is that’s playing it to turn it off. That’d require energy though. A low buzz starts, the unmistakeable sound of a lot of people talking at once and the music still isn’t stopping.
He finally goes to the window to see what’s going.
He definitely doesn’t expect Alex to be standing out there like he’s John fucking Cusack.
His ex-boyfriend is standing out there looking so apologetic, staring up at him like he’s the only thing left in the world. Grieco glances to his left, to his right. There are all of the other people from the dorm, standing at their windows and watching. And then they all seem to turn at the same time and look at him. Grieco watches them all look back down at Alex, blasting Peter Gabriel from a boombox, and then look back at him and finally make the connection.
Sierra, his neighbor from nextdoor opens her window and leans out. “What the hell are you waiting for?” she asks, looking at him like he’s dumb. Which, maybe he is. “Go get him!”
Grieco gapes at her for a second, and then he jumps, grabbing a hoodie and pulling it on while he simultaneously shoves his feet into shoes and stumbles down the stairs and out onto the lawn. He trips, crashes into Alex which is actually okay because he puts the stupid boombox down while he was on his way from the second floor. “I was worried you weren’t going to come down,” Alex says. “My arms were getting heavy. So much heavier than an ipod.”
They’re both just standing there and holding each other and staring at each other. Grieco hasn’t answered him yet. He realizes vaguely that almost the entire building is hanging out of their windows to watch. “I’m sorry,” he moves his hands, cups his cheeks and makes sure that he’s looking at him. “I’m sorry, I should have told you, I should have stopped.” There’s a pause where he thinks about what it is that he’s doing, thinks about the fact that there’s between two hundred and three hundred people watching this. “I quit, you know. I quit because I think I’m in love with you and I’m going to get a normal job at Abercrombie and Bitch or McDonalds or something and I really think that I love you and I would really, really appreciate it if you would say something right now.”
For half a second, Alex is convinced that Grieco is going to deck him. Instead, he gets a kiss.