Selfie Read Free

sometimes the villain—but he worked consistently and got paid well.
    Eventually, Jilly (who had signed us by that time—she’d gotten me the gig at the CW) said we had to get houses. If we didn’t, the press would talk, the fan fiction would get out of hand, our careers would be in jeopardy.
    I remembered asking, “Can’t we just come out?” Neil Patrick Harris had come out. George Takei had come out. Six years ago there had been enough out celebrities that it shouldn’t have made a difference, right?
    Jillian had looked at me, pity in her cobalt-blue-tinted contacts. “Honey, you’re just not that good.” She shook her head. “Those other guys can do it because they’ve got balls-out talent—you and Vinnie, I love you guys, you’re my first big hits and my bread and butter, but you’re . . . you know. Beefcake. You’re decent enough actors to not embarrass yourselves, but mostly, sugar, you’re just a pretty face.”
    I’d done a shitty job of concealing my hurt—I’d loved drama in school. I hadn’t wanted to be beefcake, I’d wanted to be an actor, damn it! But Vinnie had let it roll off his back.
    “Whatever you say, gorgeous,” he’d purred. “As long as we’ve got backdoor access to each other’s pads, I’m good with that.” But he’d looked at me searchingly over her head, with a little bit of pity and fear. His family still loved him, and I knew because he’d told me that he dreaded, more than anything, losing that support.
    Jilly hadn’t seen that look, though. She’d touched his nose like wasn’t he just the cutest thing? Vinnie got that a lot. “You gay guys—you flirt like gangbusters, but do you ever put out? Done, then—I’ll tell the real estate lady to look for properties next to each other, relatively private. No one will ever know.”
    And no one had ever known. Ten years of a relationship forged in the crucible of Hollywood, and my only proof was a laptop full of memories that only two people had shared.
    And now it was down to one.
    I pulled myself back into the present with a sick thump . “Jillian . . . did I post a video last night?”
    Her laugh was weak and stringy and hysterical. “Oh, honey.” I heard a shaky draw on the cigarette. “That’s like asking if the Washington Monument is a little bit of an erection.”

    I didn’t look. I couldn’t look at my Washington Monument of YouTube selfies. Just getting out of bed and into the shower took everything I had. After that, it was a fight against vomiting, and I needed all my strength for that.
    Forty-five minutes after Jilly hung up, she was at my house—had arrived, in fact, while I was still in the shower. When I emerged, a towel wrapped around my waist, I was surprised and touched to see she’d pulled up my comforter and cleaned up the bottles for me.
    Jillian was a four-time combat veteran of the marital wars, and the mother of two. She hardly twitched a sculpted eyebrow as I started rustling around in my drawers for some yoga pants and a T-shirt. She’d once walked into the tiny bathroom of a guest-star trailer to have me sign my next contract. I’d been taking a stellar dump at the time, but she hadn’t even wrinkled her rhinoplasty. I loved her like a mother, but there was no doubting the fact that she had iron-clad tits in a stainless-steel bra.
    Or so I thought.
    She was sitting at my personal desk, sifting through my laptop browser when she cast a look over her shoulder and recoiled.
    “Jesus, kid, you’re scrawny as hell.”
    “I work out,” I mumbled, taking a hungover look at my wardrobe. I had a maid service that came in and did laundry, which was awesome—but all of my clean, pressed yoga pants and T-shirts had holes in them, and I let out a sigh. Yeah, it had been a while since I’d gone shopping.
    “Who gives a shit if you work out? Do you eat ?”
    I tried to remember the last meal I’d had, and drew a blank. “I must eat,” I muttered. “Otherwise, I couldn’t work