Stars in Your Eyes(52)

He stares at me. He’s breathing hard, too. He might kill me. I’m pretty sure he’s considering it.

Then he gets up. He opens the door and doesn’t bother to close it as he practically runs down the hall.

I sit on the couch for a while. I don’t know how long. At one point, I consider texting Mattie, but the idea slips away. I just keep sitting, trying to fight off the thoughts that eventually find their way to me again. Don’t they always?





Mattie




It’s more humiliating than I would’ve imagined, being abandoned at a Halloween party by my drunk fake boyfriend. I decide to pretend that it was intentional—that he told me he would leave early, and I was okay with his decision. I smile at anyone who looks at me with a raised eyebrow, silently questioning why I would ever want to be in a relationship with someone like Logan Gray.

I’m not fooling Phillip or Julie. They saw the whole interaction.

Julie shakes her head. “I don’t know what’s up with him,” she says. “I’m sorry, Mattie. You deserve to be treated better.”

“It’s okay,” I say, though I’m not sure that’s true. We’re not even in a real relationship, but I know I’m worth more respect than that. At the very least, he could have come over, told me that he was leaving, and asked if I’d be okay getting home on my own.

“He used to be different when we were kids,” she says. “I have no idea what happened to him to make him become such a shitty person.”

I feel a flare of defensiveness for him. Gray isn’t a shitty person. He just makes a lot of shitty mistakes. Knowing the root of it all softens my anger for him.

“Oh, right,” Phil says, nodding. “You were on that show together. What was it again?”

“It Takes Two.”

“God, I loved that show growing up,” he says. Phil is very charming, I’ll give him that. He gives off a warmth that feels safe and loving, even if we only just met. “It’s hard to imagine Logan Gray being different,” he says.

“He was actually nice, once,” Julie tells him. “Kind.”

“What happened to him? What made him change?”

I know the answer to that, but it isn’t my story to tell. Logan told me how, one day when he was seventeen, he suddenly realized how messed up everything he’d experienced had been. He’d convinced himself it was normal, but when he couldn’t lie to himself anymore—that he’d been abused and assaulted—he became angry, angrier than he’d been with the years of bullying, the biphobia, all the shit he had to survive on his own. It’d been silently building until he finally couldn’t keep the rage bottled up anymore. I’m quiet, but Phil and Julie don’t seem to notice.

“That—well, that film he posted,” Julie says, lowering her voice. I know she means the one when he was eighteen. “He was always sarcastic, but he never went out of his way to be hurtful, or controversial for the sake of controversy. After that, it was like he became a different person. It was hard to be around him, especially as he started to pull away for no reason. I tried to see if there was something I could do to help him, you know? But some people can’t accept help from others. They need to save themselves. We can’t be responsible for another person when they need to learn how to be better.”

I feel like she’s trying to say something to me, specifically—and yeah, maybe she’s right. Even if Gray isn’t really my boyfriend, I’ve felt like it’s my responsibility to help him. Phil is watching me quietly.

Julie puts a hand on my arm. “I’m going to get another drink. Do you want water?” she asks me. I love that she remembered I’m sober and is kind enough to offer without judgment.

“I’m okay, but thank you.”

She leaves. Phil and I are silent for a second. I wonder if that’s why Julie suddenly became thirsty—to leave me and Phillip behind and give us a chance to talk more. Julie’s been smiling at us all evening, like she thinks we would make a much better couple than me and Gray. She might be right. We’d certainly look better together, anyway. Compared to Gray, I know the public would prefer Phillip Desmond as my boyfriend, with his clean-cut look and easy smile. Plus—well, he’s white.

“She’s right, you know,” Phil says. “You certainly deserve to be treated better.”

The fact that he’s white would make people think of him more highly. They would automatically see him as more attractive. Logan was right, earlier, too. The history of colonialism would also mean that people would say Phillip’s accent is “sexy.” People would like Phil much, much more than Logan Gray, with no hesitation.

I’ve gotten to know Logan. I’ve learned that he has layers, hurts and pains that he hides from the world—this world that has enjoyed attacking him for entertainment for most of his life now. If Logan wasn’t half-Black, and had two white parents, would everyone have treated him differently? Would they have had more patience and tried to get the full story? If he was white, they might’ve tried harder to learn about his past, his history with being abused in this industry. They might’ve had more compassion from the beginning, and he wouldn’t have had to spend his entire life fighting, growing in anger and fear until he learned to push everyone else away. I’m angry at Logan, while I’m also angry for Logan.