“Good seeing you, Gray,” he says.
We’re not the type of friends who hug when we see each other for the first time in months. I nod toward the door and he accepts the invitation, following me into the lobby and the elevator. He shoves me against the wall and presses against me as the elevator doors shut, kissing me, hands grabbing my ass so tightly I can already tell I’m going to be bruised in the morning. He bites my neck hard enough that he might break skin. That’s okay. I like pain. It’s a distraction. This time, though, I remember Mattie kissing my neck. Fuck.
The elevator opens again, and Briggs follows me down the short hall to my apartment, hugging me from behind so that I can feel just how—uh—excited he is as I struggle with the keys. I must be drunker than I thought. Briggs tsks in annoyance and grabs the keys from me, unlocking the door and shoving me inside. I almost trip. He shuts the door, locking it behind him.
“I’ve missed you,” he says, walking over to me and tipping my chin up. I’m pretty sure he missed my body more than anything else.
“How’s shooting going?” I ask. My words sound strange in my head, mixing together. I realize they’re slurring. Briggs starts to guide me over to the couch. He puts a hand in my hair and pushes down.
“You really want to ask how the show is going right now?”
We never really talk about anything personal or private. He pushes harder, until I give in, sinking to my knees. I struggle with his zipper.
“Come on, Gray,” Briggs says. “Get it together.”
He always talks to me this way. I should be used to it by now. I get the zipper undone and pull out his dick. It’s already half hard. He grabs a fistful of my hair and my chin, squeezing my mouth open and holding my head in place, before he starts to shove himself in my mouth. I block his dick with my tongue the first time, but I struggle to breathe when he rams it to the back of my throat. I feel like I’m going to throw up. I put a hand up on his waist, trying to push him back.
He frowns at me. “What’s going on, man? You can usually take it.” He grins as he thrusts and I cough, trying to pull away. “What? Is the boyfriend making you soft?”
I push him back hard enough that he lets go. I wipe the corner of my mouth. Just the mention of Matt makes my chest buzz. There’re too many emotions for me to unravel, and my head’s fuzzy. I start to get up.
“I don’t think—you know, sorry, Briggs,” I say. “Maybe you should go.” He reaches for me, and I snatch my arm back. “I’m serious. I’m not in the mood.”
He stares at me before he snorts, like he thinks I’m joking. When I don’t laugh, he sticks his tongue into his cheek in annoyance. He pulls up his boxers and jeans, buttoning and zipping. “I just drove here for this shit?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“You’re a fucking asshole, Gray.”
I frown. I don’t know. Maybe being around Mattie has had an effect on me after all. “I’m an asshole for not wanting to have sex with you?”
“For being selfish, yeah.”
“Sure. Okay.” I turn away, toward the kitchen to get some water.
“You should be happy,” he says. “Isn’t this how you made your whole life? Your whole career? Letting yourself get fucked by whoever wanted to—”
I turn back around and shove him. He stumbles for a breath. And then he shoves me so hard I fall over my feet, landing partly on the edge of the center table. “Fuck!” I put a hand to my abdomen, checking for blood. I didn’t break skin, but the muscle and bone there aches so much I’m not even sure I can get up again.
“You’re a piece of shit, Gray,” Briggs says. “You know that? You can’t see how pathetic you really are.”
“I have a pretty good idea of how pathetic I am,” I say, wincing as I try to stand.
He doesn’t like my dismissive attitude. He grabs my arm and yanks me up, tugs my arm behind my back as he pushes me into the couch. I don’t even know what’s happening, not really—my brain shuts down and I don’t have any thoughts. Whenever I was with those sick fucks as a kid, they pretended I wanted it. I didn’t fight back. It was what they expected. I was afraid. I blame myself for that shit. I can already hear Matt in my head at the thought of even saying that out loud. God. He’d want me to know it wasn’t my fault. That the focus shouldn’t be on me and whether I fought back. It should be on the assholes who raped me.
Briggs is pulling down my boxers. My body reacts without me thinking. My elbow slams back. He shouts, and I twist, pulling my pants up. I got him in the eye. His brow is bleeding. And I don’t know. Something takes over. I throw myself at him and punch him again and again. I hear myself screaming so hard my voice tears my throat, but I don’t realize it’s me. Not really. Not until Briggs manages to throw me off him. His nose, his lip, his eyes—blood is everywhere. I’m breathing hard. There’s a cut on the corner of my mouth. He must’ve gotten a punch in and I didn’t even feel it. Shit.
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?”