Okay, so this will not be a blog story week, let me just get this out there right now. No blog story. I've been staring at the same 300 words for so long they're burned onto my retinas, and I'm totally fine with that, by the way. My mentors and I are on the verge of turning in my Pitch Wars submission, which is AMAZING! I've been working like a maniac for the last three months on revising Magical Hazmat, with three rounds of revisions, cutting ten thousand words and adding in another fifteen, and generally getting the five-star treatment from my incredible mentors Janet Walden-West and Anne Raven. #TeamSubversive for the win!
The point is, all my energy has been directed solely at this book for the past week, solid. I've been cutting and shaping and bending words to my purposes, and I'm happy with what I've got, but what I don't have is The Tank today.
However, I do have an excerpt from a short story I'm going to be putting up for free for my lovely readers (YOU, you people, I'm talking about YOU). Some of you might recognize it from its original publication in a Riptide anthology. I also have a solemn vow that next Tuesday will be a story day. The day after that is the day my Pitch Wars submission goes live to agents and editors, so I can assure you that Tuesday will be productive, since Wednesday will be nothing but me staring anxiously at my computer while self-medicating with baking and whiskey. Yeah, I'm classy that way.
Anyhow, on with the excerpt!
***
The list didn’t change.
Jon could see the whiteboard through the porch windows: bullet points written
out in Alistair’s stupidly pretty cursive, black and stark and beautiful. Those
rules governed the basics of his behavior, from eating to meds to when he
should be in bed at night. Thanks to Alistair’s frequent absences for filming
and promotion lately, Jon just about had those suckers memorized.
Usually he liked following
them. For the most part they did exactly what Alistair had meant them to: they
gave Jon a routine, a series of things to do that kept his day from devolving
into a chaotic mess of introspection and lost time. Seeing them whenever he
glanced in the kitchen prompted him to remember that Alistair wrote them out as
a reminder of what they had, and to give him a way to obey even when they
weren’t together. Usually they helped.
Today was not one of those
times. Right now the rules felt more like a list of chores for a naughty child
than guidance for a willing lover, and he was tempted—he was so, so
tempted—to fuck off and ignore them. Just this once. As long as he followed the
ones that required communication, Alistair would never know. How could he, when
he was darting from press event to award ceremony to celebrity interview, so
busy promoting Blessed Father that Jon hadn’t seen him for more than
three days at a time since December?
It wasn’t fair to think
like that. Jon could have gone with Alistair on plenty of the trips. In fact,
he was in demand for interviews himself, mostly because he never gave them and
he had a reputation for difficulty that made every producer and publicist that
much more determined to be the one to get him. He could see the article now: Jon
Jones, the playboy son of two renowned artists, fell from grace into addiction.
Learn how he clawed his way back to the top, and why he credits it all to
Alistair Fraser’s help.
The public wanted to see
evidence of his gratitude. They wanted to wallow in his remorse. More than one
paparazzo had gone out of their way to get into Jon’s face when he and Al were
out together, snapping pictures and shouting questions. Screw them. Jon wasn’t
an actor; he was the one writing the script. The only person who got to lay
their expectations on him was Al, and he wasn’t here to enforce them in person
because tonight was the Oscars. If there was one event Al had to be at this
year, it was the Oscars. He was a nominee, after all.
But then, so was Jon.
Jon sighed as he finished
his cigarette, out on the porch, of course, because neither of them wanted the
smell of smoke in the house. He’d just earned an extra five swats for
indulging, but he didn’t care; he needed the nicotine. He felt twitchy, too
tight in his skin. He ground the butt into the ashtray and stood up slowly,
pleased that he’d gotten away with no nausea this time. Nausea was the one side
effect he couldn’t shake of the HIV meds, even with seven years’ practice. The
lasting consequences from years of sleepless nights and heavy drinking probably
didn’t help the situation, but food and cigarettes, formerly two of his
favorite things, were now constant struggles in the disputed territory that was
his body.
Jon headed back inside,
locked the sliding glass door, and then lowered the blinds. Their house was two
hours north of Los Angeles in a quiet, wooded area with few close neighbors,
but he didn’t like to take chances with their privacy. There had been too many
embarrassing photographic “revelations” over the years to get complacent just
because Al was gone. He walked over to the whiteboard and put another check
under the Vices column. Frankly, he’d argued vices should be changed to
“indulgences” and mostly forgiven, because didn’t everyone deserve to indulge
every now and then? Alistair hadn’t bought it though.
He glanced at the
grandfather clock on the far wall. It was an enormous, ridiculous thing, with a
clanging chime that never failed to wake him up when he didn’t have Alistair
home to exhaust him, but Al loved the damn thing. Nearly four o’clock. Plenty
of time to take the dog for a walk before the show started. Just because he
wasn’t attending the Oscars didn’t mean he didn’t want to watch them,
especially since his movie was up for four awards.
“Brutus!” The heavy-bodied
black lab darted up from where he’d been napping on his bed and trotted over.
“Walk time, dog o’ war.” He patted Brutus on the head and smiled. He still
wasn’t quite over Alistair’s insistence on naming the dog Brutus. Alistair was
an utter Shakespeare nerd.
Brutus was a new
development in their relationship. Alistair had bought him, already two years
old and thankfully well trained, at the height of filming Blessed Father
when Jon had alternated between nerve-racking visits to the set and sleepless
nights at home by himself. He was supposed to be company for Jon, something for
him to care for when Alistair couldn’t be there to care for them both.
Goddamn him and his
psychobabble, but it had worked, or close enough. Brutus was good company: not
too demanding but lovable, and his schedule was as regular as clockwork. Four
in the afternoon meant a walk outside, and therefore Jon had to put on actual
clothes and act like an adult for half an hour. Not his favorite thing to do,
but if it was something he liked doing it wouldn’t need to be on the list.
Did sweatpants count? No
obvious stains, and his T-shirt was clean . . . “Close enough,” Jon muttered.
“Let’s do this.”
He followed Brutus to the
door, slid into a pair of flip-flops, and undid both the dead bolts and the key
lock. “Have you got your ball?” Alistair would laugh at Jon asking the dog
questions as though he expected an answer, but Jon got his revenge whenever Al
slipped into baby talk. “Go get it!”
Brutus ran down the hall
and came back with his worn toy.
“Good boy.” He opened the
door and stuck his head out onto the veranda of their sprawling Spanish-style
home. It was the biggest house he’d ever lived in, and he could have been happy
with a lot less, but what this home offered them that so many others hadn’t was
a bit of isolation, a buffer zone between their private life and the outside
world. Before they’d gotten together, Alistair had lived in the heart of Los
Angeles, and Jon knew that he missed the hustle of city life and the energy he
got from being around so many people. This house was their compromise: close
enough to the city that they could get there for work, but far enough away that
Jon didn’t feel like he was suffocating. He could manage in a city—hell, he’d
lived in New York for years—but he didn’t really enjoy it anymore. Time and
circumstance had transformed him into a recluse.
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