Drew’s stomach lurched hard. It wasn’t cheating on Jessica if the whole thing had been her idea in the first place.
He packed that guilty thought away as Abby went on with, “Then you have the people who think you were just drunk and goofing off. And, of course, the people who think the whole thing is AI.”
Drew huffed a humorless laugh and moved to the coffee maker to get that going. “So it’s pretty much what we thought it would be.”
“Pretty much,” Abby said.
Drew wrestled with the avalanche of feelings all the social media posts and pics had given him. This was exactly what was supposed to happen after a night out with Lee. Pics had been taken and posted, rumors were swirling, and all those accusations of queerbaiting would probably flare up for a fewdays before dying down entirely as everyone decided he was gay after all.
Or bi. Because that was a thing.
He needed coffee, and he needed it now.
“Do you want to call Avery later or should I?” Abby asked as Drew stood frozen solid, staring at the single-cup coffee machine as it growled away and dribbled mediocre coffee into a mug.
He was late pulling himself out of his swirling thoughts to ask, “What?”
“Avery. Your agent,” Abby reminded him with a smirk. “The one who will be fielding questions about your sexuality and dating life all day today. Probably.”
The sinking feeling in Drew’s gut got worse. This was going to be a bigger deal than he’d thought it would be. They really should have thought the whole thing through before jumping into a media firestorm.
But it didn’t have to be all that. What he did on his own time was no one else’s business but his own. If he wanted to be friends with a hot, funny, interesting romance writer with cute glasses, then he was allowed to. And if he wanted to dance and grind with said romance writer and kiss him like the secrets of the universe were down his throat?—
“I’ll call Avery later,” he interrupted his thoughts, turning to Abby with a hungover smile. “I’m sure I’ll have a lot of downtime on set today, and you’ll be on a long-haul flight back to L.A.”
“That I will be,” Abby said, stepping over and kissing Drew’s cheek as he added milk and sugar to his coffee.
Drew’s eyebrows shot up. Abby only kissed him like that if something really big was going on.
“It’ll be okay,” she said when Drew turned to stare at her. “You can handle this. You’re a big, strong, gorgeous, famous celebrity.”
That made Drew laugh, which broke the tension of the moment and had Drew settling. “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he said, then took his first glorious sip of coffee.
Two minutes later, Jessica burst into the room, dragging her half-packed suitcase with her. She’d cleaned up, but was definitely hungover. Drew didn’t envy her flying all the way back to L.A. in her current state and helped her with the packing and coffee, being the best friend he could be.
“Friend” feeling like the operative word.
“It’ll all be worth it,” she said once Drew walked the two of them down to the apartment’s entrance, where a car was waiting to take them to Heathrow. “Booking this film was worth it. I have a real chance of making it now, thanks to you.”
She lifted onto her toes to kiss Drew goodbye. Like a good boyfriend, Drew tried to kiss her back, but Jessica turned away and dove into the back of the car before he could.
“You’ve got this,” Abby reminded him, giving him a long hug before she, too, climbed into the car. “Call me if you need anything at any time,” she said before shutting the door.
Drew waved as the car pulled away, then felt as lonely and abandoned as he’d ever felt as the car turned the corner, leaving him on his own.
He took a deep, shaky breath before heading back into the apartment. A car from the studio would be there to pick him and some of the other actors who were housed there up in just a few minutes to take them to set. It would be a relief to lose himself in filming for the day. He’d never been so glad to have a job that forced him to work long hours on weekends in his life.
The distraction worked for a while, but the problem with even the busiest of filming days was that there was a lot of downtime. And downtime opened up a heck of a lot of space for intrusive thoughts and feelings to rush in. That was made evenworse as he scrolled through social media, seeking out whatever he could about him and Lee.
There was so much out there all of a sudden. Pictures from the party and the concert were everywhere. So were a few from Trafalgar Square, and even outside the coffee shop. Drew couldn’t decide as he looked at them whether it was obvious he and Lee were faking everything or if people would believe the story they were trying to tell.
They looked so convincing. Two or three of the angles that had been taken of their kiss were really hot, showing tongue.
Drew could still taste Lee’s mouth, still smell the salt of his skin, still feel the contour of his waist as he?—
He sucked in a breath and turned his phone face down, then searched the area where he sat out of the way of the work being done on set to prep the next shot. He was just hungover, even though his head felt fine now. London was still a whirlwind, and maybe he was still a little jetlagged after a week.
Or maybe something else was going on that reached deep down into parts of himself that he’d ignored or dismissed as committing to the parts he’d played over the last few years.