Every day after school, I’d come home fighting back tears. Beating myself up for not being able to handle the rejection, the exclusion.
The feeling that I didn’t belong; the fact that I was an outsider among all of the popular kids.
And here I was, immersing myself in that same feeling. It was like I was about to march straight into a clique of popular kids and lay myself open again. Even though this time I was going there for a different reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling of deja vu.
My mouth went dryer and dryer with each step I took toward Reese’s trailer, the sound of my footsteps muffled in the sand.
My heart beat faster and faster as all those feelings of rejection came bubbling to the surface again. Would these guys reject me? Would they tell me to leave? Would they kick me off the set?
I thought of what Alina just told me — that I was bound by contract and they couldn’t get rid of me. Holding onto that truth like it was a lifeline, I reached for Reese’s door handle.
Pausing before I grabbed it, I bit my lip.
The door burst open and the hulking form of Leo rushed out.
I was still against the side of the trailer — he hadn’t seen me.
For a moment I hesitated, longing to stay in the shadows and go unnoticed. But the way I saw it, I had two choices: Follow Leo, or make myself go inside and face Reese.
I chickened out. I followed Leo.
“Hey!” I called from behind him, hurrying to catch up.
He stopped in his tracks, then turned to face me. Moonlight bathed his face, making him look somehow even more beautiful now that all of his golden features were forced to be silver.
“Charlie,” he said breathlessly.
I examined his face carefully; trying to read the expression that was there. I’d never seen that look on his face before.
He was… uncomfortable.
“What… what’s this?” I asked, gesturing to him.
He scoffed. “Nothing, just…” His eyes went past my shoulder and locked onto Reese’s trailer. “They’re just talking about things that don’t concern me.”
“What kinds of things?” I asked.
He brushed me off. “Didn’t you go home or something? You’re not cool with what Reese did—”
“I was being stupid and dramatic,” I said. Even now looking back at myself in my memory, I cringed. “I made a big deal out of nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Leo said. “I thought you standing up for what you believed in was admirable. More than what I can say…” he said, his jaw tight.
“No, I was being dumb,” I maintained, picking at my thumb cuticle. “It’s really not a big deal… it’s just…”
Leo studied me carefully, waiting for me to talk. It was so different from everyone else who tried to fill up the silence with their voice.
“It’s… just a lot. Nevermind, it’s not important.”
“Of course it’s important,” Leo said, taking my hand in his as we started to walk along the beach. “Everything you say is important. At least to me, anyway.”
My heart was beating faster and faster, thundering against my chest. “Okay, but it’s really stupid, okay?”
Leo waited patiently, taking quiet steps in the sand. There was no noise except the calming waves of the ocean.
“I get really worked up about things like that sometimes, and I don’t want it to sound like I’m whining or anything, but a lot of it has to do with being bullied,” I admitted.
Leo nodded in an understanding way, so I opened up a bit more; I kept going.
“There was this guy… I made a mistake and got close to him, or so I thought. It turned out to be a setup, and then he bullied me.”
Leo nodded quietly, then said, “That couldn’t have been easy.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“You must have felt alone,” he said.
“…I did. I felt lonelier than I’ve ever felt in my life,” I admitted.
He squeezed my hand. “It’s okay to feel that, you know,” he said.
I brightened. Never before had someone validated my feelings about the whole thing. Whenever I’d worked up the bravery in the past to tell someone about what had happened to me — with varying levels of detail — it was usually brushed off as me being some whiney kid. Get over it. Grow up.
But with Leo, it felt like it was okay to be open, at least a little bit.
I smiled.
“Standing up for what you believe in can be lonely. If you’re preaching to the choir, you’re not doing anything,” he said, frowning.
I wondered where he was going with this.
“Some people like to push boundaries,” he said, glancing back at Reese’s trailer.
I frowned, matching his. I wasn’t sure if we were talking about my experience or his. “What happened, Leo?”
“Nothing. Just a bunch of folks that are out in the open, trying to convince me to be out in the open as well,” he said, his shoulders sagging.
“You can come out when you’re ready,” I encouraged, squeezing his hand. “You’re on no one’s terms but your own.”
“It doesn’t feel like that,” he grumbled. “No one ever talks about the pressure to come out. It’s like, I’m surrounded by all of these people, and they’re trying to drag me out of my hiding place.”
He paused.
“You know, there’s something messed up about that. The fact that others think they know what’s best for you, when it’s best for you.”
I nodded, thinking of how my old coworker Scott kept trying to get me to shed my midwest identity and become an “L.A. Boy.” It was exhausting.
“I’m going to stay in the closet until I’m damn well ready to come out,” he said. “It’s even harder for people like us — people in the limelight. Because nothing like this is a personal, private experience anymore. It becomes about that image of you that others see. It’s always about the image...”
I was quiet, afraid to say anything. This was the most I’d ever heard Leo talk;
