Beautiful Box Set

Chapter 12-1

Chapter 12

By the time Johnny reaches Lou’s office, he’s decided he isn’t mad at Brett. He didn’t tell his boyfriend not to say anything, did he? And the guy works in the industry, rubbing elbows on a daily basis with stars and paparazzi alike. Chances are he was boasting about Johnny and it just slipped out. Part of Johnny is pretty pleased Brett would be talking about him to others. It adds a dimension to their relationship it didn’t have before—it isn’t just the two of them hiding away from the world now; others know.

Well, Lou knows, but he’s being an ass about it. Why can Ellen DeGeneres and George Takei parade through the society pages of the paper, lovers draped around their arms like the latest Louis Vuitton bag, and he can’t even run into McDonald’s with his guy? Who sets these rules, anyway?

Seriously, Johnny thinks as he takes the elevator up to Lou’s floor. Would the world come crashing to a halt and the stock market plummet if middle America knew he liked d**k?

When the lift doors open, Johnny raises a hand in greeting to Lou’s secretary. She looks up from her computer screen, sees him standing there, and her eyes widen. “Heya,” he says, leaning on the counter in front of her desk. “Lou told me to stop on by.”

Without a word to him, she lifts the phone and dials an extension. “He’s here.”

Before she even hangs up, the door to Lou’s office bursts open. Johnny’s manager seems to swell into the lobby, eclipsing the doorframe. His face is a shade of red so bright, it makes the auburn strands combed over his bald spot look yellow in comparison. “Get in here,” he fumes.

Johnny cringes back—he’s seen this anger before, once or twice, but his mother had always been with him to calm the manager down. “Lou, what—”

“Now.”

That leaves little room for discussion. Like a kicked puppy, Johnny shrinks into himself as he ducks into Lou’s office, keeping his distance from the man. Inside the room, there’s a laptop open on Lou’s desk, a celebrity gossip website open on the screen. Johnny sees the logo for Z-23 and groans. He’s getting damn tired of that name.

“What is it now?” he asks, dropping into one of the chairs in front of Lou’s desk.

Behind him, the door slams shut with such force, the pictures rattle on the walls. Johnny thinks maybe Lou’s over-reacting just a bit. So the press knows he auditioned for the Roxy Greene film—so what? No one keeps a secret forever, especially not in a town like Hollywood. And besides, isn’t that why managers hired PR reps? To play down erroneous reports, cover up the wrong stories? Damage control?

With his head down, Johnny watches Lou from the corner of his eye. The manager storms toward his desk and, for one heart-stopping moment, Johnny is sure the man’s going to haul off and backhand him where he sits. He even scoots over a little, just to get out of the way, because he knows it’s coming. Lou’s too angry not to hit him.

In a tentative voice, Johnny asks, “Lou? What is it? What’s going on?”

At the last possible moment, Lou sidesteps a collision with Johnny’s chair and lunges across his desk to grab a handful of papers off the laptop’s keyboard. Without a word, he tosses them at Johnny, who sighs as he turns them over. This is those photos of himself and Brett eating breakfast all over again.

Then Johnny sees the first image and the floor drops out from under him. No, he decides. This is much, much worse.

It’s him, in bed, naked. His arms are stretched above his head, his fingers casually twined through his hair. The bed sheets are pulled down around his legs as if he kicked them away. His pale c**k rests high across his thigh, flaccid, his balls dark with hair and shadow. He’s sleeping, he knows—the photo captures a fleeting innocence about him, a moment that will be lost when his eyes open, but now it’s here, in his hands, trapped for all eternity.

For all the world to see.

“Where’d you get this?” Johnny shuffles through the pictures but they’re more of the same, him in bed, his d**k the focus of each shot. He knows exactly where Lou got these—the last couple shots show Johnny cuddled up against the photographer, kissing him, hungry for his touch.

Brett.

He can’t believe this. “These weren’t meant to be seen.”

“Oh?” Lou’s voice sounds tight, strained, as if he’s holding back emotions Johnny can only guess must be whirling inside him. “You take a picture with a camera, Johnny, and it’s going to get back to someone somewhere.”

Johnny shakes his head in disbelief. “We were just playing around. It was Brett’s personal camera—”

“What the hell does that mean?” Lou leans back against his desk, arms crossed before his chest, and glares at Johnny as if he could burn those pictures and the boy in front of him with that evil eye alone. “The man’s a professional photographer, kid. He does this for a living. There’s nothing personal about it.”

You’re wrong. Johnny shuffles the papers together, placing the ones with him naked in between the ones with Brett so no one sees them. He feels violated, used, exposed. “How did you get these?” he wants to know.

“Sam’s girl.”

Lou’s son, who’s dating someone at Z-23. How did they get them? Johnny feels a helplessness well up inside him, suffocating. Suddenly he can’t breathe, can’t think. God…. “Were these online?” If so, he wants to die.

But Lou shakes his head, the anger never quite leaving his face. “Tish got them off an employee’s camera. She recognized you and sent them straight to me.”

“Tish?” Johnny’s heart plunges, his skin feels clammy and cold, his head swims. This can’t be happening to him. “Oh, my God, did you say her name was Tish?”