“It’s beautiful out here, Ollie,” Matt said from beside him.
“Are you doing okay? I know you’re nervous about tomorrow.” What Oliver didn’t understand exactly, was why.
“I will be. I’m always okay. I just…I know it sounds crazy but I don’t like all those eyes on me. It makes me feel like I’m naked.” Oliver looked over at Matt just as Matt shook his head. “It makes me feel more than naked—naked I could deal with. It makes…it makes me feel like a fraud.”
Oliver’s pulse jackhammered. He opened his mouth to tell Matt he wasn’t a fraud, but Matt began speaking again before he could. “I get sick sometimes beforehand. I get sick sometimes during breaks. I’ll go to the bathroom, vomit, then clean up and pretend everything is okay.”
“Jesus, Matty. And Parker never stopped you?”
He rolled his head until he was looking at Oliver. “Parker never knew.”
The motherfucker must have been a shitty boyfriend and agent. How could he not see that Matt had been hurting? They’d lived together for years, worked together for even longer. How could he not have known?
“Why do you do it? Christ, Matt. Why do you do that to yourself?” Oliver rolled to his side. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and pushing Matt’s brown hair off his forehead, from twisting a lock of it around his finger.
“It’s all I can do—”
“Fuck that.”
“I didn’t tell you that to argue with you. I told you because I needed to get it out. Because you’re the only person in the fucking world I can tell some things to. I just needed you to hear it, not try and fix it for me or not try to tell me what I can or can’t do. What I should or shouldn’t do. I just needed you to hear it.”
Which felt like taking a hammer to his own heart, for Oliver. It felt like letting someone he loved suffer and nothing ate away at him like that did. “Okay.” He pulled his hand away and listened. Listened as Matt told him that he sometimes had what sounded a lot like stage fright or anxiety to him. As he told him, he would sometimes go into another room, nearly lose his mind, and then steady himself before he walked back out to pretend nothing was wrong.
“I’m afraid of gaining weight. I know you think I have an eating disorder but I don’t…I could, though. If you hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have touched that box of cereal because if I gain weight I won’t get jobs, but at the same time, every fucking time I take on another one, every contract I sign, I feel like I’m selling my goddamned soul to the devil because I hate it, Ollie. I hate it so fucking much I can’t breathe sometimes.”
Oliver listened as Matt got it all off his chest, as he opened up to Oliver, even though every word made the rage and pain inside him spin faster and with more strength until he nearly couldn’t hold back the storm inside of him.
Matt had been suffering all these years, and he hadn’t known. None of them had known. Matt had hidden it from them. Parker hadn’t seen the signs, but he should have known. Not Parker. Fuck Parker. Somehow, Oliver should have known.
When Matt was done speaking, he moved closer to Oliver. Grabbed Oliver’s arm and put it around him and let his head rest on Oliver’s shoulder. “Look at the stars with me before we go inside.”
Every fucking thing inside of him wanted to tell Matt he shouldn’t go tomorrow. That he should be done with modeling but he didn’t. He tried to honor Matt’s wishes because he knew that Matt felt like this was all he had.
He ran his hand up and down Matt’s arm as Matt wrapped around him. He wasn’t sure how long it was they lay on his roof, breathing and looking at the stars.
Eventually, they packed up their stuff and went back inside. Matt followed Oliver to his room; Oliver didn’t mention it and when Matt stripped down to his blue briefs and climbed into Oliver’s bed, he went in beside him and held him the rest of the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
For some reason, Matt loved being awake early. It felt like the whole world was still asleep, the edge of waking up just about to descend upon them.
He and Oliver got ready in near silence. Nerves ate away at him, gnawing at his bones and making him feel weak. Not just because of the shoot but because of the things he’d admitted to Oliver last night. Things he’d never expected to tell another human being. When the words did emerge, of course it would be Ollie that he spoke them to. There was never a chance of it being anyone else.