“You hired the hockey star Cameron Chavkin to teach you hockey. The same Cameron Chavkin who is all over the media, not only for his team’s abysmal loss in the Stanley Cup but also because he sleeps with anything that moves.”
Oh. Well, I didn’t know the second part, but whatever, love is love and everyone deserves to be happy. If Cameron chose to show that by jumping beds, so be it, as long as everyone was safe and informed. He might be the opposite of my cold and dark love life, but that didn’t matter to anyone but Cameron Chavkin himself.
“Jesus H Christ,” Atlas added, as if that helped the situation.
“I now have only a few weeks to brush up on my non-existent hockey skills, plus learning the script, which is more dialogue than in all three Rapid movies put together, and it was destiny or something that I found out where he was.”
“How did you even do that?”
“I followed him from the stadium.”
“To a bar.”
“A night club, or I don’t know what you’d call it, but there were a lot of naked women, and I have this bra thing that I don’t know what to do with now.”
The noise this time from Atlas’ end was somewhere between a growl and a snort, and then he let out a high-pitched whine and I could picture him pacing his room.
“That explains the photos. You know there are photos, right?”
“Of Cameron Chavkin? I know. That’s how I found him. He’s the third sexiest hockey player right now.”
“Not of him. Of you and Chavkin together. At the bar. They’re on TMZ. It’s not good. You’re looking up at this woman who… jeez… I can’t…” He wheezed again, and this time I felt as if maybe he was taking this way too seriously.
“Are you okay?” I asked with caution.
“Am I okay? Am. I. Okay?”
Nope. It seemed he wasn’t okay.
“Fuck’s sake, Finn. You tell me you stalked a man to a bar, you propositioned him, you were staring at strippers, and fuck me, do you not understand the meaning of keeping your head down? These photos do not align with your clean-cut media persona and your core values.”
That didn’t make sense. “If I was there in the bar, then I made a conscious decision to be there and surely that is the very definition of one of my core values—”
“Not the core values I wrote down for you to adhere to in public. Not the ones that get you parts. I created your character as the slightly less-than-clever-hero type, who does his acting, does it well, doesn’t drink, smoke, swear, or touch drugs, and then gives the impression he goes to church on a Sunday with his steady girlfriend who he’s categorically not sleeping with until their wedding night.” He took a deep breath after that insane run-on sentence.
I parsed all the information.
“Well, that person sounds kinda boring. I mean, I’m nearly thirty-one and surely the character you’re making up would be sleeping with his girlfriend by now.”
“That’s not the fucking point!”
“And I do fucking swear,” I added as an afterthought.
“Do you even want Ladybug 2?”
Hope flared inside me. “Wait. What? They’re actually making a Ladybug 2?”
“With over half a billion in receipts and merchandising on the first one, of course they are. I don’t get why, but the kids loved it. They want you for Hobart-the-Elf again, and they’ll have the script with you in two months or so, shooting for next year’s Christmas release. You want it, then keep your nose clean, otherwise you’ll lose that, and you’ll lose the Grierson movie.”
I didn’t want to lose the kids’ movie I knew I’d love. And the intense hockey story that might take me to the next level in my career as a serious actor, able to come out and be authentic and not be laughed out of the house.
“Okay.”
“I got a quick message at the end of a very short meeting with Luca.”
“Yeah?” Luca not only shared the headline on the Rapid movies as the psychic sidekick, but we shared Atlas as an agent.
“He said, and I quote. ‘Sorry dude will call you when back from Machu Picchu’. I assume he’s there doing whatever sidekick actors do when they’re not filming.
“Sleeping mostly, and he emailed me the same thing.” One friend down, and I was definitely running out of people to talk to.
“Finally, we need to issue a statement about these photos, because not only do they show you seemingly fascinated by the naked form of a dancing woman with the perky jiggly… um… breasts… but the way you’re staring into Cameron Chavkin’s eyes made it look as if…”
“As if?” I prompted, but got the feeling I wouldn’t like the answer.
“I’m not spelling it out for you. Look, Finn. I’m doing everything I can to hide your secret, but random visits to stare at strippers, stalking hockey players, then staring at them like you want to eat them, will make sure that people see right through to your life character and see the real you. Do you want to end up like Elias Lake? Do you recall what happened to him?”
Of course, I did, but tried to fluff it off as if I didn’t because it was too scary.
“To refresh your memory, Elias Lake just last year was outed by some twinky social media celebrity. The Elias Lake. Outed as being gay. He ended up hiding in some tiny Maine town where he hooked up with a potter and—”
“Harry?”
Atlas snorted. “I’m sorry, but what?”
“The potter. Was it Harry?”
“No, Finn, the potter was a man who makes things with clay.” Oh sure, yeah. I knew that. “The point being that he’s not been heard from in Hollywood for over two years. Last time he was spotted by anyone it was in some tiny seaside theater. Is that what you want for your future? Do you want to end up performing for free to people who reek of lobster?!”
I didn’t want to lose my career over who I loved, or wanted in my bed, not when it hadn’t even happened yet. I mean, yes, I’d slept with guys over the years, one-offs, mostly here in LA, people as scared as me to keep their secrets, but I’d never met anyone worth losing my career over.
It hurt to have to hide myself, made me tense even considering that maybe Finn Corrigan, hero of the Rapid movies, coming out as gay, might be a positive thing to any kid out there struggling.
But it was the part I’d signed up for and I hadn’t known any different; sometimes, I wished I hadn’t been a child actor, sometimes I wished I’d had time between my last appearance on that stupid popular kids’ show on that stupid popular kids’ network and filming for Rapid 1.
Maybe I could have grown up properly then.
“What if I don’t want to keep it a secret? What if I want to be the real me?”
“Not this again, Finn.”
“Well, it’s all up inside me and I can’t help it,” I snapped at him.
“I know. I know. But do you love what you do, Finn? Because you could lose everything if you position yourself too far away from the character we created for you to live.” Atlas was trying very hard for reassurance laced with patience.
Worry rolled through me, washing away any tentative idea I might have had over the past year or two of coming out. It wasn’t like I needed any more movies—hell I had enough money to last me five lifetimes—but I was an actor in my heart and soul, and what if I lost that? What if I couldn’t even get a role in a fourth-rate theatre for a bit part because my lies blew up in my face?