Second Best -- Chapter 7
“So where’s the famous Jordan? You made plans so he’s off blowing someone else?”
Brad greeted Adam at the door, rising up on his tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek before glancing pointedly behind him as if looking for something. He met Adam’s eyes, a single brow raised questioningly as he spoke with feigned disinterest.
Adam had done his best to push the fight with his boyfriend to the back of his mind during the drive to the club that Brad had rented out for the evening for his party. As the music suddenly surrounded him, and he looked around at the sea of familiar faces, most of whom he hadn’t seen in far too long - suddenly, it wasn’t a struggle to forget about the negative for the moment and just enjoy himself.
Until someone felt the need to remind him.
Adam shot Brad a dark, warning look, muttering, “Don’t ask,” before pasting his smile back on and making his way across the room to greet some other friends.
And Brad didn’t - not for a while, anyway.
A few hours later Adam had had a few drinks and made his rounds of the group a few times, managing to catch up with most of the people he’d wanted to talk to. Brad finally found him leaning against the bar, facing the crowd and watching with a contented smile on his face as he sipped from his glass. Brad hopped up to sit on the bar beside him, calling out his order to the bartender before returning his focus to his friend.
“So… I would have thought your boyfriend would have wanted to celebrate your success with you tonight,” he observed, carefully not watching Adam, surveying the room idly as he spoke.
“He did,” Adam confessed softly, his smile slipping a little.
Brad ventured a glance in his direction, persisting cautiously. “Then… what happened? Trouble in paradise, already?”
Adam sighed, rolling his eyes in Brad’s direction. “We just had a little fight, that’s all. It was no big deal.”
“Yeah,” Brad drawled, a single brow raised as he took in the way Adam’s shoulders had fallen and his smile had all but vanished. “I can see that.”
“Seriously, everybody fights,” Adam insisted, agitation rising in his voice. “It’s just… there’s this… stalker that keeps sending me letters, and… and Jordan’s a little pissy and freaked out right now, that’s all. It’s got us both on edge, and… and that’s all it is. We’ll be fine when I get home tonight.”
“Uh-huh.” Brad looked away as his own drink arrived, picking it up and taking a sip before continuing. “That’s how it starts...”
“No, no, it’s not like that,” Adam argued, standing up straight and turning to fully face Brad. “We’re fine. Everybody fights. Maybe we’ve just… been seeing a little too much of each other lately.”
“Yeah,” Brad agreed flatly, nodding as he held Adam’s gaze. “Because you can’t invest everything in one person. You have to hold onto your friends, have separate interests and all that shit. Huh. Didn’t someone give you that advice not too long ago? I vaguely recall… oh, wait…”
“Shut up,” Adam muttered, but he was laughing as he shook his head and set his drink down on the bar. “If I dance with you, will you stop being so annoying?”
Brad gave him a smirk as he slid down from the bar and took Adam’s extended hand, sliding his other arm around his waist as they headed out toward the dance floor.
“Only for as long as the dance lasts.”
Adam silently resolved to talk things out with Jordan when he got home, and let him know that in spite of the dangers, he had to maintain his friendships, had to get some time away every now and then. No relationship could survive being together constantly, and Adam would have to make Jordan see that. He grimaced as he glanced down at his phone, vibrating again, and noted the - five, now - missed calls from Jordan’s cell.
Yes, they were definitely going to have to have a talk later.
But for now… he was just going to enjoy his party.
He spent the next several hours dancing and drinking and laughing and talking, until he finally located his driver - sitting at the bar drinking a soda and talking to the only waitress who was still on duty - around 3:30am. Adam was in a very optimistic mood, and though it was partially due to the nice, pleasant buzz of the alcohol, he knew it also had something to do with figuring out what to do about his situation with Jordan.
He smiled as he thought about good friends, and the way that they could sometimes help you come around to your own solution without really saying much at all.
It was almost four when Adam finally unlocked the door to his house and slipped inside. Not too drunk to still be wary of the mysterious stalker, Adam asked Manny to watch and make sure he got in safely before driving around back to park the car and leaving for the night.
The house was dark and quiet, and Adam felt a brief sense of relief that Jordan must have gone to bed rather than waiting up for him. He was too tired to have a serious conversation right now. It would be better to wait until the morning, when they both would approach the issue with a fresh perspective.
Then, the light in the living room came on.
Adam sighed at the sound of footsteps crossing the carpet, and ignored them, heading toward the stairs, intent on going to bed and dealing with Jordan later. Jordan’s voice - low and edged with quiet anger - stopped him on the second step.
“Where the hell have you been?”
Despite his relaxed mood, Adam felt the tension rising in his shoulders at the sharp, accusing tone of Jordan’s voice. He turned to face him, his jaw set with stubborn irritation as he held up a halting hand, his own voice measured and full of forced patience.
“You know where I’ve been,” he replied quietly. “I have had a wonderful night with my friends, and honestly, Jordan, I am not in the mood. So if you’ll excuse me, we can talk about this in the morning…”
He turned and started up the stairs again, but before he could take a single step, Jordan grabbed his arm, yanking him back down the couple of steps he’d already climbed and spinning him around to face him.
“No, Adam, you are not gonna just walk away from me like this…”
Adam tried to jerk his arm away as he had done during their fight hours earlier, but found to his surprise and alarm that Jordan must have been holding back earlier - because he might as well have been trying to escape a steel vise. Jordan caught Adam’s free arm in his other hand, and Adam struggled instinctively, furious at being manhandled in this way - furious… and a little scared.
God… if he wanted to hurt me…
But… Jordan wouldn’t hurt me. He loves me. He wouldn’t…
His self-reassurances died half-formed in his mind at the smoldering look of fury in Jordan’s dark eyes. Adam strained uselessly against his grip, still trying to pull away, but Jordan effortlessly pressed him back against the wall, pinning his arms against it with his large, unyielding hands.
“Do you have any idea what time it is, Adam?” Jordan demanded, his voice trembling with quiet, barely restrained rage.
Adam’s eyes were wide, his breath quickening with his heart as he looked up warily into Jordan’s narrowed, angry eyes. He hated the breathless, defensive tone that somehow came out in his voice, though he was trying for outrage at Jordan’s aggression. “I don’t care what time it is! I’m not a child! I can stay out as late as I want, so just back off!”
Jordan’s mouth twisted into a sneer of disgust, and he recoiled slightly from the alcohol on Adam’s breath. “Yeah,” he retorted bitterly, that warning undercurrent still carrying his words. “Now you really do sound like a child, Adam. Do you have any idea how worried I was? What could have happened to you?”
“Well, nothing happened to me, I’m fine, so get off me!” Adam insisted, increasingly frustrated and alarmed by Jordan’s verbal attack as much as by the fact that he was still being restrained. “Let go of me!” he demanded, his voice trembling and breaking slightly as he uselessly tried to break Jordan’s grip.
“No!” Jordan snapped, shaking Adam hard and shoving him back against the wall again. “I had no idea where to look for you - whether or not you were even alive! You wouldn’t answer your phone, didn’t let me know when you’d be back! What if the stalker had gotten to you?”
“I’m sick of hearing about the damn stalker,” Adam retorted, a note of panic in his voice now, shaken by the unexpected violence of Jordan’s reaction. He felt trapped, claustrophobic, and just wanted to get away, now. “Get the hell off me!”
Adam managed somehow to twist his arms free of Jordan’s grip at last, shoving hard against his chest - and still only managing to budge Jordan a backward step or two. He tried to push past Jordan to the stairs, but Jordan grabbed him and slung him back against the wall again, hard enough to knock the back of his head against it. Adam barely had time to recover from the dizzying impact before Jordan lashed out and slapped him across the face, hard. Unprepared for the blow, Adam reeled backward under the force of it, his hand flying to his face as his knees went weak and he grappled against the wall behind him in order to retain his footing.
Jordan was unfazed by Adam’s reaction, already up in his face, his voice raised to a furious yell. “No, Adam, no you do not get to walk away from me this time! Do you wanna know why I was so freakin’ scared? Do you even care why I thought you were probably lying dead in an alley somewhere, or worse?” He stopped for a moment, his hoarse, rapid breath the only sound in the shocked silence between them as he finally seemed to remember himself, and took a step backward. When he spoke again, his voice was low, trembling with dread. His face was streaked with tears, his eyes filled with regret. “I’m sorry, Adam, I just… you just… don’t understand the danger you’re in!”
Adam didn’t move, his back pressed against the wall, his hand still pressed against his throbbing cheek as Jordan’s head lowered and his shoulders shook with sobs. Adam couldn’t seem to find his voice, stunned to silence, his mind still racing to catch up with what had just happened.
“Wh-what,” he spoke at last, his voice breaking over the word. He cleared his throat, drawing in a shuddering breath, before trying again. “What are you talking about, Jordan? What are you so… so freaked out about?”
Jordan was silent, unmoving, for a long moment. Finally, he lowered his hand from his face and reached into the pocket of his jeans. Adam stared blankly down at the somewhat crumpled white envelope in Jordan’s trembling hand when he extended it.
“I… I wasn’t going to show this to you,” Jordan whispered, sounding broken and dejected. “I didn’t want you to… to have to… see… but… but you obviously don’t have any idea… how serious this is.”
Adam remained still for a few moments, simply staring at the envelope, then at last reached out warily to take it, straightening slightly to open the unsealed envelope with shaking fingers.
“Adam… this was on the doorstep when I checked the locks, after you left last night,” Jordan explained, a quiet, pleading urgency in his voice. “Which means… he somehow got past the rest of the security team to leave it there.”
A damp, sick chill swept over Adam as he read the words written there in deliberately generic block letters. It was a new letter from his stalker, detailing how he had seen Adam leaving the recording studio the previous evening. It described the stalker’s opinion of the outfit he’d worn… as well as the things it made him want to do to him.
Adam shuddered as the tone of the letter changed from admiring to malevolent, the stalker proceeding to tell him how he waited every day for the chance to find Adam without his ever-present security and entourage, so that they could have some “time alone”.
The details of what the stalker intended for their “time alone” were disturbingly violent and depraved, and made Adam want to vomit.
Adam allowed the letter to drop to the floor, his hand suddenly shaking too hard to hold it. He instinctively wrapped his left arm around his torso, his hand nervously clasping his right elbow as he anxiously worried his lower lip with his teeth. Jordan cautiously edged closer to him, his hands sliding around Adam, his lips brushing against the cheek he’d slapped as he whispered soothing words against Adam’s skin.
“Don’t worry, baby. He won’t touch you. I promise, I’ll protect you, but… you have to let me.”
Adam couldn’t help but take comfort in the warm strength of Jordan’s hands on his waist, now gentle and reassuring once more.
Not like… not like before…
Adam abruptly pulled away from the soft pressure of Jordan’s lips against his skin, eyes wide and wary as he looked up at his boyfriend, searching his eyes. His voice trembled slightly with confusion and uncertainty when he spoke, his reproachful tone carrying a note of hurt.
“You… you hit me.”
Jordan’s face crumpled, his lips trembling and his eyes welling with tears as he shook his head slowly. “I’m so… so sorry, baby. I should never have done that to you. I just… I was so scared, and I had no idea whether or not you were okay, and then you came in - just fine, and acting like it didn’t even matter, and I just… I just snapped. I… I thought I’d lost you, and… and you didn’t seem to understand how… how dangerous this guy is, and…”
He met Adam’s eyes, a tear slipping down his cheek as he repeated in a tremulous whisper.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. I just… I was so afraid I’d lost you, and… and Adam… I couldn’t stand it if I lost you… please…”
Adam felt a rush of sympathy and understanding, despite the lingering ache in his jaw, as Jordan broke down, his shoulders shaking with sobs. He knew what Jordan was asking of him, even if he couldn’t quite voice the question - and he already knew what his answer had to be.
How could he walk out on Jordan, simply for being so scared for his safety that it pushed him beyond the limits of his self-control? Adam thought of a dozen different movie scenes he’d seen, in which the hero took some foolish, reckless risk - albeit with far nobler motives than his own tonight - and returned home expecting the kiss of his lover, only to have her slap his face instead, furious with him for nearly getting himself killed.
How is this any different, really? He only did it because he was so scared… for me.
“Adam, I swear to you I’ll never hit you again,” Jordan promised, a note of panic in his voice, and Adam realized that Jordan was misinterpreting his silence. “Baby, I’m so sorry. Please don’t leave me… please…”
“I won’t,” Adam whispered, instinctively moving forward and wrapping his arms around Jordan, pulling him close. “It’s okay, Jordan, it’s all right. I won’t leave you, I promise. It’s all right.”
Jordan relaxed against him, trembling with relief as he clutched him close, and Adam surrendered to his embrace, closing his eyes and resting his brow on Jordan’s shoulder as he ran his hands soothingly through his hair, trying to reassure him without words that he understood.
“It won’t happen again, Adam,” Jordan whispered, in the reverent tone of a vow. “I swear to you, Adam… it will never happen again."
TBC...