Free Beginnings and Ends (Short Story) by Suzanne Brockmann Page B

turned down last month.” He smiled. “Because it’s a perfect vehicle for your new bride.”
    The douchebag is using my predicament to turn Irene into a star
.
    And wasn’t that why I hired him? Because he has the reputation to bitch-slap a losing scenario into a major win.…
    Richie hits the button for his intercom. “Maureen! Come escort Academy Award nominee Joe Laughlin to my car downstairs.”
    The door opens and Maureen is back. She tries to take the bottle from me, but I won’t let it go, and she quickly surrenders, focusing instead on getting me up and out of my seat.
    As I’m walked out of Richie’s office and down the hall toward the main door, my boys are there in the lobby, waiting for me. Billy’s perched on the receptionist’s desk, and curiosity and concern are in his brown eyes as he looks up. “What the fuck was that about?” he asks.
    And the world shifts for me again, because Richie West now knows a secret that I’ve managed to keep from my best friend from fifth grade, my wingman, my
chief of staff. Billy has no clue who I really am. Billy, who’d told me just last night that he was crazy in love—with Irene Anderson …
    Maureen keeps me moving even as she stops the boys from following. “The party Joe’s going to this afternoon is a private one,” she tells them primly, and they grin and nudge each other, imagining me between a pair of smooth, soft legs.
    I get into the elevator with Maureen. And because I’ve opened that bottle, she pushes the button for the garage with pursed lips. I don’t give a shit. I tip my head back and drink it, all of it.
    This is the only way I’m going to make it through the next few hours, days, weeks, months, lifetime.…
    I’m not just going to fuck Irene in that honeymoon suite at the Grande, I’m going to fuck Billy, too. And then, after my new bride is asleep, I’m going to slip out of the room and find some stranger to fuck in some back alley, behind the piles of trash
.
    Because that’s what I always do
.
    That’s who I am. That’s what I’ve become
.
    As we descend to the private level of the parking garage, I find myself thinking about Tommy
.
    I wonder what he’ll think when he hears the “happy” news
.

Chapter Two
     
    Boston, present day
    The first thing that Jules Cassidy did whenever he came home from work was to secure his sidearm in the lockbox he kept in his home office.
    The second thing he did was search for his husband, Robin. This evening he found him up in their bedroom, lying facedown on their bed, his jacket still on, fast asleep.
    Robin’s character was having a really rough week.
    The good news was that
Shadowland
, the Art-Urban-written-and-directed series in which Robin played a closeted gay A-list actor named Joe Laughlin, was a bigger hit than ever.
    The bad news was that playing Joe for all these years had sucked the energy out of Robin. Yes, it was a wonderful, challenging role. And yes, Robin was brilliant, giving a nuanced performance that got him Emmy and Golden Globe noms galore.
    But slipping inside the skin of an alcoholic, substance-abusing, self-loathing, fear-driven, craven man was not the easiest thing for Robin to do, day after day, year after year. Particularly when Joe was on a downward spiral.
    Joe’s manager was urging the actor to get married to some female starlet, to quash some rumors that weren’t really rumors at all.
    Jules checked the clock on the bedside table—it was barely 1830.
    Even though the idea of peeling off Robin’s boots, jacket, and jeans, and then shucking off his own suit and just crawling into bed with his husband was tempting, Jules had skipped lunch.
    His stomach growled loudly as if in preemptive protest—so loudly, in fact, that Robin awoke.
    The lack of recognition in his eyes as he lifted his head would’ve been weird, had Jules not witnessed it before. Robin had gotten so deeply inside of his character that now, in that cloudy place between waking and sleep,