In Focus

Chapter 1: Press, Day One-3

“You’re very welcome, any time.” Colby even managed to make this sound personal, an invitation, as if he really would offer to feed a near-stranger scones and coffee if the man happened to drop by. In fact, Sam considered, Colby Kent probably would.

That interview wrapped up, with nods all around. A trade-off of equipment and camerapersons happened. The next magazine, the next media. A makeup person swooped in to do some touch-up for Colby and Jason.

Colby glanced over at Sam, while the makeup person applied a sponge to Jason’s forehead. “I’m sorry, this must be terribly boring, just listening to us talk, so you don’t need to stay if you’d rather not.”

“I’m here to document things,” Sam said. “Your week, your publicity, your premiere. So I’m staying.” He probably should be taking more pictures. He wasn’t sure that he felt good about capturing Colby like this, when he could tell that there was a cost to it, and those eyes didn’t need more burdens.

But Colby only smiled, and said, “Did you get some coffee, there’s certainly enough to spare, they’ve done a marvelous job of taking care of us, and also you should have the blueberry shortbread if you like white chocolate.”

“Yes to the coffee, and yeah, thanks, I had one.” He couldn’t stop the next question before it emerged. “Did you?”

Colby blinked at him. Twice.

Jason contributed, freed from makeup artist hands, “I’m on Sam’s side here, babe, eat something.”

“I…really…I tried one when I took them out of the oven, this morning…”

“So like eight hours ago,” Jason said. “And you didn’t eat more than a bite of that banana, earlier, after you put it down and forgot. We’ve got five minutes. Come here.”

As they got up and stretched, as Jason put an arm around Colby and began saying something very quiet, Sam wandered over to the kitchenette part of the suite, and found a plate, and the complementary fruit display, and the fancy brand of granola bars that’d come with that, and a miniature bottle of water because apparently a lack of size made bottles more upscale. And then he wandered back over and put the plate and the miniature water-bottle on Colby’s chair.

Both movie stars swiveled to look at him. Jason’s arm stayed around Colby’s shoulders. Sam shrugged. “Habit. My sisters always want food when they’re doing homework, school projects, all that stuff.”

“I suppose it is sort of a school project,” Colby said. “Like rehearsals for a play. Reciting lines. I didn’t actually do theater in school. So perhaps it isn’t like that.”

“Didn’t you?” Sam picked up a blueberry shortbread from the homemade box, casually.

Colby took a strawberry off the plate, mirroring the motion. “I was far too shy for that. Too anxious about getting things wrong. I would’ve loved to try out for something, but I couldn’t imagine going through with it. I didn’t talk to people much, if you can picture that.”

“You? Nope, not believing that one.” Success. Colby had eaten the strawberry, and now a piece of pineapple. Jason was looking Sam’s way with the expression a boulder might wear when decently impressed.

“I had friends, or rather acquaintances, in a certain sense.” Colby absentmindedly collected a granola bar, which Sam had opened and put on the edge of the plate. “I was on the swim team once I got to high school, and I had parents with money who didn’t care or even notice what I might be up to, so long as I didn’t embarrass them, so in general people wanted to be nice to me, usually because they wanted me to host a party or because their parents wanted to be on good terms with my parents. I knew that was always why, when anyone at school talked to me. I never knew how to talk to them. I couldn’t simply walk up and start babbling spontaneously at them about a new very gay teenage vampire novel or antique astrolabes, so I just didn’t say much, ever.”

“God, I wish I’d known you in high school,” Jason said, grinning. “Gay teenage vampire novels and antique astrolabes. Did I already say you were perfect? Eat the other granola bar too, I’ll get my own.”

“Jason,” Colby said to Sam, “was popular. The wrestling team, the peer mentoring program, volunteering to help the theater kids with set-building. A cheerleader girlfriend. Friends with literally everyone, judging by his yearbook.”

“When did you see my yearbook?”

“Your mother showed me last time we visited. Along with your senior prom photos.”

“Oh no.”

“You look lovely in a tuxedo.”

“I’m strongly objecting to this conversation,” Jason said. Colby, Sam observed, had obediently eaten the second granola bar, and was looking slightly better. “Strongly.”

“I know what you’re both doing, you know,” Colby said. “You’re not terrifically subtle.”

“What are we doing?” Sam said, innocently. “Hey, can you and Jason go stand by the curtains real quick? It’ll be a great prom photo backdrop.”

“Oh good heavens,” Colby said, but he let himself be tugged that way, and Jason put both arms around him, and then they both started laughing, and Sam caught it all, snap after snap of Jason Mirelli and Colby Kent doing a ridiculous half-waltz half-swing dance in a hotel room, hand in hand, forgetting about chairs and questions and cameras.

The assistant over by the door cleared her throat. Next interview. Press resuming. More questions, more promotion.

Colby and Jason got more professional, coming back to sit down. Focused. Paying attention. Sleeves straightened. But Colby’s cheeks were pink, and his hair was bouncy, and Jason was grinning. Tiredness faded into anticipation, revived.

The next interviewer came in, accompanied by a wave of equipment and, for some reason, flash cards displaying pictures of British foods. Colby looked at the first one, said, “Oh, I actually do know how to make Spotted d**k, I love that you’re going to ask about that, would you like my recipe, it’s very delicious Spotted d**k, I promise!” and caused the poor journalist to lose his grip on the rest of the cards.

Good, Sam thought. Good.

That interview, and the next, proved to be more fun: little games, guessing whether something was a real nineteenth-century British food, identifying and completing quotes from their own past movies. Colby and Jason decided on their own to trade replies halfway through that one, and started answering for each other. Colby apparently knew all of Jason’s terrible blockbuster dialogue, including the groan-worthy line about knowing who’d been naughty, from Saint Nick Steel.

Jason, kind of impressively, also got most of Colby’s, even the whimsical teen drama that’d once had a younger supporting-role Colby dancing shirtless in rainfall glitter in somebody’s flight-of-fantasy daydream. Jason finished the line with, “—and you can dance with me any time you want,” and then sighed and explained, “My sister loved that movie.”

“Oh, yes,” Colby said, very sweetly. “That’s true. She told me.”

Jason sighed again. “They could’ve picked a worse line for you from that one, if I remember right. Something about the soccer ball, and ball-handling—”

“So you have memorized it.”

“Um. You’re a brilliant writer. And a brilliant actor. And I love everything you’ve ever done.”

“Oh, I like that answer.” Colby lifted Jason’s hand in his, pressed a kiss to the back of it. “I like this interview.”

The interviewer, beaming, said, “Thanks, and same to you.”

Several rounds later, Sam had caught a few good shots of Colby and Jason laughing, holding hands, naming parts of ships, feeding each other shortbread and catching crumbs—that one’d been during a break—and he was even more in awe than he’d been. He personally was aware of hunger, atop repetitive questions and sound bites—it was well past even the latest possible definition of lunchtime—and he didn’t know how Colby and Jason kept going.

Unflagging energy. Generous answers, over and over. Upbeat and passionate. In love and sharing that. Giving everyone the Colby Kent and Jason Mirelli experience.

Colby handled interviews with practiced sweetness, and Jason did the same with humble appreciative amusement, an action star who’d never expected to be here but who was grateful for everything about this new phase of his career. The fans would love that, Sam guessed.

He caught snapshots of Colby and Jason together and apart, framed by curtained backdrops and by sun. Doing his own job: documenting them and this week. What he’d been hired for.

They made it easy, of course. A love story happening right here in front of him. He would’ve wanted to do this even if he hadn’t been getting paid.

He wondered what else he could do with these snapshots. He’d promised a few exclusives to Jameson Jay and the tabloid pages—he’d had to, way back when he’d needed the paycheck for the first assignment and the start of everything—so he’d have to sort out which ones. But the rest…

Colby and Jason would like some copies, they’d said. Sam, considering the series he’d been gathering—portraits, stories, textures—let himself imagine possibilities. Some sort of exhibition. Moments with the Steadfast cast. Movie stars at home.

An art book. An installation. Magazine features. This love story shared with the world—and he could do that, he would love to do that—and also with his family, showing his siblings something he was proud of, what he could do. The money wouldn’t hurt, either, while he was fantasizing. Samuel Hernandez-Blake, renowned photographer. Someone people wanted to commission, to invite in, to see them through a lens.

And maybe it could happen. Maybe, for a minute or two here in this sun-drenched hotel suite, with Jason Mirelli and Colby Kent treating him like a friend and not an employee, he could almost see it.

Jason, during breaks, started putting both arms around Colby, holding him. Colby leaned into Jason a little more, each time. When he ducked out to use the suite’s restroom, Jason exhaled, and ran a hand through his own hair.

Sam said, “Is he doing okay?”

“He’s fine.” Jason watched the door. “I never knew, though…before I met him, whatever interviews I’d seen, you know, he always is. Fine. Smiling. Excited. But doing this with him, seeing it, the press in London, and now here…when he told you he’s nervous around people…”

“He is, isn’t he?” Sam sat down on the couch-arm. “He doesn’t like this part.”

“He likes talking about the film. And he loves the novel. He’s happy. It’s not like he doesn’t want to…it’s complicated.”

“I get that.”

“I think it used to be easier, but it wasn’t easy.” Jason looked briefly as if he might be contemplating an end to the entire day, right now, on the spot. “It’s sort of…actual social anxiety, like, diagnosed, now, with our therapist…plus some other s**t that made it so much worse, and…he can do all of it, of course, he’s incredible. He’s going to be exhausted, though.”

“How can I help?”

Jason’s eyebrows went up. “I really do see why Leo likes you.”

“Thanks.”

“Today, and tomorrow,” Jason said. “Then we get a day off. Except not completely, because we have appointments with stylists. And then the premiere.”

“Which you know’ll be amazing. And then you can sweep him off his feet somewhere and relax.”

Jason grinned. A few layers of leaden fortress weight vanished. “That’s kind of the plan. Well, first we’re going to be hermits for a week. At home. With each other. And then we’re going to go stay in an eight-hundred-year-old Welsh manor for another week, just us, with private garden and library tours.”

Sam tried to imagine having the sort of life that involved sentences like that. Nope. Couldn’t do it. “That sounds…awesome, honestly. Like something you’re both going to love. I bet it’ll be beautiful.”

His phone buzzed softly. He yanked it out of his pocket. Leo. Reaching out to him. Got two minutes, wanted to see how you were doing! And the lovebirds. What with all the press. Plus three hearts.

Colby reappeared, shoulders straight in the manner of a young tired king, determinedly ready for the next battle. Jason said, “It’s not a raincloud, but there’s kind of a neat cloud out there over the water, it looks like a dragon,” and tugged Colby that way, in the circle of one arm, standing at an open airy window in the sea breeze.

Sam answered with Everything’s good, they’re adorable, how are you? Of course Leo’d asked about him, about other people, first. Not saying anything, never letting out a word, that might make anyone think that maybe, just maybe, Leo Whyte wasn’t doing fine.

I’m marvelous. Did you have the one with the trivia cards about historical British foods? Fortunately my father’s cooked most of them. Leo waited a beat, then added, Recipes, not journalists. As far as I know.

And you’re deflecting, Sam thought. Trying to make me smile. Meet you out in the hall real quick?

Leo began typing, stopped. Started again. Yes but very quick?

Sam sent him four hearts—one beyond Leo’s—and called over, “Do you mind if I step out for a sec?”

Colby turned his way. “Does Leo have a break as well?”

“A couple minutes, yeah.”

“Yes, by all means, go on! Tell him we’re thinking of him!”

“Will do,” Sam promised, and ducked out of the suite. Colby and Jason needed some time alone, anyway. And he wanted—needed—to talk to Leo.