Star Bright

Chapter 1-3

It was probably rude for Rafi to be on the phone while Jean-Paul Caron, the renowned French designer, got him dressed for the Gala, but Rafi needed the emotional support.

“You’re a big boy,” said Amber Hernandez, manager and best friend extraordinaire, her voice on the speakerphone echoing slightly throughout the shiny hotel dressing room. “You can do this.”

“But they’re going to be there,” Rafi said, the words a growl between clenched teeth. He raised his arms obediently so Jean-Paul’s scurrying staff could get his shirt off.

“Yep,” Amber said, “and if they have the balls to show up, you’d better have ‘em too.”

Rafi groaned. “I wish you were going with me.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t pay absurd and irresponsible amounts of money to get in, and I’m pretty sure that as your mere manager I wouldn’t be cool enough to rate a ticket anyway.”

The stylists heaved a cloak onto his shoulders, massive with grey fur, and buckled it there with leather straps across his bare chest. Rafi jumped a little as Jean-Paul began dusting the exposed skin with powder. “Stop tickling my n****e!”

“Is this a bad time?” Amber said dryly.

“I wish.”

“We don’t want you looking washed out for the cameras, Ralph,” Jean-Paul said cheerfully.

“It’s Rafi. And that’s not usually a problem with my skin tone.” Rafi sighed, seeing Jean-Paul’s minions approaching with combs and spray cans. “I should put those gold contact lenses in before you get to work on my hair. Amber?”

“Text me when you get home and we’ll overanalyze everything your evil ex and douchebag brother say to you tonight.”

“You’re a pal,” Rafi said, and tapped to hang up the phone.

He stood before one of the dressing room’s many mirrors, once his costume was finally complete, and considered the effect. Maybe costume was the wrong word, but the Constellation Gala at the Aiden Planetarium had become the place to cut loose with wild fashion, and Rafi’s outfit was going to be one of the wildest. Games of Thrones with a splash of b**m.

The theme of the Gala this year was the constellation Leo, King of Beasts, which everyone was taking as an excuse to dress up as animals. He had chosen a wolf, which Jean-Paul had pulled a lot of medieval knight ideas into, built around the bare chest as an exposure of the beast within, or something like that. He usually had to read the magazines’ analyses of his stylist’s work the next day to really understand it, but he liked the effect anyway.

It was going to be the devil to drive in, Rafi thought as he disentangled himself from Jean-Paul and called for the hotel to bring his car around. Most people would be arriving at the Gala in the backs of limousines, but he wasn’t about to hitch a ride with Bo and Carlos in the one they’d scheduled as a group, and anyway the Planetarium was only a few blocks from his hotel. There’d be valet parking, surely.

Were Bo and Carlos cuddled up in the back of their limo right now, taking selfies together, laughing and sipping champagne?

Shake it off, he told himself as he got behind the wheel of his Lexus convertible. Eyes on the road, Rafael.

After all, like Amber had said, he was a big boy. Furthermore, he was going to be the bigger man. He had nothing to be ashamed of, and if Carlos (or Bo, though that was less likely) tried to start something with him, they would only make themselves look bad. If there was going to be a stink at the Gala tonight, it wouldn’t be because of Rafi.

He took a deep breath, trying to enjoy the wind in his hair, and turned on the radio.

“—of the Constellation Gala, with the usual amazing display of fashion choices,” said a delighted female DJ. “My Twitter feed is full of really questionable costumery right now, which is just Christmas for me. One of the really gorgeous ones, though, is that blue butterfly outfit from Bo Thomas—did you see it, Bret?”

“I’m looking at it right now. It really shows off the baby bump, too!”

The what?

“That’s one of the more dramatic tweets we’ve seen tonight under the Constellation Gala hashtag,” Bret-the-DJ continued merrily, “Bo Thomas of Distant Kingdom announcing her pregnancy. You gotta wonder, right, which brother…?”

“Oh, absolutely, you gotta wonder! This is soap opera material here and I’m living for it—”

Everything around Rafi had gone out of focus. He couldn’t breathe, and his hands were strangling the steering wheel. Wheels screeching, he pulled over—some dark corner, he didn’t care, he was out of traffic—and snatched his phone out of his pocket to open Bo’s Twitter page.

“—such classy behavior, honestly,” the female DJ was saying, her voice a distant and tinny distraction. “And it’s hard to imagine the band could possibly survive it, which is a huge shame. I love Distant Kingdom—”

Rafi silenced the radio with the slap of a button, and stared at Bo’s latest tweet.

‘It’s hard to hide it in this dress, so I might as well make it public. No champagne for me tonight! #ConstellationGala #socialbutterfly #20weeksalong’

The words were attached to a close-up shot of Bo’s distinctly rounded belly.

Twenty weeks. That was, what, five months? Five months ago, that would have been March, twenty weeks would be early March…

Rafi had been in London in early March. Alone. Bo and Carlos had stayed in New York.

Everything seemed to be tilting around him. Bo had been sleeping with Carlos all the way back in March?

“Move, you i***t!” A hand clamped around his wrist, another got a handful of his tunic, and Rafi yelped as he was hauled bodily out of his car.

His car, which was not metaphorically but literally tilted, and sliding into the ground.

He had pulled over, Rafi realized, into the middle of some kind of construction, running roughshod over orange cones and parking the entire right side of his car on flimsy wooden slats, laid over a dark hole. The slats were now breaking under the weight. Rafi stood helplessly on the edge of the pavement, watching his Lexus fall in slow motion. He was a strong man, but not strong enough to catch a car…

“I hope you have good insurance,” said a tart voice—the man who had pulled him out of the car. Rafi turned toward him—and realized his rescuer’s feet were still on the collapsing slats.

There wasn’t time to say anything. Rafi grabbed the man tightly and swung him out of the way, just as something crumpled with a crack, and the car’s descent went from a creep to a plunge. The step forward Rafi had taken to reach the other man put him just within reach of the Lexus as its nose flipped up, Titanic-style, on its way down. An edge of metal lashed across his wrist as it went.

The car hit bottom with a resounding crunch and a billow of smoke. Bits of wood pattered down after it. The engine sputtered, then died.

For a moment Rafi and his rescuer both stood silent, chests brushing as they breathed. People were starting to gather around, pointing down at the car in its hole, taking pictures.

“Put me down,” Rafi’s rescuer said, and Rafi realized that not only did he still have his arms around the guy, he was actually holding him an inch or two off the ground. He tore his eyes away from the remains of his car to look at the stranger who had saved him, mouth opening to say thank you—but no sound came out.

He knew the face of the gorgeous young man wrapped in his arms, the one who had probably saved his life and was now staring at him in annoyance. Rafi had last seen him smoking a cigarette in a French café—on a movie screen.

“You’re Julian Gault,” said Rafi’s mouth without his permission. “The movie star.”

“Lovely to meet you,” the man said, eeling his way out of Rafi’s arms. “And you are?”

Rafi’s brain had flatlined; he didn’t answer.

“Did you hit your head?” Julian’s perfect alabaster brow wrinkled. “Or are you having a stroke? Is that why you pulled over in such an idiotic spot?”

“No,” Rafi managed. “That was because…” He gestured inarticulately with the phone that was, miraculously, still in his hand, the screen dark now over Bo’s picture.

Julian Gault’s lip curled in disgust. “You were on your phone? You could have killed someone!”

“I was only on the phone once I stopped!”

“You’re still an i***t,” Julian said. He stepped back and dusted off his hands. “Well, good luck with all this. I have a Gala to attend, preferably before the authorities get here.”

“Yeah,” Rafi said, “that sounds like a good—wait, gala? The Constellation Gala? That’s where I’m going!”

Julian blinked, then looked Rafi up and down with new eyes. “Wait, are you—you’re Rafael Reyes. Of Distant Kingdom.” He finally looked as boggled as Rafi had felt all along.

“Call me Rafi.” He held out his hand. “I need to call a cab—and a tow, or…extraction team…Let me give you a ride? It’s the least I can do, seeing as how I owe you my life.”

“I suppose that could be useful,” Julian murmured. He reached for Rafi’s outstretched hand, only to draw back again with a start. “You’re bleeding.”

“What?” Now that he was looking at a hand covered in blood, Rafi could feel the pain in his wrist. “Oh, right. That happened when I pulled you out of the way. Let me just get that cleaned up…”

By the time Rafi came out of the nearby gas station’s bathroom, cut cleaned and bandaged, he half-believed Julian would be gone. He half-believed Julian was a hallucination to begin with, the product of stress and adrenaline. But he was still there, bent over to speak with the driver of assumedly-their-cab, and wasn’t that a nice view.

“Speak of the devil,” Julian said, and opened the cab door with a distinctly sarcastic flourish. “Your carriage awaits.”

“Aiden Planetarium?” the cabbie asked, catching Rafi’s eye in the mirror. Rafi nodded as Julian slid in beside him, and they were off, just as red and blue lights came into view somewhere far behind them.

* * * *

They rode in silence, Rafi straightening his cloak and watching Julian from the corner of his eye. If Rafi was a wolf, Julian was apparently a peacock—a white one, feathers flowing in a snowy train from his long coat, and gathered in his flame-red hair like some cross between a comb and a crown.

“Were you…headed to the Gala on foot?” Rafi asked at last. “That’s unconventional.”

“I try to keep people guessing,” Julian shrugged. “That’s rather ugly.” He jerked his chin toward the bandage on Rafi’s wrist. It had been the biggest one in the gas station first aid kit, but it was already proving insufficient, blood darkening the material.

Rafi swore under his breath, rubbing uselessly at the injury. “That’s just what I need, to walk into a public event featuring my ex-fiancée while looking like I tried to slit my wrists.”

Looking as if he might already regret what he was saying, Julian pulled a thick golden bracelet, ornately carved and sporting a large square ruby, off his wrist. “This might cover it.”

Rafi felt his eyebrows rise. Julian Gault seldom appeared in public without that bracelet; Rafi had seen more than one tabloid article speculating as to why, though he didn’t think Julian had ever answered the question.

“Thanks,” Rafi said, and took the bracelet. It was a tight fit, but it did conceal the bandage. “This is a big improvement.”

“I suppose I can at least loan you a bracelet,” Julian said, “for being injured in my service, so to speak. Even if I never would have been in danger to begin with, if it weren’t for you.”

Rafi assayed his most charming smile, the one that showed off his dimple. “My hero?”

Julian rolled his eyes, but—was that a bit of pink in his cheeks? “I don’t appreciate being manhandled, incidentally.”

“Noted,” Rafi said. “Next time you rescue me, I’ll let you fall to your death afterward.”

“See that you do,” Julian said, and turned to the window, leaving Rafi to travel the last few blocks in baffled silence.