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“Holy shit!” Madison exclaimed from across the room.“What?” Natalie questioned with a risen eyebrow, looking up from her phone. They were meant to be doing their homework but they’d taken a ‘break’ that had quickly taken a turn for procrastinating in silence.“Stacee Jaxx is gay!” She said, staring at the phone in her hand with wide eyes.“What?!” Natalie’s attention was officially caught and kept, her own expression blowing open with shock.“Yeah,” Madison nodded, holding a hand to her open mouth as she read the article on her phone. Natalie slid along the edge of the bed and Madison pivoted to let her read over her shoulder. “Someone from his team leaked it, he’s apparently in a relationship with a man.”“Woah,” Natalie reacted, reading the blurb for herself over her girlfriend’s shoulder, “I never would’ve guessed that.”“Mm,” Madison hummed, settling out of the shock for a moment, “In hindsight…”“He’s glam rock,” Natalie rolled her eyes, “Glam rock bands are inherently effeminate, doesn’t make them inherently queer.”“I don’t know, he did always give off ‘Rob Halford and George Micheal had a baby’ vibes to me,” Madison mused, skimming the article.“He’s been with a lot of women for that to be a front,” Natalie sucked her teeth, “It’s 2014, not 1982 anymore, I can’t see all of that being for show.”“Maybe he’s bi,” Madison shrugged, “Sources trace back to…a fired PR manager.”“Kinda shitty of them to out him like that,” Natalie grimaced.“Yeah,” Madison’s eyebrows furrowed together.“Any word on who the supposed partner is?” Natalie questioned, flopping back onto the bed to stare at the ceiling.“None,” Madison pursed her lips, “Something tells me he’s not famous or something, this woman was being vindictive with the way she did this.”“He certainly knows how to piss people off,” Natalie huffed out a slight laugh, “What is it with his team taking shit to the press?”“I don’t know,” Madison shook her head and sighed, “That disaster back in ’09 was memorable.”“I hope everything turns out okay,” Natalie frowned. Madison reached a hand out, stroking over Natalie’s dark hair. “I’d hate for this to get nasty.”“He’ll lose some fans but he’ll gain some too,” Madison shrugged, “I just hope this whole thing coming to light doesn’t hurt anybody, I’d hate for this to tear apart a new relationship or something.”“Yeah,” Natalie nodded, leaning into Madison’s touch and pulling her free hand into her own, “That would suck.” She looked up at her girlfriend and Madison’s blue eyes looking down at her brought a smile to her face on sight alone. For the time being, she forgot about celebrity drama and focused on her girl’s blonde curls and the way her sweater draped over her curves in luscious waves and dips. She grinned, “It would.”She leaned up to kiss Madison and all focus on the topic at hand faded away.•
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•“Ohhhhhh shit,” Natalie covered her mouth in shock.Madison glanced over at her from the driver’s seat, “What?”“Stacee Jaxx was spotted on a late-night outing with a man—ohhhh,” Natalie grimaced.“What?!” Madison exclaimed.“God, this guy looks our age,” Natalie scrunched her face, “Or younger, even.”“Well, so?” Madison raised an eyebrow.“I’m not judging them but the shitstorm this is about to turn into for the media is going to be interesting,” Natalie cringed in sympathy. Madison tipped her head in acknowledgment.“It’s attached to an article,” Natalie clarified, “Oh! By the same reporter that started the ordeal back in ’09.”“Shit,” Madison hissed, “Well, don’t just leave me hanging, read it!”“I’m trying,” Natalie mumbled, scanning the screen in her hands, “This is bad.”“Like, how bad?” Madison questioned, glancing at her.“Bad,” Natalie answered solemnly.“Elaborate,” Madison gestured frantically for her to continue.“They’re taking the age gap angle for most of it,” She clarified, “The rest is just talking about how shitty of a person Stacee is.”“Like what?” Madison furrowed her eyebrows.Natalie cleared her throat, holding her fingers up in quotations, “Whilst most of the world may know Stacee Jaxx as the belligerent addict that he is, many would not label the man a predator. Many would be wrong. Only two months after being publicly outed as queer, he has been seen several times with the same young man who we have yet to identify for certain but who appears to be college-aged at the absolute oldest. ‘Harmless’, you may assume, but considering all we’ve learned about Stacee Jaxx in the past, how can we know that?”“Fuuuuuuck,” Madison grimaced.“Yeah,” Natalie continued skimming the article, “This is bad.”•
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•“God, it’s good to be back!” Stacee exclaimed in a lull between songs. The crowd cheered back at him, Madison and Natalie’s voices among them. He laughed in exhilaration, “This year has been…a lot.”He shook his head, sighing, “Never expected being outed to turn into the worst year of my life and yet,” he tossed his hands up with a half-hearted smile, “Here we are.”“So let me just clarify a few things,” he held up a hand, his smile breaking out towards something more sly. The crowd roared back in response and his smile tilted up even further at the edges.“Because I don’t give a shit what the rest of the world thinks of me,” he shouted into the mic, “I want you guys to know the score, to hell with everybody else.” They all cheered back raucously.“So,” he laughed, “I am bisexual, always have been, always will be,” he shrugged, “Never faked it with women, I never had a beard, every relationship you ever knew about was real, so let’s get that clear, I just never stayed with a man long enough to feel a need to go public with it and sometimes,” he shrugged again, “When your whole life is public, sometimes you want a little something to yourself.”“Point being,” he strummed absentmindedly on his guitar, playing in with the soft backing music the band was echoing behind him, “That’s changed now.” He smiled, something lovesick, and all of them screamed in accordance.“Wait, you don’t think—“ Natalie asked.“I think he’s—“ Madison nodded.“I’ve met somebody now and we fell together by coincidence,” Stacee shook his head fondly, “Never in a million years did I consider things going the way they have but I’ve been with the love of my life since 2013 and he just so happens to be a man.” The crowd screeched once more.“Now, I didn’t want to talk about this publicly because he’s never been in the limelight in his life,” Stacee grinned, something soft and loving that nobody in that crowd had ever seen before, “And I didn’t want to be the one to sic the media hounds on him, but alas…” he strummed a soft riff, “That choice was taken from the both of us.”“So,” Stacee smiled, looking around the stadium at the crowd in the stands, “Here I am, baring my soul for you just to set the record straight, I met this funny, awkward little twenty-year-old in a bar and somewhere deep in my soul, I began falling in love,” the crowd awed and he laughed, “I know, it sounds insane, but I think I started falling in love before I even really knew what it meant, because here was this down-to-earth guy who didn’t look at me and see Stacee Jaxx: international rockstar, he just saw Stacee, this kinda cool guy he met at a rock club in downtown Atlanta because get this! This sheltered motherfucker had never even heard of Arsenal before he met me.”The whole crowd laughed and Stacee laughed with them, “I kid you not, he couldn’t have picked me out of a line-up and I loved that, I felt…normal, in a way I hadn’t in a really long time, it was refreshing and invigorating and even liberating if you wanna call it that, it was damn-near addictive, and before I knew what was happening, I started falling for this goofy ass guy with an accent thicker than sin who said phrases that really knocked me on my ass sometimes, just gibberish,” he laughed even louder, “I really felt like a teenager in love all over again, especially the closer we grew and the more sides of him I saw, from the quick temper to the gentle care, everything he ever turned my way managed to feel good, for the most part, and if that’s not magic,” he shrugged with another laugh, “I don’t know what is.”“Damn, he’s whipped,” Madison whispered, laughing. Natalie nodded, chuckling.“I don’t know, it was the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced and yet, I’d never go back in a million years because now I have him,” he smiled, teeth splitting his face wide, sunglasses glinting in the stage lights, “And I am never letting him go, because last week, I asked him a little question and he said yes so…” The entire crowd screamed.“Point being,” Stacee laughed into the mic over the noise, “I just wanted you all to meet my future husband and the man that I dedicated half of this album to, including this next song.” The screen on the back of the stage suddenly changed, showing a camera angle pointed into the crowd. Stacee turned back to watch the screen as the lens slowly zeroed in on one man in the very front row, the very same as had been in the photos all those months ago. Dressed in a plain t-shirt and a cowboy hat, there he sat, smiling wide and proudly up at the stage, his brown eyes sparkling even in the low lighting.“Say hi, baby,” Stacee grinned, purring into the mic. The man looked directly into the camera, waving with a dopey grin on his asymmetrical face.“This one’s for you, Will,” Stacee smiled, settling his mic back into the stand firmly and then opening his way into the song, “Made some breakfast, made some love, this is what dreams are made of on a cloudy Monday morning…summer’s gone and you’re still here, for both of us, it’s been a year, a tidal wave without a warning…”