Chapter 1: The Call
The late afternoon sun bled through the tall windows of the Hollywood Hills living room, painting warm stripes across the grand piano. Matthew Scott traced a finger over the cool ivory keys, not playing, just feeling the familiar smoothness. From the kitchen, the rich, earthy smell of Dan’s attempt at a bolognese sauce mingled with the scent of lemon polish. It was a good smell. A settled smell.
His phone vibrated on the piano bench, skittering like a trapped insect. He glanced at the screen. Kelly Mantle. His agent’s calls always had a certain urgency, like she was permanently mid-crisis.
He picked up. “Kelly. I’m about to eat.”
“Food is temporary, opportunity is eternal,” she said, her voice a crackle of static and caffeine. “Sit down. You’re not going to believe this.”
“I’m already sitting.”
“Good. Stay there. Remember Fusion4?”
The name landed like a physical blow, a sudden, hollow thud in his chest. Of course he remembered. You don’t forget the name of the rocket that both launched you and then blew up in your face. “Vaguely,” he lied, his voice carefully neutral.
“Don’t be cute. The Millennium Network is doing a Y2K nostalgia special. A two-hour extravaganza of frosted tips, cargo pants, and all the music we pretend we weren’t obsessed with. They want Fusion4. One night only. A reunion concert.”
Matthew’s gaze drifted from the piano to a framed photo on the bookshelf. It was him and Dan, grinning like fools on a hiking trail in Big Sur, wind-tousled and happy. A world away from stadium lights and synchronized dance routines.
“Kelly, no. Absolutely not.”
“Matthew, listen to me. The offer is insane. It’s ‘set-your-grandkids-up-for-life’ money. It’s one night. You show up, you sing ‘Electric Summer’ badly because let’s be honest, none of you were great live, you collect a check, and you go back to your perfectly lovely life of producing alt-folk albums for people with beards.”
“It’s not about the money.” He could hear the weakness in his own voice.
“It’s always about the money, honey. But fine, let’s pretend it’s not. It’s about legacy. It’s a victory lap. Marie is already on board. She needs this. Her last single charted somewhere below a polka revival.”
“How is Marie?”
“Desperate. Which is why she said yes before I even finished the sentence. Sara’s in, too. I think she sees it as content for her mommy blog. ‘How I Reunited With My Pop Past While Managing Five Kids’ Eczema!’”
A laugh escaped him, tight and surprised. Sara. His old friend. The only one from that life he still talked to, their conversations now filled with potty training and producer credits instead of chord progressions and tour buses.
“And Ryan?” Matthew asked, the name feeling strange and heavy on his tongue.
A beat of silence on the other end of the line. Kelly knew. She knew everything. “Ryan Lucas is also in. He’s openly gay now, you know. Very proud. Does a lot of work for the community. He’s on that soap, Pacific Shores. His character just came out of a coma, I think.”
Ryan. Openly gay. The words echoed in the quiet room. After all those years of secrecy, of hushed arguments in anonymous hotel rooms, of Ryan’s hand slipping from his the second a door opened.
“I can’t, Kelly.”
“Matthew, look. I get it. History. But this is business. Good business. It’s one night. You’re thirty-seven. You’re happily married to a professor who looks like a sexy lumberjack. You have nothing to prove and nothing to fear. Just think about it. That’s all I’m asking. Don’t say no. Just… consider.”
He could feel her pushing, the relentless pressure of her ambition. She was a force of nature. “I’ll consider it,” he said, the concession tasting like ash.
“That’s my boy. I’ll email you the details. Don’t overthink it. Just picture the check.” She hung up.
Matthew set the phone down slowly. The calm of the room was gone, shattered. He could almost smell it now, under the bolognese and lemon—the stale beer and adrenaline sweat of a packed arena, the sharp, chemical tang of hairspray. He could feel the crush of bodies backstage, the dizzying height of the stage, the blinding glare of the lights that made thousands of faces disappear into a dark, roaring ocean.
And Ryan.
Always Ryan.
He was seventeen, and Ryan was sixteen, and they were learning the dance routine for their first single in a mirrored studio that smelled of sweat and hope. Ryan, shirtless and gleaming, his blonde hair dark with sweat, grinning at him in the reflection, a secret, wicked thing. Their first kiss was in a bathroom stall at a radio station, all frantic, clumsy hands and the terrifying, exhilarating feeling of freefall.
He was nineteen, and they were in a Tokyo hotel room, the city a sprawling galaxy of lights outside their window. Ryan’s head was in his lap, and Matthew was carding his fingers through that famous blonde hair. They were talking about getting a place together after the next tour, a cabin somewhere no one would find them. It had felt so possible, so close he could almost touch it.
He was twenty. It was the night after they’d won their first major award. The after-party was a blur of noise and flashing cameras. He found Ryan on the balcony, shoulders tense. “We have to be careful, Matty,” Ryan had said, not looking at him. “The label… they’re talking about branding. About image. Two young, single heartthrobs. It’s better for the group.”
“What are you saying?”
Ryan finally turned, his beautiful face a mask of a pain so profound it looked like anger. “I’m saying this is going to ruin us. Me. This… thing between us. It has to stop.”
The breakup wasn’t a conversation. It was a demolition. It was Ryan avoiding his eyes for the rest of the tour, leaving rooms when he entered, being photographed with a series of beautiful, famous women. It was Matthew’s heart hardening into something small and brittle, a fossil trapped in the sediment of his past. He left the group a year later, the music suddenly feeling like a lie.
“Who was that?”
Matthew jumped. Dan stood in the doorway to the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel. His shaggy hair was a mess, and he had a tiny smudge of tomato sauce on his t-shirt. He looked solid. Real.
“Kelly,” Matthew said, forcing a smile. “Just… work stuff.”
Dan’s eyes, warm and knowing, scanned his face. He could always tell. “Everything okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Matthew looked past him, through the window to the quiet street beyond. A ghost. Several, in fact. All of them wearing glitter and Doc Martens, all of them singing the same damn song.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice a little too bright. “Everything’s fine. Just a weird offer she wanted to run by me. Smells great in here.”
He walked toward Dan, toward the smell of garlic and home, pushing the echoes of the past back into the silence they came from. For now.
For now.
He walked into the kitchen and wrapped his arms around Dan from behind, burying his face in the soft cotton of his shirt. Dan leaned back into the embrace, his solid warmth a grounding force.
“You sure you’re okay?” Dan asked, his voice a low rumble against Matthew’s chest. “You’re tense.”
“It’s nothing.”
Dan turned around in his arms, his gaze searching. “Matty. It’s me. Talk to me.”
The nickname, one only a handful of people ever used, undid him. The words tumbled out in a rush. “Kelly called. The Millennium Network wants a Fusion4 reunion. For some Y2K special.”
Dan’s eyebrows shot up. He blinked, processing. “A reunion? Like… perform?”
“Yeah. One night only.”
“Wow.” Dan leaned back against the kitchen counter, crossing his arms. The shock was plain on his face. “That’s… I mean, wow. I didn’t see that coming. You never talk about that stuff. You hate performing.”
“I don’t hate it,” Matthew corrected, though it was mostly a lie. “It’s complicated. That whole part of my life is… complicated.”
“Because of Ryan.” It wasn’t a question.
Matthew sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Because of Ryan. And a lot of other things. It was a messy time.”
Dan watched him for a long moment, his expression softening. He reached out and squeezed Matthew’s arm. “Look, you don’t have to do this. Seriously. The money doesn’t matter. We’re fine. If the idea of getting up on stage with him, after everything… if it makes you uncomfortable, then just say no. Kelly will get over it.”
The simplicity of it was a relief. Dan was his harbor, always had been. “I know. I just said I’d consider it.”
His phone, face-up on the counter, erupted in the specific, shrill ringtone he’d assigned to Sara Rodriguez. A picture of her, face smeared with birthday cake and laughing, filled the screen.
“Speak of the devil,” Matthew muttered, swiping to answer. Sara’s face, now framed by a messy mom-bun and a faint smear of what looked like peanut butter, appeared.
“Don’t you ‘hey’ me, Matthew Scott!” she said, her voice a familiar, energetic wave. “Kelly just called me. She says you’re being a stubborn asshole and you’re the last holdout. Please, please, please say you’ll do it.”
“Sara, I—”
“No! Listen to me. My kids think my greatest achievement is the time I made a dinosaur-shaped pancake that didn’t burn. I need this. I need to show them their mom was cool once. Well, moderately cool. We were a pop group, not Nirvana, but still.”
Matthew couldn’t help but smile. “You’re plenty cool.”
“Lies. But that’s not the point. Marie is already picking out her sequins and practicing her vocal runs. Ryan is… well, he’s Ryan. He’s in. It has to be all four of us. It’s not Fusion4 without you, Matty. You were the heart.”
The word ‘heart’ felt like a pointed jab. “I’m not sure about performing again. And facing Ryan…” He trailed off, the unspoken history hanging heavy in the air between them, even through a screen.
Sara’s expression shifted from pleading to earnest. Her voice dropped. “I know. I was there, remember? I saw the whole messy thing. But that was a lifetime ago. You’re married. You’re happy. He’s out. The world has changed. Maybe this is your chance to… I don’t know, mend the bridge. Or at least burn it down properly and build a new one. Put the past in the past where it belongs.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It can be,” she insisted. “One weekend. A few rehearsals. One show. Then we all go back to our lives, a little richer and with a way better story to tell. Come on. For me? For old times’ sake that don’t completely suck?”
He looked over at Dan, who gave a small, supportive shrug, as if to say, Your call. He looked back at Sara’s hopeful, peanut-butter-smeared face on the screen. The past was a locked room he’d been content to leave undisturbed. But now the key was in his hand.
He took a deep breath. The air still smelled of garlic and home.
“Okay,” he said, the word feeling foreign and inevitable. “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”
“Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”
Sara’s squeal was so high-pitched he had to hold the phone away from his ear. Dan, from the kitchen, gave him a slow, appraising look, one that said we’re definitely talking about this later, but followed it with a small, reassuring smile.
Later, after the surprisingly decent bolognese and a bottle of red that did little to quiet the buzz in his head, they did talk. They cleared the plates together, the domestic rhythm a comfort.
“So,” Dan said, leaning against the sink. “A reunion.”
“A one-night-only, nostalgia-fueled cash grab,” Matthew corrected, scrubbing a plate with more force than necessary.
“With Ryan.”
“With Ryan.” Matthew placed the clean plate on the rack. “It’s fine. It’s been fifteen years. We’re different people. He’s apparently very out and proud now. Good for him.”
Dan was quiet for a moment. “It’s okay if it’s not fine, you know. It’s okay to be pissed. What he did to you was shitty.”
Matthew felt a surge of love for this man, for his unwavering, clear-eyed support. He dried his hands on a towel. “It was a lifetime ago. I’m over it.” He said it to convince himself as much as Dan.
Upstairs, in the quiet of his study, the bravado faded. The decision felt abstract, the people involved like characters from a book he’d read long ago. He needed to make them real. He opened Instagram.
He found Marie Sorensen first. Her profile was a curated blast of glamour and diminishing returns. There were professional photoshoots, but the captions pleaded. My new single “Glitter Bomb” is out NOW! Link in bio! He clicked the link, cringing through thirty seconds of over-produced, generic electro-pop. It was desperate. The most recent post was a flashback video from her stint on The Masked Singer—she’d been the Astronaut, eliminated in the third week. The comments were a graveyard of “Who?” and “I loved you in Fusion4!” It was a tough, public slide. Kelly was right. Marie needed this.
Then, he typed in Ryan Lucas.
His heart did a stupid, predictable lurch. The first photo was of Ryan and a man, both shirtless and gleaming, on a sun-drenched beach in what looked like Mykonos. Ryan’s body was, frankly, ridiculous—a sculpted testament to gym membership and good genes. The man, tagged as Jonathan Andring, was similarly built, with a perfectly pleasant, blankly handsome face. A fitness influencer, Matthew recalled.
He scrolled.
There was Ryan, giving a heartfelt speech at a GLAAD awards dinner, his voice cracking with emotion as he talked about visibility. There was Ryan, holding hands with Jonathan at a premiere, the caption reading “So proud of my man.” #QueerLove. There were tasteful, artistic black-and-white portraits. There were cozy-looking shots of them cooking together in a pristine kitchen.
It was a gallery of unapologetic, celebrated gay life. A life they could have had, if only Ryan hadn’t been so terrified of it back then.
The resentment hit him then, sharp and acidic. It wasn’t about Jonathan, who seemed perfectly nice, if a bit dull. It was the hypocrisy. It was the fact that Ryan got to be this gay icon now, this paragon of proud authenticity, when he had been the one to call what they had a “thing,” something that would “ruin” them. He had forced Matthew into the shadows, then broken his heart for the sake of a career that had fizzled out anyway. And now he got to post about #QueerLove for his million followers?
Matthew tossed his phone onto the desk. It skidded and hit a stack of sheet music.
He took a deep, steadying breath, staring out the window at the glittering grid of Los Angeles below. That was the past. This was now. Dan was now. This house, this career, this quiet happiness was now.
He had made a promise. To Sara, to Kelly, to himself. He would bury this. He would go to the rehearsals, he would stand on that stage, he would sing the stupid songs, and he would collect the life-changing check. He would be professional. He would be civil.
He would endure it.