Chapter 2

* * * *

“Can’t you make the show down here?” I’d asked my father. “I like my job. I need my job.” Despite the family wealth, I tried to pay my own way. Being a teacher, even if not in a traditional setting, was also rewarding. “Do it for me, Dad. For your son.”

“I could buy a new son with the money I’ll save in just one week shooting anywhere other than LA.”

My father’s sly grin indicated he was aiming for levity, but I had a feeling he’d already priced my replacement.

* * * *

Despite our brief time together, somehow, it felt as if I’d known Shawn my entire life. Another moment from my past came rushing back to me as I fell, a scene from when I was five. Bel Air. Halloween, 1996.

* * * *

“Look, Otto! It’s Pumbaa!”

My sister Tabor and I were out trick or treating with the nanny. Tabor was quite excited to spot the little boy in a costume complementary to mine.

“Hi.” Always the more outgoing of the two of us, she waved. “My brother’s Timon.”

After two hours in wardrobe and makeup with a couple of Hollywood’s top artists at both, I hoped my character was recognizable without my sister telling people.

“I know.” The neighborhood boy joined our trio but seemed rather shy. We hit mansion after mansion together, treading over manicured lawns, up walkways outlined in orange lights, and rushing up and down stairs with fancy black wrought iron railings covered in fake cobwebs. Most of the time, Pumbaa and I held hands.

My new young acquaintance joined my sister and me several years in a row after that, as Buzz to my Woody, Bart to my Milhouse, and Vincent to my Eric from the HBO series Entourage, whichour housekeeper let me watch with her when I was eight. This other kid apparently got to watch it, too.

“Best friends, Otto,” he said to me more than once. “Best friends forever.”

* * * *

Forever hadn’t lasted quite that long.

“What was his name?”

Damned if I could remember. Maybe because the kid didn’t exist. I’d made the whole thing up. Not the whole thing, just him. My real life was so dull, so lonely at times, I was having a flashback of imaginary adventures with my imaginary friend What’s His Name.

“Oh, well.” The only person I wanted on my mind right then was Shawn, anyway.

“Be sad for a while,” I yelled, whether he could hear me or not. Was that selfish? “But then, go on without me. I’m grateful my last hour on Earth was with you.”

I wanted my last memory to be of Shawn, too, so I took myself back to his proposal.

* * * *

“Keep your eyes closed, Smarty.” Shawn was in LA for the day to do press.

“It’s hard to walk with my eyes clo—Ow!” After tripping on a cable, I smacked right into a wall.

Closing my eyes wasn’t necessary, anyway, because I’d been blindfolded, blindfolded and loaded into a golf cart. I assumed we were still on the Cooper Brennington lot. Where we’d ended up on the property, I didn’t know.

“Okay. Now, you can look.”

I was about to find out.

“Otto Brennington…”

When I whipped off the blindfold, there was Shawn, down on one knee. Fresh flowers would have been a tip off, the scent of them, but we were surrounded by well-made fake ones, roses, in pink, red, and cream. There was even a giant heart made out of them hanging over Shawn’s professionally styled head and filtered spotlit, made-up face. He’d taken me to the Dead Over Heels set, all decorated for the scene where the female mortician finally proposes marriage to her shoe salesman beau, in the sitcom’s penultimate episode. After eight seasons, the series was finally going off the air. Not a moment too soon, as far as I was concerned.

“Will you marry me, Smarty?”

“Whoa.” I looked at the faux flowers, at the battery operated flameless candles, and at the ring box in Shawn’s hand. I wondered if it was real or yet another prop from the sitcom.

“Say yes, Smarty. Otherwise, I’ll look like a fool down here.”

I smiled at him. “Yes, Shawn! Yes.”

The place erupted in applause. The cast was there, hidden, up until now, behind fake walls and doors that went nowhere. My half-brother showed himself, my father, too. Dad was the first to congratulate me, after he’d congratulated Shawn.

“How long have you been gay, son?” Dad asked.

Was he serious? Likely so. “In the few weeks between you proposing the purchase of a new son and Shawn proposing marriage, have you forgotten the reason you and I had that conversation?”

Dad stared at me blankly, like he so often did. Sometimes, I felt as if I might as well be invisible.