Haunted

Second Chance

A few days later Maddox still hadn't heard back from Eli. He'd been ready to beg Scooter to call Eli's dad until Eli started tweeting again and Maddox at least knew he was alive. It didn't stop him from worrying but that was better than nothing.

Maddox also hadn't decided exactly what he was going to do about his plan to come out. Eli had suggested he talk to Justin about it but every time Maddox worked up the nerve to try talking to his dad, Justin was busy with Clara or rushing off to the studio. If his mom hadn't seemed so sick or so tired all the time he would have tried talking to her but she was always sleeping anymore.

Jackson, of course, was no help. He seemed happier than ever to play the secret boyfriend, sending Maddox cute texts when they were in public together and acting like they weren't together. As Maddox watched Jackson he started to realize that it all just seemed like a game to him.

"Hey, what's happening tomorrow?" Jackson asked. They were out at lunch with a few of Maddox's dancers.

"What do you mean?" Maddox frowned.

"Tim called this morning and said we all needed to come to some meeting," Jackson said. Maddox's heart dropped.

"Tomorrow's my usual business meeting," Maddox shrugged. He met with a bunch of people once a week to go over details about his new projects, money stuff, and ideas. Normally none of the dancers would be part of it but Maddox had a feeling that with his Ellen interview coming up that Tim had decided it was time for Maddox to come out to his team.

"Is it about your new video?" Jackson asked. "Don't we have rehearsals scheduled for that soon?"

"Oh, yeah," Maddox nodded. "Maybe that's why, I don't know," he lied hoping Jackson would drop it.

He did his best to ignore the photographers who were lurking as they left the restaurant after that and Maddox also decided to go straight home instead of trying to hang out. Every time he'd tried to make up his mind about what to do he'd told himself he still had a week. If he had to tell everyone at his meeting he suddenly only had hours left to decide.

"Did you invite everyone to our meeting tomorrow?" Maddox demanded as soon as Tim answered his phone.

"Yes, I was about to call you," Tim insisted and tried to explain. Maddox barely listened. He was out of time.

For the rest of the afternoon, Maddox lay in his bed staring at the ceiling. He barely managed to eat his dinner that night. At around 4 that morning Maddox had to admit he probably wasn't going to fall asleep. He decided he would check on Eli again, scrolling through all his tweets just to see what he was up to.

Maddox stared at the many tumblr links Eli had posted and had a sick feeling he knew what he'd see as soon as he clicked on it. As much as he dreaded looking at it, he had to know. It had to be a picture of him with Jackson.

Eli's tumblr was almost exactly what Maddox would have imagined it looked like. Almost all his latest posts were reblogged pictures of Maddox and Jackson. Below that were a ton of edited pictures containing really depressing song lyrics. Then there were the occasional pictures of Maddox mixed in there, including the one Kylie had taken at the beginning of his tour where it looked like Maddox was about to cry. He'd never even realized that picture was out there but Eli had captioned it "i fell for his broken heart but it was just another part of his show"

The longer Maddox looked the more awful he felt. He could watch Eli's mood changing through all the pictures he posted. Before the day Maddox said he might not come out, everything Eli posted was bright and happy. After that day it all went dark. Maddox scrolled back until he started seeing the pictures from the day he and Eli had met and watched the sadness slowly slipping into Eli's posts again.