Page 294 - Some Dance to Remember

264 Jack Fritscher

a round of steroids could hardly hurt him.
But something, some little voice in Ryan had made him quit. He
stopped opening the bottle. He stopped shaking the 5 mg of Dianabol
into his hand. He stopped popping the little blue pills into his mouth.
With Kick away so much, the steroids turned his vague anxiety into a
well-defined stress. His skin seemed dry. Small lines appeared around his
eyes. He was feeling insecure enough without taking the Dianabol. The
drug made him feel guilty.
When he was insecure and guilty, anxiety depressed him. It was a
small thing, but in small things often great things are at stake. He decided
not to tell Kick that he was off the stuff. He was still ready to keep their
promise to take muscle as far as it would go, but he was content to let it
be Kick’s muscle. After all, Kick had said he preferred communicative
men to competitive men, and too many musclemen were competitive on
stage and off.
One bodybuilder in the house was enough. Two were too many.
Logan was proof of that. He had that competitive edge. Kick seemed not
to notice it. Ryan didn’t need crystal balls to realize that the only way to
beat Logan Doyle was to be more supportive and communicative with
Kick than competitive. He put his sharpened fangs away. Words were the
only competition he could win. The Universal Appeal project was his way
to victory.
He hated Logan not because he was with Kick but because he was
an asshole. He was not unaware from Logan’s sidelong glances and his
pointed comments about skinny-necked geeks that Logan thought he was
a wimp. In Logan’s book, if you didn’t have muscle, you weren’t shit.
Ryan wondered if Kick knew that Logan had Attitude about Ryan
that Kick couldn’t see and Ryan ignored. It was all too complicated.
Maybe Kick knew Ryan’s writing schedule, like his time with Solly,
wasn’t all that demanding. Maybe Kick knew that Ryan pretended to
be busy to cover his sense of abandonment, haunting at night the empty
Victorian. Maybe Kick thought Ryan had taken a boyfriend on the side
to give Kick time for his affairette with Logan.
Ryan was never sure what to think. He was one half of that other
Famous Couple, Lou Costello trying to find out from Bud Abbott,
“Who’s on first?” Hadn’t Kick confided during a night of intimate pillow
talk: “Logan I like. You I love.”
What a match! Ryan’s temperament and Kick’s personality. Ryan
was Ryan, dark and brooding, and Kick was southern sun, free as the
breeze. Kick was Ryan’s main exercise. Their affair was more of a workout

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