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I s it true? Are you gay?

How long have you been in the closet?

Were your girlfriends aware?

A terrible thing about hitting the number one trend was the lurching sweaty bodies Timi had to wade through to get to the other side of sanity. Flashing cameras and raucous voices demanding for answers were the bane of his career he'd prepared for, but he'd never gotten used to the people.

Fendi's director, Marjorie Bloom, had assured him of a quiet morning, but what business could resist the lure of free publicity?

“I'm sorry, Mr. Lawson,” the petite British lady said, as he burst into the brightly lit reception of the four-storeyed complex, feeling as harried as he believed he looked. “We don't know how the news of your coming got out.”

Of course.

He waved off her apology. “We can only hope for less leaks, can't we?”

She winced. “How are you taking it?”

He'd laughed, at first. The absurdity of the claim was as stark as the wild stories the media had feasted on for the past months. His unending parties. His women. Pictures and videos all over the Internet, irrefutable proof of his unapologetic straightness.

Then, his eyes drifted to the comments and his laughter had died.

Ewwww! That dude's gay?

Omg. Not Timi Lawson.

I dey talk am since, una no wan hear.

Wait. I don't understand. Nollywood don dey get gay actors?

Whaaaaat! Gay bastard.

Abomination! Tufia! #spits

He'd gone still, absorbing the vitriol and venom snaking through words and dripping from letters.

Till the phone screen morphed into a corridor.

Cold, uneven, mildewed. Jagged edges of spalls and cracks pricking bare feet.

Down the Quadrangle it surrounded, boys with the same face, snarled.

Eyes promising an inescapable violence. Hands stretched out to receive the boy thrown in their midst.

Then, pain. Searing white hot agony. Setting the boy's body and soul on fire. Shameful disgust settling deep in his bones.

Fifteen years later, and the faces had remained the same. The pain, as poignant. And he'd known for certain, the life he buried and was about burying had to stay dead. For his and Uncle Jude's sake.

“Timi?” Marjorie called.

He started, releasing his wrist he'd unconsciously been twisting. “Sorry. Yeah, I'm good.” He smiled down at her. “Any different reaction, and I'd have been surprised.”

“Please know if it's true, we have nothing against—”

“It's not. I assure you.”

The next two hours went by with him enduring the gruelling tasks of changing outfits, striking poses, and being cooked alive in front of blazing lights and flashing cameras.

He appreciated the transformative process of modelling but had never loved it.

Partly due to the meat-on-a-slab feeling it conjured, and mainly for the furnace it dunked him into.

Ebun, a celebrity stylist he'd worked with several times, wiped Timi's face with an oil blotting sheet. “Just one more collection, and we're done,” he crooned. He snapped ringed fingers at the two girls who had made Timi's face up. “Broad strokes. We don't want his mocha skin burning up.”

“What collection are you fitting me in this time?” Timi asked around the soft foam dabbing above his lips.

“ He's so handsome, he borders on beautiful ,” Ebun recited. “Well, they're about to get their wishes.”

Timi winced. Everything about him was always one thing tottering into something else.

Great actor, attaining perfection.

Notorious Casanova, edging towards debauched.

Multi-millionaire, few numbers away from the billionaire gang.

Really picky with food, he might as well become vegetarian.

So ironic how the words described the fabric of his existence—an almost man. Never quite reaching what made him, him.

How rotten was his luck to appear in a skin netizens were currently frying his ass for?

It had always bothered him when the media called him pretty or beautiful, but he'd drawn comfort from the fact that it usually came up as an afterthought.

As though his looks were so transcendently divine, they had to tilt to the other side of the spectrum for more quality adjectives.

But today of all days?

He frowned. “That kind?”

Ebun clapped down hard on his shoulder. “Androgyny is trendy now o, just check out the Asians. And you guys are doing some doings. Look at the last AMVCA awards.

Timi tried not to shrug off his hand. “I know…but the timing…”

The radio in the background stopped mid-music, and a jingle came on. And for a moment, the large room bustling with people and machines went still .

Once Sunny Nneji's voice singing Happy Birthday faded, Ebun thankfully lifted his hand, and tugged at his neck chains, chuckling. “Your Timians ehn…”

Timi grimaced. With how they'd taken the gossip, they must be regretting creating the jingle. “They are very…dedicated,” he said.

Ebun pushed Timi's chin towards the large LED panel above. “You mean the same ones bashing you?”

“The fan culture here is the ghetto,” Timi agreed.

“Relax. Things would have settled by the time we release this edition. And you're not even going full dress-mode. So sorry, Man.”

He shrugged. “Normal stuff.”

“Gay of all things?” Ebun snorted. “What's attractive in a man's body?”

“Nothing, my brother. Nothing at all.”

By the time Ebun released him an hour later, with his clothes sticking to his skin, he’d begun questioning their importance.

Nejeere met him in the hallway, handing over a bottle of chilled water, and glaring.

Timi gulped with gusto, then smacked his lips. “You know staying off the phone doesn't have to be a rule solely meant for me?”

She urged him towards the elevator. “I can't, for the life of me, understand why we aren't shooting from all angles or contacting Barrister. Do you realise how much we can lose if we let this fester?”

He knew. He'd suffered the brunt a few times. But what power did a ludicrous rumour have on a man on the verge of disappearing?

“I told you, Nej. Relax. By tomorrow, they'll move on to something else.”

Nejeere scoffed as she punched on the green-lit buttons. “Tell that to Dame B.”

The elevator began descending. “That was quick. Six hours was our estimate. What does she want now?”

“She wants to help ,” Nejeere said, lips curling on the last word.

Dame Bukola Bucknor, the C.E.O of Buck’s Group–Timi's former management company, and his defender extraordinaire. During the last Ponzi scheme scandal, she had called him for a meeting at Buck H.Q. Only to be assailed by reporters already assembled in the building's foyer .

“ Sorry for those vultures downstairs, Timi dear ,” she’d crooned as she glided into the office he'd escaped to, jewelleries twinkling.

Followed by her usual entourage of harried-looking workers and the overpowering smell of her Chanel perfume.

“ But it’s their constitutional right. Buck can't tamper with that .”

Sympathy coated her words, but it was absolute bullshit. Not when she’d hammered on so many occasions.

“No press is bad press. When the cameras are on you, it means the people are interested, and that's the best currency for Buck artistes. Use that and shine .”

Later, she’d made a short video in solidarity of Timi Lawson and his false connection to the appalling Ponzi schemers.

“Buck doesn't think this is an important enough topic to keep having discussions about. There’s the fact that a Buck movie just made top 30 on Netflix ‘Movies of all times’, and Top 20 on Primetime. There’s also Buck Communications which just opened and is offering a fifty percent discount to our first ten. . .”

Yeah, he knew her style of helping alright.

Outside the complex, Marjorie must have grown a conscience and expelled the vultures beyond the gates, where they littered the metal bars like mould in cheap motel bathrooms.

He was about heaving a relieved sigh when his eyes snagged a strange sight.

Someone stood by the LM parked several vehicles away.

A specimen dressed in the most horrendous outfit he'd ever had the misfortune of encountering.

Clad in red…no, bluish red?...reddish purple.

..suit, with an inner blue shirt and another red tie—the stranger looked like he'd ingested the same growth enzyme as Incredible Hulk but got his stomach pumped midway.

Though not fast enough to purge out Hulk's sense of style.

His lips twitched from a laughter slowly bubbling within him. A surprisingly pleasant one he hadn't felt in a long, long while. But before he could give in to his mirth, a voice exclaimed beside him.

“Lex! ”

And he watched, stupefied, as Nejeere skipped towards the man.

His manager never skipped. She strode, stamped, sometimes barrelled, but never skipped. And certainly, never exposed all her teeth to anyone. Ever. But there she was, standing in front of the man, barely reaching his chest, beaming and exclaiming how great he'd shown up.

Befuddled, he made his way towards them. His door at the opposite side slid open, and he got in without uttering a word to Nejeere and her Neon Hulk. He expected her to finish with him and get on, but two figures darkened his door before Suleiman could shut it.

Up close, Timi had to tilt back his head to keep his gaze on the man's startling face.

Sharp, well-defined angles made prominent by a temple-fade afro style, and side carvings so perfect, his barber must have majored in hair and geometry.

A face, so arrogantly male, it even boasted of a tiny scar beneath an earlobe, like an evidence of a won battle his aloof yet dignified air alluded to.

The cameras would have loved him.

Despite not saying a word, or having any expression, the man appeared formidably haughty. The haughtiness came from the eyes, which held a bored, jaded look. As though he knew he was a perfect ten, and everyone had to scramble off, unable to withstand his god tier gorgeousness.