Page 164 of Silver Sweet

Susie grins up at me. “But if they were open, Wolfgang, who would you want to slide in there?”

I avoid Tom now and eye her. “So about our music…”

She giggles again. “Always about the music. Ilovethe dedication to The Carraways.” She unpockets three fun-sized red boxes of Devil Hots, explains how she’s obsessed with the candy and wants to share the heat.

While she’s asking Tom about the album, we’re supposed to eat this spicy shit, and I’m so amped from the DM back-and-forth bit that I unconsciously throw a handful of candy in my mouth like Tic Tacs.

I bite into a chewy, spicy personal hell. Thenauseatingflavor explodes on my tongue. It tastes like literal vomit, and I cough hard into my fist.

“Dude?” Tom puts a concerned hand on my lower back. “What do you need?”

A time machine.

“Oh!” Susie gasps, and not because Tom is touching me. But because I lower into a squat and retch on the curb. It all instantly comes out. Hell, it never went fullydown.I’m apologizing as soon as I stand back up, more to Tom than her. He’s glaring at me, probably pissed I’m offering a rare, authenticI’m sorryover this.

She’s still filming us, and Tom tells her, “Hey, can we cut for a sec?”

“Yeah, yeah, I can’t use that anyway. Devil Hots wouldn’t like it, or maybe…” She cocks her head in thought.

I find out two days later she went with theor maybeoption and posted my Madison Ave puke fest to her followers. It’s not what goes viral.

I’ve apparently given Tom an “up-down” look during a few interviews, including the Tiff Montclair podcast and the Susie Mac street video. Ibarelychecked him out. Barely. For videos to go viral, I thought they’d need like a billion views, but Tom said over a million was enough.

I’ve had an explosion of followers and guilt at knowing this is my fault.

Tom reminds me they’re also dissecting his body language in the Susie Mac interview, but every clip I’ve seen has been aboutme.

They’re all speculating my sexuality. They want to know if I have the hots for Tom Carraway Cobalt.

The answer:every fucking day. Oh and he also drives me insane.

Tom’s phone becomes a buzzing nightmare of DMs from guys asking to fuck. Some just send wet and eggplant emojis. “I did not ask for this,” he groans, blocking another person.

I narrow my gaze. “You asked for ‘other things,’ which is about as open-ended as asking to be dicked down by all of New York.”

“Idon’twant that,” he professes deeply to me.

“I know. You just want to be dicked down by me.” I laugh when he faceplants onto his bed.

His phone buzzes again. “Okay,” he says fast, rolling over with his phone. “Okay, I’m turning off my DMs.”

Thank God.

At the tailend of the press junket, Riot lands us a local news outlet, and we’re aware the trending videos about our personal lives brought us our first live performance on-air. I have mixed emotions.

So does Tom, but we’re both too ecstatic at the opportunity to play “Nuclear Winter” and for more people to hear our music.

First, we need to film a short interview segmentliveon Good Morning Manhattan. We’re not even a minute in, and this olddickhead news anchor focuses onme. “Wolfgang St. Pierre.” He finger-snaps at me. “Now, as I’ve heard by my much younger colleagues who keep me ‘in the know’—you’ve been trending on social media the past week.”

“So Tom tells me,” I nod, gripping my jostling knees and wishing to release this amassing tension behind my drums. “I’m not online as much.”

“Something we have in common,” he chuckles. I’m on edge as he gestures a hand to Tom while staring at me. “Tom is openly gay.”Here we go.“Would you care to share about yourself?”

Tom chokes on a sound ofirateshock. He’s about to interject for me, but I answer too fast, “I’m also openly gay, and I think we want to play now—right, Tom?”

“Yep. Right now.” He’s tearing off the mic clipped to his ripped collar. Interview over early. The old man is slack-jawed, a little floored that Tom would leave mid-segment. I’m less shocked because Tom always risks looking like a snobby rich kid.

He’d risk this a thousand times over to reinforce my boundaries, which are typically very hard to push. Tom knows this, as someone who likes pushing them.