“WHERE IS everyone?” Dusit Sitwat glanced up from the latest social media post that rang his notifications. The bar was empty. He grabbed on to the bar top to stop himself from meeting the floor.
The bartender threw a hand out to help keep him on the stool. “Careful there. It’s closing time. Everyone’s gone home.”
“Home.” Dusit sighed. Such an incredible idea—a safe place to call your own, but one that seemed out of reach living in Bangkok.
“Thanks.” He should really know the guy’s name. He’d been coming in here for a few months. No one knew him, but he found the familiar faces more comfortable to get drunk around. “Everyone’s gone?” Dusit was alone again.
“Sleeping it off. Exactly what you should be doing. Can I call you a taxi?” The bartender tossed the bar cloth in a bin.
Dusit shook his head. “Nah, it’s okay. I can walk.”
The music changed from something easily ignored to something familiar. The angelic voice reached out to him.
“Just want to rest for a minute.” Dusit laid his head on the bar and crooned the words. The lyrics stirred his heart with the best memories “of his life, followed by gut-wrenching pain.
He drank the shot in front of him.
“Oh shit,” the bartender said. “Sorry. Let me find the remote and turn this off. I know how you hate this song.”
Was this guy that good that he’d noticed? “Why do you think that?”
“I gauged your reaction.” The bartender shrugged. “And you told me several times you hate hearing this song.”
“Sorry.” Dusit hoped he hadn’t rambled or raged much.
“Where is—ah. Found it.” The bartender pulled out the remote from inside a drawer and pointed the clicker at the stereo system.
“Don’t. Don’t.” Maybe he had no right to demand anything, but this near stranger honored the request.
“Sure, man. Whatever you want.” The bartender put the remote away.
Whether Dusit heard this song or not, it had embedded itself in his heart years ago and would forever play on an endless loop. “So, you like this song?”
“It’s an excellent song, and my sisters love it.” The bartender grabbed a fresh cloth and began wiping down the liquor bottles.
Dusit sighed and shook his head. “You know, I wasn’t even a singer or an actor then. I had “just moved to Bangkok.”
“Where from?” The bartender continued to straighten up behind the bar.
“Chiang Mai. I got a job at a production studio, working in their maintenance department.” The job was mostly indoors, and it paid well.
The bartender paused and tilted his head, which was all the invitation Dusit needed to continue.
Shrugging, he admitted the truth. “It was crazy. I had just been passing by to change a light bulb at the end of the hall.”
“Passing by where?” The guy leaned on the bar, listening intently the way bartenders did.
“The recording studio. This woman—the singer’s mother, it turned out—asked me to stand in for the other singer, who couldn’t make it.”
Dusit’s words might have been a bit slurred, but from the look on the bartender’s face, he was making himself clear enough. The man seemed interested.
“Whose mother?” the bartender asked.
“His.” Pain ripped through Dusit, wrapped in regret as it did whenever he so much as thought the name, let alone tried to say it out loud.
“Oh, okay.” None of judgment his vague words usually received sounded in the bartender’s voice.
Dusit wanted someone to believe him. “I tried telling her I didn’t sing except for a little karaoke. You know what she said?”
The bartender shook his head.
“She laughed at me and told me she expected little. I would just be a placeholder for someone better.” That summed up the story of his life. “Sorry, I’m rambling.”
“I don’t mind. Talk to me. I’m all ears.” The bartender tossed a fresh towel on the bar and started freeing the shiny surface of wet circles left behind by patrons. “You were a maintenance worker, and they “wanted you to stand in as a singer? What did you do?”
Ah,the bartender was clearly invested now. Good. Dusit knew his story seemed unreal—and maybe it was. At least it sometimes seemed that way to him. “I followed her into the studio. That was the first time I laid eyes on him.”
“Him?”
Dusit could still feel the desire, enthrallment, longing, wrapped up with feeling unworthy of such an angel. “He was so shy he didn’t even look at me when he handed me the page of lyrics. And when he finally glanced up at me, he had the biggest eyes, and I lost my heart to him.”
The confession hurt, but maybe the ache was good. Hurt reminded him that everything they had been to each other had been real.
“Who?”
“Him. My heart….” Dusit swallowed hard. “Gamon Chaisit.”
“Wait.” The bartender pointed to the speaker. “Gamon Chaisit? Actor? Model? This singer? The one with two number-one hits?”
Best person in the entire world. Dusit grunted, “Yeah.”
When Dusit entered the recording studio, they hadn’t spoken to each other. The first words they exchanged were the lyrics of the song.”
“My sisters love that guy,” the bartender said.
So do I.
“Did you sing this duet with him?”
Instead of answering, Dusit sang the lyrics along with the stereo. “I love you. Don’t break my heart. I love you….”
The excitement that had plowed through him whenever he’d caught Gamon’s gaze overwhelmed him. Singing the words of the song was much like an admission of love that was as true the first time he sang the words as it was now. He had held on to Gamon’s gaze throughout all the various takes of the recording. Recording that song made everything seem possible. He had felt the world opening and welcoming him. From that first moment on, being with each other renewed them, or at least that’s what Dusit believed until everything evaporated.
Once he started singing along in the bar, there was no way not to continue through to the end.
The bartender stopped wiping down the bar and peered at him as the song concluded on a high note. “So this is Gamon Chaisit, and that’s you singing?”
Dusit glanced around for an escape. His drunken ramble had ripped away his privacy, and the exit door seemed too far away.
“Wait, you’re Dusit Sitwat. After that reality show a couple of years ago―”
“I had my fifteen minutes.” Dusit ran a hand over the stubble that didn’t always work to hide who he was.
How he wished he could forget all the mistakes he’d made between singing that song and now.
Every time he woke up alone, the hurt and betrayal of Gamon disappearing from his life slashed through him. And every morning since, he’d never gotten used to waking up alone in an empty bed. But Gamon was no longer reachable. That was something his heart still didn’t understand.
Gamon’s mother had told him in no uncertain terms the relationship between him and her son was over. He’d waited for Gamon to reach out and tell him what was going on.
He waited and waited, because he wanted to hear what had gone wrong from Gamon himself, and then he’d try again. But she always answered and continued to let him know her son had moved on to better things.
Dusit was left with no recourse. Gamon never reached out to him, and that spoke to how little Gamon had valued what they had.
Gamon had done a BL series, with Dusit as his co-star, simply as a stepping stone to his singing career, which was going rather well.
“career, which was going rather well. If given a chance, Dusit would do whatever it took to have one more chance to sing even one more song with him….
Why was he moving?
He opened his eyes. Ah, so he’d closed his eyes. Why was there motion?
The bartender shook his shoulder. “Man, I’m locking up. You okay?”
“I don’t know. That last shot really got me. Even if I can’t have him, I should at least clean up my—” Time to find another bar.
Dusit stood.
Everything spun.
Ow! His ass hit the floor. He needed to rest before he got back to his feet.
Chapter 2
GAMON CHAISIT’S cell phone buzzed again.
A quick glance said it was the usual evening call from his ex-manager. That’s what he categorized his mother as, and until she apologized and let “him live his life, he’d dodge calls and visits from her.
He’d never imagine she’d betray him the way she had. It has been two months since he’d found out how she’d blown up his life five years ago.
Maybe his reaction was harsh, but he needed to stand on his own without her wishes and needs affecting every decision he made. This separation and the strict boundary might allow him to heal and have a relationship with her in the future.
Perhaps. But currently she refused to listen to him, so he wouldn’t answer her calls. Parent or not, she’d caused him too many regrets.
Gamon craned his neck left and then right, providing a satisfying crack.
He grinned as he read Achara’s email. They’d been friends for years. If there was tea to be spilled, especially on which actor was dating their co-star or who had a girlfriend, she made sure he was in the loop. After spending a little time away from the Y-series fan culture, he resented how actors and actresses needed to hide their relationships for fear of becoming unpopular.
Achara gave advice but never took it. Still, she concluded the email by telling him he was right and agreeing that her new doctor was trying to get a date “with her by making her come in for extra hormone checks.
“I told you so,” Gamon said to the empty room.
Achara always had fascinating adventures to share with him.
He sent a quick note back, including his new condo address, and now that he was back in Bangkok, he promised to get together with her soon. It had been exhausting finishing out his contracts in France while still taking on parts in Thailand.
Now he refocused on answering his fan email.
Gamon responded to one of the usual questions he got with yes. He originally wanted to be a singer, but acting was where he found the freedom to be himself. What he didn’t say was how grateful he was that acting gave him his one true love, for however short a time the relationship lasted. He’d known pure love.
The next email touched him with the sincerity of the sweet words, but he didn’t need to click the link to the video to know it was a fan-made video made up of clips from years ago. He’d seen every one of them numerous times.
He sighed.
There had to be some way to make himself stop yearning for the past. Not for the first time, he promised himself he’d start checking out some dating apps, or at least a hookup app, to get back out “there. No one was near him to control his every move; he needed to try.
“Yeah, like that ever worked.” He talked to the empty room, but he needed to release his doubt about the idea.
Gamon had attempted a few dates after he stopped his mother from setting him up with women, but he didn’t enjoy any of them. He’d gone on three dates in the last three years—not an impressive average—and the dates all ended before they even started.
He couldn’t help himself. Taking a deep breath, he clicked the link the fan attached.
His eyes got blurry as he watched the clip. The fan-made video pieced together snippets from Don’t Break My Heart and fan meets to show the chemistry and love between him and Dusit.
God, how could he have lost the best thing that ever happened to him?
The video ended with a searing kiss that Gamon still felt to this day.
He opened yet another email begging for him to consider Don’t Break My Heart 2. The fans were unaware that he had very little say in whether that Y-series drama would ever be made.
“Gamon had read the novels that the Y-series was based on, and if he was in control, he’d jump at the chance. That way even if he there was no hope for his happy ending, at least his character could have one.
Embedded in the email was another link. Apparently he was a masochist, because he opened the link.
Dusit’s beautiful face filled the screen, then the camera panned back to reveal Gamon and an interviewer. There was no way he could have hidden the love he had for Dusit. His adoration shone through every part of him until he glowed with affection.
He paused the video and studied Dusit’s body language and his expression. Gamon would have bet everything he owned that Dusit had felt the same way he did… but here he was alone. Gamon lost everything he never really had.
His love for Dusit still burned bright in his heart and mind. His body ached for what he no longer had. The video morphed into the two of them singing Don’t Break My Heart’s theme song at a fan meet.
His mind dragged him back to the beginning.
“The day he and Dusit met was the first day they had sung together, and it always struck him as destiny. The recording session started with upset and chaos, mostly because of his mother’s demands on his would-be co-star.
Gamon had been really nervous because he didn’t want to act, but his mother convinced him to take the part so they could showcase his singing talent. He was excited to sing the original theme song, but the producer informed him his co-star had resigned from the series.
His mother demanded, “Why did that little sand fly back out of the entire project?”
The producer shrugged and shook his head. “He didn’t think it would be an easy working relationship.”
His mother had picked the actor apart, and now they were without a co-star and someone to sing the duet with. “Was that the only reason?”
“His manager said he was uncomfortable with some of the NC scenes, and the director told him in no uncertain terms the script would not change.”
Time and money both wasted.
Gamon didn’t understand why anyone would take such a role and assume they could change it into something else. Unfortunately that wasn’t the last time he’d seen blatant homophobia in the industry.
The producer was furiously texting as he spoke. “Casting is looking for a replacement, but we’ve got this “sound studio today only, so we need to do this song today. Even if it’s just Gamon’s part.”
And then a beautiful man sauntered past the glass walls of the sound studio. Gamon stared so hard, he dropped the sheet music.
Pointing at the man, his mother asked, “What about him?”
The producer shook his head. “I believe he works in maintenance and is not an actor.”
His mother shot into the hallway and shouted, “Hey, you. Can you sing?”
“Me?” Dusit looked down in that sweet way of his and said, “A little.”
As the video in front of Gamon continued to play, anyone would say Dusit understated his voice.
He looked at the sheet music only for a couple of minutes before nodding his readiness.
Their first take gave Gamon chills, and the second run-through made him fall in love with Dusit right there in that recording studio. Everything and everyone vanished, and the only one who existed was Dusit, with his soft smile and his sparkling brown eyes that lit with affection as he sang the lyrics.
Gamon touched his heart as he remembered the pain caused by his mother’s assurance that Dusit was probably “just pretending to be interested in him to get the abandoned role.
Staring at his computer, he decided no, he wouldn’t write off what they shared on- or off-screen. Their love had been real and deep.
No! Don’t look back. You must look forward… but back is where he wanted to go. Back to when he got stolen moments away from his mother to spend with Dusit. The private jokes and little touches for only him to savor.
But there was no way back. Too much time had slipped past before he found out how his mother had ripped them apart.
There was no closure between him and Dusit. Dusit simply left without a goodbye, vanishing after a night they’d spent together.
Or so he’d thought for years. But a couple of months ago, during one of his mother’s tirades to a producer, he overheard her spill the truth. She threatened the production house that she’d cut them out of Gamon’s life the same way she had Dusit.
First, he was shocked, then confused, and now he was seething with anger.
Over the last couple of years, Gamon only heard snippets of how Dusit was doing through their mutual friends, but even that bit of information trickled to nothing.
“Thirsty for the tiniest bit about Dusit, Gamon clicked through his social media platforms again. He only found a drought. The most recent posts were from three years ago.
Sometimes Gamon just wanted to find him and make sure Dusit was okay. They could never get back what they’d lost. That was long gone, but…. He wanted to apologize for what his mother had taken from them both.”
COLLAPSE 
