Dry Drowning

His t-shirt draped casually off the back of the chair that stood in front of the window. I held the shirt up to my nose and between sips of coffee and staring out across the dunes to the beach beyond; I breathed him in and lingered on the faint smell of cardamom and his musky sweat. The night before, I sat across the kitchen counter from him and watched him cook Indian food while we laughed at a few random comments and gifs on Twitter and talked about nothing much at all that was important. 

It had been five months since I first met Josh at the cast meeting for the movie-a romance between two men filmed in Santa Cruz, California, and the day that changed everything for us. For the first two months, we spent nearly every moment together, filming during the day and growing into each other every night. Cast as the leads in the steamy film, our on-screen romance quickly evolved into an intimate bond and ignited an off-screen passion. After the filming ended, the producers decided not to cut some of the scenes and suddenly we had an R rating and a popular movie with the early pre-release screeners, but the media and critics believed we lied to get the parts and were eager to find fault-or at least a steamy story good for a few news cycles.

We had retreated to Portugal together to relax after the filming ended, or were we trying to escape the rumors that had started? But we were about to be discovered. A near drowning incident at our local beach thrust us into the spotlight as heroes in Portugal while exposing our whereabouts and relationship in the US media. We had decisions to make. Our on-screen love affair that had blossomed to a real-life romance might be good for movie publicity, but exposing it will come at the cost of our privacy. It was time to go home and face the music.