He eventually comes out but is pressured by his agent and movie studios to be the right kind of super masculine gay man. He loves that Declan doesn’t treat him any differently and isn’t impressed by his stardom. They continue to hookup several times a year for a number of years, in which time Sebastian becomes a bona fide movie star. The titular loner is Declan, one of four, lifelong best friends who host a podcast about “love, sex, friends, queer life and culture.” Along with Declan, The Loner, it also stars Corbin, The Charmer Parker, The Romantic and Marcus, The Realist.ĭeclan meets closeted, virgin Sebastian, an up and coming actor who picks him up at the bar Declan tends. They morph from strangers hooking up, to friends-with-benefits, to something more over the course of those years. is an outstanding, opposites attract tale about two men – a bar owner and a movie star – who take more than a decade to fall in love. Riley Hart has created enticing characters with wildly different personalities who prove that chosen family is many times closer, stronger, and more important than biological family. You’d be hard pressed to find better friends than the Fantastic Four. The Vers Podcast is going to be an outstanding series. Expect Southern California sun, swoon, found family and once-in-a-lifetime friendships. The Loner is an opposites attract romance about a movie star rethinking his career and a bar owner/podcast host who isn’t fond of most people. But to call him mine, I’ll need to leave the past behind and finally allow myself to move forward with him. I don’t know how to be someone’s boyfriend, let alone be in the public eye. The more we hang out, the more I realize I’ll never get enough of him.Ī loner dating a celebrity doesn’t make much sense. When he starts taking me places, it feels suspiciously like dates…and surprisingly, I like it.ĭespite our differences, Sebastian’s lonely, like me. We’ve known each other intimately for years, and yet we’ve never spent much time together with our clothes on. He needs a friend, and for whatever reason, he decides that should be me.

Now Sebastian is back in California, taking a break from acting. A boyfriend he later found in bed with another man. Who knew my favorite one would become such a popular movie star? But Sebastian Cole and I made it work, meeting up whenever he was in Santa Monica and in the mood-until he called it off when he got a serious boyfriend. Infrequent, no-strings-attached hookups have always worked for me.

Most of them just let you down anyway, or maybe it’s just that something about me chases people away.

As a founding member of The Vers, a queer podcast I host with my three best friends, I’m The Loner-quieter than the others, and except for them, I don’t let myself get too close to people.

The Loner by Riley Hart