Chapter 7 Alex #2
"My mom does. Every Christmas. The same plot twelve times with different sweaters."
I laughed.
I parked on the main street. We got out. The air was cold and clean and smelled like wood smoke and fallen leaves. A couple walked past with a pug. An old man was sweeping the sidewalk in front of a hardware store. Nobody looked at us twice.
Nobody knew us here.
The realization hit like a drug. No teammates. No coaches. No Braden watching from across the bay. No Eldridge in his office. No one who knew the name Harrington or Moore or what either of those names meant.
We were just two guys on a sidewalk in a town we'd never been to.
Liam was looking around. Taking it in. And I watched the tension leave his body in real time—the jaw unclenching, the shoulders dropping, that constant scan of the room he did everywhere we went just stopping. Like someone had flipped a switch.
He was just Liam. The version I only got in my dorm room after midnight or in the boat when nobody was close enough to hear.
Except now he was that version in daylight. On a sidewalk. In the open air. And seeing it—seeing him free—made something ache in my chest.
This is what it could be like.
"Come on," I said. "I saw a café."
The café was called Maple & Main. The kind of place with mismatched furniture and a chalkboard menu and a bell that jingled when you walked in. It smelled like fresh bread and coffee and something with cinnamon.
We ordered at the counter. Turkey and avocado on sourdough for me. Roast beef and cheddar for Liam. Two coffees—mine black, his with enough sugar to make the barista raise an eyebrow.
"Four sugars?" I said.
"Six."
"That's not coffee. That's dessert."
He smirked.
We sat at a corner table by the window. The main street visible through the glass—the storefronts, the church, a couple of kids riding bikes. A Sunday in a town where nothing dramatic had ever happened.
The sandwiches came. We ate. And for a few minutes it was just that—two people having lunch, knees almost touching under the table, the easy silence of not needing to fill every second with words.
I kept catching myself staring at him—the way he ate with his whole body, leaning into it, no pretense.
The way he wiped mustard off his chin with the back of his hand instead of a napkin.
The way he looked up and caught me watching and said "What? " with his mouth full.
"Nothing," I said.
"You're staring."
"I'm not."
"You are. You've got this whole face happening."
"I don't have a face."
"You've got a very specific face right now." He leaned in. "It's the same face you make when you're about to—"
"Fuck off. Eat your sandwich." I laughed.
He grinned. Kept eating.
Then he set his sandwich down and wiped his hands.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Always."
"Braden. What's his deal? Like, actually."
I took a sip of coffee. Thought about how to explain something that had been shaping my life since before I could name it.
"It started with our fathers," I said.
"They rowed together?"
"Not exactly. My father was a freshman at Kingswell. Braden's father was a junior. They were competing for the same seat in the Henley quad."
"Henley? As freshmen?"
"Lockwood was already established. But my father was good enough to challenge him." I turned my coffee cup on the table. "He became obsessed with beating Lockwood. He over-trained. Pushed too hard. Injured his back three weeks before selection."
"And Lockwood made the boat."
"My father didn't. And the worst part—Lockwood barely thought about him. The whole rivalry was in my father's head."
Liam was quiet. Processing.
"So how did it become a real thing?"
"Money." I turned my coffee cup on the table.
"After college, my father started donating to Kingswell.
Got his name on buildings, got a board seat, made sure everyone knew the Harrington name still mattered.
And Robert Lockwood saw what my father was doing and decided he wasn't going to be outspent.
When my father funded the boathouse renovation, Lockwood funded the new erg center. "
"A dick-measuring contest with tax write-offs."
"Basically. But then it got personal. Lockwood blocked my father from chairing the alumni board—called in favors, made it political. My father retaliated by getting Lockwood's name removed from the regatta trophy sponsor list. Petty, ugly, rich-people warfare."
"This is dark Alex," Liam said with his face twisted in disgust. "Glad I'm not rich."
I shook my head. "By the time Braden and I were twelve, both our fathers were using us as the next round. Same elite rowing clubs. Same junior regattas. Every time I won something, my father made sure Robert Lockwood knew. And every time Braden won, his father called mine."
"So Braden's not just competitive on his own."
"No." I set the cup down. "We didn't choose this rivalry. We inherited it."
"So it's not just about the double."
"No. And now I'm rowing the featured boat at the Charles with someone from Riverside instead of him." I paused. "In his head, that seat should be his. By birthright."
"By birthright." Liam's mouth twisted. "Must be rough."
"I'm not defending him."
"I know." He picked up his sandwich. Took a bite and chewed. "It's weird. Your world. Everything's about who your dad was. Who your grandfather was. Like you're not even a person—you're a sequel."
A sequel. That's exactly what it felt like. Not my own story. A continuation of someone else's.
"Yeah," I said. "That's exactly what it is."
"For what it's worth—" He looked at me across the table. "You're a pretty cute sequel."
I almost laughed. "That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
He kicked me under the table. I kicked him back. The barista glanced over. We both looked away, and Liam's mouth pressed shut against a grin he was trying to kill.
We finished our sandwiches. Drank our coffee.
The conversation drifted—Liam telling me about Brackett Lake in winter, how the ice fishermen set up shacks and his mom would make soup from whatever they caught.
The old bridge near the inlet where he used to skip rocks with friends and stare at the big houses on the north shore.
"I used to make up stories about the people who lived there," he said.
"Convinced myself they were all miserable. "
"And?"
"You tell me. You lived there."
"My family was miserable. Does that count?"
"Sadly, yes."
I told him about Christmas at Peninsula Point.
The formal dinners. Dinner at seven sharp—not 6:59, not 7:01.
The house that felt like a museum with a dress code.
My father at the head of the table and my mother at the other end and the space between them filled with polished silver and absolutely nothing real.
"That sounds awful," Liam said.
"It was beautiful and awful at the same time. The lake was beautiful. The house was beautiful. Everything looked perfect from the outside."
"Yeah." He looked at me. "I know something about that."
The check came. I reached for it.
Liam's hand got there first.
"I got it," he said.
"Liam—"
"I got it." He was already pulling his wallet out. He opened it and I saw him do the math. The quick glance at the bills inside. The micro-calculation that I never had to do.
Two sandwiches. Two coffees. Twenty-six dollars and change.
"Let me get this one," I said.
"I said I got it."
"You get it next time."
"Alex." He looked at me. That thing in his eyes—not pride exactly, something sharper. The reflex of a guy who'd spent his whole life watching rich people pay for things and swearing he'd never be on the receiving end. "I can pay for my lunch."
"I know you can. I want to." I held his gaze. "You drove — wait, I drove. You picked the music. I pick up the check. That's how dates work."
"Oh, so you're an expert on dates now?"
"I'm a fast learner."
He held the check for another second. The internal fight visible on his face—the part of him that would rather eat nothing than owe someone. Then something loosened. He set the check down. Slid it toward me.
"Next time is mine," he said.
"Deal."
"I mean it. Next time I'm paying. Even if it's a place with cloth napkins and you order something with a French name."
"I would never."
"You absolutely would."
I put my card down. The barista took it.
"Thank you," he said, like it cost him more than the meal would have.
"You're welcome."
We walked back out onto Main street. The storefronts stretching in both directions.
The sun higher now, warm enough to cut through the chill.
Liam walked close to me—closer than he ever walked on campus.
Our shoulders bumping. His hand brushing mine between our bodies, not holding, just touching.
The kind of contact that would be invisible to anyone passing but felt enormous to me.
Liam stopped. He was looking at something across the street.
"What?" I asked.
"Thrift store." He nodded toward a storefront with a hand-painted sign: SECOND CHANCES — VINTAGE & THRIFT. The windows were cluttered with old lamps, picture frames, a mannequin in a denim jacket.
"You want to go in?"
He looked at me with an expression I couldn't quite read. Warm, and mischievous. Like he was about to show me something about his world the way I'd just told him something about mine.
"You ever been in a thrift store, Harrington?"
"I've... been in stores."
"That's a no." He grabbed my arm and pulled me across the street. "Come on, golden boy. Time for education in being broke."