Chapter 19 Alex
The interview lasted thirty-two minutes.
I know because I was watching the clock the whole time.
The journalist was a woman named Dana—mid-thirties, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, a leather notebook open on her crossed knee.
She sat across from us in one of the folding chairs Eldridge had arranged in a loose semicircle near the trophy cases on the upper level.
Behind her, the photographer—a quiet guy in a flannel shirt—moved between angles, the shutter clicking every few seconds.
The boathouse hummed with the low-grade energy of a program performing for an audience.
Eldridge had made sure the shells were polished, the bay doors open to frame the river in the background, the Harrington plaque visible over Dana's shoulder.
Everything curated. Everything saying tradition meets innovation.
Liam sat to my left in an identical wooden folding chair. Close enough that our elbows could have touched. We'd made sure they didn't.
He was in his Riverside quarter-zip, legs wide, hands on his knees—the posture of a guy who didn't know what to do with his body when he wasn't rowing.
I was in my Kingswell gear, ankles crossed, spine straight.
The posture of a guy who always knew exactly what to do with his body and hated every second of it.
"So the joint program has been running for—how long now?" Dana asked, glancing at her notes.
"Since about a month ago," I said. "Coach Eldridge and Coach Hale put it together."
"And you two were paired for the doubles from the beginning?"
"The coaches rotated combinations for a few weeks. We were selected based on compatibility on the water."
"Your coaches describe your connection as unusual. Almost intuitive." She looked between us. "Where does that come from?"
The silence lasted a beat too long.
"We push each other," I said, at the same time Liam said, "We're competitive."
We stopped. Looked at each other—first real eye contact since the fight. Brief. Charged. Broken.
Dana's pen moved across the notebook.
"Different styles," Liam said. "He's technical. I'm instinctive. It works."
"And outside the boat? How's the dynamic between a Kingswell legacy rower and a Riverside scholarship athlete?"
"We row," Liam said. "That's the dynamic."
Five words. Everything and nothing.
Dana pushed a little more. The Charles. What it meant to represent both programs. I gave the answers Eldridge would want—measured, grateful, the kind of quotes that looked good in print. Liam gave short responses that Dana seemed to find charming in their bluntness.
The photographer asked us to stand by the double. We walked over—the shell resting on its rack in the lower bay, hull gleaming under the overhead lights. We stood side by side. Hands on the gunwale. Not touching.
"Can you stand a little closer?"
We adjusted. Half an inch. His shoulder near mine. The heat of his body through the fabric. I stared at a fixed point on the far wall and tried not to breathe him in.
"Great. Hold that."
The shutter clicked.
"One more—can you both look at the camera?"
We looked. I had no idea what my face was doing. Something acceptable. Something Harrington.
"Perfect. That's everything."
Dana thanked us. Thanked Eldridge, who'd been hovering near the office door the whole time. The photographer took a few more shots of the bay, the river, the shells in their racks.
Liam grabbed his bag from the bench by the wall. Slung it over his shoulder and walked out through the bay without looking back.
I watched him leave. The set of his shoulders. The way he moved through the doorway like distance was the only thing keeping him upright.
Something in my chest pulled hard enough that I had to put my hand on the shell to steady myself.
"That looked fun."
Ethan. Leaning against the editing room doorframe, laptop under one arm.
"It was fine," I said.
"Mm." He pushed off the doorframe. "I gave her the practice footage from last week. Wide shots. Nothing personal."
"Thanks."
"Come get coffee with me. You look like you need to not be here."
***
The Meridian was the kind of coffee shop that could only exist on a campus like Kingswell.
Exposed brick walls lined with bookshelves nobody touched.
A chalkboard menu behind the counter listing drinks with names like "The Hemingway" and "The Fitzgerald"—because even caffeine had to come with a legacy reference.
The furniture was mismatched in the deliberate, expensive way that meant a designer had been paid to make it look accidental. Velvet armchairs. Marble-topped tables. A fireplace in the corner that actually worked, throwing warm light across the hardwood floors.
We sat in the back corner. Two armchairs angled toward each other, a low table between them. Ethan had an oat milk something. I had black coffee. The afternoon light came through the tall windows in slanted columns, catching the dust.
A few students were scattered around—a girl in cashmere typing on a MacBook, two guys from the economics department arguing over textbooks, a couple sharing a scone by the fireplace. Nobody paying attention to us.
Ethan drank. I held my cup and didn't.
"So," he said. "What's going on?"
"Things with Liam are bad."
"I gathered. That interview looked like two people being held at gunpoint." He set his cup on the table. Leaned back in the armchair, one arm draped over the side. Settling in. "What happened?"
I stared at the coffee in my hands. The surface trembling because my fingers weren't steady.
"We had a fight," I said. "A bad one."
"About?"
"He went after Braden. Physically."
"Shit what'd he do?"
"Pushed him against his car."
"So not full on Liam attack mode?" Ethan smirked.
I almost laughed. "No. But then we got into a fight."
"And it was about that?"
"It started there. But then it got deeper."
"Deeper how?"
The Meridian hummed around us. The espresso machine hissing. The fire crackling.
"The night before the fight. I'd been drinking. Way too much." I turned the cup in my hands. "Liam came and got me. Brought me back to my dorm. Took care of me."
Ethan's face changed. Not the patient stillness from before. Something sharper. His jaw tightening. His hand going still on the armrest.
"You were drinking," he said.
"Yeah."
"And he had to come get you."
"Yeah."
"What'd you do?"
The words hung between us. He wasn't asking about Liam.
"Ethan—"
"I need you to hear what you just described to me." His voice was quiet. "You got drunk. You were out of control. And something happened."
"It's not the same."
"Isn't it?"
"No." My voice came out harder than I intended. "He took care of me. He said no when I—" I stopped. The sentence catching in my throat because—it was the same.
Ethan leaned forward with his elbows on his the table.
"When you what, Alex?"
Silence. The couple by the fireplace laughing about something. The barista calling a name. The ordinary world going on while mine contracted to the space between two armchairs.
"I came on to him," I said. Barely audible. "While I was drunk. And he stopped me."
Ethan sat back. His face unreadable for a long moment. Then something loosened—not relief exactly. More like the tension of bracing for a blow that didn't land.
"He stopped you," Ethan repeated.
"Yeah, because I was too drunk for it to mean anything." My eyes were burning. "He was more careful with me than I—" I couldn't finish. Because the end of that sentence was than I was with you. And Ethan already knew that.
The silence stretched. Both of us sitting in the wreckage of a parallel that neither of us could pretend wasn't there.
"So he did the thing I wish you'd done… cared about me," Ethan said. Simply. Without venom. A fact.
My chest caved in.
"Yeah," I whispered.
Ethan didn't pick up his cup. Didn't nod. Didn't move on. He sat there. Looking at the fire. His jaw working. The silence between us thickening into something that had its own weight.
"You know what's funny?" he said. Not laughing. "When you came to my room that night—I spent weeks thinking there was something wrong with me. Like I'd given you the wrong signal."
"Ethan, I—"
"Let me finish." His voice was steady but the edges were sharp. "It wasn't about me. It was never about me. You didn't come to my room because you wanted me. You came because I was there and I was gay and you were too scared to face what you actually felt for Liam. I was convenient."
The word landed like a slap. Convenient.
"That's not—"
"It is. And that's almost worse than if you'd actually wanted me." He looked at me. The firelight catching the wet in his eyes that he was refusing to let fall. "Because at least if you'd wanted me, it would have meant something. What you did meant nothing. I was just the nearest body."
I couldn't breathe.
"So here's what I'm hearing, Alex. When you're drunk, you can be honest about what you want. But you lose control."
The Meridian was empty now. Just us. The barista had disappeared into the back.
"So what's changed?" Ethan asked. "Since my room. What's actually different about you?"
"I—" I started. Stopped. Started again. "I don't know."
"That's not good enough."
"I know it's not."
"Then give me something better. Because right now I'm sitting across from you again—after another crisis and being your safe person again—and I need to know this isn't just the pattern recycling with better lighting."
His hands were gripping the armrests. This was the Ethan underneath—the one who'd been shoved against his own bed by someone he trusted and was still, five weeks later, deciding whether that trust had been earned back.
I sat with it. Didn't deflect. Didn't reach for a Harrington answer. Just sat in the ugliest version of myself that Ethan was holding up and looked at it.
"What's different," I said slowly, "is that I see it. The pattern. I saw it that night with Liam—not in the moment, but after."
Ethan was watching. Not giving me anything. Making me earn every inch.
"And what's different is that I'm telling you this sober.
Sitting up. Not falling apart on your bed at midnight.
" I looked at him. "I know that doesn't fix what I did to you.
Nothing fixes that. But I'm not here because you're the nearest body, Ethan.
I'm here because you're the only person who would tell me the truth. "
He was quiet for a long time. His coffee cup between his hands. Not looking at me.
"Okay," he said. Not warmth. Not forgiveness. Just the door staying open a crack instead of slamming shut.
The silence stretched. He wasn't going to ask. Wasn't going to make this easier by pulling the story out of me. That was fair. He didn't owe me easy.
So I kept going.
"I woke up sober. Remembered everything I'd said. And instead of dealing with it, I started a fight. Threw everything I could at him until he left."
Ethan's jaw tightened. Still not looking at me. "Instead of dealing with yourself."
"Yeah."
"Because being honest drunk is easy. Being honest sober is—"
"Terrifying."
"And you'd rather destroy something than be terrified."
The words landed. Not like an accusation. Like a mirror held at an angle I couldn't look away from.
"He called me on it," I said. "Said I let him in and shut the door. Every time. That he's chosen me over and over and I'm the one who keeps deciding it's over."
Ethan looked at me then. Something hard in his expression. "Is he wrong?"
"No."
"You do this, Alex. You get close to someone. They see you. And you burn it down because being seen is worse than being alone."
"I know."
"So what do you want?"
"Him. I want him."
"Then stop sitting in this chair talking to me about it and go tell him."
"I don't know how to be honest without falling apart first—"
"Then learn. Right now. Today." He set his coffee down. "You stop reaching for people when you're falling apart. You reach for them when you're standing up. Go to Liam sober. Clear-headed. And you say the things you said drunk."
"What if he doesn't want to hear it?"
"Then he doesn't. But at least it came from the real you."
"I'm scared," I said.
"I know."
"I don't want to be my father."
"Your father would never sit here admitting he was scared." Ethan grabbed his laptop bag from the floor. Stood up. "Your father would double down and convince himself he was right."
He looked down at me.
"You're sitting here telling me you were wrong. That's the difference. The only one that matters."
He slung the bag over his shoulder. Then paused.
"Alex."
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad he stopped you. I'm glad someone cared enough about you to do what needed to be done. Even when you couldn't do it yourself."
My throat closed.
"Don't waste that. Talk to him. Before the race. Before you think yourself out of it."
He walked out. The door chimed behind him. Cold air swept through for a second before the warmth closed back in.