Chapter 18 #2
He answers on the second ring, slurring slightly. “Bro? It’s almost midnight. Please tell me you’re not crying on the cliffs or some emo shit—”
“I have an idea.”
“Here we go—.”
“No, listen.” My pulse is hammering. “I want a video blog. My own. A series. A… digital love letter.”
Tristan goes silent.
Then—
“No f*cking way.”
“Yes way.”
“You want to go public? About Jade? About YOU and Jade? You want to hashtag your feelings?”
“Yes.”
Tristan screams into the phone. “HOLY SHIT. YOU’RE COPYCATTING HER.”
“No,” I say sharply. “I’m courting her.”
A beat.
“A modern old-school romance,” I say. “If her platform is her armor, then I need to show her my heart in the same arena. Stories. Posts. Videos. Straight-up declarations. No running. No hiding. No PR spin.”
Tristan is breathing like he just ran a mile.
“Bruh—this is… insane. This is genius. This is—this is going to blow the internet apart.”
“I don’t care about the internet.”
“Yeah, but the internet CARES ABOUT YOU TWO,” he shouts. “This is Romeo-and-Juliet-star-crossed-lovers-HBO-series-level shit.”
I close my eyes.
“I’m not doing it for them,” I say quietly.
“I know,” Tristan replies, just as quiet. “You’re doing it for her.”
Another voice joins on speaker: Xavier, apparently half-asleep.
“What’s happening. Why is Tristan yelling.”
“Leo’s about to become a global romantic icon,” Tristan blurts. “He wants to build Jade a digital love letter.”
Xavier grunts. “Finally. Something smart.”
I grip the steering wheel tighter. The waves crash below.
“Call your PR girl,” I tell Tristan. “I want to film the first one tonight.”
“Tonight? As in right now tonight??”
“Yes.”
“Bro, this is going to guarantee movie deals, documentary deals, merch drops, late-night interviews—”
“Tristan,” I snap. “Stop thinking like a publicist.”
There’s a pause.
Then Tristan answers, softer:
“Okay. I’ll think like your friend instead.”
Good.
Because the fire in my chest is too much to hold alone.
I hang up.
Step out of the car.
The wind whips my hair, stings my face, rattles through me like electricity.
I walk to the cliff’s edge where Jade once pressed her forehead to mine and told me she believed I was more than the world made me.
I lift my phone.
I switch to front camera.
The wind is loud. My eyes burn. My breath fogs the lens.
“Hey,” I say quietly. “It’s me. Leo.”
My heart pounds.
“Jade… this one’s for you.”
And I hit record.
The wind on the cliffs is brutal tonight.
It cuts across my face, grabs at my jacket, rattles my bones. Waves slam into the rocks below, white foam exploding in the dark like the ocean’s pissed off at the world too.
It fits my mood.
I’m standing where I used to bring her.
Where she’d lean against my chest and talk about soccer and stargazing and getting the hell out of every small-minded place we’d ever known.
Now I’m here alone.
Phone in my hand.
Heart in my throat.
Her face on my screen.
I’ve watched her Boston vlog at least ten times in the last three hours.
Her voice saying: “You can start again. Every day if you need to.”
She’s becoming more than a girl.
She’s become a symbol.
A movement.
My thumbs shake as I swipe back to the camera.
Front-facing.
Just me and this storm.
“Hey,” I say, voice low, the wind roaring around me. “It’s me. Leo.”
I laugh once, bitter, at how weak that sounds.
I tilt the phone so the ocean is behind me in shadow.
“Jade… this is for you,” I whisper. “I—”
“STOP.”
I jump so hard I almost drop my phone.
There’s a figure hustling up the path, clutching a big scarf around her face to block the wind, hair whipping.
Tristan’s PR girl.
“Are you insane?” she shouts over the wind. “Please tell me you did NOT just post anything.”
“I didn’t!” I yell back. “I was just recording.”
“Good.” She presses a hand to her heart. “Don’t. Yet.”
I frown. “I thought you said this was a good idea.”
“It is a great idea,” she says, catching her breath. “But right now, to the internet, you’re the rich guy at the prep school who broke the heroine’s heart. You’re the villain. You don’t start with a grand romantic confession.”
“What do I start with, then?”
“Making people see you as a person. As a boy, not a headline. They need to like you, Leo. Or at least understand you. Before they root for you.”
I swallow. That stings. Because she’s right.
“So what do you want me to do?” I ask.
She grins, sharp and professional.
“We start at the beginning. Tomorrow. Your house. Your world. We show them who you really are.”
I snort. “A spoiled, privileged, trust fund cliché? That’ll help.”
“Trust me,” she says. “Boy born with everything who somehow had nothing emotionally? That story sells. That story earns sympathy. That story sets up the love letter. Tonight was the trailer. Tomorrow’s the movie.”
The waves crash again. I look out over the water.
“Fine,” I say. “Tomorrow then.”
She pats my arm like I’m a skittish horse.
“Good. Do not post from the cliffs. Save the poetry for later. Right now we’re going to build context.”
“Context,” I echo. “For what?”
She smiles.
“For the moment you tell the world you’re in love with her.”
The next day, the house feels wrong.
Or maybe I’m just seeing it clearly for the first time.
Crystal chandelier glittering over the foyer.
Marble floors polished to mirror shine.
An actual grand piano no one plays.
Oil portraits of dead ancestors on the walls, watching me with judgmental eyes.
The PR girl walks in with her camera guy and sound tech and just stops.
“Holy…” She catches herself. “Okay. This? This is a set.”
“This is my house,” I say.
“Exactly.”
Tristan and Xavier trail behind, carrying coffee and acting like they’ve just been granted behind-the-scenes access to a HBO drama.
“Duuuuude,” Tristan breathes. “Can we film in the library? Your library screams ‘I brooded here while contemplating my tragic feelings.’”
Xavier nods. “It does have gravitas.”
I roll my eyes. “You two are not helping my dignity.”
The PR girl (her name’s Lane, I remember suddenly) spins in a slow circle, taking everything in.
“All this,” she says finally, “and you’re still miserable.”
“Thanks,” I mutter.
She glances at me. “That’s your story, Leo. That’s the point. Let’s use it.”
We start in my room.
Not the carefully-cleaned version. The real one. Clothes on the chair. Sneakers on the floor. A shelf full of trophies and medals next to a desk covered in untouched textbooks.
Lane adjusts the camera on a tripod. Sound guy clips a mic to my shirt.
“Remember,” she says. “We’re not doing PR-speak. We’re not polishing you. We’re capturing you.”
I sit on the edge of my bed, palms pressed to my knees. My heart is beating so hard it feels like it’s in my throat.
“Just answer me like you would if this wasn’t being recorded,” she says.
“That’s impossible,” I say.
“Do your best.”
She hits record.
“Okay,” she says off-camera. “Tell us who you are. No brands. No family name. No school. Just… you.”
I stare at the lens.
“Uh. I’m Leo,” I say. “And I’m… I guess I’m the guy everyone thinks they know.”
I swallow.
“Born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Came out in Ralph Lauren onesies and baby cashmere. Graduated into Vineyard Vines polos and then Giorgio Armani suits before I could even grow a decent beard.”
Lane snorts softly behind the camera. “Keep going.”
“I grew up in a house with marble floors,” I say, voice flattening. “Crystal chandeliers. Summer homes. Ski trips. Private jets. Latin tutors. French and Spanish lessons before I even hit middle school.”
My jaw clenches.
“I had everything money could buy,” I admit. “But the stuff that actually makes a home? I didn’t have that.”
I stare past the camera for a second, seeing it all.
“I never had a mom baking bread and yelling at us to get our elbows off the table. I never had holidays where everyone’s crowded around a scratched-up wooden table laughing until they cry.”
My throat tightens.
“I had staff. Schedules. A calendar color-coded by my mother’s assistant. I had nannies, not bedtime stories. A full-time driver, but no one to talk to on the way.”
My voice shakes, just a little.
“I had a lot of… noise. Not a lot of warmth.”
The room feels smaller suddenly. Quieter.
Lane says nothing. Just lets the silence sit.
“That’s why I was such an asshole for so long,” I mutter. “Because when you grow up in this world, they train you to believe you’re the center. That everyone else is orbiting you. That the crown is your birthright and not something you have to earn.”
I let out a sharp breath.
“And then I met her.”
Lane doesn’t ask who. She knows. Everyone knows.
“Jade,” I say. “The scholarship girl. The one who never let me get away with my bullshit. The one who didn’t care about my last name or my car or the fact that I could buy the entire lacrosse team matching sneakers on a whim.”
I laugh, soft and wrecked.
“She made fun of me. She challenged me. She told me no when everyone else said yes. She looked at me like I could be more than I was. Like I could be someone better if I tried.”
I look straight at the camera now.
“And then I broke her heart anyway.”
The words hang there like a confession.
Because they are.
We film all day.
The library.
My dad’s office.
The dining room with the twelve-person table that’s rarely all filled.
Lane gets shots of me walking past portraits. Running my fingers along the edge of the piano keys I never learned to play. Staring out the huge windows at a perfectly manicured lawn I never cut.
By the end, my chest feels hollowed out.
Lane’s eyes are shiny when she calls cut.
“Okay,” she says. “We’re going to put this together. Not polished. Not glossy. Just you. Talking about privilege, family, guilt, and… her.”
Tristan leans in. “When do we post?”
“Tonight,” she says. “First one is the confessional. You own your part. You own your failure. You don’t make excuses. You make yourself human.”
She looks at me. “Ready?”
No.
Absolutely not.
“Yes,” I say.