Chapter 6 #2
"Good. Really good, actually."
Something crossed his face. Quick. A tightening at the corners of his mouth that he covered with a nod. "Glad the joint program's continuing to pay off for you."
I let that sit. Most people couldn't stand a gap in conversation longer than three seconds. They filled it. And whatever they filled it with was usually more honest than whatever they'd planned to say.
Marcus lasted four seconds.
"So what's really going on?" he asked. "You didn't sit down to talk about Morrison's seminar."
"No. I didn't." I leaned back. Crossed my arms. The posture of someone thinking, not someone attacking. "Someone's been trying to blackmail me. Since the beginning of the semester."
Marcus's expression didn't change. That was the tell. A normal person would have reacted. Confusion, concern, curiosity. Something. Marcus's face stayed perfectly neutral, which meant he was holding it there.
"Blackmail," he repeated.
"Texts. From a blocked number. They know my schedule, who I'm spending time with. They had a photo from the mixer." I watched his eyes. "And they had a video."
"A video?"
"My unsanctioned race from the beginning of the semester."
"Jesus." Marcus shook his head. The performance of surprise.
Competent but not flawless — his hands were flat on the table instead of where they'd normally be, which was moving.
Marcus talked with his hands. When his hands stopped, he was controlling the conversation. "That's fucked up. Any idea who?"
My stomach turned. Not because of him — because of me. Because I was sitting across from my oldest friend running an interrogation disguised as a conversation, and the worst part was how easily it came.
"I thought it was Braden," I said. "For a while."
"Makes sense. He's had it out for you since day one."
"But Braden's not subtle. He doesn't do anonymous." I tilted my head. "Whoever's doing this is strategic. They understand how my life works. The family pressure, the legacy stuff, which buttons to push."
Marcus's jaw shifted. Barely perceptible.
"So who do you think it is?" he asked.
And there it was. The question he shouldn't have asked.
A friend who was genuinely trying to help would have offered theories.
Would have said have you told anyone? or what did the messages say?
Marcus skipped all of that and went straight to who do you think it is — because he needed to know if I'd figured it out.
"Someone who was at Brackett Lake," I said. Quiet. "Someone who saw something that summer and decided to use it."
Marcus went stone-still.
"You tell me," I said.
The mask cracked. A fracture at the jawline. A shift in the eyes. The face of a guy realizing he'd been walked into a room with no exits.
"Alex —"
"You were there that night. You saw us kiss." I kept my voice low. My hands were shaking under the table. "The slur at the party. The video. The texts. The photo. All of it started after that night."
"What are you talking about?"
"It's too late Marcus. I already know."
"I haven't done anything." He shook his head.
"You didn't react when I mentioned the video. You asked who I suspected instead of what was happening. And when I said Brackett Lake, your whole body changed."
Silence.
"I know it's you, Marcus."
He closed the laptop. The click of the latch was the loudest sound in the room.
"I was trying to protect you," he said.
It wasn't out of guilt or shame it was just dead certainty.
"Protect me."
"From throwing your life away over some phase."
"Phase?"
"Yes. A phase. Something you'd grow out of if someone just had the guts to —"
"Your solution was to terrorize me into not being myself?"
"I tried to scare you into thinking. That's different." The prep-school polish was gone. "I sent the texts to show you how exposed you were. How easy it would be for the wrong person to find out."
"You are the wrong person."
"I was showing you the risk!"
"By being the risk?"
"Because you weren't seeing it! Walking around campus with Moore like nobody was paying attention —"
"And the video? You recorded the race. You started the rumor."
His jaw tightened. Confirmation enough.
"The photo from the mixer?"
"I followed you. I knew what was happening." His voice dropped. "And I was right."
"You were stalking me."
"I was protecting you!" The girl two tables over looked up. Marcus dropped his volume but not his intensity. "Someone had to. You weren't listening. Not when I tried to talk to you about Moore. Not when I told you he wasn't our kind of people. Not when I —"
He stopped. A door opening he hadn't meant to open.
"Not when you what?"
"Nothing."
"Marcus."
"Doesn't matter."
"What did you do?"
The fight drained out of his face.
"I called your father with my concerns."
The floor dropped out.
Not the texts. Not the photo. Not the intimidation campaign that had been grinding me down for months. Marcus had called my father. Had picked up the phone and called the man whose pressure Marcus himself had called toxic right before the scrimmage.
"You told me his opinion didn't matter. Right before the scrimmage against Riverside. You said 'fuck him.'"
Marcus flinched.
"And then you called him?"
"Those are two different things!" His voice cracked. "Your dad pressuring you about rowing? That's toxic. I meant what I said."
"But —"
"But this?" His hand cut through the air. "This isn't rowing. This is you throwing everything away over some kid from a public school who makes seven dollars an hour at a marina."
"Don't talk about him like that."
"Your father needed to know."
"What exactly did you tell him?"
"That you kissed Liam. That it was a phase. That you were experimenting and I was trying to help you through it."
The room tilted.
"You told him about Liam."
"I told him what he needed to hear to —"
"You told Thomas Harrington that his son kissed a guy. And you thought that would help me?"
"I told him it was a phase! That the joint program was putting you near people who were influencing you.
That if he stepped in now, you'd come out the other side fine.
" His voice had the cadence of someone who'd practiced this.
Played it back enough times to believe it.
"I gave him the framing. Experimental. Temporary. "
"You gave him a loaded gun and told him it was a water pistol."
"I gave him context —"
"You don't know my father." My voice cracked. Not with sadness. "You think you do because you've been to the house. Because you've watched him pour wine and shake hands. But you don't know what happens when the guests leave."
"He's your dad. He loves —"
"He showed up at the Head of the Charles and told me we'd 'talk at home.' Do you know what that means?"
Marcus shrugged.
I knew what it meant. I'd end up like James.
"He is going to disown me." My voice was rising. "You handed him the worst thing he could learn about me and you wrapped it in phase. Like that word would stop him."
"I was trying to control the narrative —"
"You were trying to control me."
Silence. Three seconds. The certainty on Marcus's face wavered — not guilt, maybe never guilt — but the faintest recognition that the machine he'd set in motion had moved further than he'd intended.
It lasted half a second. Then it was gone.
"He would have found out eventually," Marcus said. "I gave him the version that protects you."
"He would have found out from me. On my terms. When I was ready." My voice dropped. Quiet now. "You took that from me."
"I was trying to save you."
"You were trying to save yourself. From having a best friend that's gay."
I said it. Out loud. I called myself gay.
And Marcus stared at me. And underneath the conviction, underneath the years of friendship that had curdled into something unrecognizable.
I saw it. The truth he'd never say. He hadn't called my father to protect me.
He'd called because the version of me that kissed Liam on a dock was a version he couldn't tolerate.
"You're sick, Alex." His voice was steady. Final. "What you're doing with that kid is sick. And someday you'll thank me for this."
Sick.
The word landed in the center of my chest and detonated.
And what it blew apart wasn't just the friendship or the history or the last thread of something I'd been holding onto since we were eight. It was every memory of Liam that I'd been carrying like something precious.
The dock at Brackett Lake. Liam's mouth against mine and the whole world going quiet. Our date and us smiling on the bridge in Autumn. His hand finding mine under the blanket. The night on the river when he looked at me like I was the only thing that existed.
The best moments of my life. And Marcus had taken that — the purest, most honest thing I'd ever been part of — and reduced it to a word that made his mouth twist.
Sick.
I was a lot of things. Afraid. Angry. Broken in ways I was only beginning to understand. But the thing between me and Liam was not sick. It was the only thing in my life that wasn't.
"We're done," I said.