Chapter 8 #2
I looked down at myself. The Riverside logo across my chest. Liam's clothes on my body.
"Everyone's going to know I slept here."
"Alex." He looked at me. "Everyone already knows everything."
A beat. He was right. The photo was out. The secret was gone. Showing up to practice in my Liam's shirt was so far down the list of revelations that it barely registered.
"Fair point."
"Besides." He pulled his own shirt on. "You look good in burgundy."
"I look scruffy."
"Are you saying I look scruffy?"
"Yeah, but in a hot way."
We walked out of the dorm at 5:41 AM. The air cold enough to see our breath. The path to the Riverside boathouse was cracked asphalt and bike racks and bare trees under street lights.
Nobody was out yet. The campus had that early-morning emptiness — no witnesses, no audience, just the sound of our shoes on pavement and the river somewhere to our left, invisible but present.
I was wearing Liam's shirt walking to practice at Liam's boathouse. Yesterday, I'd beaten Marcus bloody on a library floor and now I was walking to rowing practice with who everyone would think is my boyfriend.
Boyfriend.
I let myself think the word. Let it sit there. Could he be my boyfriend one day? Would he want to?
The boathouse lights were already on.
Riverside's boathouse was a different species from Kingswell's.
Two stories of fading burgundy paint and a metal roof that pinged in the rain.
The dock system was functional wood and metal, solid but scarred.
Inside: rows of ergs in varying states of repair, wood benches without cushions, windows overlooking the rowing tank below.
No leather chairs. No donor plaques. No 1985 Henley banners.
It was a building that existed to be used, not admired. I'd been inside it a dozen times for joint program sessions and it still caught me, the absence of the performance. Kingswell's boathouse said look at us. Riverside's said get to work.
I kind of liked that.
Remy was the first person I saw.
He was standing by the erg bay when he saw us walk in together.
He didn't ask what happened. Didn't ask about the photo. He looked at Liam first. Then he looked at me. At the bruise. At the Riverside shirt on my body. At the way I was standing close enough to Liam that our shoulders touched.
"You two okay?"
"Yeah," Liam said.
Remy nodded. Then he did something I didn't expect. He put his hand on my shoulder.
"For what it's worth," he said, "I'm glad you're not hiding anymore. But sorry it went down like it did."
He said it simply. The way someone who'd already walked this road could say it. No drama or fanfare, just recognition from one queer person to another.
I didn't trust my voice. I nodded.
Remy looked at Liam again then back at me. "Whatever you guys need. I'm here."
"Thanks, Rem," Liam said.
Tyler materialized from somewhere near the launch bay carrying two oar handles.
He looked at us. At my bruise. At Liam's clothes on my body.
"Damn, Harrington." He set the oars down. "What happened to your face?"
I didn't respond.
"You should see Marcus," Liam said.
"Marcus?" Tyler's eyes went wide. "I thought Liam was the hothead."
"He deserved it," I said.
Tyler looked at me for a second. Then at Liam. Then at the space between us where our shoulders were still touching. I could see him putting it together. The photo he'd seen on his phone last night, the bruise, the Riverside shirt, the two of us walking in together.
"Guess he did," Tyler said. Then he paused. Scratched the back of his neck. "Hey, so — if you guys wanna kiss each other or whatever, that's cool with me. Just don't do it in the boat. Remy'll steer us into a bridge."
"Fuck off, Tyler," Remy said from behind us.
"I'm being supportive!"
"You're being Tyler."
"Same thing."
He picked up the oars, gym bag strap held together with duct tape, and started whistling his way toward the dock.
I looked at Liam.
I almost smiled. The bruise made it hurt. I did it anyway.
Braden was by the erg bay. He'd been there the whole time, stretching against the wall, earbuds in, watching without watching. When I caught his eye he gave me a single nod. I wasn't sure what it meant.
The boathouse was filling. Guys from both teams filtering in, half-awake, pulling on layers, checking the whiteboard for the morning lineup. A few of them looked at me. At the bruise. At the Riverside shirt. They looked and then they looked away and the morning kept going.
Nobody said anything. The silence wasn't hostile. It was the specific quiet of people who'd heard the news and hadn't decided what it meant yet.
Me and Liam were heading for the dock when the boathouse door opened.
Two campus police officers. Kingswell uniforms with navy blue, gold trim, the university crest on the shoulder. They stood in the doorway.
"Alexander Harrington?" the first one said.
Every head in the room turned toward me. Every single one.
Cold flashed through my body, underneath the skin, dropping fast, the way the floor of an elevator drops a half-second before your stomach catches up. My heart slammed once, hard, and then started going too fast, and I had the absurd thought that everyone in the room could hear it.
I did the only thing twenty years had trained me to do. I put it away — the cold, the slamming heart, all of it — folded it down somewhere it wouldn't show, and stood up straight, and let the Harrington face come down over my whole body like a shade being drawn.
"That's me."
"We need you to come with us. Dean Patterson's office."
The words landed flat and the boathouse went silent. The sound of the river outside, lapping against the dock. The hum of the overhead lights.
Liam's hand found my arm. Gripped. His fingers pressed into the muscle above my elbow.
"It's okay," I said.
"It's not."
"I know. But it's okay." I looked at him. Held his gaze. "Go row. I'll find you after."
His jaw was tight. The anger was there, behind the eyes, in the grip on my arm, in the way his body had gone rigid the second the officers walked in. Not the explosive kind. The controlled kind. The kind that meant he was choosing not to break something.
He let go.
The officers walked me out. The November air hit my face. A police SUV was parked on the access road, engine running.
One of them opened the back door.
"Am I under arrest?"
"No. Dean Patterson requested your presence regarding an incident report filed last night."
An incident report. Marcus.