Chapter 9
The quad went out without him.
Hale put a sophomore named Garrett in bow. Kid weighed maybe one-sixty, rowed like he was afraid of the oar. Every catch a half-beat late. Every drive missing the snap that Alex brought, his specific efficiency that came from a lifetime of perfect technique nobody else could match.
The boat dragged. I could feel it in my hamstrings, in the extra load on every stroke, the hull sitting heavy in the water instead of lifting. Yesterday this boat had breathed. Today it was furniture.
Remy tried. Called the rate changes. Worked the rhythm. But you can't cox a ghost into a seat.
We did a 2K piece and the split was fifty seconds off yesterday's pace. Fifty seconds. In rowing, that's a different sport.
Nobody said anything when we docked. Braden racked his oar and walked inside without looking at me. Tyler said "that sucked" to no one in particular. Garrett apologized three times in two minutes until Remy told him it wasn't his fault.
It wasn't. It was Marcus's fault. And now Marcus was somewhere nursing a broken face and Alex was across the river with campus police and I was standing on a dock holding an oar that felt heavier than it should have.
I racked the oar and headed inside.
Braden caught me by the erg bay.
"Hey, Moore. Listen, I just wanted to say—"
"Don't."
He stopped. My voice had come out harder than I meant it to… or exactly as hard as I meant it to.
"I was just going to say I hope—"
"I don't care what you were going to say.
" I was already walking. The words came out automatic, the anger program booting up before I could think about whether Braden deserved it.
He probably didn't. Didn't matter. I couldn't stand there and have a conversation about it.
About any of it, especially not with a Kingswell guy.
I showered. Changed. Stood in the locker room doorway for a full minute before walking out.
***
The campus was a problem.
Every face was a question. Every pair of eyes that landed on me and held for a half-second too long — were they looking because they knew?
Had they seen the photo? Had someone forwarded it?
The Kingswell group chat was thirty guys.
Thirty guys with girlfriends, roommates, friends on other teams. By now it could be a hundred people.
Two hundred. The whole athletic department. Both fucking schools.
A guy from my econ class passed me on the path near Morrison Hall. He looked at me. Looked away. Normal? Or the kind of looking away where you've already seen the photo and you're pretending you haven't?
I didn't know. That was the thing that made my skin crawl. I couldn't tell. I couldn't tell who knew and who didn't, who was thinking about it and who was just walking to class, who had seen a photo of me kissing another guy and had an opinion about it.
This was the thing I'd been afraid of since the beginning. This. The world knowing something about me that I couldn't take back. The feeling of being looked at by people I hadn't chosen to show myself to.
And it wasn't just me. Alex was across the river with university police. Everything was at risk. Alex's spot on the team, his entire future at Kingswell, all of it was on the table because he'd beaten Marcus bloody defending us.
Defending me.
Alex could lose everything. Not in the way I'd been worried about my own scholarship for weeks. Actually lose it. Get expelled. Get disowned. Or whatever Harringtons did to their gay kids.
And I couldn't do anything about it. I was standing outside the lecture hall with my hands shaking and there was absolutely nothing I could do except walk into a lecture about supply curves and pretend the world hadn't changed.
Every lecture hall in the building was filling up.
Finals prep. Review sessions. The end-of-semester grind I should've been part of — econ, A&P, the English seminar I was actually passing.
I stood there watching students file in with laptops and coffee cups and the urgency of people whose biggest problem was a cumulative exam.
I couldn't go in.
A girl from my A&P class was coming down the hall. Short, dark hair, always sat two rows ahead of me and took notes in colored pens. I didn't know her name. She'd never spoken to me.
She stopped.
"Hey. Liam, right?"
"Yeah."
"I just — I don't know if this is weird to say. But I saw what happened, and I think you're really brave. And I hope you're okay."
She said it fast, like she'd rehearsed it on the walk over and wanted to get it out before she lost her nerve. Her face was red. She was already stepping past me before I could respond.
"Thanks," I said. To her back. She didn't turn around.
I stood on the steps. The word brave sitting in my ears. A girl I'd never talked to, who sat two rows ahead and took notes in colored pens, had walked up to me and called me brave and hoped I was okay.
I wasn't brave. I was terrified. But she didn't know that. She just saw a guy whose photo was going around and decided to say something kind, and it made the world feel one degree less hostile than it had thirty seconds ago.
But it wasn't enough to make me walk into the lecture hall. I turned around, went down the steps, and headed back to the dorm.
The room was empty. Noah had an eight AM class. His bed was made, his desk organized, a sticky note on his lamp that said I'm around if you need me. —Noah
I pulled my shoes off. Climbed into bed. The sheets still smelled like Alex and something sharper underneath, adrenaline maybe, the chemical residue of the worst night of his life soaked into my pillow.
I lay there. Staring at the ceiling. The cinderblock walls painted depression gray. The strip of light coming through the blinds.
I thought about my mom. Her text from last night, still sitting unanswered on my phone.
I needed her.
The thought arrived with a flush of embarrassment that I hated. Twenty years old. Scholarship athlete. Just got outed to his entire team. And the person he needed to talk to was his mother.
But she was the only one who could actually hold this.
Noah was steady and practical but he couldn't tell me it was going to be okay with his whole body the way she could.
Remy could sit next to me at dinner and give hostile looks to anyone who stared, but he couldn't make me feel safe.
Alex was the person I wanted but Alex was across the river fighting for his own survival and I couldn't put this on him too.
My mom was the only person on earth who loved me without conditions. Who'd loved me before rowing, before the scholarship, before Alex, before any of it. Who'd worked doubles at the hospital so I could have new shoes and a decent winter coat and a shot at something bigger than a marina worker.
If she rejected this, if she heard her son was kissing a boy and it changed the way she looked at me, then nothing else mattered anyway. No scholarship, no rowing career, no future. Because she was the foundation. Everything else was built on top of her.
I picked up the phone and scrolled to her text.
Hi baby. Just thinking about you. Hope you're having a good week. Love you.
I pressed call before I could talk myself out of it.
It rang three times. Four.
"Liam?" Her voice was surprised. I never called in the morning. A call at nine AM on a Wednesday meant something was wrong.
"Hey, Mom."
"Hey, baby. You okay?"
I closed my eyes. The ceiling disappeared. Just her voice and the dark behind my eyelids and the sound of whatever was happening on her end — a TV on low, dishes maybe. She was probably between shifts sitting at the kitchen table.
"Yeah. I'm okay."
"You don't sound okay."
"I know."
She waited.
"Something happened last night," I said. "And I need to tell you before you hear it from someone else."
Her breathing changed. I could hear it, the shift from relaxed to alert. "Okay. I'm listening."
"There's a photo going around. Of me and someone. Kissing."
Silence. Two seconds. Three.
"Okay…" she said.
"Someone took it and sent it to a bunch of people on the rowing team."
Her voice was careful. "And who is the person you're kissing?"
"Alex. My doubles partner."
The name sat there on the line between us. Not just a name. The name. The blond-haired boy from TV. The doubles partner. The rich kid at the marina I told her about.
"Alex," she said.
"We've been together for a while, Mom." My voice was steady. I'd expected it to shake and it didn't. "He's not just my rowing partner. He's my —"
I stopped. He wasn't my boyfriend. But it was more than just a hook-up.
"We're together," I said. "And someone outed us last night and now everyone knows."
Silence.
Long silence.
"Mom?"
Nothing. Then a breath. Shaky.
"I'm here," she said. "I'm here, baby. I'm just —" Another breath. "Give me a second."
I gave her a second. I gave her ten. I lay in my narrow bed in my cinderblock dorm room and tried not to fill the silence with all the things I was afraid she was thinking.
"Honey it's okay. Whoever you want to be with. I'm here for you." she said finally.
The tension left my body instantly. The one person that really mattered was okay with me being with a guy. With Alex.
"Okay," I said.
"I'm just… confused. What about Emily?"
"I like both. I'm bi."
"Okay. Liam honey… why didn't tell me?"
It wasn't a question. It was the same voice from the phone call about the Charles. Not angry. Hurt. The specific hurt of a mother who kept finding out her son's life from other people.
"I wasn't ready," I said. "I didn't really know —"
"Liam." Quiet. Firm. The voice that cut through everything. "Have I ever given you a reason to think you couldn't tell me something?"
"No."
"Have I ever made you feel like you had to protect me from who you are?"
My throat closed.
"No," I said. "But this is different."
"How is it different?"
"Because it's — because people are going to —" I pressed my palm against my eyes. "I didn't want you to have to deal with that. The questions. The looks. Linda asking about your son and —"
"Linda can mind her own damn business."