Chapter 13
The Spaghetti Palace hadn't changed.
Red-checkered tablecloths, dim lighting, and the giant ceramic tomato by the cash register. Same smells — garlic, cheap wine, the breadsticks they kept in baskets on every table whether you ordered it or not.
The hostess sat us in the same corner booth that I sat with Emily just a few months ago. But things were different now… very different. I couldn't tell if it was progress or the mess of my life had gotten worse. If it was progress, then it was weird, terrifying, progress.
Noah and Priya came in five minutes late. Priya was still in her blazer from the tournament, her debate binder tucked under one arm, glasses slightly crooked. She was talking before she even sat down.
"Davis choked. Third round. I could see it from the prep room, he started hedging on the empirical data and the Amherst team just ate him alive. We had a six-point lead going into that round and he gave back eight."
"Priya—" Noah started.
"We placed second because one person couldn't hold his nerve under pressure. Every other round was clean. Ours were clean. I can't fix someone else's rebuttal from the prep room."
She slid into the booth across from me. She was shorter than I expected, Noah had talked about her so much she'd gotten taller in my head.
Dark hair pulled back, a pen tucked behind her ear that she'd probably forgotten about.
She looked like someone who'd been arguing at high speed for six hours and was still running hot.
"Priya, Liam. Liam, Priya," Noah said, sliding in next to her.
"Finally," she said. "I've heard so much about you I feel like we've already met."
"Same. Noah won't shut up about you."
"Good. He shouldn't." She picked up a breadstick and pointed it at Noah. "Tell him what you said about me after the first round."
Noah's ears went red. "I said you were impressive."
"You said I was terrifyingly competent. Own it." She bit into the breadstick and looked at me. "So. Rowing. I don't know anything about it. Noah tried to explain it once and I fell asleep."
"It's boats," I said. "You go fast."
"See, that I understand." She grinned. "Congrats on the Head of the Charles thing, by the way. Noah showed me the video. You looked miserable the entire time, which I assume means you were doing well."
I laughed. "That's actually exactly what it means."
"Athletics are strange. In debate, if you're winning, you look like you're winning. You smile. You gesture. It's a performance." She shrugged. "But I guess rowing is the opposite."
"Rowing is suffering in a straight line and hoping the suffering pays off."
"Politics major energy," she said, glancing at Noah. "I see why you two are friends."
I liked Priya, she was fun and she was a good match for Noah.
The conversation stayed light for a while — the tournament, how they met, Noah's disastrous attempt to explain Kant to her on their first date.
She was easy to talk to. She was genuinely curious and didn't have time for small talk, so everything skipped to the interesting part fast.
"So Noah told me about what happened with Alex." She said it directly, no tiptoe. "That's a lot."
"Yeah."
"Are you okay?"
"Getting there."
She nodded.
"What's he like? Noah talks about him but Noah talks about everyone like they're a problem to be solved," she said.
"Hey," Noah said.
"You described your own mother as 'an interesting case study in utilitarian ethics.'" Priya raised her eyebrows.
"That was a compliment."
I laughed. "Alex is — he's great. But his life is complicated. He comes from a different world than us. Richer."
Priya considered it.
The waiter came. Carlo again. He looked at me, did a half-second of recognition, glanced at Noah and Priya, and if he noticed I wasn't with the girl from last time he didn't show it.
"What can I get you folks?"
We ordered. Spaghetti for me — same thing I'd ordered with Emily, because the menu had six items and they were all variations of pasta.
Noah got the lasagna. Priya got the penne arrabbiata and asked Carlo if it was actually spicy or "Italian-restaurant spicy," which made Carlo laugh and promise to tell the kitchen to bring the heat.
"I like her," Carlo said to Noah, and disappeared.
The food came fast. We ate. Priya dissected the tournament round by round, Noah occasionally interjecting with something that made Priya roll her eyes, me eating spaghetti and feeling the strange normalcy of it.
A Friday night. A restaurant. Friends. This was what people did.
"The thing about debate," Priya said, twirling her fork, "is that you can be right about everything and still lose.
The judge isn't scoring truth. They're scoring persuasion.
You can have every fact, every study, every piece of evidence lined up perfectly, and if the other team tells a better story, you lose. "
"That's depressing," I said.
"It's realistic. The world doesn't reward being right. It rewards being convincing." She looked at me over her glasses. "Which is probably relevant to your situation, if you think about it."
"My situation?"
"With Alex's father. From what Noah told me, the man isn't arguing facts. He's arguing narrative. My son is confused. This is a phase. The family legacy matters more than a college relationship. None of that is true but it's a compelling story to the people in power."
I stared at her. She took a bite of penne.
"So the question isn't whether Alex loves you. The question is who tells a better story… you or his father."
Noah was watching her with the expression I never seen before. It wasn't surprised. It was pride or love. The look of a person who'd found someone who made the world make more sense just by being in it.
"You know," I said. "You sound exactly like him."
They both looked at me.
"Like who?" Priya asked.
"Like Noah."
They looked at each other, their eyes did the thing that mine and Alex must do. Noah smirked and Priya blushed then they both looked back to their pasta.
"Made for each other," I said.
They both laughed. And for three seconds the booth at the Spaghetti Palace was the warmest place in Ashford.
And underneath the warmth was the ache. Because this was what it looked like.
The easy version. Two people who found each other and didn't have to fight a family dynasty or cross a river in the dark or hide in showers and boathouses.
They just sat in a restaurant and held hands under the table and it was the most uncomplicated thing in the world.
I wanted that. For me and Alex. What if we didn't have to have breakfast hidden away in the woods by the river? Or constantly be under threat by his family or how us being together could effect my rowing career. If all of it could just—
My phone buzzed. I pulled it out under the table.
A photo. From Alex. No caption.
A theater marquee. Plastic letters. HARTWICK INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL. Below it, the program board. One of the titles: RECLAIMED — ETHAN GRANT.
My face must have changed because Priya said, "That's him, isn't it?"
I looked up. She was watching me.
"Yeah," I said.
"You should see your face right now. That's not the face of someone whose relationship is falling apart." She said it gently.
"We're not in a relationship," I said.
"What?" Priya set down her fork. "Define it."
"What?"
"Relationship. Define the word. You said you're not in one. So tell me what one is and we'll check."
"Priya," Noah said.
"I'm serious. This is a definitional dispute. Half of all arguments are." She looked at me. "Go."
I opened my mouth. Closed it. The pause was the answer, and she knew it, because she leaned back like she'd already taken the round.
"We never called it anything," I said. "It was a secret. You don't put a label on a thing nobody's allowed to know about."
"Okay. So the label was the problem. Not the thing."
"It wasn't a thing. It was—" I stopped. What was it? Showers and boathouses. Breakfast hidden in the woods by the river. Secret sleep overs. A guy in Vermont sending me a photo of a marquee with no caption because he wanted me in the room with him for it. "We're just sleeping together."
"Just sleeping together."
"Yeah."
"How long?"
I did the math. "Brackett Lake was a year and a half ago. Then nothing. Then since September."
Priya nodded, slow. "So. A year and a half of history. Three months of sleeping together. He's in another state right now and he's texting you." She picked her fork back up. "But sure. Not a relationship. Definitionally."
"It was a secret," I said again. Like that explained anything.
"It was a secret relationship," Noah said from his side of the booth. "Those are still relationships. The secret part's the modifier. Not the noun."
I didn't say anything. Twirled spaghetti I wasn't going to eat.
The thing was, they were right, and I hated that they were right.
I'd been calling it nothing for so long because nothing was safer.
Nothing didn't break your heart. Nothing didn't get pulled out of your hands by a guy's father.
Nothing couldn't ruin your rowing career.
And now that it wasn't a secret, people were looking for a label.
The truth was it had never been nothing. It was always a thing. I just hadn't been allowed to look at it straight.
Maybe it was a relationship.
Maybe it had been one for a while.
Noah paid the check because Priya said "the loser buys dinner and we lost" and Noah said "we placed second" and Priya said "second is first loser" and they argued about it all the way to the register while Carlo watched them with amusement.
***
Later, the three of us were freezing outside Priya's dorm. She hugged Noah and then turned to me.
"It was good to finally hang out, Liam."
"Yeah. You too."
"For what it's worth, I think you're handling all of this better than you think you are."
"Thanks, Priya."
She walked down the path to her dorm. Noah watched her go with the expression of a person who couldn't believe his luck.
"She's something," I said.
"Yeah." He was still watching. "She really is."
We walked back to the dorm. The campus quiet. End-of-semester energy — everyone either studying or gone for the weekend. Our breath visible in the cold.
The room. The door closing. Both of us changing into sweats and climbing into our beds the way we'd done a hundred times. Noah reaching for his phone dock. The whale sounds app queued up.
He didn't press play.
"How do you feeling being out?" He asked in the dark.
"Weird," I said. "It's weird."
"Weird how?"
I stared up.
"For over a year I had this thing I didn't understand. And it took up a lot of space." I shifted. "Now it's just out there. Anybody can know. I keep waiting to feel relieved and mostly I feel like I got caught doing something wrong."
"But you didn't do anything wrong."
"Yeah. Tell my body that."
Noah was quiet. Listening the way he does, all the way.
"Everything looks the same," I said. "Campus, boathouse, dining hall.
But people look at me different now. Or I think they do.
Hard to tell." I paused. "Some of them are cool.
Girl from my A&P class told me I was brave.
Some of them get weird. And some of them don't care at all, which is honestly the best one. "
"What about rowing?"
"Hale hasn't said anything. Which I figure means it's fine. Or he's waiting me out. Can't tell yet."
"And the team?"
"Remy's Remy. Tyler made a joke about it within twelve hours which means he's fine." I shifted in the bed again and the sheets rustled. "The Kingswell guys are a mixed bag. Some of them look at me different. But I don't care about them."
"And how do you feel about it? Not how other people are reacting. How do you feel?"
Leave it to Noah to ask the question nobody else had thought to ask.
"Lighter," I said. "And terrified. At the same time."
The room was quiet.
"I'm proud of you," Noah said.
"I didn't really have a choice. Marcus made it for me."
"You had a choice about what you did after. You could have denied it. Said the photo was fake. Made up a story." He paused. "You didn't. That's not Marcus making a choice for you. That's you."
"Thanks. And thanks for not making it weird. When Alex showed up. When I kissed him. You just... stood there."
"What was I supposed to do? Start clapping?"
"Some people would have freaked out."
"Some people are idiots." A pause. "You're my best friend and you kissed a guy. That's not weird. That's Tuesday."
I laughed.
"That's not Tuesday. It was a Sunday."
"Details." I heard him reach for his phone. The whale sounds app starting up — the low, deep calls filling the room the way they did every night. The sound I'd hated in September and now couldn't sleep without.
"Priya's great. Like, actually great. Don't screw it up."
"I'm a politics major dating a debate champion. Every conversation is a potential argument. I'm in constant danger."
"You love it."
"I absolutely love it." A pause. "Night."
"Night."
The whale sounds through his head phones. The dark. The narrow bed.
In a day or so Alex would come back from Vermont. And we'd talk. And I didn't know what would happen after that.
So I closed my eyes and tried to let it go because I didn't have control of what would happen.
There was nothing left to hide.