Chapter 14 #2
“Is your goal going to be to keep being a grump all night?” Perdita asked him.
“Yes,” he grumbled. “And to also get absolutely shit-faced.”
“In that case, I think I’ll join you,” she said, and then she grabbed her own glass from the waiter and joined him in leaning over the railing. They both looked out at the vast blue-black ocean stretched before them, silently battling their own demons in each other’s company.
Bilal couldn’t tell if his sudden nausea was brought on from the motion of the yacht slowly gliding away from the shore , or if it was yet another side effect of his pain meds, or if it was the Anwar of it all.
Perhaps it was all of the above.
“How’s the leg?” Perdita asked after a few quiet moments.
He could feel the ship beneath them rattle as it sailed farther away from the shore.
Bilal looked up at the bruising sky, not wanting her to see the truth in his eyes. “Better,” he lied. “How was your trip? Paris, was it?” he continued quickly, before she could ask any follow-up questions.
“Prague,” she corrected.
“Oh yeah, how was that?”
“Cold,” she replied with a shrug. “Not much better than the weather here,” she finished, shivering a little as the cold air wrapped around the yacht.
“What were you there for again?” Despite messaging all the time, they never really spoke about their work lives.
It always felt so corporate and cold when they did, too much like their childhood, so instead they stuck to nicer, safer topics, such as the latest trashy reality television series they were both watching.
“Went to meet with some art vendors, did some research … Same old. I’m honestly exhausted, but you know how it gets with the constant travel,” she replied.
He nodded, pretending to know. He didn’t travel nearly as much as his siblings did.
Octavius was always off performing somewhere in the world, Fola was always traveling to give keynote speeches and lectures, and Perdita was always abroad looking for inspiration for her art pieces.
It sounded like an incredible life, one he was envious of.
His siblings were actually out in the real world living, while Bilal was stuck inside the same gym in Brooklyn, training day in, day out.
Competitions were the only time he really got to travel and he wasn’t sure that even counted for much, seeing as he never left the training centers or the gym whenever he was abroad.
He would trade all of his medals to live like his siblings. In fact, he would trade the entire world.
Silence crept up on them again, and Bilal found his focus drifting away from the sea, and back to the devil over his shoulder.
“Anwar is here,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant about it. He glanced at his sister, trying to see if she was buying his lack of chalant-ness.
“Anwar, as in your asshole ex-boyfriend, Anwar?” she asked, an eyebrow raised as she turned to rest her back against the railing.
Bilal wasn’t sure that was a fair assessment of Anwar. Anwar was decidedly not a bad person, but Perdita only knew him as the guy who’d broken Bilal’s heart back in March, so he was an asshole in her eyes.
“The very same,” he replied.
Perdita surveyed the deck through narrowed eyes, as if trying to hunt the boy down.
Bilal followed suit but avoided looking at the spot he’d last seen Anwar.
The last thing he wanted was another deadly dose of eye contact.
He people-watched instead, taking notice of the semi-famous faces around him.
He recognized Sullivan Spencer, a fellow sportsman and a basketball prodigy from North Philly, who’d become one of the youngest players ever drafted into the NBA at just age seventeen.
Sullivan was surrounded by eager-eyed donors in black suits, all of them wanting a piece of him.
Bilal did not envy him one bit. Usually Bilal was the athlete the donors would be surrounding all night, shoving business cards in his face and promising big sponsorships.
Tonight, though, he’d hardly been approached.
That’s the thing about being young and brilliant.
It was always going to be temporary. There will always be someone younger, someone with more to give.
And he was okay with that. He’d given enough.
Besides, his injury had made him undesirable, a soon-to-be has-been before he was even eighteen.
“That sucks,” Perdita said as if she could read his mind. But he knew she couldn’t. She was most likely responding to his ex-boyfriend being here and not the fact that he was no longer worth his weight in gold. “I’m sorry, Billy. I know you really liked him,” she continued.
Bilal didn’t just really like Anwar. He more than liked him and maybe that was his problem.
“Yeah, it’s whatever,” he said, the surface of his voice cracking.
“Speaking of sucking …,” Perdita muttered. She nodded toward the small grinning man sporting a bright yellow press lanyard who was steadily approaching them. “Good luck. I was never here,” she said, hurrying away before Bilal could stop her.
He didn’t have time to figure out his own exit strategy before the journalist was in front of him.
“Bilal! So great to bump into you here,” the journalist said, in that faux-polite way they always did before they ruined lives.
“At my father’s event? On my father’s yacht?” Bilal asked, blinking down at the man, who seemed elated by his response. Probably because it was a response at all. Bilal imagined that he wasn’t the first of his siblings that the man had tried to pin down tonight.
“Yes! And what an event this is. A celebration of prodigies from all over—you know I was one of the first people your dad told about his prodigy project, many, many years before your birth,” the journalist said as though this would somehow endear Bilal to him.
“Are you my father’s friend or something?” Bilal asked, confused.
The journalist burst out laughing like this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “No, not at all. What we are, your father and I, extends beyond friendship.”
Bilal raised an eyebrow at that, now questioning whether his father had been in some sort of secret love affair. He didn’t think his dad even had the time for that sort of thing.
The journalist seemed to realize the suggestive nature of his words and cleared his throat.
“What I mean is … we are, in simple terms, lifelong colleagues. You know, I was something of a prodigy too back in the day, as you can probably tell. I am much younger than your father, but our paths did cross for a brief time when we attended business school together and shared a few journalism classes—before your father dropped out, that is … But anyway, I’ve known old Leontes for many, many, many years.
In one of his articles back in the day, he even called me his greatest enemy,” the journalist continued with a look of absolute pride.
Bilal just stared blankly at the strange man before him, unsure of how to process any of what he’d just heard.
“Oh, I realize I didn’t even introduce myself. I’m Jesse Philips. I write for The Atom Magazine’s science news column on weekends—my main rodeo is lecturing.”
Realization settled into Bilal at the man’s name. He distinctly remembered, at several points during childhood, his dad saying that some Jesse Philips guy was the bane of his existence. Philips was always in their family’s business apparently, writing about all his father’s failures.
Perhaps Bilal could be endeared to this man, after all.
“Oh yeah, Mr. Philips. I’ve heard plenty about you,” he said, and the short balding man beamed so brightly, you’d think he’d never been acknowledged before in his life.
“I’m sure you have! As I said, your father and I go way back. Honestly, I was so pleased when he invited me to the event tonight. I have been trying to get a press pass for ten years now. It’s truly a mystery as to why my application has never been answered before,” Mr. Philips said.
“Your invite probably got lost in the mail in the other years,” Bilal said dryly.
“That must be it!” Mr. Philips replied with a menacing grin.
“Must be,” Bilal muttered.
“I’m covering this event for my magazine’s Sunday edition, and I wanted to ask you a few questions. I hope you don’t mind.”
Bilal had thought his time answering reporters’ questions would be done with after the press conference.
But it wasn’t like he could say no, especially not here, where he was expected to mingle, to impress guests and donors with his laundry list of “achievements.” After all, this was first and foremost a networking event.
“Go ahead,” he said, and Mr. Philips’s beady, birdlike eyes lit up with excitement as he brought out a recording device from his pocket before turning it on and bringing it up to his mouth.
“I’m here with Bilal Button, genius fencer, Olympic gold medalist, and the eldest son of the infamous Master of Prodigies, Leontes Button. Bilal, how is the evening going for you so far?”
“It’s going okay, I guess,” Bilal replied. That is, if “going okay” means “the worst night ever,” he thought.
“Would you say it feels … strange being here tonight?” Philips continued, and Bilal raised a confused eyebrow.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, everyone knows, of course, that you left your father’s house almost three years ago to begin a permanent training residency in the city at the age of fifteen …
incredible. So I figure it must be strange being around all your siblings and your father, whom I’d imagine you only have time to see on rare occasions like this one? ”
“I guess,” Bilal said, tension rising in his bones.
“You guess?” Jesse Philips had a ravenous look in his eyes. “Sounds like some hesitation there. Do you regret leaving the Manor so young? Would you ever return?”
Fuck no, Bilal wanted to say but obviously couldn’t.
“I don’t regret leaving. It was best to move out so I could focus solely on my career, especially since my coach wanted me to train more seriously for the big events like the Olympics, the grand prix, and the World Cup.
” It was the rehearsed answer that both Henry and Claire had taught him to give.
It was the only way to keep the secrets of that awful time in their lives dead and buried.
“Speaking of your career!” Mr. Philips said, and then not-so-subtly trained his gaze on Bilal’s cast-wrapped calf. “I heard about your accident—terrible news. How is your leg doing?”
It seemed like an innocent enough question, but Bilal had been asked this by his coach so many times over the past few weeks, and even more so in the last forty-eight hours by everyone else, that he knew there was nothing innocent about it.
What they were really asking was, Is this injury a permanent one?
Is your career over like the gossip sites say it is?
“My leg is fine, or at least it will be soon enough,” Bilal said, lying through gritted teeth. He had to get used to the feeling of lying, especially as he was certain he’d get more questions like this from other attendees tonight.
“Thank goodness for that!” Mr. Philips clutched his chest dramatically with the hand that was not gripping the voice recorder and let out a massively exaggerated sigh of relief.
“I’ve heard so many horrific rumors, some saying you would never fence to your incredible standards again. What a tragedy such a world would be.”
Bilal felt a sharp pang in his chest. What a tragedy such a world would be.
If only Mr. Philips and all the other people speculating on his career knew the truth.
That Bilal’s accident was no accident at all.
Because who was Bilal Button if not a slave to his father’s interests and prodigal vision? Who was he without his piste or his blade? Who were any of them without their talents?
Ordinary. Unremarkable. Failures.
These were the words their father had threatened them with growing up.
Bilal’d put everything into fencing. Since he was old enough to hold a saber in his hands, he’d worked tirelessly at it.
Hours and hours, years and years of training himself to death, too scared to fail.
The fear of not being brilliant had always scared him more than death ever could.
Now what scared Bilal most was that life. A life of doing something he hated, being someone he hated, and worst of all, being brilliant at it.
It was no life at all.