3. Isaiah
Isaiah
Late September, London
The decision had been easy.
The office was open-plan and aggressively modern in a way Isaiah found jarring and gauche compared to the hallowed halls he had grown used to occupying.
Glass walls, muted colours, and framed photos of athletes mid-victory who he recognised from news articles Malek had forwarded him in an attempt to prepare him stared down at him as he read and reread contracts, proposals, and reports.
Malek, who was now technically one of the clients he was helping support.
The thought made a bubble of pride swell in his chest. His friend was finally getting what he’d worked so hard for, given up so much for.
Isaiah sat hunched over a desk that was definitely meant for someone more permanent, scrolling through lab reports until the numbers blurred, looking for something, anything that would help.
He was working on Chris Green’s ban. Isaiah figured Carl wanted him on it because technically, Chris wasn’t a client anymore.
The arsehole had made a big scene, firing Carl in front of a group of reporters right after the Olympics.
Carl had definitely taken the whole affair personally.
He was pulling absurd hours, joining Isaiah at the end of each day to review Green’s files, despite the fact that there was hardly anything to go on and no explanation from Green.
No word from him at all, not since he’d caused a media shitstorm.
Isaiah had emailed him not once, not twice…
three fucking times, and received absolute silence for his efforts.
“Doesn’t look good,” Isaiah muttered. The sample in question was from April, but nothing had been noticed until a targeted test was conducted. That in itself was odd, but Isaiah couldn’t find the source of the tip-off, and that wasn’t really the point.
“Nothing ever does,” Carl said, not looking up from his laptop.
They’d been at this for far too long, piecing things together slowly, because Chris Green couldn’t be bothered to respond to the people trying to save his career.
Isaiah rubbed his eyes. “He did it? Didn’t he?” The question he hadn’t dared voice until now slipped out before he could stop it. He held his breath.
Carl’s fingers paused for a fraction of a second, then resumed typing. “That’s not the question,” he said evenly.
Isaiah frowned. “It kind of is.”
Carl leaned back in his chair, folding his arms. “The question is whether the sample supports deliberate performance enhancing ingestion.” His gaze sharpened. “And it doesn’t.”
Isaiah let it drop and returned to the reports, abandoning Green’s case only occasionally to support other agents with drafting statements, mostly apologies, for their clients’ various misdeeds.
They worked late. Ridiculously late. Isaiah helped compile evidence until his hands cramped, drafting statements and cross-referencing precedents.
They spoke to lawyers, refined language, cut anything that sounded defensive, and tried in vain to reach out to Chris Green.
One night, well past midnight, Carl set a mug of tea beside Isaiah’s laptop. “You don’t have to stay.”
Isaiah shrugged. “You didn’t have to keep working after he dropped you.”
Carl considered that. “No. I chose to.”
Isaiah watched the steam curl up from the mug and thought, not for the first time, about reasons and justifications.
Choice wasn’t made purely because it was voluntary.
Sometimes you chose because not choosing felt like a kind of moral failure, the sort you’d carry quietly for the rest of your life.
10 He wondered about Carl and what drove his choices, but he didn’t ask.
Isaiah’s life had developed a strange, double-exposed quality. Agency by day. Then, by night, when Carl and his wife, Melinda, went to bed and the house fell quiet, Isaiah locked his door, set up his camera, and slipped back into a version of himself that felt like control.
He cammed quietly, with less desperation than he had when he’d been couch surfing.
The money was getting better too, slowly but surely.
It let him enjoy the process more, despite the secrecy of it.
He knew he wouldn’t give it up now. He needed this for far more than the financial cushion.
He craved the validation from his subscribers in a way he wasn’t going to examine, as well as the knowledge that he was in charge.
He could walk away from this at any time, switch off the stream and disappear—it was more power than he’d ever had over his own life. 11
The Sunday before he was due to return to Oxford, Carl knocked on his bedroom door, where he’d been sprawled out, poring over the Green timeline for the thousandth time.
“Elliot’s coming for dinner with his boyfriend, Jackson.” A pause. “You don’t have to join us, but we’d love it if you did.”
Isaiah went. He was curious about his elusive, famous cousin.
Jackson Jennings filled the room the moment he arrived. He was loud, bright, and unapologetic. He kissed Elliot on the cheek, cracked a joke about carbs, and immediately made himself at home. Isaiah liked him on instinct.
Elliot followed more quietly. He was unfailingly polite, but guarded, even with his parents.
He and Carl exchanged an awkward half-hug that spoke more to distance than affection.
Then he turned to Isaiah, a soft smile gracing his face as he stopped in front of him, stock-still, until Jackson jumped in and pulled the two of them into a tight hug that made Isaiah laugh and Elliot flush and stammer an apology.
Any nerves he’d been pushing down about being in the presence of real-life Olympians drifted away as Elliot muttered, “Sorry about him.” He took a step back. “You look good, Isaiah,” he said. “Love the hair.”
“It is very cool,” Jackson replied.
Melinda kept herself slightly apart from the whole exchange, as though she didn’t quite know what to do. He hadn’t seen much of her, despite living in the same house. He watched with keen eyes as she hugged her son, her grip limp at first glance, but she held it just a beat too long.
They moved to the table.
“Are you enjoying working with Carl?” Jackson asked Isaiah.
“Yes,” Isaiah replied. “I’m focusing on Chris Green’s case. It’s interesting.”
Elliot bit his lip. Something flickered across Melinda’s face. Disapproval? Weariness? Isaiah couldn’t tell. Jackson nodded tightly, his usual joviality replaced with something contemplative.
“Is he…alright?” Elliot eventually asked.
Isaiah grimaced. “Far too busy to get involved with his own case, apparently.”
“What do you mean?” Jackson asked.
“I haven’t heard from him.” Isaiah shrugged. “We’re piecing things together with Eric Anders and the lawyers Carl has on retainer. Not a peep from Green himself.”
Jackson and Elliot shared a look that felt loaded, but Melinda cleared her throat and soon Carl was deftly manoeuvring the conversation on as though this were something he’d done hundreds of times, to the neighbours’ garden, to Elliot and Jackson’s new house, to Jackson’s father’s health. Anything except athletics…or doping.
Dinner conversation flowed in a strange rhythm for the rest of the evening, existing in fits and starts; Jackson filling silences, Elliot answering carefully, Carl choosing his words with surgical precision. Melinda spoke the least, seeming lost in her thoughts.
At one point, Jackson launched into a story about a disastrous sponsorship shoot, waving his fork around for emphasis. Isaiah laughed. Elliot smiled.
Melinda watched them, then looked away.
Later, when Jackson and Elliot stepped out onto the terrace, Isaiah pretended not to listen in as she spoke quietly to her husband. “You’re still helping him,” she said to Carl.
Carl nodded. “Yes.”
“He fired you.”
“I know.”
She exhaled through her nose. “This world takes and takes. You know that.”
“I do.”
“He isn’t you, Carl.” Her voice softened just a fraction. “You don’t have to do this.”
Isaiah felt like he was overhearing something he wasn’t meant to understand yet.12 He slowly pushed back from the table, drifted up to his room, and stared at the ceiling.
The following week pulled Isaiah back to Oxford whether he was ready or not.
Carl drove him to the station in silence. The city felt far away already, being overwritten in his mind by stone, spires, and libraries, by debates waiting to be had.
“This is it,” Isaiah said.
“I know.”
He hesitated. “Thank you.”
Carl nodded once. “I’m the one who should be thanking you. The work you’ve done, Isaiah, it’s… I think it will make the difference.”
“I’ll still help when you need it.” Isaiah swallowed, then shook his uncle’s hand, grabbed his bag out of the boot and walked into the station to board the train back to his real home.
Stepping into Balliol felt like coming home.
Isaiah had been lucky to be able to stay in the same college after finishing his degree and starting his graduate programme, because Balliol meant more to him than he ever let on.
It had been the first place he’d really been able to be himself.
It was where he’d met his best friends and discovered who he was without his parents’ interference.
After the mess of the summer, it felt good to come back to the place that had seen him through his entire undergrad and the first, impossibly challenging year of the BPhil.
There were twenty-five students in his year of the degree, but only two of them were in Balliol: Isaiah and one of his closest friends, Amara.
His maybe-not-quite-boyfriend, Ollie, would be starting his doctorate this year.
His obsession with philosophy was one of the things that had drawn the two of them together to start with.
Isaiah wanted to be in the doctoral programme himself next year.
It had felt like a simple future once, the two of them researching side by side, maybe living together off campus in a place not too different from the one Jacob and Malek had found over the summer.