Chapter 21
How did I lose complete control of this conversation? —Noah Hardaway
“Kiddo!” Uncle Stan’s voice is cheerful and relaxed when he picks up the phone, and I send an anxious look across the island counter at Milo as I press the speaker to my ear. He takes my other hand and squeezes it, just for a moment.
“Hi, Uncle Stan. I got worried when you weren’t answering me.”
He groans. “I know, can you even believe how silly I am? I left my phone on a cocktail table next to a pool. What a doofus! Ezra said the whole thing was a write-off. Nothing could be recovered. Isn’t that wild, in this day and age? I thought everything lived on the cloud now!”
Milo raises an eyebrow at me, and I know what we’re both thinking: nothing from the phone could be recovered? Really? My suspicions are more than confirmed now. Ezra saw that message I sent last week, and he made it disappear. He’s up to something.
“Do you have a minute to talk?” I ask Uncle Stan.
“For you? Always. I’ve got a strategy meeting with Ez soon, but we can push that if we need to. I’ve missed you, kiddo!”
Ez? He’s calling him Ez now?
“Anyway,” Uncle Stan goes on. “What’s new in your world?”
My mind whirls with the updates I’d like to give him: tours of Devon Falls with Milo, the upcoming Prom is for Everyone event, my recent mastery of the perfect grilled cheese and tomato sandwich—at least according to my roommate—telling off Mrs. Perry at the state agency.
But there are more important things I need to talk about first.
My heartbeat feels like a motor in my chest, and Milo reaches across the island to squeeze my hand again.
The warm, soft touch sends a flash of self-assurance through me, and I blurt out the words before I can lose them.
“Uncle Stan, I need to tell you something. Those flowers you got? I didn’t send them. I think Ezra did.”
The line goes quiet on the other end. Too quiet. I wait for his follow-up questions, his confusion… but none of it comes.
Instead, he says, “Yeah, Ezra mentioned you might bring up the flowers.”
“Huh?” I blurt out. Both of us are speaking pretty loudly right now, and with Milo only a few feet away, I can easily tell he’s hearing every word of this discussion.
But I don’t make any move to step out of the kitchen.
I want Milo to hear my father and me talking right now.
I need him to hear this conversation. The last thing I want at this moment is to feel alone on one end of this phone line.
Uncle Stan sighs. “Listen, kiddo, I know it’s been just you and me for a long time. And now you’re out there in Vermont, and you’re seeing me spend all this time with Ezra.”
“What are you talking about?” I blurt out. Nothing about this conversation is going the way I expected. Milo moves around the island to stand at my side, a steady presence.
“Breathe,” he whispers quietly.
I do.
“Kiddo,” Uncle Stan goes on gently. “Ezra mentioned you sent him some texts. He said you’re feeling a little threatened, maybe?”
“Threatened?” I ask, but my voice comes out more of a whisper now. Milo’s face is pure thunder, his eyes dark with anger.
“Look, it’s natural,” Uncle Stan goes on.
“You and I have been attached at the hip for years. Now we’re both too busy to even find time for regular phone calls, and you know how much time I’m spending with Ezra.
He mentioned you were upset when he called you about something.
And that you sent him some odd texts after I got those flowers. ”
“He did what?” Oh. The call on Labor Day, when Ezra told me what happened to Milo. That feels like so long ago now. “What’s that time he called me got to do with him sending flowers and saying they’re from me?” How did I lose complete control of this conversation with my own father?
“Noah.” The tone in Uncle Stan’s voice reminds me of the same one he’d use when I was young and frightened to go into a doctor or therapist’s office.
Patient, but also determined. “Look, Ezra said you’d bring this flower thing up to me.
And I get it, Noah, I do. You feel like you’re being replaced.
You pushing back on Ezra’s place in my world is natural. I told him that.”
“He told you I was going to say he sent those flowers?” Milo’s eyes are getting more and more narrow, his expression more clouded, and I can almost feel how badly he wants to take the phone from my hand.
But he doesn’t move, and I push to figure out how Ezra got ahead of me with Uncle Stan yet again.
“Uncle Stan, he’s lying! I never sent you those flowers!
I didn’t. It was him. He’s manipulating you. ”
Uncle Stan clears his throat. “Noah,” he says quietly.
“I will always love you more than life, kiddo. I hope you know that. I need you to know that. So I’m thinking maybe you can come back for a visit soon and we can talk to our old family therapist together?
Get to the bottom of why you’re trying to push Ezra out of my life right now?
Because I need you to understand that Ezra is my COS, Noah.
He’s brilliant at his job, and he’s not going anywhere, especially if I’m going to enter this primary race.
I need you to make sure you can feel comfortable with him being in my life, okay?
That’s important to me. I never want you to feel shut out, kiddo. ”
The truth sinks into my skin like a cold, wet compress.
Ezra started stacking this conversation against me the minute I sent him that text about the flowers.
Maybe even before that. He’s in Uncle Stan’s ear right now, and he’s the one Uncle Stan is listening to.
If I keep pushing, keep arguing, keep swearing I never sent those flowers, who’s going to lose?
I swallow hard. “I didn’t send the flowers.” My voice comes out like a croak as I say the words again, and Milo pulls me against his body now, holding tightly to me as I fight back against a rush of tears.
“Noah,” Uncle Stan says. “I love those flowers. I don’t care why you sent them. I love you too, kiddo, and I always will. We’ll figure this out. Can you pick a weekend to come back and see me? I’ll get us on Dr. Rubian’s calendar.”
His words are a wash of white in my ears; I hardly hear them. He says something about a meeting, and I grunt out a “goodbye” and “I love you,” and then I hang up the phone.
“Chucks.” Milo keeps my body tightly against his, and I let him wrap himself around me like a blanket. “Don’t worry. That fucking little shit won’t get away with this, okay? We won’t let him.”
Alpha Milo has arrived, ready to fight. But for the first time, his promise of protection doesn’t feel comforting or soothing. It just feels… dangerous. Because I know exactly how hard Milo would fight to take Ezra down, if taking Ezra down meant protecting me.
But what would the cost of that fight be? To Milo, who’s already been burned once by another political fight that got personal? To me and Uncle Stan, the one person in my life I could always count on to listen to me, until Ezra Morehouse came into the picture?
I shake my head as I pull away from Milo. “Tom and Lou are picking me up to take me shopping for the prom,” I mutter. “I need to get ready.”
“Hey.” He squeezes my shoulder. “Look at me, please?”
I slowly lift my gaze to meet his. The anger in his eyes has been replaced by worry. “Are you sure you want to go shopping? Maybe you should stay here with me and Bear. We can make some tea, figure out a plan.”
For the first time in my life, my father just called me a liar. Plans are the last thing I want to think about right now. I shake my head. “Shopping will be good,” I tell him. “We can talk after I get back.”
He frowns as I start looking for my wallet. And I guess I am a liar, because talking about this phone call with Milo later is the last thing I want to do.
“Have you picked out an outfit yet, Mr. Noah?”
I smile down at Lou, who’s holding a bright purple dress and a pair of sneakers in one hand. “Lou, you can call me Noah,” I remind him.
“Okay, Mr. Noah. But did you find a dress? Or a fancy tie and a shirt?”
“I haven’t yet.” I frown and step back from the rack of dress pants in front of me at Sylvia’s Seconds used clothing shop. “Lou, I know you’ll be disappointed, but I think I may just wear jeans and one of my favorite t-shirts to the prom.”
Lou’s mouth drops open in horror. “But you can’t do that! Prom is supposed to be special! Papa Tom,” he calls over the rack of clothing. “Come tell Mr. Noah he has to dress up for prom!”
“Is someone desecrating the sacred ritual of prom?” Tom appears around the clothing rack wearing a fedora with an actual feather tucked into the side. “And what do you both think of my hat?”
Lou giggles. “It’s silly! I like it!”
I smile as Tom tips the hat toward us and does a quick soft shoe.
The more time I spend with Gabe’s partner, the easier it is to forget that he’s an Oscar-nominated actor who’s probably spent more time with Brad Pitt than he has with most people in Devon Falls.
He’s awfully down to earth for someone who claims to have an eight-step skincare routine.
I can’t even figure out what kind of moisturizer I’m supposed to be using. Tom has assured me he’ll help me figure that out right after he’s done taking me and Lou shopping for prom outfits.
But as I flip through each rack of clothing, one shirt blending into another, I can’t stop thinking about that phone call.
How quickly Uncle Stan believed Ezra over me.
How fast I lost my place in his world, and how manipulative and conniving Ezra really is turning out to be.
I always thought mustache-twirling villains only existed in movies and books, that all villains are heroes in their own story.
Whatever reason Ezra has for doing all this, I am sure he thinks that reason is worth every moment of harm he’s causing me right now.
Either that, or he’s a sociopath who just doesn’t care about inflicting pain.
And while I’m hardly a fan of Ezra Morehouse, I never thought he was a sociopath either.
“I’m not desecrating prom,” I tell Tom and Lou. “The invitation says all attire is acceptable. I’m just planning to wear my usual attire.”
“But you have to dress up!” Lou clutches at my arm. “Papa Tom and Papa Colin showed me pictures of their proms, and everyone looked so pretty and happy! And Gabe didn’t get to have a prom, so Papa Colin bought him a fancy toledo and he looks so beautiful in it!”
“Toledo?” I ask.
“Tuxedo,” Tom whispers to me. Ah. That makes more sense. “Lou,” he says as he bends down to Lou’s height. “Not everyone always wants to dress up for things the way you do. And that’s okay. You don’t like it when people tell you how to dress, do you?”
Lou wrinkles his nose. “I guess not. I just thought that Mr. Noah would want to look pretty in pictures when he and Milo dance together.” He shrugs.
“But Milo likes Mr. Noah no matter what he wears, so that’s okay!
” Then he ducks under a clothing rack and over to the kids’ section, leaving me standing with my mouth wide open.
“Did you tell him Milo and I are dating?” I finally ask.
Tom laughs. “No. Kids are just always more perceptive than we want them to be.”
“So true.” I sigh. “Well, who knows if Milo and I will even still be, um, seeing each other, by the time we get to prom.”
Tom’s expression flips in front of me, and he frowns. “Why? What’s going on?”
There’s no way I have the energy to explain today’s phone call with my father. “Family drama,” I finally say. Tom nods easily and doesn’t ask any more questions.
“Ah, I see.” Tom puts a hand on my shoulder, stopping me as I move to step away from the rack of shirts.
“Listen,” he says, and he sounds uncharacteristically serious.
“I know there’s history between your family and Milo’s.
But I see the way Milo looks at you, Noah.
This isn’t a simple situation. It comes with a lot of uncertainty.
” He glances over at Lou. “I can tell you one thing: Gabe, Colin, and I were in a complicated situation once too. The three of us came with a lot of uncertainty. And I don’t regret sitting in that uncertainty while we found a way to build a family.
Now.” He claps his hands together. “I think I have the perfect outfit idea for you!”
Given that Tom’s been on the cover of GQ at least twice, I’m not all that surprised when he, Lou, and I walk out of the store forty minutes later with five shopping bags and successful outfit plans for the prom.
“Do you know how you’re going to do your hair?
” Lou asks me excitedly as we pile down the stairs of the shop.
“Gabe’s going to let me use his hair gel! ”
I’m about to look to Tom for help, when I see something else—someone else—standing right outside the shop, next to Tom’s car, as if he’s been waiting for us. I stop where I’m standing.
“Scout? Scout from Montpelier? What are you doing here?”