Chapter Twenty-Three
Following the meeting, I take the elevator down to the underground parking lot at MSG when a familiar voice stops me like a referee’s whistle.
“Nice digs, LeClerc.”
Rocky’s leaning against his car, an old station wagon he’s had for a decade.
“What’re you talking about?”
He gestures to his phone. “You didn’t see?”
“See what?”
Rocky laughs. “Of course you didn’t. Jesus, you’re always the last one to know when you’re trending.
” As I approach him, he turns his phone screen towards me, and there it is: A carousel of Instagram photos of my apartment.
Not the old, sad bachelor pad version that looked like a discount furniture store’s clearance section.
This is the new version courtesy of Claire.
The photos showcase walls that are no longer bare, furniture arranged by someone who understands spatial relationships, and lighting that suggests moods beyond “bright” and “off.”
The post from Claire has tens of thousands of likes.
The caption reads like poetry for people who care about throw pillows.
“A modern yet masculine transformation in the heart of Manhattan, courtesy of dream client @LiamLeClerc and my growing obsession with natural light. More to come! #InteriorDesign #NYCApartments #HockeyMeetsHome”
“Yeah, LeClerc,” Rocky continues, enjoying my confusion with unseemly glee. “My wife follows all these interior design accounts, and apparently, this post hit the algorithm just right. They’re blowing up.”
I scratch the back of my neck. “Huh, wow. I guess that’s good…”
Rocky clutches his chest. “Holy jumpin’, LeClerc, was that an actual emotion? Are you pleased with something?”
“Wouldn’t go that far, Rocky.”
He grins. “Hey, at least you’re going viral for something wholesome. You know how rare that is these days?” He claps my back with unnecessary force. “Enjoy it while it lasts, buddy. Because I’ve seen far worse ways guys end up going viral on social media.”
“As have I,” I say. “Thanks for showing me, Rocky.”
Rocky winks before getting into his car. “That’s what I’m here for.”
On my Uber ride home, watching Manhattan blur past like a time-lapse of capitalism, my phone buzzes with a missed call from Claire. She probably wants to celebrate our mutual journey into interior design fame or at least explain how she turned my sad apartment into clickbait gold.
I put her on speaker as my driver navigates 6th Avenue with the aggressive confidence of someone who’s given up on the concept of lanes.
“Claire,” I say as she picks up. “Just saw the viral post. Congrats!”
A long silence follows. Then her voice comes through, quieter than someone who just went viral should sound.
“Yeah. I saw.”
My internal alarm system, finely tuned by years of reading teammates’ moods, starts pinging. “You okay?”
“I’m not, Liam. I’m not doing well.”
My stomach drops. I’d been expecting excitement, maybe some humble bragging. Instead, I hear fear in her voice, devastation even.
“What’s going on?”
Another pause. The kind that makes you brace for impact.
“I can’t keep lying to her, Liam.”
I exhale slowly, lowering my head like it might help me think better. The weight of Claire’s secret—the fictional Parsons acceptance, the elaborate deception to keep Petra from Saint Petersburg—rears its head.
“I keep thinking about how much she’s sacrificed,” Claire continues, her voice cracking. “She turned down a principal role in Saint Petersburg, Liam. A principal role. Do you know how impossible that is to get? And she didn’t take it because of me.”
I don’t argue because Claire is speaking the truth.
“I told myself that if I could just buy a little time, maybe things would work out.” Her frustration with herself builds. “Maybe she’d get promoted here, and it wouldn’t matter. I just needed a little more time to get it sorted, I thought.”
Time is such an unforgiving constant in our lives, the only thing we borrow that we can never pay back, and the interest rate on lies is always compounding.
I let Claire talk because sometimes people need to confess to someone who already knows their sins.
“But none of that’s happening. She’s still a soloist, and she’s still stuck under Nilas’s ridiculous favoritism. And every time she talks about how excited she is that I’ll be in New York, I feel like a complete fraud…because I am one.”
I hear a faint whimper, the type that precedes longer bouts of sobbing.
“I thought about just applying to another school,” she continues, spiraling like overthinkers do. “Maybe transferring the second I get in somewhere else, but I don’t even know where to start. And what if I don’t get in? Then what?”
She sniffles, trying to stifle her crying.
“Claire,” I say, trying to channel some reassurance. “You made a mistake. I’m not going to sugarcoat that. But you did it because you love your sister. You weren’t trying to screw her over. You were trying to keep your family together.”
“Yeah, well, mission accomplished. And now she might be stuck in career limbo because of me.”
That part’s harder to argue. Petra passed up an opportunity that comes along maybe once in a lifetime, and now she’s watching Kate Steel perform political theatre with their artistic director while her own career stagnates.
“I think I have an idea,” I say, the words escaping before my brain has properly vetted them.
Claire’s breath catches with the desperation of someone drowning who’s been thrown a life preserver. “You do?”
“Yeah. I might be able to pull some strings.”
The strings I’m referring to are completely theoretical. I have no strings. I’m stringless. But sometimes confidence is just fear wearing a good costume.
“You really think you can?” Her voice has gone small—young—reminding me she’s just a kid who loves her sister enough to build elaborate lies.
I fidget in my seat, watching New York pass by.
All these people living their lives, telling their own lies, managing their own catastrophes.
“I’m not gonna let Petra get screwed over because of this.
And I’m not gonna let you keep carrying this guilt around.
There’s a way out of this, Claire. We just have to find it. ”
The “we” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there considering I have no idea what I’m doing.
She’s quiet for so long I check to make sure the call hasn’t dropped. Then, finally her voice cuts through: “I’m counting on you, Liam.”
“Then I won’t let you down,” I promise, which is either determination or delusion, and I’m not sure there’s a difference anymore.
The call ends, and I’m left sitting in the back of an Uber, watching Manhattan do its thing, holding secrets that aren’t mine and promises I’m not sure I can keep.
My apartment might be Instagram-famous now, transformed from disaster to design triumph, but everything else feels like it’s one revelation away from collapse.
The irony isn’t lost on me; my living space has never looked better while my actual life is held together with good intentions and elaborate deceptions. And now it’s up to me to solve because I said I would.
No pressure. Just the happiness of two people I care about hanging in the balance.