Red, White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston Page 0,42
shitty mood funneled down to the point on the page where Henry’s lips touch somebody’s skin that’s not his.
Who the fuck does Henry think he is? How fucking—how entitled, how aloof, how selfish do you have to be, to spend months becoming someone’s friend, let them show you all their weird gross weak parts, kiss them, make them question everything, ignore them for weeks, and go out with someone else and put it in the press? Everyone who’s ever had a publicist knows the only way anything gets into People is if you want the world to know.
He throws the magazine down and lunges to his feet, pacing. Fuck Henry. He should never have trusted the silver-spoon little shit. He should have listened to his gut.
He inhales, exhales.
The thing is. The thing. Is. He doesn’t know if, beyond the initial rush of anger, he actually believes Henry would do this. If he takes the Henry he saw in a teen magazine when he was twelve, the Henry who was so cold to him at the Olympics, the Henry who slowly came unraveled to him over months, and the Henry who kissed him in the shadow of the White House, and he adds them up, he doesn’t get this.
Alex has a tactical brain. A politician’s brain. It works fast, and it works in many, many directions at once. And right now, he’s thinking through a puzzle. He’s not always good at thinking: What if you were him? How would your life be? What would you have to do? Instead, he’s thinking: How do these pieces slot together?
He thinks about what Nora said: “Why do you think they’re always photographed?”
And he thinks about Henry’s guardedness, the way he carries himself with a careful separation from the world around him, the tension at the corner of his mouth. Then he thinks: If there was a prince, and he was gay, and he kissed someone, and maybe it mattered, that prince might have to run a little bit of interference.
And in one great mercurial swing, Alex is not just angry anymore. He’s sad too.
He paces back over to the door and slides his phone out of his messenger bag, thumbs open his messages. He doesn’t know which impulse to follow and wrestle into words that he can say to someone and make something, anything, happen.
Faintly, under it all, it occurs to him: This is all a very not-straight way to react to seeing your male frenemy kissing someone else in a magazine.
A little laugh startles out of him, and he walks over to his bed and sits on the edge of it, considering. He considers texting Nora, asking her if he can come over to finally have some big epiphany. He considers calling Rafael Luna and meeting him for beers and asking to hear all about his first gay sexual exploits as an REI-wearing teenage antifascist. And he considers going downstairs and asking Amy about her transition and her wife and how she knew she was different.
But in the moment, it feels right to go back to the source, to ask someone who’s seen whatever is in his eyes when a boy touches him.
Henry’s out of the question. Which leaves one person.
“Hello?” says the voice over the phone. It’s been at least a year since they last talked, but Liam’s Texas drawl is unmistakable and warm in Alex’s eardrum.
He clears his throat. “Uh, hey, Liam. It’s Alex.”
“I know,” Liam says, desert-dry.
“How, um, how have you been?”
A pause. The sound of quiet talking in the background, dishes. “You wanna tell me why you’re really calling, Alex?”
“Oh,” he starts and stops, tries again. “This might sound weird. But, um. Back in high school, did we have, like, a thing? Did I miss that?”
There’s a clattering sound on the other side of the phone, like a fork being dropped on a plate. “Are you seriously calling me right now to talk about this? I’m at lunch with my boyfriend.”
“Oh.” He didn’t know Liam had a boyfriend. “Sorry.”
The sound goes muffled, and when Liam speaks again, it’s to someone else. “It’s Alex. Yeah, him. I don’t know, babe.” His voice comes back clear again. “What exactly are you asking me?”
“I mean, like, we messed around, but did it, like, mean something?”
“I don’t think I can answer that question for you,” Liam tells him. If he’s still anything like Alex remembers, he’s rubbing one hand on the underside of his jaw, raking through the stubble. He wonders faintly if,