Page 65 of Open Water
"What about rowing?"
"Hale hasn't said anything. Which I figure means it's fine. Or he's waiting me out. Can't tell yet."
"And the team?"
"Remy's Remy. Tyler made a joke about it within twelve hours which means he's fine." I shifted in the bed again and the sheets rustled. "The Kingswell guys are a mixed bag. Some of them look at me different. But I don't care about them."
"And how do you feel about it? Not how other people are reacting. How doyoufeel?"
Leave it to Noah to ask the question nobody else had thought to ask.
"Lighter," I said. "And terrified. At the same time."
The room was quiet.
"I'm proud of you," Noah said.
"I didn't really have a choice. Marcus made it for me."
"You had a choice about what you did after. You could have denied it. Said the photo was fake. Made up a story." He paused. "You didn't. That's not Marcus making a choice for you. That's you."
"Thanks. And thanks for not making it weird. When Alex showed up. When I kissed him. You just... stood there."
"What was I supposed to do? Start clapping?"
"Some people would have freaked out."
"Some people are idiots." A pause. "You're my best friend and you kissed a guy. That's not weird. That's Tuesday."
I laughed.
"That's not Tuesday. It was a Sunday."
"Details." I heard him reach for his phone. The whale sounds app starting up — the low, deep calls filling the room the way they did every night. The sound I'd hated in September and now couldn't sleep without.
"Priya's great. Like, actually great. Don't screw it up."
"I'm a politics major dating a debate champion. Every conversation is a potential argument. I'm in constant danger."
"You love it."
"I absolutely love it." A pause. "Night."
"Night."
The whale sounds through his head phones. The dark. The narrow bed.
In a day or so Alex would come back from Vermont. And we'd talk. And I didn't know what would happen after that.
So I closed my eyes and tried to let it go because I didn't have control of what would happen.
There was nothing left to hide.
Chapter 14: Alex
Forty seats. Maybe thirty people in them.
I counted — twenty years of walking into rooms and reading them, who's here, who matters, where the exits are. My father's habit, installed so early I couldn't tell anymore where he ended and I began. Except this room didn't have anyone who mattered in the Harrington sense. A retired couple in matching fleece. Three film students. A gray-haired woman in the front row in combat boots. Nobody who could do anything to me. Nobody who knew my name.
