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By the time I finally pulled into my parents’ driveway, it was almost eleven. My phone had been vibrating on and off all morning. Mom had called me six times and texted me more. I’d ignored every single one of them. It wasn’t that I was trying to be an asshole. I just hadn’t worked out what I wanted to say. The lie had to be plausible without giving everything away either.

I killed the engine and just sat there, staring at the house. My phone buzzed again in the cupholder. The single word Mom flashed on the screen. Damn it. I grabbed it and shoved it in my pocket without answering. Instead, I climbed out of the car and went inside. The door had barely creaked open before Roscoe came barreling through the house, yapping and howling with excitement. Pausing just inside the doorway, I gave him the demanded attention while he wriggled between my legs.

My parents were in the kitchen, making lunch. Mom stood at the counter assembling sandwiches while Dad was next to her, cutting vegetables.

“Oh, there you are!” Mom exclaimed and hurried across the room. I gave her the hug I couldn’t avoid, feeling guilty for making her worry. That had never been my intention. “We were wondering where you disappeared to yesterday.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered into her shoulder. “Jude asked me to check on Rhodes. He was worried about him.”

“And that required you to stay overnight?” Dad asked, his voice a little rough around the edges.

I couldn’t blame him. Not really. I’d disappeared from the funeral without a word and ignored them all night and all morning. From their perspective, I’d vanished on an already awful day and left them with nothing to go on. They loved me. I couldn’t imagine it’d been easy for them to deal with. I could’ve handled it better.

“Sariah was there, and Jude showed up later,” I said. That wasn’t a lie. I just left out the part where he’d slept in the car instead of knocking on the door. And of course the parts about being there to comfort Rhodes. “Rhodes was really upset.”

“That family has enough problems without you getting dragged into their bullshit,” he retorted.

“Jude’s my best friend,” I replied almost immediately. Jude’s bullshit was my bullshit and vice versa. That was just how we worked. There wasn’t some invisible line where his family stopped being my concern because things were messy.

“I’m talking about Rhodes.”

“What about him?” I frowned.

“You need to be careful around him right now,” Dad told me. “I know he’s your coach, but people are talking.”

I knew Everdale was full of gossip, and most of the town had shown up for Mrs. Kennedy’s funeral. It only made sense that people had something to say about it. Watching someone get thrown out of his own mother’s funeral was exactly the kind of thing people would whisper about for months or more.

Still, the warning sat wrong with me.

“And what are they talking about?” I asked because I had to know.

“What’s not to talk about?” he scoffed like it was so obvious I should’ve figured it out. “You’ve got scouts looking at you, Theo. You don’t need to be attached to someone else’s scandal.”

My frown deepened. Had he really just used the word scandal to describe what happened at the funeral? Rhodes had lost his mother, his father had publicly humiliated him, and somehow, Dad had taken all of that and turned Rhodes into the embarrassing part. That didn’t sit right with me.

“Rhodes isn’t a scandal.”

“Maybe not to you,” Dad said. Something in the way he said it made me uncomfortable—something dismissive buried beneath the words that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“He’s gay. That’s not a scandal,” I replied.

“Don’t play dumb, Theo.”

My discomfort increased at the comment.

“Henry!” Mom scolded, and Dad stopped what he was doing to face us. His lips were pressed thin with irritation as he finally gave me his full attention. I could tell that my challenging him wasn’t sitting right with him.

“What?” he demanded. “His mother was dying, and instead of keeping the peace, Rhodes decided to turn Thanksgiving into some fucking coming-out event.”

For a long moment, I just stared at him. Had we sat at the same Thanksgiving table? Had we witnessed the same event? Heard the same things? How could he sit there, hear everything Rhodes’ father had said, and still think Rhodes was at fault? It made no sense to me.

“That’s not what happened,” I said, though I wasn’t sure he cared.

“There was no reason he couldn’t keep that part of his life private.”

My chest tightened at the word private. I didn’t like where this was going. The smart thing to do would’ve been to end the conversation—to tell him he was right—but this was Rhodes. It wasn’t right that he was standing there and saying those things.

“His father said some horrible shit about gay people—”