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He hates himself, but he doesn’t regret anything, and maybe that makes him a bad person and a worse politician, but he doesn’t regret Henry.
For five endless, unbearable hours, he’s not allowed to even try to contact Henry. The press sec drafts a statement. It looks like any other memo.
For five hours, he doesn’t shower or change his clothes or laugh or smile or cry. It’s eight in the morning when he’s finally released and told to stay in the Residence and stand by for further instructions.
He’s handed his phone, at last, but there’s no answer when he calls Henry, and no response when he texts. Nothing at all.
Amy walks him through the colonnade and up the stairs, saying nothing, and when they reach the hallway between the East and West Bedrooms, he sees them.
June, her hair in a haphazard knot on the top of her head and in a pink bathrobe, her eyes red-rimmed. His mom, in a sharp, no-nonsense black dress and pointed heels, jaw set. Leo, barefoot in his pajamas. And his dad, a leather duffel still hanging off one shoulder, looking harried and exhausted.
They all turn to look at him, and Alex feels a wave of something so much bigger than himself sweep over him, like when he was a child standing bowlegged in the Gulf of Mexico, riptide sucking at his feet. A sound escapes his throat uninvited, something that he barely even recognizes, and June has him first, then the rest of them, arms and arms and hands and hands, pulling him close and touching his face and moving him until he’s on the floor, the goddamn terrible hideous antique rug that he hates, sitting on the floor and staring at the rug and the threads of the rug and hearing the Gulf rushing in his ears and thinking distantly that he’s having a panic attack, and that’s why he can’t breathe, but he’s just staring at the rug and he’s having a panic attack and knowing why his lungs won’t work doesn’t make them work again.
He’s faintly aware of being shifted into his room, to his bed, which is still covered in the godforsaken fuckingnewspapers,and someone guides him onto it, and he sits down and tries very, very hard to make a list in his head.
One.
One.
One.
He sleeps in fits and starts, wakes up sweating, wakes up shivering. He dreams in short, fractured scenes that swell and fade erratically. He dreams of himself at war, in a muddy trench, love letter soaking red in his chest pocket. He dreams of a house in Travis County, doors locked, unwilling to let him in again. He dreams of a crown.
He dreams once, briefly, of the lake house, an orange beacon under the moon. He sees himself there, standing in water up tohis neck. He sees Henry, sitting naked on the pier. He sees June and Nora, hands clasped together, and Pez on the grass between them, and Bea, digging pink fingertips into the wet soil.
In the trees next to them, he hears the snap, snap, snap of branches.
“Look,” Henry says, pointing up at the stars.
And Alex tries to say,Don’t you hear it?Tries to say,Something’s coming.He opens his mouth: a spill of fireflies, and nothing.
When he opens his eyes, June is sitting up against the pillows next to him, bitten nails pressed against her bottom lip, still in her bathrobe and keeping watch. She reaches down and squeezes his hand. He squeezes back.
Between dreams he catches the sound of muffled voices in the hallway.
“Nothing,” Zahra’s voice is saying. “Not a thing. Nobody is taking our calls.”
“How can they not be taking our calls? I’m the goddamn president.”
“Permission to do a thing, ma’am, slightly outside diplomatic protocol.”
A comment:The First Family Has Been Lying To Us, The American People!!1 WHAT ELSE Are They Lying About??!?!
A tweet:I KNEW IT I KNEW ALEX WAS GAY I TOLD YOU BITCHES
A comment:My 12 y/o daughter has been crying all day. She’s dreamt of marrying Prince Henry since she was a little girl. She is heartbroken.
A comment:Are we really supposed to believe that no federal funds were used to cover this up?
A tweet:lmaoooo wait look at page 22 of the emails alex is such a hoe
A tweet:OMFG DID YOU SEE somebody who went to uni with Henry posted some photos of him at a party and he is just like Profoundly Gay in them i’m screaming
A tweet:READ—My column with @WSJ on what the #WaterlooLetters say about the inner workings of the Claremont White House.
More comments. Slurs. Lies.
June takes his phone away and shoves it under a couch cushion. He doesn’t bother protesting. Henry’s not going to call.
