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He tests leaning into the kiss and is rewarded by Henry’s mouth sliding and opening against his, Henry’s tongue brushing against his, which is,wow.It’s nothing like kissing Nora earlier—nothing like kissing anyone he’s ever kissed in his life. It feels as steady and huge as the ground under their feet, as encompassing of every part of him, as likely to knock the wind out of his lungs. One of Henry’s hands pushes into his hair and grabs it at the roots at the back of his head, and he hears himself make a sound that breaks the breathless silence, and—
Just as suddenly, Henry releases him roughly enough that he staggers backward, and Henry’s mumbling a curse and an apology, eyes wide, and he’s spinning on his heel, crunching off through the snow at double time. Before Alex can say or do anything, he’s disappeared around the corner.
“Oh,” Alex says finally, faintly, touching one hand to his lips. Then: “Shit.”
FIVE
So, the thing about the kiss is, Alex absolutely cannot stop thinking about it.
He’s tried. Henry and Pez and their bodyguards were long gone by the time Alex made it back inside. Not even a drunken stupor or the next morning’s pounding hangover can scrub the image from his brain.
He tries listening in on his mom’s meetings, but they can’t hold his attention, and Zahra bans him from the West Wing. He studies every bill trickling through Congress and considers making rounds to sweet-talk senators, but can’t muster the enthusiasm. Not even starting a rumor with Nora sounds enticing.
He starts his last semester, goes to class, sits with the social secretary to plan his graduation dinner, buries himself in highlighted annotations and supplemental readings.
But beneath it all, there’s the Prince of England kissing him under a linden tree in the garden, moonlight in his hair, and Alex’s insides feel positivelymolten,and he wants to throw himself down the presidential stairs.
He hasn’t told anyone, not even Nora or June. He has no idea what he’d even say if hedid.Is he even technically allowed to tell anyone, since he signed an NDA? Was thiswhyhe had to sign it? Is this something Henry always had in mind? Does that mean Henry hasfeelingsfor him? Why would Henry have acted like a tedious prick for so long if he liked him?
Henry’s not offering any insights, or anything at all. He hasn’t answered a single one of Alex’s texts or calls.
“Okay, that’s it,” June says on a Wednesday afternoon, stomping out of her room and into the sitting room by their shared hallway. She’s in her workout clothes with her hair tied up. Alex hastily shoves his phone back into his pocket. “I don’t know what your problem is, but I have been trying to write for two hours and I can’t do it when I can hear you pacing.” She throws a baseball cap at him. “I’m going for a run, and you’re coming with me.”
Cash accompanies them to the Reflecting Pool, where June kicks the back of Alex’s knee to get him going, and Alex grunts and swears and picks up the pace. He feels like a dog that has to be taken on walks to get his energy out. Especially when June says, “You’re like a dog that has to be taken on walks to get his energy out.”
“I hate you sometimes,” he tells her, and he shoves his earbuds in and cranks up Kid Cudi.
He thinks, as he runs and runs and runs, the stupidest thing of all is that he’s straight.
Like, he’s pretty sure he’s straight.
He can pinpoint moments throughout his life when he thought to himself,See, this means I can’t possibly be into guys.Like when he was in middle school and he kissed a girl for the first time, and he didn’t think about a guy when it was happening, just that her hair was soft and it felt nice. Or when he was a sophomore in high school and one of his friends came out as gay, and he couldn’t imagine ever doing anything like that.
Or his senior year, when he got drunk and made out with Liam in his twin bed for an hour, and he didn’t have a sexual crisis about it—that had to mean he was straight, right? Because if he were into guys, it would have felt scary to be with one, but it wasn’t. That was just how horny teenage best friends were sometimes, like when they would get off at the same time watching porn in Liam’s bedroom… or that one time Liam reached over, and Alex didn’t stop him.
He glances over at June, at the suspicious quirk of her lips. Can she hear what he’s thinking? Does she know, somehow? June always knows things. He doubles his pace, if only to get the expression on her mouth out of his periphery.
On their fifth lap, he thinks back over his hormonal teens and remembers thinking about girls in the shower, but he also remembers fantasizing about a boy’s hands on him, about hard jawlines and broad shoulders. He remembers pulling his eyes off a teammate in the locker room a couple times, but that was, like, an objective thing. How was he supposed to know back then if he wanted to look like other guys, or if hewantedother guys? Or if his horny teenage urges actually even meant anything?
He’s a son of Democrats. It’s something he’s always been around. So, he always assumed if he weren’t straight, he wouldjustknow,like how he knows that he loves cajeta on his ice cream or that he needs a tediously organized calendar to get anything done. He thought he was smart enough about his own identity that there weren’t any questions left.
They’re rounding the corner for their eighth lap now, and he’s starting to see some flaws in his logic. Straight people, he thinks, probably don’t spend this much time convincing themselves they’re straight.
There’s another reason he never cared to examine things beyond the basic benchmark of being attracted to women. He’s been in the public eye since his mom became the favored 2016 nominee, the White House Trio the administration’s door to the teen and twenty-something demographic almost as long. All three of them—himself, June, and Nora—have their roles.
Nora is the cool brainy one, the one who makes inappropriate jokes on Twitter about whatever sci-fi show everyone’s watching, a bar trivia team ringer. She’s not straight—she’s never been straight—but to her, it’s an incidental part of who she is. She doesn’t worry about going public with it; feelings don’t consume her the way his do.
He looks at June—ahead of him now, caramel highlights in her swinging ponytail catching the midday sun—and he knows her place too. The intrepidWashington Postcolumnist, the fashion trendsetter everyone wants to have at their wine-and-cheese night.
But Alex is the golden boy. The heartthrob, the handsome rogue with a heart of gold. The guy who moves through life effortlessly, who makes everyone laugh. Highest approval ratings of the entire First Family. The whole point of him is that his appeal is as universal as possible.
Being… whatever he’s starting to suspect he might be, isdefinitely not universally appealing to voters. He has a hard enough time being half-Mexican.
He wants his mom to keep her approval ratings up without having to manage a complication from her own family. He wants to be the youngest congressman in US history. He’s absolutely sure that guys who kissed a Prince of England and liked it don’t get elected to represent Texas.
But he thinks about Henry, and,oh.
He thinks about Henry, and something twists in his chest, like a stretch he’s been avoiding for too long.
