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“Uh.” Has he been that obvious already?
“About Raf.”
Alex exhales, his shoulders dropping, and returns his attention to the dry rub.
“Ah. That motherfucker,” he says. They’ve only broached the topic in passing obscenities over text since the news broke. There’s a mutual sting of betrayal. “Do you have any idea what he’s thinking?”
“I don’t have anything kinder to say about him than you do. And I don’t have an explanation either. But…” He pauses thoughtfully, still stirring. Alex can sense him weighing out several thoughts at once, as he often does. “I don’t know. After all this time, I want to believe there’s a reason for him to put himself in the same room as Jeffrey Richards. But I can’t figure out what.”
Alex thinks about the conversation he overheard in the housekeeper’s office, wondering if his dad is ever going to let him in on the full picture. He doesn’t know how to ask without revealing that he literally climbed into a bush to eavesdrop on them. His dad’s relationship with Luna has always been like that—grown-up talk.
Alex was at the fund-raiser for Oscar’s Senate run where they first met Luna, Alex only fifteen and already taking notes. Luna showed up with a pride flag unapologetically stuck in his lapel; Alex wrote that down.
“Why’d you pick him?” Alex asks. “I remember that campaign. We met a lot of people who would’ve made great politicians. Why wouldn’t you pick someone easier to elect?”
“You mean, why’d I roll the dice on the gay one?”
Alex concentrates on keeping his face neutral.
“I wasn’t gonna put it like that,” he says, “but yeah.”
“Raf ever tell you his parents kicked him out when he was sixteen?”
Alex winces. “I knew he had a hard time before college, but he didn’t specify.”
“Yeah, they didn’t take the news so well. He had a rough couple of years, but it made him tough. The night we met him, it was the first time he’d been back in California since he got kicked out, but he was damn sure gonna come in to support a brother out of Mexico City. It was like when Zahra showed up at your mom’s office in Austin and said she wanted to prove the bastards wrong. You know a fighter when you see one.”
“Yeah,” Alex says.
There’s another pause of Chente crooning in the background while his dad stirs, before he speaks again.
“You know…” he says. “That summer, I sent you to work on his campaign because you’re the best point man I got. I knew you could do it. But I really thought there was a lot you could learn from him too. You got a lot in common.”
Alex says nothing for a long moment.
“I gotta be honest,” his dad says, and when Alex looks up again, he’s watching the window. “I thought a prince would be more of a candy-ass.”
Alex laughs, glancing back out at Henry, the sway of his back under the afternoon sun. “He’s tougher than he looks.”
“Not bad for a European,” his dad says. “Better than half the idiots June’s brought home.” Alex’s hands freeze, and his head jerks back to his dad, who’s still stirring with his heavy wooden spoon, face impartial. “Half the girls you’ve brought around too. Not better than Nora, though. She’ll always bemy favorite.” Alex stares at him, until his dad finally looks up. “What? You’re not as subtle as you think.”
“I—I don’t know,” Alex sputters. “I thought you might need to, like, have a Catholic moment about this or something?”
His dad slaps him on the bicep with the spoon, leaving a splatter of crema and cheese behind. “Have a little more faith in your old man than that, eh? A little appreciation for the patron saint of gender-neutral bathrooms in California? Little shit.”
“Okay, okay, sorry!” Alex says, laughing. “I just know it’s different when it’s your own kid.”
His dad laughs too, rubbing a hand over his goatee. “It’s really not. Not to me, anyway. I see you.”
Alex smiles again. “I know.”
“Does your ma know?”
“Yeah, I told her a couple weeks ago.”
“How’d she take it?”
“I mean, she doesn’t care that I’m bi. She kind of freaked out it was him. There was a PowerPoint.”
