Golden Girl(116)

“Technically, it wasn’t an accident,” Leo says. “You drove into the Bathtub on purpose.”

“Shut up, Leo!” Marissa says.

Leo’s anxiety is rising like the water level in a Titanic stateroom. It’s going to drown him. He fights for a clear breath. He promises himself it will be fine. It’s no big deal. He just needs to get to the beach and talk to Marissa calmly and rationally.

The road to Madequecham turns to dirt; they rumble along. Marissa suddenly starts to cry, but Leo can’t engage, he can’t get distracted. He realizes the song on the radio is “Falling,” by Harry Styles, which was the theme song for their senior banquet. Is that why she’s crying?

It’s an emotional time, the transition between one period of their lives and the next, leaving the cradle of this island, venturing into the wider world. For him the Rocky Mountains, for her the mansions and glamour of Newport. He wants to assure Marissa that she’ll thrive without him; she’s a smart and beautiful girl, she’ll meet people, make friends, find someone who genuinely adores her. Leo has been pretending for years. That ends tonight. That ends now.

He pulls up to the lip of Madequecham Beach. It’s the wild, windswept southeast coast, nearly always deserted at night. There are a few homes on the bluff, all completely dark. The owners have probably left for the season. Summer is ending.

The waves crash under a nearly full moon, which makes the water look dense and metallic, like mercury.

“Marissa.”

“You don’t want to sleep here, do you?” she says. “You look like I’ve brought you to the proctologist’s office.”

He wants to smile, but it’s beyond him. “We need to break up.” He turns to face her. “I’m not in love with you, Marissa.”

Her face looks ghostly pale in the moonlight, like an image on black-and-white film. She isn’t wearing any of the orangish foundation she favors, and Leo thinks she looks prettier without it. He watches her absorb his words. A flicker of recognition ignites in her expression.

“I know,” she says.

“You do?”

She pulls out her phone and with a few finger-swipes brings up the photograph. It’s of Leo and Cruz kissing. Leo pretends not to remember the moment, but he does, vividly. Cruz was trying to load Leo into the car; Leo was drunk, protesting. When Leo twisted away from the open passenger-side door, Cruz’s face was right there, and an instinct, so long and so deeply sublimated, surfaced. Leo had grabbed Cruz’s head and started kissing him. Almost immediately, there had been a flash. Cruz pulled back and Leo made out the shadowy figure of Peter Bridgeman, gawking at the image he’d captured on his phone.

Leo had socked Cruz right in the eye. “Get off me!” Leo screamed.

“What the heck, man?” Cruz said. He pulled off his glasses; one of the lenses was cracked.

“Get off me!” Leo said again, louder, in case Peter Bridgeman was still listening.

“Me get off you?” Cruz said. “Are you kidding me right now? Man, you’re my brother and I love you, but not…”

But not that way. Which Leo knew, which Leo had always somehow known. Cruz was the Frick to Leo’s Frack, Cruz was his best friend, his ride-or-die—but Cruz was straight.

“Get off of me!” Leo said. He stumbled away thinking Cruz would persuade him to get back in the Jeep, but Cruz didn’t. Cruz drove off, leaving Leo in the parking lot. Leo somehow made his way out to Eel Point Road, where Christopher, who was heading home, picked him up.

Leo takes the phone from Marissa. “Peter sent this to you?”

“He did.”

“So you knew? You knew all along?”

“I’d always suspected,” Marissa says. “Because your friendship with Cruz…your devotion to him was weird, Leo. It was unnatural. But even so, seeing this was a shock. All I could think was that you lied to me…for years. A profound lie, Leo.” She clears her throat. “I tried to convince myself that I was overreacting, that you two were probably just kidding around. I mean, Cruz isn’t even kissing you back.”

Leo nods and hands the phone back to Marissa. “I know he’s not. But we weren’t kidding around. Or I wasn’t.” His eyes are glossy. “I love him. I’ve always loved him. My whole entire life, I’ve loved him. But it was one-sided.”

“It’s disgusting,” Marissa says.

Leo sits with this for a second. He’s not sure if she means it’s disgusting that he loves Cruz when he pretended to love Marissa or that it’s disgusting because it’s two men kissing. It doesn’t matter. Marissa has revealed herself either way. She has no feelings, no empathy, no ability to sense anyone’s pain but her own.

“I’m taking you home,” he says. He throws the car in reverse and fights the desire to leave her on the side of the road. He is not disgusting. He has, finally, spoken his truth: He loves Cruz DeSantis. After he drops Marissa off, he’ll call Cruz, figure out where he is, and apologize in person. He will get it all out—his love, his denial, his shame, his rage, his sadness, his grief. And then, once he’s an empty vessel, he can accept his heartbreak, accept himself, and start to heal.

When Leo pulls onto Marissa’s road, they see red and blue flashing lights. The police are waiting in her driveway.