Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1)(74)

But he didn’t know how to open his fist. Not when it came to April. Not when it came to his career and his public persona. Not when he knew precisely, precisely, how it felt for that outstretched hand to remain empty. Always empty.

“Marcus?” April’s gaze was gentle. Concerned. “Are you—”

Then, as if he’d summoned her with his earlier thoughts—a horrifying possibility—his cell rang, and Debra Rupp appeared on the screen.

“It’s my mother. I can call her back later,” he told April.

Much later. Possibly never.

She waved her fork dismissively. “It’s your choice. I certainly won’t be offended if you want to talk to your parents.”

He didn’t, so he let the phone ring itself to silence while they both watched. A few seconds later, there was another chime. A voicemail. His mother had left a voicemail.

With a simple tap of his forefinger, he could delete it without listening. Instead, he lifted the cell to his ear and listened, consciously straightening his shoulders and letting the back of the chair brace him against whatever he might hear.

“Marcus, Madame Fourier saw your picture in one of those trashy magazines at the grocery store. She told us you’ve apparently been in San Francisco for weeks. Visiting your new girlfriend from Twitter, according to the article. She was obnoxiously pleased to know more than we did concerning your whereabouts and activities. We had assumed you were back in Los Angeles or on set somewhere.”

He couldn’t quite decipher his mother’s tone. Was she hurt he hadn’t informed them of his proximity or visited in the past month? Aggrieved that her former colleague had been gifted an opportunity for gloating? Or was she merely stating facts?

“Call us at your earliest convenience, should you find yourself so able.”

Well, that was definitely sarcasm.

After he’d heard it all, he deleted the message, as he probably should have done when his instincts first urged him that way, and pushed the phone away a few inches. Then another few inches, more, more, until he couldn’t reach farther across the table, and April laid a light, warm hand on his forearm.

“Marcus?” So low. So sweet.

Would she still be so sweet if she knew everything?

He shook his head, shook the thought away.

Their hidden history on the Lavineas server didn’t matter, not right now. This part of himself he could show her. This story he could tell, even though it gathered and thickened in his throat in a way that made speaking difficult.

Really, the outlines of the situation were so simple. It was stupid to struggle so hard for words. “I, uh, I hadn’t told my parents I was in the area, but one of the teachers at the school where they used to work saw an article about us and informed my mom. She wants me to call her back.”

She’d want him to visit, because he always had to come to them.

From the doorway to their kitchen, he’d make himself small and watch them dance.

“Do you want to call her back?” April’s voice was absolutely neutral.

She’d taken off her glasses at some point, scooted her chair closer, and those brown eyes were soft and patient. Full of affection and trust he didn’t deserve.

“They—” He cleared his throat. “They hate the show. Did I tell you that?”

Silently, she shook her head.

“They’ve hated all my roles, I think. But especially Aeneas, because they both taught classical languages, and they feel like the show slaughtered Virgil’s story.” His hand wasn’t entirely steady when he reached for another sip of water. “Which it did, of course, but I still didn’t—”

Her knees were abutting his now, nudging softly. A reminder of her closeness.

His voice cracked. “I d-didn’t expect them to write op-ed articles about the ‘pernicious influence’ of the show, and how it ‘promotes a disastrous misunderstanding of foundational mythology.’”

That particular piece had run in the nation’s most popular newspaper, and after his computer had read the text aloud to him, he’d regretted his choice. If he’d read it himself, in print, maybe he could have pretended he’d gotten it wrong somehow. Mixed up the letters. Misunderstood, as he so often did.

In his parents’ articles, they never mentioned their son or his role on the show. Not once. But of course, the names made the connection obvious, and he could have predicted the public reaction, the tittering about how such learned parents had birthed a son like him.

“I thought it would be different. As an adult, I mean. I thought being around them would feel different someday. Once I had a career and friends and something outside them. But it never does, and April—” He turned to her, and her eyes were glassy again, for him, and he couldn’t bear it but couldn’t stop himself, either. “April, I’m so fucking angry every time I see them.”

When she took his hand, the desperate force of his grip must have hurt.

She didn’t complain. Didn’t move away.

“I hate it. Hate it,” he spat. “How they despise all my roles, and how they wrote those articles and will probably write more, and how they looked at me like I was dumb and lazy and—and worthless, even though I swear to God, I tried. I tried and tried, as hard as I could, and I was just a fucking kid, and they were teachers. How could they not have known?”