“Or primetime journalism,” he continued. “Luke’s gay.”
Greta blinked, shrieked, and constricted her sharp uninvited elbows around my neck. “Well, I just found my new bestie! This gal loves hergays!”
Two days after Barnes left, Greta was conveniently struck down by “severe gastrointestinal distress,” departing in Episode 2 with a medical disqualification. “How can my body fail me?! I only want tocompete!” she wailed operatically from the unjustifiable ambulance. “I am a com-pet-i-tor!”
“That cow faked sick,” Arjun complained afterward, reclining poolside between me and Imogen. “She knew the next Trial was for women, so she logged some camera time and left without breaking a nail. It’s despicable. Banging on about ‘losing her chance to compete’ with you right there, Luke. After all you’ve endured?” I didn’t mind having a protector of my own for once, happily indulging his tirade, but Imogen eventually sat up, an inscrutable look on her face. “What?” he asked, an abrupt flash of discomfort in his eyes before he left us to the sun.
Imogen and I dove into the pool, though she still seemed distracted. “You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she replied. “Actually, since our mics are off… I wanted to apologize. I was weird at the airport that first day.”
“You weren’t.”
“I felt I was. I don’t do well with new people.”
“The cameras can’t make it easier. Weirdly, I’m starting to forget they’re there.”
“That’s traditionally when you should watch the fuck out.”
“WasMedals of Honorlike this?”
“Sort of.” She shrugged. “Honestly, I wonder if the network keeps casting me because I thrive in these environments or because they push all my buttons.”
“Maybe both?”
She chuckled, silent for a moment. “Can I be real? I was weird because I don’t usually trust men, especially when money is involved. Well,straightmen. And I didn’t know you were…”
“An Aries?” I grinned.
“Exactly,” she said, splashing me in response. “I haven’t met many outlinebackers.”
“I was never really in. Like, all my teammates knew,” I replied. “But I kept my mouth shut and my eyes down in the locker room. So nobody said anything, at least not to my face.”
“Because you could beat their asses. If the Navy taught me anything, it’s that people get real quiet when they know you can shut them up.”
“I think I was just the best at something people liked so they pretended to overlook it, relieved I wasn’t too flamboyant or, you know, waving a rainbow flag in the end zone. BeforeLiberty Today, everyone ignored me unless they wanted to discuss career sacks.”
“So there weren’t, like, people thanking you for being loud and proud after it aired?”
“I mean, sure, but it wasn’t actually aboutme. I was a symbol in shoulder pads before the accident, and then I was a tool that lost its purpose the second it broke,” I said, surprised how relieved I felt to say it aloud. “With the exception of my family, you and Arjun are the only people in ages to ask me about anything other than football.”
“Well, you and Arjun are a full-blown Aries convention.” She laughed when my jaw dropped. “Come on, my gaydar’s notthatoff.”
I lowered my voice, all too aware the wrong person overhearing would destroy everything. “He flirts with every girl here. He’s not an Aries, he’s just… urbane.”
“Is that Ivy League for ‘metrosexual’?”
“You really think he’s gay?”
“He better be,” she exhaled. “It’s the only reason I’d trust a man who talks that fast.”
Imogen rarely spoke of her family, but I eventually learned her mother left not long after her tenth birthday, abandoning Imogen in a Tucson ranch house with her taciturn prison guard father and younger brother, Todd. Soon after, her father decreed a girl her age should be able to manage the household. Even Todd became her responsibility. That is, until the September she turned seventeen. She came home one afternoon to findher brother had more in common with their mom than she’d thought. Todd had escaped by bus to a cushy boarding school in Santa Barbara, having forged signatures to secure full financial aid. That night, her dad breathed in Todd’s empty room and remarked, “Well, he was always the one heading places. Guess he decided to go early.”
Imogen understood then the only person concerned with her fate was her. She wouldn’t stay in that ranch house, receiving semi-annual platitudes on creased postcards of the Montecito cliffs. And thus at eighteen, the Navy. And thus at twenty-four,Medals of Honor. And thus at twenty-six,Endeavor.
That day at the pool, I was convinced I’d know Imogen the rest of my life. If you’d told me that two years later Imogen would swear to never speak to me again, that she’d furiously—and deservedly—kick my stomach hard enough to break a rib, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I wouldn’t have believed a lot of things back then. It never stopped them from happening.
7
