Wait, what?
I turn fully onto my side, tuck my hands beneath my cheeks. Alex mirrors me. His eyes shine, but they look kind of glazed, too. As we lie here in the silence, watching each other, I take stock of all the things we’ve unearthed today.
Alex’s relationship with his father. My relationship with my ex. His aunt. My parents. Miriam. Freddy. Sasha, and Brijesh. We offered up all these pieces of ourselves to each other, like the bindings of a truce.
This is it.
Now or never.
My perfect moment to push the envelope a little further.
If Tracy Garcia could see me now,I think queasily.
Beneath the comforter I shift, jittery with the conscious weight of what I’m about to do. One of my feet comes to rest against Alex’s ankle by accident. He doesn’t move away, and neither do I. He just dips his eyes down, then back up.
“Alex?” I ask.
“Yeah?” His voice is a ghost of what itcanbe.
“What’s the deal with your father and Dougie Dawson?”
His mouth pulls into a taut line, and I instantly regret bringing it up out of the blue, or at all, if it’s something that puts that sad of a look on his face.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
Don’t tell me. Say you still think it’s hilarious I would even ask.
“No, it’s fine,” Alex whispers. “It’s not some huge secret.”
“It’s not?” The question comes out embarrassingly hopeful, and the relief I feel is instantaneous.
He takes a deep breath. “Dougie has a son my age who went to Choate, too. Ellis. He’s cool. One night after a party, we wound up smoking a joint together. That’s how I know some of Dougie and Robert’s history.”
I say nothing, but it’s pretty telling that Alex doesn’t even know the truth from his own dad; he heard it through the grapevine.
“Dougie and Robert were in the same class at Harvard,” Alex starts. “Before my dad’s wife married him, she dated Dougie all through college. Their senior year, Dad basically stole Linda from Dougie. So, that’s how it started.”
“How itstarted?” I repeat.
“It gets worse. Did you ever seeThe Social Network?”
I nod.
“Picture what happened between Zuckerberg and all the people he screwed over, but with a start-up that flopped and lost hundreds of thousands of the founders’ own money. Dougie was supposedly the biggest investor, too. He’s Eduardo Saverin, and my dad is Zuckerberg in this scenario. But whenever the failure gets brought up—in press, and even more so in private—each of them makes a point to blame the other.”
“Damn,” I whisper.
“Yeah,” Alex says. “After they both finished grad school, Dougie made it his life’s mission to have Robert disregarded from every job he wanted in New York. He eventually got one at LC and worked his way up the ranks, but it took him a lot longer because of Dougie.”
“They both sound so ruthless,” I say.
“Were,and still are,” Alex says. “Two men intent on each other’s destruction.”
“Is that why Dougie became our CEO?” I ask. “To steal Robert’s legacy?”
What would my mom have thought about that? Legacy was soimportant to her. In her eyes, there is probably no greater sin than overwriting someone’s name once they’re gone.
Alex turns onto his back, puts an arm over his forehead. “Maybe. I think part of it had to do with Ellis and me,” he admits. “When we were old enough to apply for Harvard ourselves, my dad started to care about my schoolwork and extracurriculars. He even came to my college counseling sessions.” Alex says all this in the same clinical tone he used earlier, as if it’s boring, monotonous stuff. Like he’s trying to keep some unnamed emotion at bay.
