Page 110 of Golden Girl
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 animage 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.
“Meget offyou?” 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.
“Getoffof 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 wasunnatural.But even so, seeing this was a shock. All I could think was that you lied to me…for years. Aprofoundlie, 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 isnotdisgusting. 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, accepthimself,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.
The Chief
He had nothing for weeks, then everything at once. No sooner did Jasmine Kelly say the name Lopresti than the Chief knew it was Marissa’s sister, Alexis, who worked dispatch and her new boyfriend, Officer Pitcher, who tampered with the evidence. They destroyed Vivian Howe’s clothes; they paid Justin to plant the running shoes.
Alexis wants to take all the blame. It washerfault,herplan. She had been able to persuade Pitcher because she had something Pitcher wanted. (This is an old story, Ed thinks.) Alexis was trying to protect her sister, Marissa.
Marissa Lopresti is the one who hit Vivian Howe. The Chief brings Marissa into the station and she spews forth the whole story. She and Leo Quinboro broke up at a bonfire at Fortieth Pole the night before the accident. Marissa then got cozy with Peter Bridgeman. It was easy, she said, because Peter had had a crush on her since fourth grade. Marissa thought Leo would get jealous seeing her with Peter, but Leo disappeared; no one had seen him. Marissa blew Peter off and left the party but Peter Bridgeman lurked around, eventually catching Leo and Cruz DeSantis kissing by the side of Cruz’s Jeep.
The photograph, which the Chief had suspected was of two people in a compromising position, was of Cruz and Leo.
Okay, okay,the Chief thinks. He’s a lot more “woke” (as Chloe and Finn would say) than he was twenty or even ten years ago, butthispossibility hadn’t even crossed his mind. Clearly, he still has some evolving to do.
Peter sent the photograph to Leo and Cruz in the middle of the night, but he didn’t send it to Marissa until the next morning, right after Cruz woke Peter up by pounding on his door. (Peter hadn’t answered, not wanting a confrontation that his parents might hear.) Peter Bridgeman’s phone records, which the Greek managed to subpoena, showed a text with an attachment sent to Marissa’s phone at 7:14 a.m.
