"What the fuck?" I looked from my best friend to the man who was now standing next to him, resting his hand possessively on his shoulder. I felt like the earth had opened up under my feet.
Liam took a deep breath. “Babe? Could you get Cooper some coffee? Black, with more sugar than makes sense.”
Marco nodded and went to the cupboard. But I couldn’t even form words to say think you.
“Cooper. Sit down.” Liam gestured to the broken down couch. I nodded and sat down, but stayed perched at the very edge of it, my elbows braced on my knees. Marco brought over a mug of coffee and handed it to me. “Stop jiggling like that,” Liam said. “You’re gonna spill it all over yourself.
I tried to sit still, but I wasn’t sure I could do it. “What the fuck, man?” It was all I seemed capable of saying. "What the fuck, man, what the fuck?"
Liam sighed and pushed himself up to sit on the counter. Marco immediately went to stand by him and the two shared another glance. When Marco gave him a small nod of encouragement, Liam nodded back and turned to me. “So, I’ve known I was gay since I was twelve..."
I shook my head. “No, dude, I don't care about that." Seeing his face, I amended that. "I mean, of course I care, but not that you're gay!" I was panting, struggling to breathe through pain like a vise squeezing my heart. "I'm your best friend. You always told me that. How could you keep something this important from your best friend?"
Liam glanced at Marco, who made a "go ahead" gesture with his hand. "It's not that I didn't trust you, and I'm sorry if I made you feel like that because it's not true at all. It's that I didn't trust myself." He looked up at me. "You know who my dad is."
“Of course. Mayor Bill."
"And you know... how he is. About being mayor."
I nodded slowly. Bill Mulligan viewed every single person in Crown Creek as a potential voter. He counted every vote against him and held on to the pain of it, searching for reasons why the people he viewed as his loyal subjects might have turned against him.
"Having a gay son..." I said slowly.
"Would be bad PR,” Liam finished. He shrugged and looked back at Marco who gave him a private smile that, if I hadn't believed Liam when he told me he was gay before, made it glaringly apparent that they'd found each other and were totally in love.
The way I was with Willa. "Fuck. So Willa. What was… What did you really...."
“She was my beard.” He spat the word with flat self-loathing, then let out a long breath. "It wasn't fair to her at all, it really wasn't. I used her as a human shield because I was too wrapped up in how terrified I was of my father finding out.” He wrapped his fingers around his coffee mug. “I told her how scared I was and we came up with the idea together. Having a pretty little ‘girlfriend’ would keep my dad off my back. I’d be ‘normal.’”
Marco made a growling noise, and Liam took his hand. “But toward senior year,” Liam went on, looking at his boyfriend. “After I'd done some growing... and I started getting more comfortable with who I am... I took a look around and realized she'd given up so much just to protect me from my bogeyman.” He shook his head. “How many guys had been interested in her that she had to reject to keep up our charade? How many guys had she been interested in and had to let go because of me?" Regret was written in every line of his body. “It was like I woke up one morning and was like, 'whoa, I'm a real piece of shit.'"
Slowly I put two and two together. “So… that night when I saw her at the movies… you knew about that?”
He nodded. "I actually forced her to go. Eli Jordan is a couple years older than us so we didn’t think we had to worry about her running into anyone from our crowd. And he’s a nice guy and had his own car and all that. She liked him. Maybe even had a tiny crush on him too, though she’d never admit it. So I told her to go.” He shrugged when he saw the shock on my face. “They were going to the movies in Reckless Falls. It’s not like they were at the Royal Diner or some other place in town where they could be spotted. I told her to go and not worry about it." His eyes flicked up at me and then down again.
A chill went through me. “But I was there.“ I still remembered that night with my cousins. I felt like such hot shit hanging with Cole and Derek. I was convinced I was all grown up, both college-bound like my whip-smart cousin Cole, and a total badass like the grown-up Derek.
So when I thought I spotted my friend's girlfriend, I enlisted their help, leading the mission to catch her cheating like I was some kind of teenaged General Patton. “It would have all been okay if I hadn’t been visiting my cousins.”
He nodded silently.
I felt like he’d poured a bucket of ice water on my head. I shook it, then shook it again, trying to make all the pieces fall into place. For years I’d had the jigsaw puzzle of what I thought had happened all perfectly assembled in my head, but now it seemed I’d put together something that didn’t even resemble the picture on the box. "But why didn't you go to prom anyway, then?” I wondered. "You paid for the freaking limo and then didn't even use it. I was so pissed that she got a fancy night out with her friends all scot-free while you stayed home -" I glanced at him. "Okay, clearly not heartbroken at all, so what the hell?"
He and Marco shared another private smile. "Tell him," Marco encouraged.
Liam sighed. "So... okay. When you caught Willa with Eli, I knew she and I had two options. We could keep 'dating,' and pretend we'd worked through our differences, that she was sorry, that I forgave her, all that bullshit. And that's what I was prepared to do except..."
"Except?"
Another smile with Marco. "I'd met someone."
I looked between the two of them. "Wait. Him?"
They both nodded. "When the orchestra came down here to play in the state competition,” Liam explained. “I fell in love with him in spite of the fact that he's a dirty percussionist."
“And he’s a finicky, uptight violinist.” Marco rolled his eyes. "It was a real Romeo and Juliet situation."
"Romeo and Romeo?" I corrected. "Sorry that was terrible," I apologized when they both stared at me.
“Not the worst we’ve heard,” Marco said with a world-weary grin. “Sadly enough.”
”Willa told me to dump her,” Liam went on. “I still remember it so clearly. 'It was my fault for getting caught,' she said. 'And time you spend with me is going to eat up what little time you have to be with him.'" Liam patted Marco’s shoulder and inhaled sharply.
And so did I, because I could actually hear Willa saying those words. Of course she'd take the fall to protect him. I knew her heart well enough - I thought - to not be surprised by this. But the strength she had to have to live under this cloud all these years. Never once had she tried to defend herself with the real story. Not even at his going away party. She stayed strong for as long as he needed her strong.
"Whoa." I could barely force the words around the lump in my throat. "That's pretty..." I shook my head. "Wow." I looked up at Liam. "I think," I said. Slowly. Heavily. "I think I owe Willa an apology.”
Liam winced sympathetically. "Now you know why I always told you that you didn't have the whole story."
I looked back up at my best friend. My best friend who was sitting on the counter next to his boyfriend of five years. The boyfriend who I'd only met today. “I can’t believe how wrong I had it.”
“I’m sorry, Cooper. I couldn’t risk telling you. Willa was the only one who knew.”
“And she never said a word.”
He shook his head. His eyes were shining, and he hurriedly wiped at them. “I owe her everything. More than I can even say. More than one person can ever hope to pay back in a lifetime. That’s why I enlisted you to help me help her when she needed it. I knew I could count on you to do right by her when I wasn’t there to do it myself.”
“And then I went and fell in love with her,” I said slowly, softly.
Liam startled. “You… did?”
I nodded as the realization settled into me. “I did.”
“She’s amazing. I’m not surprised.” His mouth turned up in a slow smile. “Holy shit, that’s fucking great, Cooper. Seriously, my two,” he glanced at Marco, “okay, two of my three favorite people ending up together? Holy shit, that’s like the best news I could get. You guys must be so good together, I fucking love it…”
I held up my hand to stop his enthusiastic babbling. It was too painful to hear when I thought about what came next. “Except… then I went and fucked everything up.” I drummed my fingers on the couch and stared at a spot on the floor without seeing anything. “Is that it?” I pleaded. “Do I finally have the whole story?"
Liam shrugged one shoulder. “Not the whole one. Just my side of it. I think now you should go listen to Willa."