“Employee of the year, right here.”
“You want to know what my ‘job’ is?” he asks, using air quotes. “I work on my dad’s campaigns. My official title is strategist, but all that means is I sit in a room with a bunch of stuffy people who claim to know the world, yet they go home and sit in their cushy mansions with their lots of money and ignore the homeless on the streets as they walk by. Anytime I come up with ideas, I’m shut down because I’m the boss’s son with a poli-sci degree and no experience.” His eyes hold helplessness, and it’s the first time I’ve seen any humbleness from him.
“You want to be a politician?” I ask.
“Something like that.” There’s something in his voice that makes me think he’s lying, or he at least doesn’t care if he ends up in the White House. “It was the original plan. Not so much anymore.”
“That’s all you’re going to give me?”
“It’s not all sunshine and rainbows over here on the trust fund train,” Noah mutters. It’s the first time I’ve seen any real vulnerability from him, and it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know how to respond to it.
“I’d still prefer that to a trailer trash family from Tennessee with six kids to feed and no food.” That’s not probably how, moron.
Noah’s arrogant smile returns. “You’re from Tennessee? So that’s where your accent when you’re pissed off comes from.”
“Taught mah-self real good-like to talk all educated and shit.” I accentuate every word as I would if I were home.
“Why? Southern accents are hot. Better than New York.” His forced accent on New York sounds more from the Bronx than Manhattan.
“I guess I associate my accent with the rednecks I grew up with.”
Noah leans against the sliding door to the balcony. “Okay, this is good. We’re getting to know each other. What was it like growing up with five … brothers and sisters? Or …?”
“Two brothers, three sisters. Charlene is twenty-one, Jethro’s nineteen, Daisy’s sixteen, Fern is fourteen, and Wade is twelve.”
Noah whistles. “Haven’t your parents heard of birth control?”
I can’t hold in the laugh. “Do you say every single thing that pops into your head?”
“Uh, yeah. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You have a point. Mom and Dad should’ve stopped after me. You know how there are people who shouldn’t reproduce? My parents would be on that list. Maybe not at the top—they didn’t beat us, they kept us clothed and fed, and they weren’t monsters—but they just weren’t … there. Football was the only thing Dad and I ever talked about.”
“Did they know you were gay before you were outed?”
I don’t exactly know what the answer to that is. “There was this guy in high school who I used to fool around with. We thought we were careful, but the more time that’s passed, the more I reckon Mom and Dad knew the whole time. When I left for college, they said in no uncertain terms that I didn’t have to return. Like ever. I had a full ride to Olmstead and got a summer job to pay for housing so I didn’t have to go home over the break. Then I was drafted sophomore year.”
“When was the last time you saw your family?”
“That day. When I left for New York. I haven’t been back, and they can’t afford to visit. I used to speak to my siblings on the phone whenever I’d call, but I’ve been told to stop calling now too. I guess it was one thing to know I was gay and ignore it, but it’s a whole other issue when photos of me are plastered all over the news and internet.”
“That’s not cool,” Noah says quietly.
“It’s what I was born into.” I’m playing it off like it’s not a big deal, but for so long I tried to get Dad to say he was proud of me. Cliché, maybe, but I lived and breathed football because I thought it was what I needed to do to get my parents to accept me.
There were times I wondered if I even liked playing, but then when I went to OU and the pressure from my parents wasn’t there anymore, I realized I couldn’t live without it. It was in my blood. From that moment, I played for me and me alone.
Noah pushes off the door and slides past me in the small space to get to the minibar. “I’m getting another beer. You want one?”
“Uh, about that. I kinda told the guys we’d go to the cigar bar with them.”
He stops mid-reach for a new bottle. “Cigars and scotch. Even better.”
Damon huffs in frustration. After drinks at the cigar bar, he follows us back to our cabin to make sure we’re prepared for our interview tomorrow as soon as we hit land, but it’s not going well thanks to an overconfident smartass who can’t take anything seriously.