who am I if I can't carry it all - railmedaddy - Red White & Royal Blue (2024)

“Dad,” June ventures, hesitating at the door. Her dad stops packing and turns to face her, still holding his shirt, suitcase open in front of him. “Do you—” her voice cracks and she takes a shaky breath.

It’s enough to make her dad put the shirt into the suitcase and sit down on the bench at the end of the bed. He pats the space next to him. “Come here, CJ.”

She goes to him and rests her head on his shoulder, snuggling in when he wraps an arm around her. She inhales as a tear tracks down her cheek. Her dad smells like he always does, clean like their laundry detergent mixed with the sweet, spicy scent of his cologne.

“Do you have to go today?” June asks, picking at her chipped nail polish. Her dad sighs. “Alex isn’t home yet.”

There’s silence while she waits for her dad to speak and it feels heavy, like the air is pushing on her. It makes her want to get up and pace the room like Alex does when he gets worked up. Like he will when he finds out.

“It needs to be today.”

June can feel him press a kiss to the top of her head. She knows he needs to leave; he’s told her about his move to California, about how they’ll visit him for Thanksgiving and how he’ll come back for her quinceañera before that. How he’s going to buy a place in Texas for when he visits, for the summers. How he thinks he can make a difference out there, that it’s where he’s needed most, as if he can’t do the same right here at home.

As if he’s not needed here.

As if she doesn’t need him.

He’s told her all about his plans, but no one has been able to explain to her why her family is broken; why they won’t even try. Or why Alex is going to come home to find that their life has been altered in a way that’s going to shake him to his core.

It wasn’t a surprise for June when her parents sat her down two nights ago and told her that they were getting a divorce. It’s ironic really, the way that they’d presented such a united front when they broke the news, sitting side by side on the sofa and reassuring her that they both loved her and that wouldn’t change, that this wasn’t her fault. They haven’t been united about anything for months now. She’d seen it coming. Heard the shouts and the angry whispers. Felt the ice cold silence that followed.

She’d seen it coming.

Alex should have too but he’s Alex. He believes that everyone is good, that everything will always work out, if you try hard enough. He believes in happy endings. He believes in fighting for them.

“He won’t like coming home to find you gone,” June insists.

“I know,” Oscar says, his voice soft. “But it’s better this way, you know how he is, nena.”

“I’m not a baby,” she says automatically.

Her dad chuckles. “No, you’re not. Alex isn’t either. And I know he’ll be okay because he’ll have you to look after him.” He taps the end of her nose.

She will look after Alex, she always has. She’ll make sure he’s fine. But she’s not sure that her dad is right. Alex isn’t going to like being surprised. He hates not knowing things.

He leaves and June cries herself to sleep. In the morning, she washes her face and avoids her mom in their too-quiet house. She reads a book while she eats her cereal, curling up in her favourite armchair to read it afterwards.

Her mom asks if she’ll be okay while she goes to collect Alex and June barely looks up from her book, still angry.

“Okay, honey, we’ll see you back here. Pizza for dinner.” Ellen kisses her hand and presses it to the top of June’s head and then she’s alone.

She closes her book when she hears the car in the driveway, turning in her seat to face the front door to wait for Alex and the inevitable cyclone that he’ll wreak on the house.

Alex pushes the door open and runs upstairs, not seeing June.

“Dad? Dad!” he calls frantically.

Ellen enters the house a few beats later, scrubbing a hand over her face. “Alex, sugar, I told you, he’s not here.”

He appears halfway down the stairs and stares at their mom with tears streaming down his face. June stands up.

“I hate you!” he shouts and runs out the front door, slamming it behind him.

Alex doesn’t come home for dinner. Her mom said he’d turned up at Liam’s house. When June asked if she was going to go pick him up, Ellen had said she was giving him ‘space to process.’

June nibbles at her pizza, worrying about Alex, angry at her dad for leaving and her mom for making him leave. Angry at both of them for letting Alex find out like this. She goes to bed early, too mad at her mom to sit and pretend to watch tv with her. Instead, she tosses and turns and sleeps fitfully until her door slowly opens and Alex tiptoes in, crawling under her blankets and pushing her until she makes space for him in her bed.

“Alex?” she whispers. But he doesn’t say anything in response, just makes himself small and curls into her, pulling her arm over him even though they don’t really both fit in her bed anymore.

He hasn’t done this for years. When they were little, they’d have sleepovers sometimes, sharing a bed and staying up late whispering stories to each other. Other times, he’d sneak into her bed in the middle of the night when he’d had a bad dream and she’d rub his back until he fell asleep again.

Alex sobs quietly, his tears wetting June’s pyjamas, her own silent tears soaking her pillow until she feels Alex’s breaths slow down as he falls asleep. Knowing that Alex is finally resting and safe, June lets herself go back to sleep too.

In the morning, she wakes up alone and when Alex isn’t in his own bedroom, she races downstairs. She finds him smiling over his Lucky Charms as if everything is normal, chattering to their mom about his plans with Liam for the rest of the summer and trying out for the local lacrosse team once the season starts because another boy at camp had mentioned it and Alex thought it sounded fun.

June stares at him, bleary-eyed, trying to work out if last night was a dream. Perhaps she should’ve seen it coming.

“What’re you staring at, Bug? Forget what I look like? Anyone would think you missed me or something.” He opens his mouth to show her his half-chewed breakfast.

“You’re disgusting.”

“You love me.”

They’ve been visiting their dad in San Diego for almost two weeks now, going to the beach and hiking and eating at all of his favourite food trucks and restaurants. Even better is the fact that Evan has been able to join them for some of it because he’s doing an internship in Sacramento for the summer.

It’s been nice, getting to spend time with her dad. And it’s been even nicer seeing Alex just relax, well, as much as he ever does. When their dad is working and June hasn’t planned anything to keep Alex busy, she finds him holed up in his room trying to get a head start on his senior reading list because he never really stops. Even when their dad is home, sometimes she looks up from a conversation with him to see that Alex has slipped out of the room to do more reading, or he excuses himself to go for a run, declining their dad’s offers to accompany him.

Sometimes June isn’t sure whether Alex is keeping himself busy because he’s Alex and he doesn’t know how to be still, or if he’s keeping himself busy to avoid their dad. The answer is probably both.

The last few years haven’t been easy for Alex and June knows he’s really struggled with their dad leaving the way he did. This trip has been better though, she thinks. Alex has been letting their dad in a little bit more — probably in large part due to the Jeep he’d acquired and fixed up with Alex before the divorce with a promise to teach him to drive in it when he was old enough – a promise he’s made good on this summer. Alex usually comes back from those driving lessons smiling and Oscar looks at him like he’s proud of him, and it makes June wonder what their life could have been like.

She’s come back from an afternoon at the beach with Evan to find Alex and their dad in the kitchen; Alex getting the ribs ready for the barbecue because that had always been their mom’s job and he’s the only one who learned her secrets, Oscar prepping the elotes. An old Chente record is playing from the living room and Alex is teasing their dad about the way he’d braced himself on the dashboard when Alex overtook another car on the I-5. He rolls up a tea towel and flicks Alex with it in response. After his first driving lesson, Alex had sullenly complained at the way their father grabbed at the emergency break as they approached an intersection, offended at the lack of trust, so this playful teasing feels as if there’s a new dynamic between them, without the tension that always seems to sit underneath Alex’s skin when it comes to their dad, even when he’s having fun.

They’re all headed to the lake house in a few days and over dinner, Alex is chatting away, gesturing with a rib in one hand and his fork in the other about his plans for when Liam comes to join them.

“You guys have always made a great team,” Oscar says.

Alex wrinkles his face in confusion.

“Your mom sent me videos of your lacrosse final, of that pass Liam sent up the field for you to score the goal to win the f*cking game,” he explains, smiling.

“Oh.” June can see the flicker of emotion across Alex’s face before he schools it and continues nonchalantly, “Mom wasn’t there, she had to go to DC.”

Oscar raises a brow in surprise, but only says, “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it over for the game, kid.”

Alex shrugs. “It’s cool, Leo came. Video probably came from him.” He rips some meat off another rib, chewing and swallowing and then talking more about the game. He seems excited to relive it for their dad, but June doesn’t miss the way he rolls his shoulders back and down before he starts speaking or the way he rakes his lower lip through his teeth when Oscar asks another question.

June was there too. She hasn’t missed a home game since Alex made the varsity team. She saw how disappointed Alex was that their mom and dad weren’t at the final, especially after they’d both promised to try and be there. At least Leo came, so it wasn’t only June. Leo goes to all of Alex’s games too – even the away games – if he isn’t in DC with their mom. He’s the one who picks Alex up from training in the evenings and makes sure he eats dinner if June isn’t home. It makes her heart hurt a little less, knowing that Alex has someone else in his corner, someone who makes time for him; that June isn’t the only one looking out for him anymore, especially when she’s so busy at college now with the paper and everything else.

Maybe that’s unfair on their mom, but it doesn’t feel like she’s trying to do what’s best for Alex. The Presidential election next year is going to turn all of their lives upside down. Again.

Alex is excited about it, of course; he’s full of ideas about the ways he’s going to help his mom and get involved in the campaign. Ever since Ellen sat them down to tell them that she intended to run, it’s dominated conversation in the house ever since.

June is unconvinced that this is going to be a good thing for them. It might be a good thing for the country and for her mom’s ambitions. But for her, and especially for Alex? It only means more change, more scrutiny and more restrictions; less of their mom, less choice and less freedom.

Even worse than the impact on her own life though, is the way that she can see Alex’s brain ticking, the way that he wants to follow their parents into politics, the way he idealises it and is willing to throw himself into the same machine with the same ambitions that destroyed their family. It comes from a good place, his desire to join the political ranks. Alex wants to help people. He’s always fought for the underdog – sitting with the kid at school who had no friends in the cafeteria and taking them under his wing, raising money when a classmate’s father needed money for medical treatment, writing letters when a lack of funding threatened their local library – and this is the best way he can think of to do that.

But she’s scared Alex is going to lose himself in the process. He thinks no one notices, but June knows that he overloads himself with AP courses and extracurricular activities so that he doesn’t have a moment to be still and think. So that his always active brain doesn’t have time to pause and process his feelings. So that their parents will notice what he’s doing and praise him for the accolades that he’s accumulating because their dad isn’t there and their mom is too busy to notice how good Alex is, even without the 4.0GPA and being the debate team captain and becoming a starting player on the lacrosse team and everything else.

The scope of her interest in their lives feels like it’s reduced to ‘one good thing, one bad thing’ and there’s Alex trying and trying with a fire under his ass for no good reason, except to make the people whose approval he’s so desperate for tell him that he’s enough.

June feels selfish sometimes, for being glad that Leo is there for Alex and that Alex gets along so well with him so that it’s not all on her anymore. Because making sure that Alex is okay is her job and always has been.

So, when Alex goes quiet after dinner and barely says a word while they’re washing up, shoulders slumping once their dad isn’t in the room, June flicks the soap bubbles from the sink at him until he splashes her back and when they’re both wet and laughing so hard they can’t breathe, she hands him a cloth to dry the counters while she goes to get the mop.

“Let’s go for ice cream after this, Lil Bit?”

It’s not the 21st birthday party June would’ve planned for herself if she’d had a choice. Her ideal party would’ve been something on a much smaller scale, something with more of her actual friends and family, and less people invited because her mother or those advising her determined they needed to be there. And while she loves the custom Christian Siriano dress she’s wearing — a fitted, sunshine yellow silk co*cktail dress with a layered scalloped embellishment on the skirt that flutters when she moves — a dress that she would never have dreamed of being able to wear two years ago, June also would’ve preferred choosing an outfit herself — probably from Zara or Anthropologie. Instead, she had to choose from a selection presented by a stylist as being appropriate for June Claremont-Diaz, one-third of the ‘White House Trio’, or whatever nickname they eventually decide tests better with the public. It would’ve been in Austin and not some hotel ballroom in DC. Her choice would’ve been a party that was an actual celebration and not another opportunity for her mother’s Presidential campaign.

She smiles though, watching Alex and Nora dancing and laughing and near them, her dad twirling her abuela on the dance floor. They look like they’re dancing to completely different songs; Alex and Nora grinding like they’re trying to get Zahra to tell them off for dancing inappropriately with the press present. June’s glad they’re doing it.

There’s an arm around her waist and a champagne glass pressed into her hand and June leans into Evan for a moment, soaking up his grounding presence.

“Having fun, babe?” he asks, mouth close to her ear.

June twists to look at him. “I am now,” she answers, giving him a flirty smile. She downs half the champagne in one go then takes Evan’s hand and pulls him towards the dance floor. “Dance with me.”

Under the dappled lights reflecting off the mirrorball that hangs over the dance floor, June loses herself in the music. She dances; slow and sweet with Evan at first, then closer, a little dirtier. She laughs as Alex remembers the questionable choreography she’d made him learn to ‘Lady Marmalade’ when they were kids, gets low with Nora and then lets her dad twirl her around the dance floor. Music has always been something of a solace for June, not in the same way that writing is, but there’s something about the way the rhythms and melodies embed themselves underneath her skin and melt away the tension that always lingers.

She’s dancing with Evan again when something in her peripheral vision grabs her attention: Zahra striding into the room in a manner which means she’s in work mode, making a beeline for her mother where she’s sitting quietly with Leo. As soon as her mom sees Zahra, she stands, frowning when Zahra whispers in her ear before nodding with a grim look on her face. They leave, trailed by the Secret Service agents who follow her mom everywhere now; one of the many new fixtures in their lives that will become permanent if the election goes their way.

Alex rushes off the dance floor, intercepting their mom and, if June’s correct, tries to find out what’s going on. He’s forever trying to get involved in the campaign beyond just attending rallies and events when asked. Alex wants to be part of it, wants to know the details, the strategies, the plans. He wants in. It scares June a little, his zealousness for this life. She doesn’t think he understands what it might cost them all.

He’s rebuffed by their mother who leaves the ballroom without a word to June even though they’re supposed to cut her birthday cake soon. He’s rebuffed a second time by Zahra. June watches him watch them leave, sees his disappointment at being rejected in the set of his shoulders before he rolls them back and flashes his best grin at someone she can’t see on the dance floor and dives back in. Leo catches her eye and shrugs apologetically, mouthing the words “security briefing” at her.

She doesn’t realise that Evan’s also been paying attention to what’s happening until he kisses her on the forehead and says, “Not long ‘til you won’t have to worry about all of that. Not when we’re in California and you’re kicking ass at the Sacramento Bee.”

June sighs and buries her face in his chest. That’s what she wants, what she’s planned for after she graduates next year, but the closer to the election they get, the more it seems like it’s out of reach.

Her mom won the election and June is so f*cking proud of her. The Lometa Longshot has made it. First female President of the United States. It’s everything Ellen has always wanted, everything she’s worked so hard to achieve and June knows her mom is going to do good things for the country, for the world.

Her mom won the election and everything is changing. The inauguration hasn’t happened yet but it feels like her life is dictated by the Secret Service. Apparently June gets her own security detail now, which is going to make her final semester at UT really fun. Her mother has turned into a person who appears at dinner – sometimes – for ‘one good thing, one bad thing’ and then disappears again. Though, that’s not such a big change from before. Alex says she’s being unfair, that their mom is doing her best and what she’s doing is important. That at least she’s there unlike their dad. He’s never really forgiven their dad for leaving without saying goodbye.

Her mom won the election and Alex is already planning all the ways that he’s going to help her administration, all the ways that he can get into the ears of the various Representatives to lobby for the policies he wants to see become law. He hasn’t even started college yet and he has a plan for his own rise to the top of the Hill – a Congressman by thirty, that’s the goal. He’s accepted a place at Georgetown and is planning to move into the White House so that he can be close to the action. June is worried about what will happen to him when she’s not around to remind him that he needs more than just coffee to sustain himself and that life exists outside of his college papers and politics, outside of trying to impress their mother.

Her mom won the election and Alex is living in the White House while June stays in Austin to finish up at UT. It’s the first time they’ve really been separated from each other, the first time that she hasn’t been there to look after her little brother and June worries. Alex isn’t sleeping, she can tell from the timestamps on his texts. It’s his senior year all over again – Alex overloading himself to keep busy and fill his million-mile-an-hour brain so that he doesn’t have time to think – not that he’d ever say that’s what he’s doing.

When June visits, she has to drag him out of the West Wing where he’s making a pest of himself trying to get into meetings and charming as much information as he can out of the assistants. Worst of all, June thinks, is that despite all of the attention – interviews and cover shoots and a rocketing social media following – Alex is lonely. He’s going to Georgetown but he’s not really going to college in the way she got to. Cash follows him around and Alex doesn’t talk to his classmates much, attending class and then coming back to the White House to study to avoid the stares and whispers.

She visits again in the spring and sees the circles under Alex’s eyes, sees the way he shrugs off any suggestion that maybe he should try to actually make friends in college. (“I’m fine, Bug. Really. I have friends.” “Meeting people in the library for a group project doesn’t count, Alex.”) June makes a decision. Nora is moving to DC in the summer after she finishes at MIT, but Nora isn’t enough.

It takes her a few weeks to come to terms with what she has to do, to gather the courage to tell Evan.

“I thought we had a plan,” he says, shocked as they sit on a park bench around the corner from her house.

June exhales a shaky breath. “Sometimes… sometimes plans have to change.”

“We’ve been looking at apartments. I’ve been sending you links to rentals and you’ve been ranking them!”

“It’s not something I’ve been planning for a long time, Evan. I really was planning to go to California with you. It’s just…” her voice breaks.

“It’s just what? We can make it work.” He grabs her hand and for a moment, June lets herself think that maybe it can work, that they can do long distance. She knows it won’t last though, that her life in DC is going to be so foreign from the life they had planned together. If she’s pining for what could have been, she’ll never accept what her life for what it is.

June hesitates, because Evan has never understood, not really. “It’s Alex. I’m moving to DC.”

“Alex isn’t a kid anymore, June. He’s in college.” Evan only barely manages to hide the bitterness in his voice.

“He needs me.”

“Did he say that?” June just shakes her head, willing the tears that are gathering in her eyes to disappear. “Does he even know what you’re planning?”

The truth is, June hadn’t told Alex that she’d planned to move to California because she didn’t know how to break it to him. Alex just assumed that she’d be moving to DC as soon as she finished up at UT because as far as he’s concerned, it’s a given that they’ll be together.

June can’t be another person who’s left him.

Evan sighs. “Babe, you’re allowed to put yourself first, you know that, right? It doesn’t make you a bad person.”

“I can’t. You didn’t see him. He needs me.”

It’s not fair on Evan, so, even though he said he’d be willing to try long distance, June breaks two hearts that day.

When she tells Alex, she lies and says that Evan broke up with her because he doesn’t want to do long distance. She lets Alex call Evan an asshole and tell June that she deserves better because she deserves everything. And when Alex unexpectedly flies from DC to Austin and turns up at home with cajeta and ice cream the following weekend, she lets Alex cook her favourite meals and feed her ice cream and stroke her hair. She lets him take care of her for once, even though she broke her own heart to protect his.

They’re in June’s bedroom and it feels like old times. Alex is stealing the food off her plate despite having his own breakfast because he’d taken one look at her waffles and decided they looked better than his own bacon and eggs. She’d be more irritated, but after the lakehouse, he’d scared her; June has seen many versions of Alex, but never like that. Despondent, helpless, quiet.

So, having him back to his incessantly annoying, noisy self after his brief trip to Kensington is a relief which, in turn, is doing wonders for her tolerance levels. She’s only pushed him off her bed once this morning.

June knows that Alex is trying not to pout about the fact that she’s off to another rally today while he once again has to stay home. She still thinks their mom made the wrong decision in taking Alex off the campaign. Of the three of them, Alex is the one people flock to, the one with enough charisma to hold the attention of a crowd on his own. He’s the one who lives and breathes politics, the one who loves it. She gives him half of a waffle.

“Nah,” he says, picking up a piece of bacon and dipping it into her maple syrup. “Doesn’t taste as good when you give it to me.”

“You’re a little sh*t, you know that?”

Alex just opens his mouth to show her his half-masticated food and laughs.

June throws a blueberry at him.

Zahra turns up just before Alex can grab a handful of blueberries to throw back at her. One look from Zahra is enough to stop him in his tracks. June’s never been able to replicate the expression but sticks her tongue out at him when Z isn’t looking.

Zahra is running them through their respective schedules – Alex’s is pointedly lightweight now – when her phone chimes with a notification. She keeps talking while scrolling and then—

“Oh, f*ck my ass.”

Alex looks up in surprise and starts to ask Zahra something when his own phone buzzes. “Oh sh*t.”

June looks over his shoulder to see a CNN push notification on his phone screen: LEAKED SURVEILLANCE FOOTAGE SHOWS PRINCE HENRY AT DNC HOTEL.

She watches as Alex hits play on the leaked footage and sees grainy vision of him and Henry walking together, flanked by Cash, then Henry with his arm around Alex’s waist in an elevator, then the three of them exiting the elevator together.

June’s brain starts whirring. This isn’t good. This is terrible. Zahra is quietly interrogating Alex while he tries to joke and make sense of what’s going on and all June can think about is how to fix this.

Her own phone chirps and she swipes to find a text from a reporter at the Post asking her to comment on Alex and Henry’s relationship and Alex’s departure from the campaign.

The magnitude of what’s happening dawns on her. “This is really bad, isn’t it?” June says quietly.

“It ain’t great,” Zahra drawls while typing furiously into her phone, already in crisis mode.

June has an idea; it’s an idea that Alex will hate, but she’s pretty sure it’ll work.

“What we need is a f*cking diversion. We have to— to send you on a date or something,” Zahra says to Alex.

“What if we—” June interrupts. She starts scrolling on her phone for the photo she has in mind.

“Or, f*ck, send him on a date,” Zahra continues as if June hadn’t spoken. “Send you both on dates.”

“I could—” June tries again more insistently once she’s found the photo. Her idea is a good one, she knows it is.

“Who the f*ck do I call? What girl is gonna want to wade into this sh*tstorm to fake date either of you at this point?” Zahra presses her hands into her eyes. “Jesus, be a gay beard.”

June looks at Alex, whose mouth quirks at the corner at Zahra’s words but for once he manages to keep his own mouth shut.

Finally, she raises her voice, feeling impatient. “I have an idea!”

Alex and Zahra turn to look at her and she hesitates, biting her lip. “But I don’t know if you’re gonna like it.”

Zahra only raises a brow. June turns her phone around to show them the photo of her and Henry that she’s zoomed in on. It’s a photo they took to send Pez at the lakehouse, June and Henry lounging on the dock together. The original photo included Nora, but June’s cropped her out so it’s just Henry smiling from underneath his sunglasses while June kisses him on the cheek.

She takes a breath. Zahra’s gonna run with the idea once it’s out there, June’s pretty confident of that. It’ll fix things for Alex and Henry, even if it means she’ll be under more scrutiny herself. But she can live with that.

“I was on that floor too,” she says. “We don’t have to, like, confirm or deny anything. But we can imply something. Just to take the heat off.”

Alex just stares at her.

June waits.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Zahra says, finally not tapping at her phone. “We’d have to get Henry on board. Can you do that?”

Alex exhales. June can see that he doesn’t want to do this and steels herself to persuade him that it’s the best option they have to protect him and to protect Henry, but then he says, “Um. Yeah, I. Yeah, I think so.”

Thirty minutes later, she gets the go ahead and posts the cropped picture from Texas to her Instagram account with no caption. Her phone immediately blows up with notifications and she switches it to Do Not Disturb before getting on the plane to Pittsburgh.

Alex, however, does no such thing. By the time June has a chance to look at her phone again, there is a steady stream of messages from him containing links to BuzzFeed articles and Twitter threads sent to their group chat with Nora. More telling are the messages that Alex sends only to June (which is when she notices that he’d apparently taken the opportunity to change his contact name again).

Alex

this is bullsh*t

bug they can’t do this to you

they’ve gone all the way back to f*cking rio on your twitter

because we attended the same event as h

Alex

lucky evans insta is private ig

someone tried to stalk him and complained on twitter that they cant

this is f*cked

Alex

if i have to see that stupid darcy gif thread

one more f*cking time

they’re saying i introduced you lol

one twitter thread is calling me the ultimate wingman

for the record i f*cking hate this

Alex

thank you though

Alex

nora is here guess i’ll go pretend we’re banging again

June

Don’t be gross

Love you x

There’s another text, this time from Nora:

Nora 💜

Nora

I’ve got him, don’t worry

Alex might be angry about the invasion of her privacy, but June doesn’t care, not really, not when it means that he’s safe and so is Henry. Zahra informs her that the photo isn’t enough and Buckingham wants her seen with Henry too, the way Alex and Nora are being seen publicly as they speak.

June agrees quickly; it’s not exactly a hardship, to have to spend time with her friend. Plus, maybe it’ll give the boys a chance to see each other.

“No,” Zahra says sharply when June asks if Henry will be staying at the White House. “We can’t risk them being seen together or any indication that they’re spending time together. Henry will stay in a hotel and you’ll be taken to meet him tomorrow.”

June doesn’t get back in until late. Alex doesn’t answer her tap on his bedroom door when she arrives, so she goes to bed.

Bea

Thank you for doing this for them.

I know it’s a lot, having the press all over your private life like this.

June

It’s okay. Like, I wish it wasn’t happening, but it’s worth it.

For them.

Bea

Henry’s not taken it well. He’s trying to be brave though.

June

I’ll be gentle with him tomorrow, promise.

Bea

Thank you x How’s Alex?

June wakes when her door opens and Alex tiptoes in.

“You okay?” she asks without opening her eyes as he sits on the edge of her bed.

“Yeah. No. I don’t know. I just—”

She sits up and looks at her little brother. His curls are a mess and he’s wearing his glasses, like he hasn’t even tried to sleep yet, even though the clock on her nightstand reads 2.13am. He looks tired, the kind of exhaustion that can’t be fixed even by Alex’s level of caffeine consumption.

“Do you wanna hop in?” June asks gently, patting the bed next to her and remembering the way Alex would come into her bed when they were little and he couldn’t sleep.

He shakes his head. “I’m fine. It’s just… tomorrow.”

“I thought you were okay with it?”

Alex lets out a harsh laugh. “Not much of a choice so… I need to see him though, June. I need you to help.”

She sighs. “I’m doing everything I can to help you,” she points out.

“No, I know you are. f*ck. I’m just worried about H. I’m okay – I’ll be okay, of course I will – but I don’t know that he is. You don’t know what it’s like for him. Please, Bug,” he asks plaintively.

“I can’t promise anything,” June points out, because she can’t. They’re going to be flanked by security and photographers will be everywhere. “But maybe you can come and like, wait in the car.”

“And Henry?”

“Let’s talk to Amy in the morning, figure it out.”

“Okay,” Alex says, still playing with the edge of her blanket.

“You sure you don’t wanna stay? It’ll be like our old sleepovers,” she smiles gently as Alex scrunches up his nose.

“I’m not a little kid,” Alex protests.

“No, but I want to sleep and I want you to sleep and you probably won’t if you go back to your room.

He scrubs a hand over his face and into his curls. “I’m fine. Promise.” He gets into her bed anyway.

Bea

June

I’ll be gentle with him tomorrow, promise.

Bea

Thank you x How’s Alex?

June

trying to fool everyone into believing that he’s fine. But that’s nothing new.

In the morning, June dresses carefully, pulling her curls back into a low bun and opting for a white Reformation midi dress with a blue floral print, simple gold sandals and jewellery. As she appraises herself in the mirror, adjusting the ruched bodice and tugging the sleeves up to cover her shoulders, she decides that she looks both American enough for the campaign and sleek enough for a potential princess. The next step in the narrative if this doesn’t blow over, she thinks to herself wryly. But it’s not going to come to that.

No one sees June off that morning, it’s only Amy accompanying her, so there isn’t anyone to stop Alex from climbing into the SUV with them. Amy averts her eyes, as if she could plausibly tell anyone who asked that she was surprised by his presence.

Alex won’t stop fidgeting the entire drive, so June holds onto his arm and makes half-hearted jokes about telling Henry all about Alex as a kid, all of the embarrassing stories she can think of, like the time he was six and stubbornly insisted he could eat an entire anchovy and cheese pizza on his own because June had said it was gross – even though he didn’t like anchovies – and stubbornly did. Only to cry and throw up all over himself ten minutes later. She talks quietly the whole time, fairly certain that Alex isn’t even listening to her, but he stops fidgeting so she keeps going.

They pull up a block from the cafe and she says, “I’ll tell him you’re here. If nothing else, maybe that’ll make it a little easier for him.”

Alex looks at her, brow creased and his lower lip pulled between his teeth. “Thanks,” he says and June moves to open the car door. Alex catches her wrist and she turns to face him again. “Seriously. Thank you.”

June squeezes his hand and then exits the car, letting Amy guide her down the alleyway towards the street. The cafe that’s been selected is on the corner, with outdoor seating and plenty of window frontage to allow them to be seen. Amy and Shaan have coordinated perfectly and Henry arrives at the cafe just as she does. June pretends not to notice the cameras across the street.

“Henry,” she says, smiling. “It’s so good to see you.” June means it, the last time she’d seen Henry in person was at the lakehouse. He was relaxed and happy then, blue eyes sparkling in the sun when Alex teased him. Now though, he’s pale and drawn, and the smile he gives her in response doesn’t reach his eyes. She’s glad to see him though, to let him see a friendly face, to be able to show him that she really does care about him.

June reaches out to take Henry’s hand and squeezes it, tilting her face up towards him. He follows her cue, bending to kiss her cheek and then they go inside – sitting outside was too much of a security risk.

They order a pot of Earl Grey to shar, and some cake; orange and almond for Henry (after he checks that peanuts are the only nut she’s allergic to) and chocolate for June because she can never resist a good chocolate cake. Neither of them actually want lunch, despite that being the plan.

June asks Henry what he’s been reading. “Not the bloody tabloids,” he says wryly, before admitting that he’d taken her up on her recommendation and started reading On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. “Or I was, until…” he gestures.

She smiles sympathetically. “He’s here, you know.” Henry’s head whips around. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry Henry. Not here, he couldn’t exactly third wheel our date. Though trust me, Alex is very skilled at being a third wheel.” Amusem*nt flits across Henry’s face and June knows that he knows exactly what she means. “He’s in the car. Anyway…” June changes the subject and asks him what he thinks of the book, where he’s up to.

Henry knows what she’s doing, that much is clear from the resigned expression on his face, and the way he rolls his shoulders back before answering. Once he starts talking though, he relaxes a little; they’re just two friends talking about books the way they always do.

The tea and cake arrives and Henry pours June’s tea for her.

“I’m surprised you drink tea, if I’m quite honest,” Henry says.

“I know spending time with Alex makes it impossible to think otherwise, but no matter what he says, his level of coffee consumption is not normal. Some of us realise that liquids other than coffee are available.”

“Remind me to send you some of the good tea then.”

June nods, eating another forkful of cake. “You know, eating this cake reminds me of the time – I think I was twelve and Alex was ten? Maybe we were eleven and thirteen, it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, we’d had cake for some reason and there was one piece left the next day. I said it was mine, that Alex could have something else and he was being so annoying. So I licked the cake all over.”

Henry’s brows shoot up and he gives her a real smile, something closer to the smiles she’d seen in LA and Texas.

“Did that work?” he asks.

“What do you think?”

Henry shakes his head.

“Absolutely not. The little sh*t swiped the whole plate and then ate the thing with his hands, licking the plate and his fingers clean. All the while he had that stupid smug look on his face. You know the one.” June tries not to sound like she’s still annoyed about it a decade later. She kind of is though. It was a really good cake.

“You look like him when you pull that face,” Henry says, jutting his chin out.

“What is it you say to Alex? You’re an absolute menace? That’s what you are,” June says, giggling.

Henry does a good job of trying to keep a straight face, but ultimately he bursts out laughing too.

When it’s time to wrap things up, June takes Henry’s hand. “Come with me.”

“Pardon?”

“Just for a minute. Amy?”

Amy steps forward. “Your cars are parked in the same alley, let’s go.”

It’s not enough. It wouldn’t be enough for her, if she was being kept away from Nora with only text messages and FaceTime calls to replace being with the person she’d chosen to love. Alex says it’s fine. That they’re used to it. That they’ve always been long distance.

She knows it’s different this time though. It hits harder when it’s her face splashed across the tabloids with her brother’s boyfriend, together with speculation about whether she would get an official courtship announcement and when it was likely to happen.

Alex is not fine. June sees it. She sees him.

She hears the music playing in his room at all hours. Sees the way he paces the halls. She sees the haunted look in Alex’s eyes, the way he gnaws on his bottom lip, the increasing frequency and length of his runs. And no matter how many times she invites him to hang out with her and Nora, or even just to talk to her, Alex smiles and says, “Bug, I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

June’s seen him like this before. Alex doesn’t realise it, but she always knew when he’d stolen the Maker’s from the liquor cabinet and gone to Liam’s. He doesn’t know that she’d wake during the night to see if he’d come home and if not, waited all morning for him to return. He doesn’t know that she heard him sneak out and start the Jeep late at night one summer in California after another fight with their dad, waiting anxiously for him to come back.

It frustrates June that no one else sees it. Her mom is too f*cking busy saving the world or whatever. Her dad isn’t there. Leo might notice but if he does, he keeps it to himself, or at least, doesn’t say anything to Alex when June is around. Alex is too busy shoving it all down behind his loud personality to acknowledge how he’s really feeling.

The next time June sees Alex emerge from his room, dressed to go running, she tells him to wait and she’ll come with him. It becomes a regular thing, Alex even starts asking her if she wants to go. They don’t talk, just run, but he slows down and allows her to keep up with him.

The first time though, Alex ties on his ratty old sneakers and runs, fast and hard; so fast that June can’t keep up. When she catches up to him at the end, lying on the grass sucking in oxygen, she lies down beside him, staring up at the clouds floating across the blue sky.

“Bear,” June says eventually, breaking their silence.

Alex looks at her then back up at the sky. “f*ck off, that’s a duck.”

June follows his gaze. “No, not that one, over there.” She points. “That one is a bear. Yours looks like a dinosaur.” She pokes him in the ticklish spot on the left side of his ribs.

“Don’t,” he whines, squirming and rolling over to poke her back.

She grabs a fistful of the manicured grass, tearing it and throwing it into Alex’s face before standing up as quickly as she can and taking off towards the Residence at a run.

Alex catches her as they run inside, giggling as they catch sight of Zahra glaring at them while she’s on the phone when they run down a hallway, shoving each other as they walk towards their bedrooms. When Alex flings open his bedroom door, June glances down and notices the blood seeping through his socks at his heels.

“Alex!” she exclaims. “What have you done to yourself?”

He looks down. “Oh, it’s nothing. Must’ve popped some blisters again.”

“Again.” She raises a brow at him. “Go clean up. I’m going to take a shower and then I’m coming in to take care of those for you.”

“You better be decent,” June calls as she lets herself into his bedroom after her shower. He’s lying on his bed in shorts with no shirt on. “Put a shirt on.” She throws the t-shirt that’s on the bed beside him at his head.

“It’s not like I’m naked,” he mutters as he sits up and pulls the shirt on.

She waves the bottle of antiseptic she’s holding at him. “I’m out of band aids. Do you have any?”

“Yeah.” He gets up and walks into his bathroom and she follows him.

“Hang your towel up.”

Alex rolls his eyes but picks his towel up off the floor and hangs it up anyway. Then he takes a box of band aids out of a drawer beneath the sink and tosses them to her, sitting down on the edge of the bathtub before she can tell him to.

June looks at the box and sees the cartoon Captain America on it. “Really? Captain America band aids?”

Alex shrugs. “They’re the ones Dad used to buy for me.”

June’s been a mess since she’d hugged Alex and sent him to get on a plane to London with Zahra, Cash and Amy in tow.

She wishes Nora was around but she’s not responding to any messages or answering her phone. June’s still not over being turned away by the doorman at Nora’s building. He was very apologetic about his instructions but it didn’t make a difference. Nora is ignoring her – ignoring them all – right when June, and Alex, need her most.

Bea has done her best to keep June updated from London. She’d sent her a photo of the boys: Henry asleep with his head in Alex’s lap in their music room, Alex looking down at him. June felt some of the tension leave her body when she saw the photo. Alex looked exhausted, but there was a soft smile on his face as he looked down at Henry and the way their bodies curled in together – seeing him being loved means everything to her.

Bea

I tipped a pot of tea in Pip’s lap

June

??????????

Bea

I did!! Long story short, he was an arse, Gran was awful but Mum was brilliant!

Bea

I’m sure Alex will fill you in, but it’s all good news here. He’s on his way home to you.

She’s seen the headlines of course. The tweets.

Never tell me the odds.

June sobbed about Alex’s tweet and then went down a rabbit hole, carefully curating screenshots to show Alex later, though she suspects that he’ll spend hours reading every comment and tweet, good and bad alike.

A couple of hours later she gets a call.

As ever, Alex eschews a greeting in favour of saying, “I need your help.”

June, always ready to help her baby brother with whatever he needs, picks up her pen ready to take notes. “Whatcha got?”

She’s shaking a little when Alex hangs up. What he’s asked her to do is daunting. The statement the Press Office had drafted was, to quote Alex, ‘boring as f*ck’ and he was right to want to come up with something else. But the fact that he’s asked her to write it for him is a lot.

June’s not entirely sure she’s the right person for the job, for something so crucial, so personal. Something that will make history. Alex insisted she was, even when she asked whether he didn’t want to write it himself.

“I’ll have, like veto power,” he’d said. “But Bug, I probably won’t need to change a word. You’ve got this.”

She can do this. For Alex.

Alex, who used to creep into her bed when he was scared or sad, taking up the entire bed because he sleeps like an octopus.

Alex, who used to torment her with june bugs in the summer, chasing her with them while yelling at her to “stop running away from yourself, June! You’re a junebug!”

Alex, who never stopped calling her Bug, which June used to pretend to hate but secretly loves (now).

Alex, who is so good and has so much love to give and deserves everything.

His instructions were simple. “I want to tell the truth and I want to sound like me. And I want to tell them they should still vote for Mom.”

June curls up in her favourite armchair in the corner of her bedroom, notebook balanced on her knees, laptop ready on the side table and chews on the end of her pen. She thinks about all the things she loves about Alex, who he is and who he wants to become and what made him. She thinks about Alex commanding rooms of thousands during their mom’s first Presidential campaign with nothing but his words, wit, and a dazzling smile. She thinks of his place in history, of what he’d told her about him and Henry, and the snippets of the emails that she’d seen in the press. (June couldn’t bring herself to read the emails in full; that would have been too much of a betrayal.)

And then she starts typing.

June checks her phone again. Unusually, Alex hasn’t replied to her text about dinner. It’s especially odd because she’d told him that she had pozole in the slow cooker – his favourite. He’s also someone who usually replies almost before she can finish texting, unless he’s in class or busy doing things she’d rather not know about with Henry. But she knows he’s not in class because it’s the weekend, and she knows he’s not with Henry because Henry has been in London for a week and isn’t due back for another week.

She frowns. It’s not the only message she’s sent Alex that’s gone unanswered in the last couple of days.

Nora💜

June

Have you heard from Alex?

Nora

yes?

no wait

depends when you’re talking about

he sent me a meme on insta overnight

but he hasn’t texted for 2 days

Checking her phone, she sees that Alex hasn’t actually sent her any messages for two days either. June sighs. Alex is, generally speaking, a competent adult who is extremely capable of looking after himself. However, Alex is also her baby brother who has always had a tendency to get lost in a task and not surface for anything other than coffee unless someone physically forces him to. She’s well aware of the fact that he’s preparing to take his final law exams before he graduates and that Henry took David with him to London, so Alex doesn’t really have anyone or anything to distract him from his studies at the moment. It’s entirely possible that he hasn’t slept or consumed anything but coffee and sour patch kids for two days. Wouldn’t be the first time.

June’s already dressed to go for a run, so she grabs her keys – including the keys for the boys’ brownstone – calls for Amy to accompany her, shoves her airpods in her ears and her phone into her pocket and sets off.

Thirty minutes later, she jogs up the front steps of the brownstone. She pauses to catch her breath and Amy signals that she’ll wait outside. June lets herself in, opening the door, setting her phone and airpods on the console table and enters the code to the security system.

“Alex?” she calls as she walks through the house.

The living room is empty, as is the kitchen. June looks around the kitchen for any sign that Alex has actually been feeding himself but it looks like it’s barely been touched in days, save for the coffee maker. She heads upstairs towards Alex’s study which is no doubt where he’s holed up.

“Alex?” she calls again. There’s no answer.

June skips up the stairs and resists the temptation to stop in Henry’s library to see what new books he has and whether there’s anything she might want to borrow. She continues down the hall to Alex’s study, steps through the open doorway and freezes.

It’s like time stops. Or maybe like being in a horror movie.

June is faced with the sight of Alex in his chair which in and of itself isn’t exactly a problem. The problem is that Alex’s pants are around his ankles and Henry is naked and kneeling between his legs, head lowered and bobbing, the fingers of one hand in Alex’s mouth and June doesn’t want or need to know what his other hand is doing.

She lets out a squeak and flees. Down the stairs – stopping briefly to grab her phone – out the door and down the street.

June - Queen of Hearts

fjlskjflsdjflsdjflsjdfls

H E L P

I went to check on Alex

And Henry was there

I THOUGHT HE WAS IN LONDON

THEY WERE—

MY EYES

Pez – Queen of Diamonds

I see the vision

June - Queen of Hearts

I wish I hadn’t seen the vision

Pez did you change all of our names again

And the gc name

Pez – Queen of Diamonds

I live to serve

Bea – Queen of Clubs

soz not soz glad it wasn't me

Bea – Ace of Clubs

Pez no, I will accept the gc name but I will not be named queen

June - Queen of Hearts

YOUR BROTHER

YOUR RESPONSIBILITY

Nora – Queen of Spades

popcorn.gif

Bea – Ace of Clubs

actually, I believe that when Henry moved across the pond I ceded all little brother custody to you

June - Queen of Hearts

You know what?

Neither of them are our responsibility

Nora – Queen of Spades

!!!!!!!! she said it! so proud of you babe 🤍

guess you weren’t the only one who noticed Alex went awol

June - Queen of Hearts

They’re both very well taken care of

Apparently.