“Wait, what?”
He looked sheepish. “The guys and I broke into one of the buildings to record. The one with the organ and the gold dome.”
“You broke into the Grand Rotunda? Didn’t you know there’d be an alarm?”
“I disabled the alarm. They caught us when the canister blew.”
“The canister?”
“We were using a huge canister of compressed air to play the pipes like a xylophone,” North explained. “Or trying to. It exploded the first time we tried to let air out.”
“Holy crap. Did they arrest you?”
“Just me,” North replied. “I told the other guys to run.” He saw the look on my face. “It sounds like a big deal, but I wasn’t seventeen yet, so it was juvie court, and they let me plead it down to a misdemeanor that’ll come off my record completely when I turn eighteen.” His expression darkened. “The school sued me separately, though, and got the restraining order. I can’t come within fifty feet of their property line.” He smiled a little. “Not that you’re not worth some jail time,” he said, nudging my knees with his. Then his eyes got serious. “But a criminal record would destroy my career.”
His career? It was an odd word choice for a guy who made coffee for a living.
He took an unsteady breath. “There are things you don’t know about me, Rory,” he said then, and my arms prickled with goose bumps. I inched back on the bench, drawing my knees to my chest. “And I want to tell you. It’s just—” He stopped. His eyes were searching mine, jerking back and forth and back and forth like the sound bar on a decibel meter, and his back foot was jiggling like a jackhammer.
“It’s just what?”
His eyes dropped to his knees. “I’ve never told anyone what I’m about to tell you. Literally, not a single person. So, it’s just—” He lifted his eyes again. “Can I trust you, Rory?”
“Of course,” I said, and reached for his hand. We both jumped a little when we touched, but I didn’t pull away this time, and he turned his palm up to face mine. My heart was pounding like a drum.
“First,” he began, “there was never anything going on between Hershey and me. What you saw that night wasn’t what you thought you saw.”
I nodded. “Hershey told me what happened.”
“Yeah. I doubt she told you all of it.” His voice was grim.
“So tell me the rest.”
“The day we met, when I made you the matcha. That night, Hershey came back—late—just as we were closing. I think she was a little drunk.”
The night of the welcome dinner. Hershey snuck out that night. She’d been drinking, too. The airplane bottles of Baileys and whatever else.
“What did she want?” I asked, even though I knew what she wanted. She’d made it clear that afternoon when we met North.
“She basically told me she was game for a no-strings-attached arrangement,” North said. “I politely declined.”
I couldn’t help it. I giggled. “How’d she take that?”
“Not so well,” North said with a laugh. For a second the heaviness of the moment lifted. “She said, and I quote, ‘It’s a long way down from here.’”
“She didn’t!”
“Oh, yes. She did.” North shook his head in disbelief. “I have to give her points for a healthy self-image.” He shrugged a little. “I shouldn’t have cared, I guess, but I felt bad about rejecting her and then immediately going after you. That’s why I asked you not to say anything to her about us. I didn’t want to rub it in her face that I was crazy about you.”
“Crazy about me, huh?” I managed to sound teasing, but I felt lightheaded, like I might faint.
“I’ll get to that in a minute,” North said, squeezing my hand. “I need to get the rest of this out, first.” I nodded. “Okay. So. The night of your dance she came into Paradiso for coffee, piss-drunk, then puked all over herself. She had puke splatter on her arms and was very worked up about getting it on her dress. So I told her she could get cleaned up at my place and sleep it off for a couple hours.”
“Nice of you,” I said.
“She was your roommate. And your friend, I thought.” The way he said I thought made my stomach sink. Where was he going with this?
He took a breath before continuing. “While she was in the shower, I got out her phone to text you. She’d just been on it, so it was still unlocked. When I clicked on her message pane, I saw an outgoing message to a blocked number attaching a document with your name on it.”
I pulled my hand back. “What do you mean, a document with my name on it?”
“The file name. Well, technically it was your social security number, but I recognized it.”
“Wait, what? You know my social security number?”
North took a breath. “Yes. And I can explain. But you need to know what was in this document first.”
“You opened it?”
He nodded. “It was the fifth time she’d sent the document to that same blocked number, and each time the file size got bigger. I had a really bad feeling about it. And I was right.”
I felt sick. “What do you mean?”
“It was a log,” he said. “Like, a journal, with dates and times, but it was all stuff you’d done. Conversations she’d had with you.” His voice got faster, more urgent, as he went on. “And there were references to audio files that weren’t attached to the message, so while she was in the shower, I imaged her Gemini. You showed up right as I started, and I knew if Hershey heard you, she’d catch me.”
I held up both hands, stopping him. “What do you mean, you ‘imaged’ her Gemini?”
“I made a copy of its contents,” he explained. “So I could go through it after she’d left.”
“I don’t understand. How?”
North hesitated, his eyes doing the back-and-forth thing again. “I’m a hacker,” he said finally, watching closely for my reaction. “I do that kind of thing for a living.”
“A hacker,” I repeated. Whatever I was expecting him to say, it wasn’t that. “So, what, you get paid to break into people’s handhelds?”
“Among other things. Look, Rory, I’m not going to try to rationalize it to you. I know it’s illegal—”
“Very illegal.” I wasn’t trying to be judgy, but it came out that way. He slid back on the bench, away from me.
“Yes,” North said, sounding more guarded now. “Very illegal. Which is why my clients pay me a lot of money for my services, and why no one but you knows what I really do.”
“Which is what, exactly?” I asked.
“Most of my work relates to public image restoration,” he said. “A person does something embarrassing, pictures end up online, and with Forum’s ridiculous privacy policies, there’s no way to take them down once they’re up. Even if you hide the photos from your timeline, they’re still there. Same with wall posts and status updates. They live forever.” North shrugged. “So people pay me to remove them.”
“Rich people.”
“Very rich people. With a lot to lose. People who need my services but prefer that I not formally exist.”
“So your Forum profile—”
“Is there in case anyone starts digging. My name is real, but nothing else. All the check-ins, the status updates, the Forum chats—all fake.” He slid closer to me and took my hands. “I hid it from you because I didn’t want you to think I was that guy. I wanted to be real with you. I wanted to just be me.”
His breath smelled like coffee and breath mints. I kissed him right then, leaning forward so quickly my feet landed on his and our teeth knocked together before we found each other’s lips.
We pulled away a few seconds later, both breathless, him from surprise and me from the exhilaration of what I’d just done.