Page 135 of Bad Prince
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tristan
My mother never calls before ten.
It’s 8:12 a.m.
I’m icing my shoulder after lift when my phone lights up:
Mother.
I let it ring twice longer than necessary before answering.
“Morning.”
Her inhale is clipped. Controlled. The way it gets when she’s about to perform outrage instead of feel it.
“I was at brunch with the Whitakers and the Hadleys. And I met Senator Mallory’s wife.”
I close my eyes.
“And?”
“And one of their daughters,” she continues tightly, “was showing something on her phone. Some… social media platform. And you were in it.”
I rub my forehead.
“In what, exactly?”
She lowers her voice as if the word itself is scandalous.
“A video.”
There it is.
“And who,” she continues, “is this volleyball girl?”
I lean back against the cold tile wall of the training room.
“Hispanic mom,” I say calmly, “that’s Stella Cortez.”
A beat.
Silence stretches across the country.
“…Cortez,” she repeats.
“Yes.”
“From Royal Oaks?”
“Yes.”
“The girl who?—”
“—got run out?” I finish evenly.
She exhales sharply.
