IT WAS A DAY or two later when Francis walked into the aide-de-camp office. I watched as he walked over to my desk, the grin he wore almost sinister “Lieutenant Colonel Laurens,” he said, purposefully allowing his mixture of a Southern and European accent to show, “might we have a word in private?”
“Mr. Kinloch, I have enough to do as it is. If you can wait but a few hours I’m sure we can—”
“I need to speak to you now,” Francis said before adding in a sneering, “sir.” It shocked my brothers. They had never seen a man talk to mе so sternly besides Washington, and thе fact that I was his superior office and not the opposite made it even more of a shock. I wasn’t sure if they knew about us being childhood friends and studying in Geneva, but that wouldn’t have lessened the surprise any more; friends never used such commanding words with other friends.
Hesitantly, I stood up, only if to get the family’s hard gaze off my back. Against my better judgement I got up to follow him. Slowly, I ascended the stairs and went into my shared bedroom, Francis not too far behind. Only when we closed the door behind us did he turn to me. “I want you to understand, Laurens, that I have no ill feelings toward you.”
“If you have no ill feelings why continue to use my surname? You seemed to love my christian name back in Geneva, saying it all night long—”
Francis stomped his foot hard like a toddler. “Well this is not Geneva! I am not the same man! And how many times do I have to tell you that I was not in love with you, and that I never was?!”
“I understand that well, but what you seem to not be able to comprehend was that your behavior toward me in Geneva is not something I can just forget and not think about like a papercut.”
“And there you go again!” Francis threw his hands up in the air. “Blaming this whole thing on me!”
“Because you were the one who caused this, not me! How can you not understand that?”
“You were the one with these Hellish desires in the first place, like a fire! If I had not put it out, you would have burned this whole place to the ground!”
“Oh, so just because I like men means that I’m automatically evil? What if I assumed that because you like women you’re going to tear the whole world to the ground? What would happen then?”
“That’s not the same!”
“Yes it is!”
“The Bible—”
“—can be wrong sometimes. For God’s sake, Francis, it was written some thousands of years ago and has been translated into more languages than you can count on two hands! There’s plenty of room for error!”
Francis looked offended. “You dare drag the word of the Lord into this?”
I tipped my chin high, almost proud. “I might as well, seeing as it is your only defense against my actions.”
“Well you should have expected heartbreak even if the Lord’s word is not true,” Francis muttered to more to the floor than anyone. His words seeped with venom as if they could poison me. “You should have not been so naïve to ever think that what we had was real.”
“But I thought your feelings were real, because you lied so much to me over only a few months. I thought I stood a chance from the way you confused me. I did not expect heartbreak!”
“Well what did you expect, then?”
“I expected to have a future with you, Kinloch! I expected that, even if we could not marry, that we could find a way to be together. Plenty of men live together with their close friends; we could pass off as that.”
Francis avoided my gaze all while glaring at me out of the corner of his eye. “You were foolish to think that. What, did you expect the laws of the universe to change in one second? That suddenly you and your kind would be accepted?”
“I don’t know what I expected!” I was yelling at this point, and it was scratching my throat raw. It hurt just to inhale, but still I panted in my anger, my hands clenching tight at my sides. “You muddled my mind so much that I didn’t know what to think I would get out of our relationship!”
“You’re right back at it again, flipping the blame on my head! When will you realize that I was giving you advice that night? That you really can help your desires and if you try hard enough you can change them?”
“Do you not understand, Kinloch? This is not something you can change in an instant! This is not a result of some childhood illness I do not remember! God made me this way!”
“Yeah, to show the world an example of sin.” Francis scoffed before finally looking in my eyes. His were as hard and shiny as a rock whose surface had been graced by the waves of the ocean. “Look, I was only trying to help you in Geneva, and that letter I sent you in London was supposed to help you as well, but you haven’t taken my advice no matter how hard I try. Now I’ve come to aid you here, if you would only let me get the chance to.”
I flinched away from him, my upper lip curling in disgust. He wanted to help me? Well, he was doing exactly the opposite. “Get away from me. I don’t want you anymore, whether it be romantically or platonically.”
Francis's upper lip began to curl just as mine had, but he was more angry than annoyed. “I will repeat it again and again until it gets through to you: I am just trying to help you—”
“—with something that cannot be helped, something that will remain unchanged until the day I die. There is nothing for you to help me with.”
The Southerner’s hands made for me in starts and stops before he finally seized my forearms in his grip. His nails dug into my skin like claws. He pushed me back up against the wall so that my head banged against it, causing me to let out a yelp in pain. I tried to squirm out of his grasp. “Let me go!”
“I am trying to make you understand, and so far civilized conversation has not worked.”
“That does not justify putting your hands on me!”
Francis leaned in so that I could feel his breath against my cheek. “If you do not listen to me, I’m going to have to show you the hard way, now—”
“What’s the meaning of this?” a commanding voice boomed. Out of the corner of my eye I could see chestnut brown hair—Meade.
Only then did Francis let go. His face reddened, not from embarrassment but from anger. Still, it looked as if his throat had closed from fear, making him unable to speak, so Meade said again: “What is the meaning of this?”
I wanted to punch Francis, but seeing as Meade would think it most ungentlemanly I kept my hands at my sides while he so calmly explained: “Laurens was acting up. I was teaching him a lesson.”
“Laurens—who you shall refer to as Lieutenant Colonel, seeing as he is your superior and not the other way around—does not need to be taught anything, and your friendship does not justify you physically harming him.”
Francis snorted in what seemed like disbelief. “Harming him is not the word I would use.”
The rider shot him daggers with his hard glare, the same thing he did to anyone who dared act up. “It is close enough. If things had gotten worse I am afraid I would’ve had to report your inappropriate behavior to His Excellency, General George Washington.” He inhaled sharply through his nose, and it seemed as if he wanted to do just that but was resisting. “But that is too extreme. The only thing I can request of you is that you leave Lieutenant Colonel Laurens alone.”
Francis took a quick stride forward so that Meade and his chests were touching. “I—” But he stopped. “Do you know the extent of our relationship?”
“I will repeat it again: your status as a childhood friend does not justify you putting your hands on him.”
Francis opened his mouth to speak before hearing a voice on the stairs—McHenry’s saying, “Harrison, if we do not get these reports done for His Excellency, then we’re doomed.”—and being forced to shut it again. Slowly, he walked out of the room, hands clasped behind his back, chin held high and regal just like how he was taught. I remembered the words I said in Geneva—
He had always been an actor.