Royally Crushed (17 page)

What Georg is really telling me, though, is that he likes me enough that he doesn’t care what Steffi knows or doesn’t know. Or what the world knows.

Which is completely, totally cool.

So we go back into the reception hall, and even though we don’t hold hands or dance so close we look like we need to get a room or anything, we have a great time. We’re the only people under the age of thirty on the dance floor, but it doesn’t matter.

And just when I’m thinking how glad I am Dad made me learn to dance like a proper lady, even though I’ve always been certain I’d never want to dance to anything like Mozart or Wagner or whatever it is the orchestra’s playing, I catch his eye across the room. He’s handing the minister of the treasury a glass of water like it’s no big thing, but he’s looking at me.

And he smiles. Well, until Georg’s facing the other way. Then he’s not. And it’s
not
good.

I can tell from the way he very pointedly shakes his head that we’re going to talk later, and it’s going to be, as he would put it, a bit
unpleasant
. But he’s beginning to warm to the idea of me seeing Georg, I can tell. He doesn’t want me developing a smoker’s rasp like Karl’s, or hanging out in the palace men’s room, but he wants me to be happy, even if getting to a happy place involves facing the risks that come with dating Prince Manfred of Schwerinborg’s only child. That much I can tell.

Geez, at least I hope so. What if he’s
really
ticked off
this time? What if he threatens to send me back to Virginia over this? It’s definitely possible. . . .

No. I won’t think about that. I’ll deal with Dad tomorrow. There’ll be
some
way for me to get out of this. I have to. Because now I have a boyfriend.

And I don’t want to have to leave him. Let alone live with Mom and Gabrielle and deal with all the crap that’s going to be coming my way from Christie, Jules, and Natalie.

Georg grabs my hand and spins me around, and I just can’t help but smile to myself.

Who’da thought that my mom announcing she was gay could get me a boyfriend? A boyfriend who isn’t a safety boyfriend, like Jason Barrows could have been, or someone like David Anderson either, who’d probably only think of me as his Armor Girl.

Probably.

Christie’s my friend, so I’ll let her say her piece, and I’ll even make myself think through everything she has to say—I owe a girlfriend that much—even though I know in my heart I’m not going to change my mind about Georg.

I cannot believe I have actually found someone who makes my stomach do flippity flops every time I look in his eyes. Someone who
gets
me and doesn’t care if I’m popular
or that my mother is a lesbian. Someone flat-out gorgeous who can kiss me inside out.

Someone who’ll let me see just what it feels like to hook my fingers in the back pockets of his Levi’s while he kisses me.

I can’t wait to try that.

No matter what it takes with Dad, I’m so not going back to Virginia. This is where I belong.

For Doug

EXACTLY SIX WEEKS, FIVE DAYS, AND NINE HOURS AGO,
my mother ruined my life. And even worse, because of her, I am missing a damned good party.

Right this second, I should be over at my best friend Christie Toleski’s house, getting ready to watch a parade of hot French and Australian actors (my favorite types) walk the red carpet at the Golden Globes. My friends Natalie Monschroeder and Julia (a.k.a. Jules) Jackson are already there, undoubtedly noshing on popcorn during the television coverage and discussing the plasticity of the host’s face while she kisses and disses the celebs and their clothes—or lack thereof.

When Christie’s parents aren’t in the room, they’re also
probably talking about how far Christie and her boyfriend, Jeremy Astin, went on their last date, how far she actually wants to go, and how all of them are sooooo sure David Anderson (whom I’ve been crushing on since kindergarten) is finally interested in me.

But no. They’re doing all that without me. I know because they texted me about half an hour ago to rub it in.

Unfortunately, my failure to attend this year’s let’s-make-fun-of-celebrities Golden Globes party (not to be confused with our annual let’s-make-fun-of-celebrities Oscar, Grammy, and Emmy parties) is because, thanks to my mother, my parents are getting a divorce and I had to move with my dad to Schwerinborg a month ago.

Yes, Schwerinborg’s a real country, and yes, my friends all refer to it as Smorgasbord, even though the people here aren’t even Scandinavian. The Schwerinborgians—or Schwerinborgers or whatever they’re called—speak German. And we’re south of Germany, not north. Not that any of my friends care where it is, other than the fact that it’s very, very far from Virginia.

So why not live with my mother? After all, she has a nice apartment back in Virginia, where all the important awards shows are carried live. And even though the location of Mom’s new place means I’d have to go to Lake Braddock High School instead of to Vienna West, where I’ve been
going, I could still see my friends on a regular basis.

Hmmmm . . . how about because Mom’s new apartment is also home to Mom’s new
girlfriend
?

Yep, girlfriend. A super-organized, yoga-twisting, vegan Weight Watchers–devotee girlfriend named Gabrielle, who is, no kidding, a decade younger than my mother. And no, Gabrielle isn’t a girlfriend like Christie, Natalie, and Jules are my girlfriends.

Gabrielle is
that
kind of girlfriend.

I haven’t even had the guts to tell
my
girlfriends about her, and it doesn’t take a psychology degree to guess why. It’s the kind of thing that takes you a while to work up to telling someone, even your best friends. Telling them about my parents’ divorce—and that I was moving to Europe with Dad—was bad enough. Popping out with, “Oh, and by the way, my mom—the woman who took us all out for manicures and facials before homecoming and has definitely seen all of you naked at one time or another when we’ve gone clothes shopping—yeah, well, she’s announced that she’s gay!” wouldn’t have gone over with them very well.

I know they say they don’t care whether a person is gay, and I’ve never heard them say one derogatory word about anyone’s sexual preferences, but I’m not quite sure I want to test their beliefs yet.

And it’s not that
I’m
a homophobe. Seriously. I know a
couple of gay kids at school, and they’re totally cool. But this is different. This is my
mother
.

It’s like the mom I knew disappeared one day and now there’s another person inhabiting Mom’s body. That’s the really hard part. Not the what-is-she-doing-with-that-woman? part. It’s that I have to wonder if she’s lied to me about who she is my entire freaking life.

You’d think I’d want to find the highest turret—well, if it had turrets—of Schwerinborg’s royal palace and toss myself off of it.

But no. I’m not even close to suicidal right now, even though I’m sure about a hundred hot actors look completely droolworthy walking the red carpet in their Armani tuxes and I’m missing it. (Thankyouverymuch, Mom.)

It’s because Schwerinborg is completely incredible. I mean, there are definite downsides, like the fact they use mayo on their French fries, that the weather is misty and depressing all winter long, and that I can’t watch the Golden Globes live. (Which, come to think of it, makes absolutely no sense—the awards are given by the Hollywood Foreign Press, and if anything’s foreign to Hollywood, it’s gotta be Schwerinborg.)

It’s because I have a boyfriend.

I have a boyfriend who looks like the hottest of those actors, only better. More of a sweetheart, less of a male slut.

I have a boyfriend named Georg Jacques von Ederhollern,
and he is a freakin’ PRINCE.

Yep. I, Valerie Winslow, a totally boring, non-cheerleader, non-athletic, non-popular sophomore redheaded nobody from Vienna, Virginia, have officially hooked up with a European prince. A prince who knows how to kiss in the most knock-me-on-my-ass way, and who is formal and polite and looks beyond hot in a tux, but who also knows how to kick back and be cool and totally un-prince-like when we’re alone, if you catch my drift.

And you wanna know a secret? Even though it’s the dead of winter and he’s always in sweaters and jackets, I’ve discovered that he has these amazing arms.

Ever see Hugh Jackman in
X-Men
? It’s an old movie, but still. THOSE arms.

Okay, Georg’s almost seventeen, so he’s not quite X-Men caliber yet, and he’s a lot more lean and wiry than Hugh Jackman, but he’s headed in that direction. His arms are totally ripped and solid—the kind that other guys refer to as guns. A girl could be about to go off a cliff, grab on to those biceps just as her footing slips, and not worry for even a second she’s going to fall, you know?

Yes, I know that girls probably go for Hugh Jackman—and every other Aussie actor, for that matter—because of their accents as much as their arms or other, um, physical
attributes. But if his name alone doesn’t make it clear, Georg
also
has an accent, and it’s pretty damned sexy. (However, I will admit that if someone had told me a year ago that listening to a guy speak with a deep, German accent would make me get all gooey inside, I’d have thought they needed some serious therapy.)

But you see, the thing that makes Georg an even better boyfriend than any Hollywood actor could ever be is . . . NONE OF THEM HAS A CROWN! They do not have staff members who polish their shoes before school or ask if they’d like a Coke or finger sandwiches while studying Trig in the palace library. Georg does. And he’s not the least bit egotistical about any of those things. In fact, it makes him blush if you mention it. He gets this little pink glow right along his cheekbones, and then he tries to hide his face so you can’t see. It’s totally cute.

Also, Georg does not care that my mother is a lesbian. He actually tells me I should try to be more understanding of her, and at the same time, he totally gets that while I really do love her, I’m completely ticked off at her for what she did to me and Dad.

Is that love, or what? You don’t find that with just any guy. The arms, the accent, and even the crown are simply bonus material. He likes me for me, and David Anderson never did.

Well, unless you believe my friends, who I think keep telling me David likes me to try to make me feel better about the whole divorce thing.

Ha.

Wait until they hear about my prince. Or better yet, wait until I put them on the phone with him so they can hear his accent.

So right now
I’m
on the phone with Georg, and I can hardly follow what he’s saying, because I’m so hung up on how he’s saying it. All rich and Euro-like, but thankfully without even a hint of that thick nasal sound that you might expect from someone whose native language is German. Georg’s voice is smooth and seductive. And it’s making me wish he would hurry up and get over here so I can grab him and kiss him the way he kissed me day before yesterday, when we went to this dinner-party-reception-formal thing his father was hosting for the British prime minister here at the palace, then ditched for a while to go make out in the garden. It was icy out there, and all the plants were that generic shade of gray-green that plants get in the middle of January, but between the kissing and him whispering to me in that fabulous accent, I was totally warm. It was our second kiss, but the first serious one, and this time we both knew there’d be more. Lots and lots more.

I can’t think about anything else
but
kissing Georg.

“Valerie. Are you still listening to me?”

I sit up on my bed and try to focus. It’s difficult, though, when my room is maybe only five degrees warmer than the garden was and Georg isn’t here to keep me toasty.

My dad and I live in the royal palace in Schwerinborg because he’s the new protocol chief to the royal family—meaning he works for Georg’s dad, Prince Manfred—who rules the country—and Georg’s mom, Princess Claudia. He advises them on things like the proper way to address everyone from visiting Buddhist monks to the queen of England, and warns them about the fact that when they visit Egypt, they might get served pigeon but that it’s perfectly safe to eat.

It’s a totally whacked thing to do for a living, but since it once got me a behind-the-scenes tour of the White House (which is where my dad did his protocol thing until the überconservative, up-for-reelection president discovered Dad had married a lesbian) and it’s the reason I met Georg and have gotten to hang out with him despite the fact I’m your average American fifteen-year-old, I’m not going to make even one crack about it.

On the other hand, while it might sound cool to actually
live
in a real palace, I’d much rather the royal couple hadn’t offered us their, uh, hospitality. Other than the fact that Georg is under the same roof, it pretty much sucks.

Our very ritzy-sounding “palace apartment”—which is actually only three small rooms and a kitchen—is always so cold I have to wear double layers of socks, and it has the decor of a circa-1970s, never-been-renovated motel. Probably because we’re in a 150-year-old section of the palace that hasn’t been renovated since, well, the 1970s. We’d have been better off living a couple blocks away, in a nice little walk-up.

Preferably one with heat.

“Yeah, I’m listening,” I say to Georg as I stare at my tiny, ancient bedroom window and wonder how much cold air is leaking in from outside. “You said you had two assists and a goal at the scrimmage yesterday. But I wish you’d just come over. I can follow soccer talk much better in person.”

I’m totally kidding because we both know it’s way too late, but still. Does he think a five-minute walk from one side of the palace—the beautiful,
warm,
renovated side, where his family lives—over to the other side, where my apartment is, would kill him? I mean, the guy’s an incredible soccer player, so you know his legs work just fine.

They’re very nice legs. All tight and muscular and—