The Royal We (24 page)

“It might not mean anything,” Lacey began.

“It
looks
bad,” Bea said.

“It could be accidental,” Gaz offered, cradling the Chex Mix like a baby.

“It’s a slap in the face,” Cilla barked.

I internalized all this, mutely, furiously, and then I started giggling. The giggles turned into a laugh when I saw how alarmed my friends were at my reaction. The laugh turned into a guffaw interrupted only when the tears ran into my mouth.

“Oh, come on, guys, it’s funny,” I said, wiping my eyes, sounding hysterical even to my own ears. “Today of all days. It was supposed to be me. And instead he’s with
her
. Happy birthday to me!”

Gaz shook his head. “She’s barmy. She needs a drink.”

“You are right on one count,” I said. “I do need a drink. It’s my goddamn birthday and I am going to go out and have the best time anyone has ever had.”

Joss brightened. “I have a shirt you could borrow,” she said. “It’s mostly black lace but there are two patches over the boobs. For modesty.”

“
No
,” said Cilla, Bea, and Lacey in unison.

“
Yes
,” I said. “Nick would hate it. So yes. Give me that shirt.”

“…Thanks? Whatever, I’ll take it,” Joss said.

“Eat first, at least, Bex,” Lacey said, throwing Cilla a concerned expression. “If you’re going out with a vengeance, at least get your base going.”

“That’s the only thing I learnt at Oxford,” Gaz said melodramatically.

I wiped my eyes and smiled, and felt the emotions I usually funneled into Nick break free and flow at all of them.

“Group hug,” I said, signaling for them to come to me. Maybe I
was
barmy.

“Absolutely not,” Bea said as everyone else reached around me.

“I love you guys. Thank you so much for being here with me even if…well, whatever happens with Nick.”

“We love you, too,” Cilla said. “Bea, get your bony arse over here and engage.”

“This is not one of Pudge’s interventions,” Bea sniffed, but she walked over and gave me a crisp pat on the shoulder just the same.

Tony’s latest project turned out to be called Misery, an aptness that seemed less funny once we got there and saw it was in an abandoned, recently condemned building on the South Bank that looked like the kind of place you’d visit if you were angling to catch hepatitis. There was yellow caution tape stretched across the front, broken glass from the ruined windows, and floors intentionally (or still?) littered with trash and assorted debris. The drinks were deliberately bad, and the music was the worst nightclub mix you could imagine, from morose Tracy Chapman to endless Gregorian chants. All the artsy, desperate hipsters lined up around the block were proclaiming it Tony’s most ingeniously subversive effort yet.

Two good things came out of that night. One was that Cilla dumped Tony for being a pretentious ass who’d tricked me and Lacey into spending our birthday at a potential hotbed for suicide. (“The rudest comedown from Gaz’s lovely dinner,” she’d rebuked him, and she’d been right in every way.) The other was that even in my emotionally reckless state, I couldn’t choke down more than a quarter of one poorly made bottom-shelf cocktail. So there was no false liquid courage when Nick showed up—I was stone-cold sober—and no drunken regrets when the end finally came.

I had actually texted Nick and told him not to bother, and that we’d speak in a day or so. He’d obviously picked up on my vibe, or been self-aware enough to know that this would be coming, because he ignored me and showed up anyway. The second I saw him, I wanted to pretend everything was fine, because…well, he was
fine
: His muscles were more sculpted after his military drilling, and because he’d borrowed Twiggy’s motorbike—as he always did whenever he wanted to travel quickly and anonymously—he’d also purloined his PPO’s snug, weathered leather jacket. The whole effect was very
Top Gun
. Nick seemed relieved when he saw that I was alive and whole in this den of scuzz, but as he walked toward me, my resolve steeled.

“Proceed with caution,” Lacey said quietly, laying a hand on my arm.

“What
is
this place?” Nick asked when he reached us, his motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm. “Are we sure Tony isn’t going to murder us all? What is that
shirt
?”

At my expression, he kissed me very chastely on the cheek, which made me go stiff. “Happy birthday…?” he said loudly, the words for the bystanders’ benefit and the question mark for mine.

“I told you not to worry about coming,” I said.

“But it’s your birthday,” he said reasonably.

“It is,” I said softly. “And it hasn’t been the best one.”

He sagged a little. “Bex, let’s go talk about this someplace else,” he said.

“No. Not tonight. I think you should just go.”

“Bex,” he said, trying to look pleasant for the sake of appearances.

“
Nick
,” I said, wiggling the vile potion in a cheap glass tumbler that was in my hand. “Don’t harsh my buzz. I’m trying to celebrate.”

“Rebecca.”

I didn’t care for his tone—whether he liked it or not, Nick had inherited a sliver of Richard’s flinty impatience, though he almost never deployed it—but I’d also known perfectly well my texts would freak him out, and I’d done nothing to correct that. I’ve never been patient; I wasn’t waiting for this fight any longer.

Cilla stepped toward me. “Tony has a trailer parked out back that he’s been using as a makeshift office,” she whispered. “Go. I’ll send Nick in a minute.”

The trailer was an Airstream that had clearly recently been a food truck, still tricked out with a restaurant-quality griddle and hot plates, and smelling faintly of old bacon grease. A crusty plastic squeeze bottle of ketchup lay unloved on the counter.

Nick walked in ten minutes later. In that time, my hackles had gone down somewhat, leaving in their place that cold, goosebumpy feeling you get when the sun goes behind a cloud.

“I didn’t want to do this tonight,” I blurted out at him. “Not here.”

Nick set his helmet on the counter. “I am amazed anyone wants to do
anything
here.”

He looked like he was wrestling with coming over to me, but I held up my hand.

“No,” I said. “Please don’t. If you come over here, we’ll just end up having sex on the griddle or something and that won’t help.”

“It might,” he said, but he stayed where he was.

My mind raced for what to say first, but as usual, my mouth had its own ideas.

“So, was Clive right?”

“I doubt it.”

“Don’t be cute,” I said impatiently. “Clive told me I was destined to be discarded once you found someone more suitable.”

“Clive had an ulterior motive.”

“Doesn’t mean he was wrong,” I said. “Look at the facts, Nick. We’ve been together four years, and you
still
won’t be seen with me in public. I had Bea telling me I’m your safety play. I had Clive telling me I was a fool for doing this in the first place. The press is telling me I’ve been thrown over for your ex, you’re telling the press you’d rather die than be tied down—”

“Please, don’t remind me,” Nick groaned.

“—and all
you
are ever telling me is, ‘It’s not a good time,’ over and over, before going out and snuggling up with Gemma goddamn Sands. I had to sit there on your birthday and watch her kiss you, and act like it didn’t hurt, in front of a room full of people who knew enough to look over at me when it happened,” I said, heating up. “Watching you from afar I could take, but watching you do
that
, in front of my
parents
, in front of your family…But, you know what? I got through it. I passed that test. And then I got bumped for her
again
. Like I’m some mutt you picked up because it looked cute in the pet store but now you can’t make it presentable.”

“Is that what you think?” he asked, incredulous.

“What else can I think?” I asked. “I know that being who you are sucks for you sometimes, Nick. But I am who I am, and that cannot be someone who waits by the phone for her boyfriend to call and say she can come outside now. Especially because I’m starting to think that call won’t ever come.”

He smacked his hand against the counter. “That is not fair,” he said. “You know I was nervous about being with anyone so seriously this soon. You
know
how much that scared me.”

“And you know perfectly well that
you
said that didn’t matter anymore,” I spat. “I was there, Nick. You didn’t fuck me into amnesia that night at Windsor. You
decided
. We both decided. Let’s at least own that.”

I hadn’t meant to go nuclear, but I was tired of being polite, and we were both past restraint.

“Okay,” Nick said. “Then let’s also own you making the paparazzi chase you through London. Let’s own me telling you about my mother, the reason for everything I’m afraid of, and then
nothing
changing with Lacey for weeks after that. Let’s own you dancing with Clive at my birthday party and acting like it was the best time you’d ever had.”

“I haven’t been perfect. I know that. But I have been lonely,” I said. “You left, Nick. Every day, little by little, since Klosters. The second our secret started to slip out, you started backing up. Straight into her.”

“There is nothing going on with Gemma!” Nick said, exasperated. “God! I’m so tired of explaining myself.”

“But that’s just it, Nick,” I said, beginning to shout. “You’re
not
explaining yourself. Not to the people who pick up the papers and see her walking into a wedding on your arm. You’re not explaining anything to the people who used to chase me around London, who are now writing that I’m being deported and that you and Gemma have a secret love nest in Surrey.”

“We’ve been over this, Bex!” Nick said, throwing up his hands. “Talking to them only makes it worse. I will not give them any more ammunition.”

“Your silence is the only ammunition they need anymore! How do you not see that?” I exploded. “I endured those people lying in wait for me, and said
nothing
about anything to them, because I love you enough to defer to your request. I told my sister to lay off your brother. I sucked it up while they picked me apart, and I’ve kept it together while they’ve laughed at me. I tried to fix what I messed up. I tried so hard to be perfect, to do exactly what you wanted me to do. And apparently I’m still not good enough.”

“That has
never
been it.”

“You made me look pathetic, Nick. And the worst part is, I let you. I can’t believe I put so much of myself into another person that all this petty shit tears me down, but it
does
, Nick, it rips away a piece of me every single time.”

“It was never on purpose. Gem was just
there
—”

“Then why does it keep happening?” I asked. “Explain it now. Explain it to me.
Please
, Nick.”

“I—maybe
that’s
why,” he said, running a hand through his hair and staring at the floor. “There’s no explaining with Gemma. There’s nothing at stake. We’re friends, it’s easy. And you and I lately…” He sighed. “Everything has been a battle. All push and pull. Will we, won’t we, what’s Lacey doing, where is Freddie. It got so exhausting, and when the wedding got closer I just didn’t want—”

He stopped himself, realizing what he’d said in the exact instant that I did.

“The disinvitation didn’t come from on high, did it,” I said, stating the fact for both of us. “It came from you.
You
didn’t want me there.”

In that moment the gulf between us widened without either of us moving. I sank against some decrepit old cabinetry and banged my palms onto my forehead.

“Talk about choices,” I choked. “That is one hell of a choice. You can’t take that one back. You just proved my point. Oh God.”

I wrapped my arms around my stomach and rocked forward, as if to hold myself together. There was a real possibility that I was going to throw up.

“I was arguing with Barnes, and I had barely seen you, and suddenly I just got this vision of us going public and everything falling apart,” he tried to explain, looking and sounding ashamed. “And I couldn’t go through with it.”

I fought hysteria with everything I had. “In baseball they call that a balk.”

“It wasn’t because I don’t love you,” he said desperately. “I do. I just got tired of
thinking
about everything so much, Bex. I just…”

“Don’t say you snapped,” I said. “Just
don’t
.”

“Mum’s shadow is over everything I do,” he whispered. “I can’t shake it. I don’t know how not to be paranoid, for me
or
for you.”

My heart—my stomach, my head, everything—hurt for him. For both of us. Nick was adrift in something, and I couldn’t be his moor anymore. Which meant I was adrift, too.

Nick was sucking on his lower lip hard now, rubbing the floor of the trailer with his shoe, trying to look at me but unable to do it.

“This is it, isn’t it,” he said. “Is this
really
it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But it feels like it.”

Something dawned on his face. “Our pin,” he said. “You’re not wearing it, are you?”

I think he already knew the answer, but I shook my head anyway. I’d left it on my dresser. I hadn’t worn it in two weeks, and I’d known, on some level, that tonight wouldn’t end in a game of him finding it.

“Did we ever really have a shot?” I asked almost wistfully. “Did you truly think this would work, or were you just hoping?”

He thought about this. “Both,” he said. “I knew—I
know
—how I felt about you. But once the press got wind, I kept thinking that maybe if we stayed where we were, and kept everyone at bay, I could just…”

“Delay the inevitable,” I said hollowly.

He shook his head helplessly. “I
always
wanted you,” he said. “But I also just wanted things to be simple for a minute.” I could hear the emotion in his voice. “And they haven’t been with us. They probably never will be, for me, and it kills me, and it ruins things. I hate that we can’t just live the way we did in Oxford, forever.”

“We were hiding there, too, Nick,” I said sadly. “Just because people weren’t chasing us doesn’t mean your demons weren’t.”