Red, White and Royal Blue / Красный, белый и королевский синий (by Casey McQuiston, 2019) - аудиокнига на английском

CHAPTER ONE On the White House roof, tucked into a corner of the Promenade, there’s a bit of loose paneling right on the edge of the Solarium. If you tap it just right, you can peel it back enough to find a message etched underneath, with the tip of a key or maybe a stolen West Wing letter opener. In the secret history of First Families—an insular gossip mill sworn to absolute discretion about most things on pain of death—there’s no definite answer for who wrote it. The one thing people seem certain of is that only a presidential son or daughter would have been daring enough to deface the White House. Some swear it was Jack Ford, with his Hendrix records and split-level room attached to the roof for late-night smoke breaks. Others say it was a young Luci Johnson, thick ribbon in her hair. But it doesn’t matter. The writing stays, a private mantra for those resourceful enough to find it. Alex discovered it within his first week of living there. He’s never told anyone how. It says: RULE number1: DON’T GET CAUGHT The East and West Bedrooms on the second floor are generally reserved for the First Family. They were first designated as one giant state bedroom for visits from the Marquis de Lafayette in the Monroe administration, but eventually they were split. Alex has the East, across from the Treaty Room, and June uses the West, next to the elevator. Growing up in Texas, their rooms were arranged in the same configuration, on either side of the hallway. Back then, you could tell June’s ambition of the month by what covered the walls. At twelve, it was watercolor paintings. At fifteen, lunar calendars and charts of crystals. At sixteen, clippings from The Atlantic, a UT Austin pennant, Gloria Steinem, Zora Neale Hurston, and excerpts from the papers of Dolores Huerta. His own room was forever the same, just steadily more stuffed with lacrosse trophies and piles of AP coursework. It’s all gathering dust in the house they still keep back home. On a chain around his neck, always hidden from view, he’s worn the key to that house since the day he left for DC. Now, straight across the hall, June’s room is all bright white and soft pink and minty green, photographed by Vogue and famously inspired by old ’60s interior design periodicals she found in one of the White House sitting rooms. His own room was once Caroline Kennedy’s nursery and, later, warranting some sage burning from June, Nancy Reagan’s office. He’s left up the nature field illustrations in a neat symmetrical grid above the sofa, but painted over Sasha Obama’s pink walls with a deep blue. Typically, the children of the president, at least for the past few decades, haven’t lived in the Residence beyond eighteen, but Alex started at Georgetown the January his mom was sworn in, and logistically, it made sense not to split their security or costs to whatever one-bedroom apartment he’d be living in. June came that fall, fresh out of UT. She’s never said it, but Alex knows she moved in to keep an eye on him. She knows better than anyone else how much he gets off on being this close to the action, and she’s bodily yanked him out of the West Wing on more than one occasion. Behind his bedroom door, he can sit and put Hall and Oates on the record player in the corner, and nobody hears him humming along like his dad to “Rich Girl.” He can wear the reading glasses he always insists he doesn’t need. He can make as many meticulous study guides with color-coded sticky notes as he wants. He’s not going to be the youngest elected congressman in modern history without earning it, but nobody needs to know how hard he’s kicking underwater. His sex-symbol stock would plummet. “Hey,” says a voice at the door, and he looks up from his laptop to see June edging into his room, two iPhones and a stack of magazines tucked under one arm, and a plate in her hand. She closes the door behind her with her foot. “What’d you steal today?” Alex asks, pushing the pile of papers on his bed out of her way. “Assorted donuts,” June says as she climbs up. She’s wearing a pencil skirt with pointy pink flats, and he can already see next week’s fashion columns: a picture of her outfit today, a lead-in for some spon-con about flats for the professional gal on the go. He wonders what she’s been up to all day. She mentioned a column for WaPo, or was it a photoshoot for her blog? Or both? He can never keep up. She’s dumped her stack of magazines out on the bedspread and is already busying herself with them. “Doing your part to keep the great American gossip industry alive?” “That’s what my journalism degree’s for,” June says. “Anything good this week?” Alex asks, reaching for a donut. “Let’s see,” June says. “In Touch says I’m . . . dating a French model?” “Are you?” “I wish.” She flips a few pages. “Ooh, and they’re saying you got your asshole bleached.” “That one is true,” Alex says through a mouthful of chocolate with sprinkles. “Thought so,” June says without looking up. After riffling through most of the magazine, she shuffles it to the bottom of the stack and moves on to People. She flips through absently—People only ever writes what their publicists tell them to write. Boring. “Not much on us this week . . . oh, I’m a crossword puzzle clue.” Following their tabloid coverage is something of an idle hobby of hers, one that in turns amuses and annoys their mother, and he’s narcissistic enough to let June read him the highlights. They’re usually either complete fabrications or lines fed from their press team, but sometimes it comes in handy for heading off the odd, particularly nasty rumor. Given the choice, he’d rather read one of the hundreds of glowing pieces of fan fiction about him on the internet, the up-to-eleven version of himself with devastating charm and unbelievable physical stamina, but June flat out refuses to read those aloud to him, no matter how much he tries to bribe her. “Do Us Weekly,” Alex says. “Hmm . . .” June digs it out of the stack. “Oh, look, we made the cover this week.” She flashes the glossy cover at him, which has a photo of the two of them inlaid in one corner, June’s hair pinned on top of her head and Alex looking slightly over served but still handsome, all jawline and dark curls. Below it in bold yellow letters, the headline reads: FIRST SIBLINGS’ WILD NYC NIGHT. “Oh yeah, that was a wild night,” Alex says, reclining back against the tall, leather headboard and pushing his glasses up his nose. “Two whole keynote speakers. Nothing sexier than shrimp cocktails and an hour and a half of speeches on carbon emissions.” “It says here you had some kind of tryst with a ‘mystery brunette,’” June reads. “‘Though the First Daughter was whisked off by limousine to a star-studded party shortly after the gala, twenty-one-year-old heartthrob Alex was snapped sneaking into the W Hotel to meet a mystery brunette in the presidential suite and leaving around four a.m. Sources inside the hotel reported hearing amorous noises from the room all night, and rumors are swirling the brunette was none other than . . . Nora Holleran, the twenty-two-year-old granddaughter of Vice President Mike Holleran and third member of the White House Trio. Could it be the two are rekindling their romance?’” “Yes!” Alex crows, and June groans. “That’s less than a month! You owe me fifty dollars, baby.” “Hold on. Was it Nora?” Alex thinks back to the week before, showing up at Nora’s room with a bottle of champagne. Their thing on the campaign trail a million years ago was brief, mostly to get the inevitable over with. They were seventeen and eighteen and doomed from the start, both convinced they were the smartest person in any room. Alex has since conceded Nora is 100 percent smarter than him and definitely too smart to have ever dated him. It’s not his fault the press won’t let it go, though; that they love the idea of them together as if they’re modern-day Kennedys. So, if he and Nora occasionally get drunk in hotel rooms together watching The West Wing and making loud moaning noises at the wall for the benefit of nosy tabloids, he can’t be blamed, really. They’re simply turning an undesirable situation into their own personal entertainment. Scamming his sister is also a perk. “Maybe,” he says, dragging out the vowels. June swats him with the magazine like he’s an especially obnoxious cockroach. “That’s cheating, you dick!” “Bet’s a bet,” Alex tells her. “We said if there was a new rumor in a month, you’d owe me fifty bucks. I take Venmo.” “I’m not paying,” June huffs. “I’m gonna kill her when we see her tomorrow. What are you wearing, by the way?” “For what?” “The wedding.” “Whose wedding?” “Uh, the royal wedding,” June says. “Of England. It’s literally on every cover I just showed you.” She holds Us Weekly up again, and this time Alex notices the main story in giant letters: PRINCE PHILIP SAYS I DO! Along with a photograph of an extremely nondescript British heir and his equally nondescript blond fianc?e smiling blandly. He drops his donut in a show of devastation. “That’s this weekend?” “Alex, we leave in the morning,” June tells him. “We’ve got two appearances before we even go to the ceremony. I can’t believe Zahra hasn’t climbed up your ass about this already.” “Shit,” he groans. “I know I had that written down. I got sidetracked.” “What, by conspiring with my best friend against me in the tabloids for fifty dollars?” “No, with my research paper, smartass,” Alex says, gesturing dramatically at his piles of notes. “I’ve been working on it for Roman Political Thought all week. And I thought we agreed Nora is our best friend.” “That can’t possibly be a real class you’re taking,” June says. “Is it possible you willfully forgot about the biggest international event of the year because you don’t want to see your arch nemesis?” “June, I’m the son of the President of the United States. Prince Henry is a figurehead of the British Empire. You can’t just call him my ‘arch nemesis,’” Alex says. He chews thoughtfully and adds, “‘Arch nemesis’ implies he’s actually a rival to me on any level and not, you know, a stuck-up product of inbreeding who probably jerks off to photos of himself.” “Woof.” “I’m just saying.” “Well, you don’t have to like him, you just have to put on a happy face and not cause an international incident at his brother’s wedding.” “Bug, when do I ever not put on a happy face?” Alex says. He pulls a painfully fake grin, and June looks satisfyingly repulsed. “Ugh. Anyway, you know what you’re wearing, right?” “Yeah, I picked it out and had Zahra approve it last month. I’m not an animal.” “I’m still not sure about my dress,” June says. She leans over and steals his laptop away from him, ignoring his noise of protest. “Do you think the maroon or the one with the lace?” “Lace, obviously. It’s England. And why are you trying to make me fail this class?” he says, reaching for his laptop only to have his hand swatted away. “Go curate your Instagram or something. You’re the worst.” “Shut up, I’m trying to pick something to watch. Ew, you have Garden State on your watch list? Wow, how’s film school in 2005 going?” “I hate you.” “Hmm, I know.” Outside his window, the wind stirs up over the lawn, rustling the linden trees down in the garden. The record on the turntable in the corner has spun out into fuzzy silence. He rolls off the bed and flips it, resetting the needle, and the second side picks up on “London Luck, and Love.” If he’s honest, private aviation doesn’t really get old, not even three years into his mother’s term. He doesn’t get to travel this way a lot, but when he does, it’s hard not to let it go to his head. He was born in the hill country of Texas to the daughter of a single mother and the son of Mexican immigrants, all of them dirt-poor—luxury travel is still a luxury. Fifteen years ago, when his mother first ran for the House, the Austin newspaper gave her a nickname: the Lometa Longshot. She’d escaped her tiny hometown in the shadow of Fort Hood, pulled night shifts at diners to put herself through law school, and was arguing discrimination cases before the Supreme Court by thirty. She was the last thing anybody expected to rise up out of Texas in the midst of the Iraq War: a strawberry-blond, whip-smart Democrat with high heels, an unapologetic drawl, and a little biracial family. So, it’s still surreal that Alex is cruising somewhere over the Atlantic, snacking on pistachios in a high-backed leather chair with his feet up. Nora is bent over the New York Times crossword opposite him, brown curls falling across her forehead. Beside her, the hulking Secret Service agent Cassius—Cash for short—holds his own copy in one giant hand, racing to finish it first. The cursor on Alex’s Roman Political Thought paper blinks expectantly at him from his laptop, but something in him can’t quite focus on school while they’re flying transatlantic. Amy, his mother’s favorite Secret Service agent, a former Navy SEAL who is rumored around DC to have killed several men, sits across the aisle. She’s got a bulletproof titanium case of crafting supplies open on the couch next to her and is serenely embroidering flowers onto a napkin. Alex has seen her stab someone in the kneecap with a very similar embroidery needle. Which leaves June, next to him, leaning on one elbow with her nose buried in the issue of People she’s inexplicably brought with them. She always chooses the most bizarre reading material for flights. Last time, it was a battered old Cantonese phrase book. Before that, Death Comes for the Archbishop. “What are you reading in there now?” Alex asks her. She flips the magazine around so he can see the double-page spread titled: ROYAL WEDDING MADNESS! Alex groans. This is definitely worse than Willa Cather. “What?” she says. “I want to be prepared for my first-ever royal wedding.” “You went to prom, didn’t you?” Alex says. “Just picture that, only in hell, and you have to be really nice about it.” “Can you believe they spent $75,000 just on the cake?” “That’s depressing.” “And apparently Prince Henry is going sans date to the wedding and everyone is freaking out about it. It says he was,” she affects a comical English accent, “‘rumored to be dating a Belgian heiress last month, but now followers of the prince’s dating life aren’t sure what to think.’” Alex snorts. It’s insane to him that there are legions of people who follow the intensely dull dating lives of the royal siblings. He understands why people care where he puts his own tongue—at least he has personality. “Maybe the female population of Europe finally realized he’s as compelling as a wet ball of yarn,” Alex suggests. Nora puts down her crossword puzzle, having finished it first. Cassius glances over and swears. “You gonna ask him to dance, then?” Alex rolls his eyes, suddenly imagining twirling around a ballroom while Henry drones sweet nothings about croquet and fox hunting in his ear. The thought makes him want to gag. “In his dreams.” “Aw,” Nora says, “you’re blushing.” “Listen,” Alex tells her, “royal weddings are trash, the princes that have royal weddings are trash, the imperialism that allows princes to exist at all is trash. It’s trash turtles all the way down.” “Is this your TED Talk?” June asks. “You do realize America is a genocidal empire too, right?” “Yes, June, but at least we have the decency not to keep a monarchy around,” Alex says, throwing a pistachio at her. There are a few things about Alex and June that new White House hires are briefed on before they start. June’s peanut allergy. Alex’s frequent middle-of-the-night requests for coffee. June’s college boyfriend, who broke up with her when he moved to California but is still the only person whose letters come to her directly. Alex’s long-standing grudge against the youngest prince. It’s not a grudge, really. It’s not even a rivalry. It’s a prickling, unsettling annoyance. It makes his palms sweat. The tabloids—the world—decided to cast Alex as the American equivalent of Prince Henry from day one, since the White House Trio is the closest thing America has to royalty. It has never seemed fair. Alex’s image is all charisma and genius and smirking wit, thoughtful interviews and the cover of GQ at eighteen; Henry’s is placid smiles and gentle chivalry and generic charity appearances, a perfectly blank Prince Charming canvas. Henry’s role, Alex thinks, is much easier to play. Maybe it is technically a rivalry. Whatever. “All right, MIT,” he says, “what are the numbers on this one?” Nora grins. “Hmm.” She pretends to think hard about it. “Risk assessment: FSOTUS failing to check himself before he wrecks himself will result in greater than five hundred civilian casualties. Ninety-eight percent probability of Prince Henry looking like a total dreamboat. Seventy-eight percent probability of Alex getting himself banned from the United Kingdom forever.” “Those are better odds than I expected,” June observes. Alex laughs, and the plane soars on. * * * London is an absolute spectacle, crowds cramming the streets outside Buckingham Palace and all through the city, draped in Union Jacks and waving tiny flags over their heads. There are commemorative royal wedding souvenirs everywhere; Prince Philip and his bride’s face plastered on everything from chocolate bars to underwear. Alex almost can’t believe this many people care so passionately about something so comprehensively dull. He’s sure there won’t be this kind of turnout in front of the White House when he or June get married one day, nor would he even want it. The ceremony itself seems to last forever, but it’s at least sort of nice, in a way. It’s not that Alex isn’t into love or can’t appreciate marriage. It’s just that Martha is a perfectly respectable daughter of nobility, and Philip is a prince. It’s as sexy as a business transaction. There’s no passion, no drama. Alex’s kind of love story is much more Shakespearean. It feels like years before he’s settled at a table between June and Nora inside a Buckingham Palace ballroom, and he’s irritated enough to be a little reckless. Nora passes him a flute of champagne, and he takes it gladly. “Do either of y’all know what a viscount is?” June is saying, halfway through a cucumber sandwich. “I’ve met like, five of them, and I keep smiling politely as if I know what it means when they say it. Alex, you took comparative international governmental relational things. Whatever. What are they?” “I think it’s that thing when a vampire creates an army of crazed sex waifs and starts his own ruling body,” he says. “That sounds right,” Nora says. She’s folding her napkin into a complicated shape on the table, her shiny black manicure glinting in the chandelier light. “I wish I were a viscount,” June says. “I could have my sex waifs deal with my emails.” “Are sex waifs good with professional correspondence?” Alex asks. Nora’s napkin has begun to resemble a bird. “I think it could be an interesting approach. Their emails would be all tragic and wanton.” She tries on a breathless, husky voice. “‘Oh, please, I beg you, take me—take me to lunch to discuss fabric samples, you beast!’” “Could be weirdly effective,” Alex notes. “Something is wrong with both of you,” June says gently. Alex is opening his mouth to retort when a royal attendant materializes at their table like a dense and dour-looking ghost in a bad hairpiece. “Miss Claremont-Diaz,” says the man, who looks like his name is probably Reginald or Bartholomew or something. He bows, and miraculously his hairpiece doesn’t fall off into June’s plate. Alex shares an incredulous glance with her behind his back. “His Royal Highness Prince Henry wonders if you would do him the honor of accompanying him for a dance.” June’s mouth freezes halfway open, caught on a soft vowel sound, and Nora breaks out into a shit-eating grin. “Oh, she’d love to,” Nora volunteers. “She’s been hoping he’d ask all evening.” “I—” June starts and stops, her mouth smiling even as her eyes slice at Nora. “Of course. That would be lovely.” “Excellent,” Reginald-Bartholomew says, and he turns and gestures over his shoulder. And there Henry is, in the flesh, as classically handsome as ever in his tailored three-piece suit, all tousled sandy hair and high cheekbones and a soft, friendly mouth. He holds himself with innately impeccable posture, as if he emerged fully formed and upright out of some beautiful Buckingham Palace posy garden one day. His eyes lock on Alex’s, and something like annoyance or adrenaline spikes in Alex’s chest. He hasn’t had a conversation with Henry in probably a year. His face is still infuriatingly symmetrical. Henry deigns to give him a perfunctory nod, as if he’s any other random guest, not the person he beat to a Vogue editorial debut in their teens. Alex blinks, seethes, and watches Henry angle his stupid chiseled jaw toward June. “Hello, June,” Henry says, and he extends a gentlemanly hand to June, who is now blushing. Nora pretends to swoon. “Do you know how to waltz?” “I’m . . . sure I could pick it up,” she says, and she takes his hand cautiously, like she thinks he might be pranking her, which Alex thinks is way too generous to Henry’s sense of humor. Henry leads her off to the crowd of twirling nobles. “So is that what’s happening now?” Alex says, glaring down at Nora’s napkin bird. “Has he decided to finally shut me up by wooing my sister?” “Aw, little buddy,” Nora says. She reaches over and pats his hand. “It’s cute how you think everything is about you.” “It should be, honestly.” “That’s the spirit.” He glances up into the crowd, where June is being rotated around the floor by Henry. She’s got a neutral, polite smile on her face, and he keeps looking over her shoulder, which is even more annoying. June is amazing. The least Henry could do is pay attention to her. “Do you think he actually likes her, though?” Nora shrugs. “Who knows? Royals are weird. Might be a courtesy, or—Oh, there it is.” A royal photographer has swooped in and is snapping a shot of them dancing, one Alex knows will be sold to People next week. So, that’s it, then? Using the First Daughter to start some idiotic dating rumor for attention? God forbid Philip gets to dominate the news cycle for one week. “He’s kind of good at this,” Nora remarks. Alex flags down a waiter and decides to spend the rest of the reception getting systematically drunk. Alex has never told—will never tell—anyone, but he saw Henry for the first time when he was twelve years old. He only ever reflects upon it when he’s drunk. He’s sure he saw his face in the news before then, but that was the first time he really saw him. June had just turned fifteen and used part of her birthday money to buy an issue of a blindingly colorful teen magazine. Her love of trashy tabloids started early. In the center of the magazine were miniature posters you could rip out and stick up in your locker. If you were careful and pried up the staples with your fingernails, you could get them out without tearing them. One of them, right in the middle, was a picture of a boy. He had thick, tawny hair and big blue eyes, a warm smile, and a cricket bat over one shoulder. It must have been a candid, because there was a happy, sun-bright confidence to him that couldn’t be posed. On the bottom corner of the page in pink and blue letters: PRINCE HENRY. Alex still doesn’t really know what kept drawing him back, only that he would sneak into June’s room and find the page and touch his fingertips to the boy’s hair, as if he could somehow feel its texture if he imagined it hard enough. The more his parents climbed the political ranks, the more he started to reckon with the fact that soon the world would know who he was. Then, sometimes, he’d think of the picture, and try to harness Prince Henry’s easy confidence. (He also thought about prying up the staples with his fingers and taking the picture out and keeping it in his room, but he never did. His fingernails were too stubby; they weren’t made for it like June’s, like a girl’s.) But then came first time he met Henry—the first cool, detached words Henry said to him—and Alex guessed he had it all wrong, that the pretty, flung-open boy from the picture wasn’t real. The real Henry is beautiful, distant, boring, and closed. This person the tabloids keep comparing him to, who he compares himself to, thinks he’s better than Alex and everyone like him. Alex can’t believe he ever wanted to be anything like him. Alex keeps drinking, keeps alternating between thinking about it and forcing himself not to think about it, disappears into the crowd and dances with pretty European heiresses about it. He’s pirouetting away from one when he catches sight of a lone figure, hovering near the cake and the champagne fountain. It’s Prince Henry yet again, glass in hand, watching Prince Philip and his bride spinning on the ballroom floor. He looks politely half-interested in that obnoxious way of his, like he has somewhere else to be. And Alex can’t resist the urge to call his bluff. He picks his way through the crowd, grabbing a glass of wine off a passing tray and downing half of it. “When you have one of these,” Alex says, sidling up to him, “you should do two champagne fountains instead of one. Really embarrassing to be at a wedding with only one champagne fountain.” “Alex,” Henry says in that maddeningly posh accent. Up close, the waistcoat under his suit jacket is a lush gold and has about a million buttons on it. It’s horrible. “I wondered if I’d have the pleasure.” “Looks like it’s your lucky day,” Alex says, smiling. “Truly a momentous occasion,” Henry agrees. His own smile is bright white and immaculate, made to be printed on money. The most annoying thing of all is Alex knows Henry hates him too—he must, they’re naturally mutual antagonists—but he refuses to outright act like it. Alex is intimately aware politics involves a lot of making nice with people you loathe, but he wishes that once, just once, Henry would act like an actual human and not some polished little wind-up toy sold in a palace gift shop. He’s too perfect. Alex wants to poke it. “Do you ever get tired,” Alex says, “of pretending you’re above all this?” Henry turns and stares at him. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” “I mean, you’re out here, getting the photographers to chase you, swanning around like you hate the attention, which you clearly don’t since you’re dancing with my sister, of all people,” Alex says. “You act like you’re too important to be anywhere, ever. Doesn’t that get exhausting?” “I’m . . . a bit more complicated than that,” Henry attempts. “Ha.” “Oh,” Henry says, narrowing his eyes. “You’re drunk.” “I’m just saying,” Alex says, resting an overly friendly elbow on Henry’s shoulder, which isn’t as easy as he’d like it to be since Henry has about four infuriating inches of height on him. “You could try to act like you’re having fun. Occasionally.” Henry laughs ruefully. “I believe perhaps you should consider switching to water, Alex.” “Should I?” Alex says. He pushes aside the thought that maybe the wine is what gave him the nerve to stomp over to Henry in the first place and makes his eyes as coy and angelic as he knows how. “Am I offending you? Sorry I’m not obsessed with you like everyone else. I know that must be confusing for you.” “Do you know what?” Henry says. “I think you are.” Alex’s mouth drops open, while the corner of Henry’s turns smug and almost a little mean. “Only a thought,” Henry says, tone polite. “Have you ever noticed I have never once approached you and have been exhaustively civil every time we’ve spoken? Yet here you are, seeking me out again.” He takes a sip of his champagne. “Simply an observation.” “What? I’m not—” Alex stammers. “You’re the—” “Have a lovely evening, Alex,” Henry says tersely, and turns to walk off. It drives Alex nuts that Henry thinks he gets to have the last word, and without thinking, he reaches out and pulls Henry’s shoulder back. And then Henry turns, suddenly, and almost does push Alex off him this time, and for a brief spark of a moment, Alex is impressed at the glint in his eyes, the abrupt burst of an actual personality. The next thing he knows, he’s tripping over his own foot and stumbling backward into the table nearest him. He notices too late that the table is, to his horror, the one bearing the massive eight-tier wedding cake, and he grabs for Henry’s arm to catch himself, but all this does is throw both of them off-balance and send them crashing together into the cake stand. He watches, as if in slow motion, as the cake leans, teeters, shudders, and finally tips. There’s absolutely nothing he can do to stop it. It comes crashing down onto the floor in an avalanche of white buttercream, some kind of sugary $75,000 nightmare. The room goes heart-stoppingly silent as momentum carries him and Henry through the fall and down, down onto the wreckage of the cake on the ornate carpet, Henry’s sleeve still clutched in Alex’s fist. Henry’s glass of champagne has spilled all over both of them and shattered, and out of the corner of his eye, Alex can see a cut across the top of Henry’s cheekbone beginning to bleed. For a second, all he can think as he stares up at the ceiling while covered in frosting and champagne is that at least Henry’s dance with June won’t be the biggest story to come out of the royal wedding. His next thought is that his mother is going to murder him in cold blood. Beside him, he hears Henry mutter slowly, “Oh my fucking Christ.” He registers dimly that it’s the first time he’s ever heard the prince swear, before the flash from someone’s camera goes off. CHAPTER TWO With a resounding smack, Zahra slaps a stack of magazines down on the West Wing briefing room table. “This is just what I saw on the way here this morning,” she says. “I don’t think I need to remind you I live two blocks away.” Alex stares down at the headlines in front of him. THE $75,000 STUMBLE BATTLE ROYAL: PRINCE HENRY AND FSOTUS COME TO BLOWS AT ROYAL WEDDING CAKEGATE: ALEX CLAREMONT-DIAZ SPARKS SECOND ENGLISH-AMERICAN WAR Each one is accompanied by a photo of himself and Henry flat on their backs in a pile of cake, Henry’s ridiculous suit all askew and covered in smashed buttercream flowers, his wrist pinned in Alex’s hand, a thin slice of red across Henry’s cheek. “Are you sure we shouldn’t be in the Situation Room for this meeting?” Alex attempts. Neither Zahra nor his mother, sitting across the table, seems to find it funny. The president gives him a withering look over the top of her reading glasses, and he clamps his mouth shut. It’s not exactly that he’s afraid of Zahra, his mom’s deputy chief of staff and right-hand woman. She has a spiky exterior, but Alex swears there’s something soft in there somewhere. He’s more afraid of what his mother might do. They grew up made to talk about their feelings a lot, and then his mother became president, and life became less about feelings and more about international relations. He’s not sure which option spells a worse fate. “‘Sources inside the royal reception report the two were seen arguing minutes before the . . . cake-tastrophe,’” Ellen reads out loud with utter disdain from her own copy of The Sun. Alex doesn’t even try to guess how she got her hands on today’s edition of a British tabloid. President Mom works in mysterious ways. “‘But royal family insiders claim the First Son’s feud with Henry has raged for years. A source tells The Sun that Henry and the First Son have been at odds ever since their first meeting at the Rio Olympics, and the animosity has only grown—these days, they can’t even be in the same room with each other. It seems it was only a matter of time before Alex took the American approach: a violent altercation.’” “I really don’t think you can call tripping over a table a ‘violent—’” “Alexander,” Ellen says, her tone eerily calm. “Shut up.” He does. “‘One can’t help but wonder,’” Ellen reads on, “‘if the bitterness between these two powerful sons has contributed to what many have called an icy and distant relationship between President Ellen Claremont’s administration and the monarchy in recent years.’” She tosses the magazine aside, folding her arms on the table. “Please, tell me another joke,” Ellen says. “I want so badly for you to explain to me how this is funny.” Alex opens his mouth and closes it a couple of times. “He started it,” he says finally. “I barely touched him—he’s the one who pushed me, and I only grabbed him to try and catch my balance, and—” “Sugar, I cannot express to you how much the press does not give a fuck about who started what,” Ellen says. “As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn’t your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term.” Alex clenches his jaw. He’s used to doing things that piss his mother’s staff off—in his teens, he had a penchant for confronting his mother’s colleagues with their voting discrepancies at friendly DC fundraisers—and he’s been in the tabloids for things more embarrassing than this. But never in quite such a cataclysmically, internationally terrible way. “I don’t have time to deal with this right now, so here’s what we’re gonna do,” Ellen says, pulling a folder out of her padfolio. It’s filled with some official-looking documents punctuated with different colors of sticky tabs, and the first one says: AGREEMENT OF TERMS. “Um,” Alex says. “You,” she says, “are going to make nice with Henry. You’re leaving Saturday and spending Sunday in England.” Alex blinks. “Is it too late to take the faking-my-death option?” “Zahra can brief you on the rest,” Ellen goes on, ignoring him. “I have about five hundred meetings right now.” She gets up and heads for the door, stopping to kiss her hand and press it to the top of his head. “You’re a dumbass. Love you.” Then she’s gone, heels clicking behind her down the hallway, and Zahra settles into her vacated chair with a look on her face like she’d prefer arranging his death for real. She’s not technically the most powerful or important player in his mother’s White House, but she’s been working by Ellen’s side since Alex was five and Zahra was fresh out of Howard. She’s the only one trusted to wrangle the First Family. “All right, here’s the deal,” she says. “I was up all night conferencing with a bunch of uptight royal handlers and PR pricks and the prince’s fucking equerry to make this happen, so you are going to follow this plan to the letter and not fuck it up, got it?” Alex still privately thinks this whole thing is completely ridiculous, but he nods. Zahra looks deeply unconvinced but presses on. “First, the White House and the monarchy are going to release a joint statement saying what happened at the royal wedding was a complete accident and a misunderstanding—” “Which it was.” “—and that, despite rarely having time to see each other, you and Prince Henry have been close personal friends for the past several years.” “We’re what?” “Look,” Zahra says, taking a drag from her massive stainless steel thermos of coffee. “Both sides need to come out of this looking good, and the only way to do that is to make it look like your little slap-fight at the wedding was some homoerotic frat bro mishap, okay? So, you can hate the heir to the throne all you want, write mean poems about him in your diary, but the minute you see a camera, you act like the sun shines out of his dick, and you make it convincing.” “Have you met Henry?” Alex says. “How am I supposed to do that? He has the personality of a cabbage.” “Are you really not understanding how much I don’t care at all how you feel about this?” Zahra says. “This is what’s happening so your stupid ass doesn’t distract the entire country from your mother’s reelection campaign. Do you want her to have to get up on the debate stage next year and explain to the world why her son is trying to destabilize America’s European relationships?” Well, no, he doesn’t. And he knows, in the back of his mind, that he’s a better strategist than he’s been about this, and that without this stupid grudge, he probably could have come up with this plan on his own. “So Henry’s your new best friend,” Zahra continues. “You will smile and nod and not piss off anyone while you and Henry spend the weekend doing charity appearances and talking to the press about how much you love each other’s company. If somebody asks about him, I want to hear you gush like he’s your fucking prom date.” She slides him a page of bulleted lists and tables of data so elaborately organized he could have made it himself. It’s labeled: HRH PRINCE HENRY FACT SHEET. “You’re going to memorize this so if anybody tries to catch you in a lie, you know what to say,” she says. Under HOBBIES, it lists polo and competitive yachting. Alex is going to set himself on fire. “Does he get one of these for me?” Alex asks helplessly. “Yep. And for the record, making it was one of the most depressing moments of my career.” She slides another page over to him, this one detailing requirements for the weekend. Minimum two (2) social media posts per day highlighting England/visit thereof. One (1) on-air interview with ITV This Morning, lasting five (5) minutes, in accordance with determined narrative. Two (2) joint appearances with photographers present: one (1) private meeting, one (1) public charity appearance. “Why do I have to go over there? He’s the one who pushed me into the stupid cake—shouldn’t he have to come here and go on SNL with me or something?” “Because it was the royal wedding you ruined, and they’re the ones out seventy-five grand,” Zahra says. “Besides, we’re arranging his presence at a state dinner in a few months. He’s not any more excited about this than you are.” Alex pinches the bridge of his nose where a stress headache is already percolating. “I have class.” “You’ll be back by Sunday night, DC time,” Zahra tells him. “You won’t miss anything.” “So there’s really no way I’m getting out of this?” “Nope.” Alex presses his lips together. He needs a list. When he was a kid, he used to hide pages and pages of loose leaf paper covered in messy, loopy handwriting under the worn denim cushion of the window seat in the house in Austin. Rambling treatises on the role of government in America with all the Gs written backward, paragraphs translated from English to Spanish, tables of his elementary school classmates’ strengths and weaknesses. And lists. Lots of lists. The lists help. So: Reasons this is a good idea. One. His mother needs good press. Two. Having a shitty record on foreign relations definitely won’t help his career. Three. Free trip to Europe. “Okay,” he says, taking the file. “I’ll do it. But I won’t have any fun.” “God, I hope not.” * * * The White House Trio is, officially, the nickname for Alex, June, and Nora coined by People shortly before the inauguration. In actuality, it was carefully tested with focus groups by the White House press team and fed directly to People. Politics—calculating, even in hashtags. Before the Claremonts, the Kennedys and Clintons shielded the First Offspring from the press, giving them the privacy to go through awkward phases and organic childhood experiences and everything else. Sasha and Malia were hounded and picked apart by the press before they were out of high school. The White House Trio got ahead of the narrative before anyone could do the same. It was a bold new plan: three attractive, bright, charismatic, marketable millennials—Alex and Nora are, technically, just past the Gen Z threshold, but the press doesn’t find that nearly as catchy. Catchiness sells, coolness sells. Obama was cool. The whole First Family could be cool too; celebrities in their own right. It’s not ideal, his mother always says, but it works. They’re the White House Trio, but here, in the music room on the third floor of the Residence, they’re just Alex and June and Nora, naturally glued together since they were teenagers stunting their growth with espresso in the primaries. Alex pushes them. June steadies them. Nora keeps them honest. They settle into their usual places: June, perched on her heels at the record collection, foraging for some Patsy Cline; Nora, cross-legged on the floor, uncorking a bottle of red wine; Alex, sitting upside down with his feet on the back of the couch, trying to figure out what he’s going to do next. He flips the HRH PRINCE HENRY FACT SHEET over and squints at it. He can feel the blood rushing to his head. June and Nora are ignoring him, caught in a bubble of intimacy he can never quite penetrate. Their relationship is something enormous and incomprehensible to most people, including Alex on occasion. He knows them both down to their split ends and nasty habits, but there’s a strange girl bond between them he can’t, and knows he isn’t supposed to, translate. “I thought you were liking the WaPo gig?” Nora says. With a dull pop, she pulls the cork out of the wine and takes a swig directly from the bottle. “I was,” June says. “I mean, I am. But, it’s not much of a gig. It’s like, one op-ed a month, and half my pitches get shot down for being too close to Mom’s platform, and even then, the press team has to read anything political before I turn it in. So it’s like, email in these fluff pieces, and know that on the other side of the screen people are doing the most important journalism of their careers, and be okay with that.” “So . . . you don’t like it, then.” June sighs. She finds the record she’s looking for, slides it out of the sleeve. “I don’t know what else to do, is the thing.” “They wouldn’t put you on a beat?” Nora asks her. “You kidding? They wouldn’t even let me in the building,” June says. She puts the record on and sets the needle. “What would Reilly and Rebecca say?” Nora tips her head and laughs. “My parents would say to do what they did: ditch journalism, get really into essential oils, buy a cabin in the Vermont wilderness, and own six hundred LL Bean vests that all smell like patchouli.” “You left out the investing in Apple in the nineties and getting stupid-rich part,” June reminds her. “Details.” June walks over and places her palm on the top of Nora’s head, deep in her nest of curls, and leans down to kiss the back of her own fingers. “I’ll figure something out.” Nora hands over the bottle, and June takes a pull. Alex heaves a dramatic sigh. “I can’t believe I have to learn this garbage,” Alex says. “I just finished midterms.” “Look, you’re the one who has to fight everything that moves,” June says, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, a move she’d only do in front of the two of them. “Including the British monarchy. So, I don’t really feel bad for you. Anyway, he was totally fine when I danced with him. I don’t get why you hate him so much.” “I think it’s amazing,” Nora says. “Sworn enemies forced to make peace to settle tensions between their countries? There’s something totally Shakespearean about it.” “Shakespearean in that hopefully I’ll get stabbed to death,” Alex says. “This sheet says his favorite food is mutton pie. I literally cannot think of a more boring food. He’s like a cardboard cutout of a person.” The sheet is filled with things Alex already knew, either from the royal siblings dominating the news cycle or hate-reading Henry’s Wikipedia page. He knows about Henry’s parentage, about his older siblings Philip and Beatrice, that he studied English literature at Oxford and plays classical piano. The rest is so trivial he can’t imagine it’ll come up in an interview, but there’s no way he’ll risk Henry being more prepared. “Idea,” Nora says. “Let’s make it a drinking game.” “Ooh, yes,” June agrees. “Drink every time Alex gets one right?” “Drink every time the answer makes you want to puke?” Alex suggests. “One drink for a correct answer, two drinks for a Prince Henry fact that is legitimately, objectively awful,” Nora says. June has already dug two glasses out of the cabinet, and she hands them to Nora, who fills both and keeps the bottle for herself. Alex slides down from the couch to sit on the floor with her. “Okay,” she goes on, taking the sheet out of Alex’s hands. “Let’s start easy. Parents. Go.” Alex picks up his own glass, already pulling up a mental image of Henry’s parents, Catherine’s shrewd blue eyes and Arthur’s movie-star jaw. “Mother: Princess Catherine, oldest daughter of Queen Mary, first princess to obtain a doctorate—English literature,” he rattles off. “Father: Arthur Fox, beloved English film and stage actor best known for his turn as James Bond in the eighties, deceased 2015. Y’all drink.” They do, and Nora passes the list to June. “Okay,” June says, scanning the list, apparently looking for something more challenging. “Let’s see. Dog’s name?” “David,” Alex says. “He’s a beagle. I remember because, like, who does that? Who names a dog David? He sounds like a tax attorney. Like a dog tax attorney. Drink.” “Best friend’s name, age, and occupation?” Nora asks. “Best friend other than you, of course.” Alex casually gives her the finger. “Percy Okonjo. Goes by Pez or Pezza. Heir to Okonjo Industries, Nigerian company leading Africa in biomedical advancements. Twenty-two, lives in London, met Henry at Eton. Manages the Okonjo Foundation, a humanitarian nonprofit. Drink.” “Favorite book?” “Uh,” Alex says. “Um. Fuck. Uh. What’s the one—” “I’m sorry, Mr. Claremont-Diaz, that is incorrect,” June says. “Thank you for playing, but you lose.” “Come on, what’s the answer?” June peers down at the list. “This says . . . Great Expectations?” Both Nora and Alex groan. “Do you see what I mean now?” Alex says. “This dude is reading Charles Dickens . . . for pleasure.” “I’ll give you this one,” Nora says. “Two drinks!” “Well, I think—” June says as Nora glugs away. “Guys, it’s kinda nice! I mean, it’s pretentious, but the themes of Great Expectations are all like, love is more important than status, and doing what’s right beats money and power. Maybe he relates—” Alex makes a long, loud fart noise. “Y’all are such assholes! He seems really nice!” “That’s because you are a nerd,” Alex says. “You want to protect those of your own species. It’s a natural instinct.” “I am helping you with this out of the goodness of my heart,” June says. “I’m on deadline right now.” “Hey, what do you think Zahra put on my fact sheet?” “Hmm,” Nora says, sucking her teeth. “Favorite summer Olympic sport: rhythmic gymnastics—” “I’m not ashamed of that.” “Favorite brand of khakis: Gap.” “Listen, they look best on my ass. The J. Crew ones wrinkle all weird. And they’re not khakis, they’re chinos. Khakis are for white people.” “Allergies: dust, Tide laundry detergent, and shutting the fuck up.” “Age of first filibuster: nine, at SeaWorld San Antonio, trying to force an orca wrangler into early retirement for, quote, ‘inhumane whale practices.’” “I stood by it then, and I stand by it now.” June throws her head back and laughs, loud and unguarded, and Nora rolls her eyes, and Alex is glad, at least, that he’ll have this to come back to when the nightmare is over. Alex expects Henry’s handler to be some stout storybook Englishman with tails and a top hat, probably a walrus mustache, definitely scurrying to place a velvet footstool at Henry’s carriage door. The person who awaits him and his security team on the tarmac is very much not that. He’s a tall thirty-something Indian man in an impeccably tailored suit, roguishly handsome with a neatly trimmed beard, a steaming cup of tea, and a shiny Union Jack on his lapel. Well, okay then. “Agent Chen,” the man says, extending his free hand to Amy. “Hope the flight was smooth.” Amy nods. “As smooth as the third transatlantic flight in a week can be.” The man half-smiles, commiserative. “The Land Rover is for you and your team for the duration.” Amy nods again, releasing his hand, and the man turns his attention to Alex. “Mr. Claremont-Diaz,” he says. “Welcome back to England. Shaan Srivastava, Prince Henry’s equerry.” Alex takes his hand and shakes it, feeling a bit like he’s in one of Henry’s dad’s Bond movies. Behind him, an attendant unloads his luggage and carries it off in the direction of a sleek Aston Martin. “Nice to meet you, Shaan. Not exactly how we thought we’d be spending our weekend, is it?” “I’m not as surprised at this turn of events as I’d like to be, sir,” Shaan says coolly, with an inscrutable smile. He pulls a small tablet from his jacket and pivots on his heel toward the waiting car. Alex stares at his back, speechless, before hastily refusing to be impressed by a grown man whose job is handling the prince’s schedule, no matter how cool he is or how long and smooth his strides are. He shakes his head a little and jogs to catch up, sliding into the backseat as Shaan checks the mirrors. “Right,” Shaan says. “You’ll be staying in the guest quarters at Kensington Palace. Tomorrow you’ll do the This Morning interview at nine—we’ve arranged for a photo call at the studio. Then it’s children with cancer all afternoon and off you go back to the land of the free.” “Okay,” Alex says. He very politely does not add, could be worse. “For now,” Shaan says, “you’re to come with me to chauffeur the prince from the stables. One of our photographers will be there to photograph the prince welcoming you to the country, so do try to look pleased to be here.” Of course, there are stables the prince needs to be chauffeured from. He was briefly worried he’d been wrong about what the weekend would look like, but this feels a lot more like it. “If you’ll check the seat pocket in front of you,” Shaan says as he reverses, “there are a few papers for you to sign. Your lawyers have already approved them.” He passes back an expensive-looking black fountain pen. NONDISCLOSURE AGREEMENT, the top of the first page reads. Alex flips through to the last page—there are at least fifteen pages of text—and a low whistle escapes his lips. “This is . . .” Alex says, “a thing you do often?” “Standard protocol,” Shaan says. “The reputation of the royal family is too valuable to risk.” The words “Confidential Information,” as used in this Agreement, shall include the following: 1. Such information as HRH Prince Henry or any member of the Royal Family may designate to the Guest as “Confidential Information”; 2. All proprietary and financial information regarding HRH Prince Henry’s personal wealth and estate; 3. Any interior architectural details of Royal Residences including Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, etc., and personal effects found therein; 4. Any information regarding or involving HRH Prince Henry’s personal or private life not previously released by official Royal documents, speeches, or approved biographers, including any personal or private relationship the Guest may have with HRH Prince Henry; 5. Any information found on HRH Prince Henry’s personal electronic devices . . . This seems . . . excessive, like the kind of paperwork you get from some perverted millionaire who wants to hunt you for sport. He wonders what the most mind-numbingly wholesome public figure on earth could possibly have to hide. He hopes it’s not people-hunting. Alex is no stranger to NDAs, though, so he signs and initials. It’s not like he would have divulged all the boring details of this trip to anyone anyway, except maybe June and Nora. They pull up to the stables after another fifteen minutes, his security close behind them. The royal stables are, of course, elaborate and well-kept and about a million miles from the old ranches he’s seen out in the Texas panhandle. Shaan leads him out to the edge of the paddock, and Amy and her team regroup ten paces behind. Alex rests his elbows on the lacquered white fence boards, fighting back the sudden, absurd feeling he’s underdressed for this. On any other day, his chinos and button-down would be fine for a casual photo op, but for the first time in a long time, he’s feeling distinctly out of his element. Does his hair look awful from the plane? It’s not like Henry is going to look much better after polo practice. He’ll probably be sweaty and disgusting. As if on cue, Henry comes galloping around the bend on the back of a pristine white horse. He is definitely not sweaty or disgusting. He is, instead, bathed dramatically in a sweeping and resplendent sunset, wearing a crisp black jacket and riding pants tucked into tall leather boots, looking every inch an actual fairy-tale prince. He unhooks his helmet and takes it off with one gloved hand, and his hair underneath is just attractively tousled enough to look like it’s supposed to be that way. “I’m going to throw up on you,” Alex says as soon as Henry is close enough to hear him. “Hello, Alex,” Henry says. Alex really resents the extra few feet of height Henry has on him right now. “You look . . . sober.” “Only for you, Your Royal Highness,” he says with an elaborate mock-bow. He’s pleased to hear a little bit of ice in Henry’s voice, finally done pretending. “You’re too kind,” Henry says. He swings one long leg over and dismounts from his horse gracefully, removing his glove and extending a hand to Alex. A well-dressed stable hand basically springs up out of the ground to whisk the horse away by the reins. Alex has probably never hated anything more. “This is idiotic,” Alex says, grasping Henry’s hand. The skin is soft, probably exfoliated and moisturized daily by some royal manicurist. There’s a royal photographer right on the other side of the fence, so he smiles winningly and says through his teeth, “Let’s get it over with.” “I’d rather be waterboarded,” Henry says, smiling back. The camera snaps nearby. His eyes are big and soft and blue, and he desperately needs to be punched in one of them. “Your country could probably arrange that.” Alex throws his head back and laughs handsomely, loud and false. “Go fuck yourself.” “Hardly enough time,” Henry says. He releases Alex’s hand as Shaan returns. “Your Highness,” Shaan greets Henry with a nod. Alex makes a concentrated effort not to roll his eyes. “The photographer should have what he needs, so if you’re ready, the car is waiting.” Henry turns to him and smiles again, eyes unreadable. “Shall we?” There’s something vaguely familiar about the Kensington Palace guest quarters, even though he’s never been here before. Shaan had an attendant show him to his room, where his luggage awaited him on an ornately carved bed with spun gold bedding. Many of the rooms in the White House have a similar hauntedness, a sense of history that hangs like cobwebs no matter how pristine the rooms are kept. He’s used to sleeping alongside ghosts, but that’s not it. It strikes farther back in his memory, around the time his parents split up. They were the kind of married lawyer couple who could barely order Chinese takeout without legally binding documents, so Alex spent the summer before seventh grade shuttled back and forth from home to their dad’s new place outside of Los Angeles until they could strike a long-term arrangement. It was a nice house in the valley, a clear blue swimming pool and a back wall of solid glass. He never slept well there. He’d sneak out of his thrown-together bedroom in the middle of the night, stealing Helados from his dad’s freezer and standing barefoot in the kitchen eating straight from the quart, washed blue in the pool light. That’s how it feels here, somehow—wide awake at midnight in a strange place, duty bound to make it work. He wanders into the kitchen attached to his guest wing, where the ceilings are high and the countertops are shiny marble. He was allowed to submit a list to stock the kitchen, but apparently it was too hard to get Helados on short notice—all that’s in the freezer is UK-brand packaged ice cream cones. “What’s it like?” Nora’s voice says, tinny over his phone’s speaker. On the screen, her hair is up, and she’s poking at one of her dozens of window plants. “Weird,” Alex says, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Everything looks like a museum. I don’t think I’m allowed to show you, though.” “Ooh,” Nora says, wiggling her eyebrows. “So secretive. So fancy.” “Please,” Alex says. “If anything, it’s creepy. I had to sign such a massive NDA that I’m convinced I’m gonna drop through a trapdoor into a torture dungeon any minute.” “I bet he has a secret lovechild,” Nora says. “Or he’s gay. Or he has a secret gay lovechild.” “It’s probably in case I see his equerry putting his batteries back in,” Alex says. “Anyway, this is boring. What’s going on with you? Your life is so much better than mine right now.” “Well,” Nora says, “Nate Silver won’t stop blowing up my phone for another column. Bought some new curtains. Narrowed down the list of grad school concentrations to statistics or data science.” “Tell me those are both at GW,” Alex says, hopping up to sit on one of the immaculate countertops, feet dangling. “You can’t leave me in DC to go back to MIT.” “Haven’t decided yet, but astonishingly, it will not be based on you,” Nora tells him. “Remember how we sometimes talk about things that are not about you?” “Yeah, weirdly. So is the plan to dethrone Nate Silver as reigning data czar of DC?” Nora laughs. “No, what I’m gonna do is silently compile and process enough data to know exactly what’s gonna happen for the next twenty-five years. Then I’m gonna buy a house on the top of a very tall hill at the edge of the city and become an eccentric recluse and sit on my veranda. Watch it all unfold through a pair of binoculars.” Alex starts to laugh, but cuts off when he hears rustling down the hall. Quiet footsteps approaching. Princess Beatrice lives in a different section of the palace, and so does Henry. The PPOs and his own security sleep on this floor, though, so maybe— “Hold on,” Alex says, covering the speaker. A light flicks on in the hallway, and the person who comes padding into the kitchen is none other than Prince Henry. He’s rumpled and half awake, shoulders slumping as he yawns. He’s standing in front of Alex wearing not a suit, but a heather-gray T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms. He has earbuds in, and his hair is a mess. His feet are bare. He looks, alarmingly, human. He freezes when his eyes fall on Alex perched on the countertop. Alex stares back at him. In his hand, Nora begins a muffled, “Is that—” before Alex disconnects the call. Henry pulls out his earbuds, and his posture has ratcheted back up straight, but his face is still bleary and confused. “Hello,” he says, hoarse. “Sorry. Er. I was just. Cornettos.” He gestures vaguely toward the refrigerator, as if he’s said something of any meaning. “What?” He crosses to the freezer and extracts the box of ice cream cones, showing Alex the name Cornetto across the front. “I was out. Knew they’d stocked you up.” “Do you raid the kitchens of all your guests?” Alex asks. “Only when I can’t sleep,” Henry says. “Which is always. Didn’t think you’d be awake.” He looks at Alex, deferring, and Alex realizes he’s waiting for permission to open the box and take one. Alex thinks about telling him no, just for the thrill of denying a prince something, but he’s kind of intrigued. He usually can’t sleep either. He nods. He waits for Henry to take a Cornetto and leave, but instead he looks back up at Alex. “Have you practiced what you’ll say tomorrow?” “Yes,” Alex says, bristling immediately. This is why nothing about Henry has ever intrigued him before. “You’re not the only professional here.” “I didn’t mean—” Henry falters. “I only meant, do you think we should, er, rehearse?” “Do you need to?” “I thought it might help.” Of course, he thinks that. Everything Henry’s ever done publicly has probably been privately rehearsed in stuffy royal quarters like this one. Alex hops down off the counter, swiping his phone unlocked. “Watch this.” He lines up a shot: the box of Cornettos on the counter, Henry’s hand braced on the marble next to it, his heavy signet ring visible along with a swath of pajamas. He opens up Instagram, slaps a filter on it. “‘Nothing cures jet lag,’” Alex narrates in a monotone as he taps out a caption, “‘like midnight ice cream with @PrinceHenry.’ Geotag Kensington Palace, and posted.” He holds the phone for Henry to see as likes and comments immediately pour in. “There are a lot of things worth overthinking, believe me. But this isn’t one of them.” Henry frowns at him over his ice cream. “I suppose,” he says, looking doubtful. “Are you done?” Alex asks. “I was on a call.” Henry blinks, then folds his arms over his chest, back on the defensive. “Of course. I won’t keep you.” As he leaves the kitchen, he pauses in the doorframe, considering. “I didn’t know you wore glasses,” he says finally. He leaves Alex standing there alone in the kitchen, the box of Cornettos sweating on the counter. The ride to the studio for the interview is bumpy but mercifully quick. Alex should probably blame some of his queasiness on nerves but chooses to blame it all on this morning’s appalling breakfast spread—what kind of garbage country eats bland beans on white toast for breakfast? He can’t decide if his Mexican blood or his Texan blood is more offended. Henry sits beside him, surrounded by a cloud of attendants and stylists. One adjusts his hair with a fine-toothed comb. One holds up a notepad of talking points. One tugs his collar straight. From the passenger seat, Shaan shakes a yellow pill out of a bottle and passes it back to Henry, who readily pops it into his mouth and swallows it dry. Alex decides he doesn’t want or need to know. The motorcade pulls up in front of the studio, and when the door slides open, there’s the promised photo line and barricaded royal worshippers. Henry turns and looks at him, a little grimace around his mouth and eyes. “Prince goes first, then you,” Shaan says to Alex, leaning in and touching his earpiece. Alex takes one breath, two, and turns it on—the megawatt smile, the All-American charm. “Go ahead, Your Royal Highness,” Alex says, winking as he puts on his sunglasses. “Your subjects await.” Henry clears his throat and unfolds himself, stepping out into the morning and waving genially at the crowd. Cameras flash, photographers shout. A blue-haired girl in the crowd lifts up a homemade poster that reads in big, glittery letters, GET IN ME, PRINCE HENRY! for about five seconds until a member of the security team shoves it into a nearby trash can. Alex steps out next, swaggering up beside Henry and throwing an arm over his shoulders. “Act like you like me!” Alex says cheerfully. Henry looks at him like he’s trying to choose between a million choice words, before tipping his head to the side and offering up a well-rehearsed laugh, putting his arm around Alex too. “There we go.” The hosts of This Morning are agonizingly British—a middle-aged woman named Dottie in a tea dress and a man called Stu who looks as if he spends weekends yelling at mice in his garden. Alex watches the introductions backstage as a makeup artist conceals a stress pimple on his forehead. So, this is happening. He tries to ignore Henry a few feet to his left, currently getting a final preening from a royal stylist. It’s the last chance he’ll get to ignore Henry for the rest of the day. Soon Henry is leading the way out with Alex close behind. Alex shakes Dottie’s hand first, smiling his Politics Smile at her, the one that makes a lot of congresswomen and more than a few congressmen want to tell him things they shouldn’t. She giggles and kisses him on the cheek. The audience claps and claps and claps. Henry sits on the prop couch next to him, perfect posture, and Alex smiles at him, making a show of looking comfortable in Henry’s company. Which is harder than it should be, because the stage lights suddenly make him uncomfortably aware of how fresh and handsome Henry looks for the cameras. He’s wearing a blue sweater over a button-down, and his hair looks soft. Whatever, fine. Henry is annoyingly attractive. That’s always been a thing, objectively. It’s fine. He realizes, almost a second too late, that Dottie is asking him a question. “What do you think of jolly old England, then, Alex?” Dottie says, clearly ribbing him. Alex forces a smile. “You know, Dottie, it’s gorgeous,” Alex says. “I’ve been here a few times since my mom got elected, and it’s always incredible to see the history here, and the beer selection.” The audience laughs right on cue, and Alex shakes out his shoulders a little. “And of course, it’s always great to see this guy.” He turns to Henry, extending his fist. Henry hesitates before stiffly bumping his own knuckles against Alex’s with the heavy air of an act of treason. Alex’s whole reason for wanting to go into politics, when he knows so many past presidential sons and daughters have run away screaming the minute they turned eighteen, is he genuinely cares about people. The power is great, the attention fun, but the people—the people are everything. He has a bit of a caring-too-much problem about most things, including whether people can pay their medical bills, or marry whomever they love, or not get shot at school. Or, in this case, if kids with cancer have enough books to read at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. He and Henry and their collective hoard of security have taken over the floor, flustering nurses and shaking hands. He’s trying—really trying—not to let his hands clench into fists at his sides, but Henry’s smiling robotically with a little bald boy plugged full of tubes for some bullshit photograph, and he wants to scream at this whole stupid country. But he’s legally required to be here, so he focuses on the kids, instead. Most of them have no idea who he is, but Henry gamely introduces him as the president’s son, and soon they’re asking him about the White House and does he know Ariana Grande, and he laughs and indulges them. He unpacks books from the heavy boxes they’ve brought, climbs up onto beds and reads out loud, a photographer trailing after him. He doesn’t realize he’s lost track of Henry until the patient he’s visiting dozes off, and he recognizes the low rumble of Henry’s voice on the other side of the curtain. A quick count of feet on the floor—no photographers. Just Henry. Hmm. He steps quietly over to the chair against the wall, right at the edge of the curtain. If he sits at the right angle and cranes his head back, he can barely see. Henry is talking to a little girl with leukemia named Claudette, according to the board on her wall. She’s got dark skin that’s turned sort of a pale gray and a bright orange scarf tied around her head, emblazoned with the Alliance Starbird. Instead of hovering awkwardly like Alex expected, Henry is kneeling at her side, smiling and holding her hand. “ . . . Star Wars fan, are you?” Henry says in a low, warm voice Alex has never heard from him before, pointing at the insignia on her headscarf. “Oh, it’s my absolute favorite,” Claudette gushes. “I’d like to be just like Princess Leia when I’m older because she’s so tough and smart and strong, and she gets to kiss Han Solo.” She blushes a little at having mentioned kissing in front of the prince but fiercely maintains eye contact. Alex finds himself craning his neck farther, watching for Henry’s reaction. He definitely does not recall Star Wars on the fact sheet. “You know what,” Henry says, leaning in conspiratorially, “I think you’ve got the right idea.” Claudette giggles. “Who’s your favorite?” “Hmm,” Henry says, making a show of thinking hard. “I always liked Luke. He’s brave and good, and he’s the strongest Jedi of them all. I think Luke is proof that it doesn’t matter where you come from or who your family is—you can always be great if you’re true to yourself.” “All right, Miss Claudette,” a nurse says brightly as she comes around the curtain. Henry jumps, and Alex almost tips his chair over, caught in the act. He clears his throat as he stands, pointedly not looking at Henry. “You two can go, it’s time for her meds.” “Miss Beth, Henry said we were mates now!” Claudette practically wails. “He can stay!” “Excuse you!” Beth the nurse tuts. “That’s no way to address the prince. Terribly sorry, Your Highness.” “No need to apologize,” Henry tells her. “Rebel commanders outrank royalty.” He shoots Claudette a wink and a salute, and she positively melts. “I’m impressed,” Alex says as they walk out into the hallway together. Henry cocks an eyebrow, and Alex adds, “Not impressed, just surprised.” “At what?” “That you actually have, you know, feelings.” Henry is beginning to smile when three things happen in rapid succession. The first: A shout echoes from the opposite end of the hall. The second: There’s a loud pop that sounds alarmingly like gunfire. The third: Cash grabs both Henry and Alex by the arms and shoves them through the nearest door. “Stay down,” Cash grunts as he slams the door behind them. In the abrupt darkness, Alex stumbles over a mop and one of Henry’s legs, and they go crashing down together into a clattering pile of tin bedpans. Henry hits the floor first, facedown, and Alex lands in a heap on top of him. “Oh God,” Henry says, muffled and echoing slightly. Alex thinks hopefully that his face might be in a bedpan. “You know,” he says into Henry’s hair, “we have got to stop ending up like this.” “Do you mind?” “This is your fault!” “How is this possibly my fault?” Henry hisses. “Nobody ever tries to shoot me when I’m doing presidential appearances, but the minute I go out with a fucking royal—” “Will you shut up before you get us both killed?” “Nobody’s going to kill us. Cash is blocking the door. Besides, it’s probably nothing.” “Then at least get off me.” “Stop telling me what to do! You’re not the prince of me!” “Bloody hell,” Henry mutters, and he pushes hard off the ground and rolls, knocking Alex onto the floor. Alex finds himself wedged between Henry’s side and a shelf of what smells like industrial-strength floor cleaner. “Can you move over, Your Highness?” Alex whispers, shoving his shoulder against Henry’s. “I’d rather not be the little spoon.” “Believe me, I’m trying,” Henry replies. “There’s no room.” Outside, there are voices, hurried footsteps—no signs of an all-clear. “Well,” Alex says. “Guess we better make ourselves comfortable.” Henry exhales tightly. “Fantastic.” Alex feels him shifting against his side, arms crossed over his chest in an attempt at his typical closed-off stance while lying on the floor with his feet in a mop bucket. “For the record,” Henry says, “nobody’s ever made an attempt on my life either.” “Well, congratulations,” Alex says. “You’ve officially made it.” “Yes, this is exactly how I always dreamed it would be. Locked in a cupboard with your elbow inside my ribcage,” Henry snipes. He sounds like he wants to punch Alex, which is probably the most Alex has ever liked him, so he follows the impulse and drives his elbow into Henry’s side, hard. Henry lets out a muffled yelp, and the next thing Alex knows, he’s been yanked sideways by his shirt and Henry is halfway on top of him, pinning him down with one thigh. His head throbs where he’s clocked it against the linoleum floor, but he can feel his lips split into a smile. “So you do have some fight in you,” Alex says. He bucks his hips, trying to shake Henry off, but he’s taller and stronger and has a fistful of Alex’s collar. “Are you quite finished?” Henry says, sounding strangled. “Can you perhaps stop putting your sodding life in danger now?” “Aw, you do care,” Alex says. “I’m learning all your hidden depths today, sweetheart.” Henry exhales and slumps off him. “I cannot believe even mortal peril will not prevent you from being the way you are.” The weirdest part, Alex thinks, is that what he said was true. He keeps getting these little glimpses into things he never thought Henry was. A bit of a fighter, for one. Intelligent, interested in other people. It’s honestly disconcerting. He knows exactly what to say to each Democratic senator to make them dish about bills, exactly when Zahra’s running low on nicotine gum, exactly which look to give Nora for the rumor mill. Reading people is what he does. He really doesn’t appreciate some inbred royal baby upending his system. But he did rather enjoy that fight. He lies there, waits. Listens to the shuffling of feet outside the door. Lets minutes go by. “So, uh,” he tries. “Star Wars?” He means it in a nonthreatening, offhanded way, but habit wins and it comes out accusatory. “Yes, Alex,” Henry says archly, “believe it or not, the children of the crown don’t only spend their childhood going to tea parties.” “I assumed it was mostly posture coaching and junior polo league.” Henry takes a deeply unhappy pause. “That . . . may have been part of it.” “So you’re into pop culture, but you act like you’re not,” Alex says. “Either you’re not allowed to talk about it because it’s unseemly for the crown, or you choose not to talk about it because you want people to think you’re cultured. Which one?” “Are you psychoanalyzing me?” Henry asks. “I don’t think royal guests are allowed to do that.” “I’m trying to understand why you’re so committed to acting like someone you’re not, considering you just told that little girl in there that greatness means being true to yourself.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and if I did, I’m not sure that’s any of your concern,” Henry says, his voice strained at the edges. “Really? Because I’m pretty sure I’m legally bound to pretend to be your best friend, and I don’t know if you’ve thought this through yet, but that’s not going to stop with this weekend,” Alex tells him. Henry’s fingers go tense against his forearm. “If we do this and we’re never seen together again, people are gonna know we’re full of shit. We’re stuck with each other, like it or not, so I have a right to be clued in about what your deal is before it sneaks up on me and bites me in the ass.” “Why don’t we start . . .” Henry says, turning his head to squint at him. This close Alex can just make out the silhouette of Henry’s strong royal nose, “ . . . with you telling me why exactly you hate me so much?” “Do you really want to have that conversation?” “Maybe I do.” Alex crosses his arms, recognizes it as a mirror to Henry’s tic, and uncrosses them. “Do you really not remember being a prick to me at the Olympics?” Alex remembers it in vivid detail: himself at eighteen, dispatched to Rio with June and Nora, the campaign’s delegation to the summer games, one weekend of photo ops and selling the “next generation of global cooperation” image. Alex spent most of it drinking caipirinhas and subsequently throwing caipirinhas up behind Olympic venues. And he remembers, down to the Union Jack on Henry’s anorak, the first time they met. Henry sighs. “Is that the time you threatened to push me into the Thames?” “No,” Alex says. “It was the time you were a condescending prick at the diving finals. You really don’t remember?” “Remind me?” Alex glares. “I walked up to you to introduce myself, and you stared at me like I was the most offensive thing you had ever seen. Right after you shook my hand, you turned to Shaan and said, ‘Can you get rid of him?’” A pause. “Ah,” Henry says. He clears his throat. “I didn’t realize you’d heard that.” “I feel like you’re missing the point,” Alex says, “which is that it’s a douchey thing to say either way.” “That’s . . . fair.” “Yeah, so.” “That’s all?” Henry asks. “Only the Olympics?” “I mean, that was the start.” Henry pauses again. “I’m sensing an ellipsis.” “It’s just . . .” Alex says, and as he’s on the floor of a supply closet, waiting out a security threat with the Prince of England at the end of a weekend that has felt like some very specific ongoing nightmare, censoring himself takes too much effort. “I don’t know. Doing what we do is fucking hard. But it’s harder for me. I’m the son of the first female president. And I’m not white like she is, can’t even pass for it. People will always come down harder on me. And you’re, you know, you, and you were born into all of this, and everyone thinks you’re Prince fucking Charming. You’re basically a living reminder I’ll always be compared to someone else, no matter what I do, even if I work twice as hard.” Henry is quiet for a long while. “Well,” Henry says when he speaks at last. “I can’t very well do much about the rest. But I can tell you I was, in fact, a prick that day. Not that it’s any excuse, but my father had died fourteen months before, and I was still kind of a prick every day of my life at the time. And I am sorry.” Henry twitches one hand at his side, and Alex falls momentarily silent. The cancer ward. Of course, Henry chose a cancer ward—it was right there on the fact sheet. Father: Famed film star Arthur Fox, deceased 2015, pancreatic cancer. The funeral was televised. He goes back over the last twenty-four hours in his head: the sleeplessness, the pills, the tense little grimace Henry does in public that Alex has always read as aloofness. He knows a few things about this stuff. It’s not like his parents’ divorce was a pleasant time for him, or like he runs himself ragged about grades for fun. He’s been aware for too long that most people don’t navigate thoughts of whether they’ll ever be good enough or if they’re disappointing the entire world. He’s never considered Henry might feel any of the same things. Henry clears his throat again, and something like panic catches Alex. He opens his mouth and says, “Well, good to know you’re not perfect.” He can almost hear Henry roll his eyes, and he’s thankful for it, the familiar comfort of antagonism. They’re silent again, the dust of the conversation settling. Alex can’t hear anything outside the door or any sirens on the street, but nobody has come to get them yet. Then, unprompted, Henry says into the stretching stillness, “Return of the Jedi.” A beat. “What?” “To answer your question,” Henry says. “Yes, I do like Star Wars, and my favorite is Return of the Jedi.” “Oh,” Alex says. “Wow, you’re wrong.” Henry huffs out the tiniest, most poshly indignant puff of air. It smells minty. Alex resists the urge to throw another elbow. “How can I be wrong about my own favorite? It’s a personal truth.” “It’s a personal truth that is wrong and bad.” “Which do you prefer, then? Please show me the error of my ways.” “Okay, Empire.” Henry sniffs. “So dark, though.” “Yeah, which is what makes it good,” Alex says. “It’s the most thematically complex. It’s got the Han and Leia kiss in it, you meet Yoda, Han is at the top of his game, fucking Lando Calrissian, and the best twist in cinematic history. What does Jedi have? Fuckin’ ewoks.” “Ewoks are iconic.” “Ewoks are stupid.” “But Endor.” “But Hoth. There’s a reason people always call the best, grittiest installment of a trilogy the Empire of the series.” “And I can appreciate that. But isn’t there something to be valued in a happy ending as well?” “Spoken like a true Prince Charming.” “I’m only saying, I like the resolution of Jedi. It ties everything up nicely. And the overall theme you’re intended to take away from the films is hope and love and . . . er, you know, all that. Which is what Jedi leaves you with a sense of most of all.” Henry coughs, and Alex is turning to look at him again when the door opens and Cash’s giant silhouette reappears. “False alarm,” he says, breathing heavily. “Some dumbass kids brought fireworks for their friend.” He looks down at them, flat on their backs and blinking up in the sudden, harsh light of the hallway. “This looks cozy.” “Yep, we’re really bonding,” Alex says. He reaches a hand out and lets Cash haul him to his feet. Outside Kensington Palace, Alex takes Henry’s phone out of his hand and swiftly opens a blank contact page before he can protest or sic a PPO on him for violating royal property. The car is waiting to take him back to the royals’ private airstrip. “Here,” Alex says. “That’s my number. If we’re gonna keep this up, it’s going to get annoying to keep going through handlers. Just text me. We’ll figure it out.” Henry stares at him, expression blankly bewildered, and Alex wonders how this guy has any friends. “Right,” Henry says finally. “Thank you.” “No booty calls,” Alex tells him, and Henry chokes on a laugh. CHAPTER THREE FROM AMERICA, WITH LOVE: HENRY AND ALEX FLAUNT FRIENDSHIP NEW BROMANCE ALERT? PICS OF FSOTUS AND PRINCE HENRY PHOTOS: ALEX’S WEEKEND IN LONDON For the first time in a week, Alex isn’t pissed off scrolling through his Google alerts. It helps they’ve given People an exclusive—a few generic quotes about how much Alex “cherishes” his friendship with Henry and their “shared life experience” as sons of world leaders. Alex thinks their main shared life experience is probably wishing they could set that quote adrift on the ocean between them and watch it drown. His mother doesn’t want him fake-dead anymore, though, and he’s stopped getting a thousand vitriolic Tweets an hour, so he counts it as a win. He dodges a starstruck freshman gawking at him and exits the hall onto the east side of campus, draining the last cold sip of his coffee. First class today was an elective he’s taking out of a combination of morbid fascination and academic curiosity: The Press and the Presidency. He’s currently jet-lagged to all hell from trying to keep the press from ruining the presidency, and the irony isn’t lost on him. Today’s lecture was on presidential sex scandals through history, and he texts Nora: numbers on one of us getting involved in a sex scandal before the end of second term? Her response comes within seconds: 94% probability of your dick becoming a recurring personality on face the nation. btw, have you seen this? There’s a link attached: a blog post full of images, animated GIFs of himself and Henry on This Morning. The fist bump. Shared smiles that pass for genuine. Conspiratorial glances. Underneath are hundreds of comments about how handsome they are, how nice they look together. omfg, one commenter writes, make out already. Alex laughs so hard he almost falls in a fountain. * * * As usual, the day guard at the Dirksen Building glares at him as he slides through security. She’s certain he was the one who vandalized the sign outside one particular senator’s office to read BITCH MCCONNELL, but she’ll never prove it. Cash tags along for some of Alex’s Senate recon missions so nobody panics when he disappears for a few hours. Today, Cash hangs back on a bench, catching up on his podcasts. He’s always been the most indulgent of Alex’s antics. Alex has had the layout of the building memorized since his dad first got elected. It’s where he’s picked up his encyclopedic knowledge of policy and procedure, and where he spends more afternoons than he’s supposed to, charming aides and trawling for gossip. His mom pretends to be annoyed but slyly asks for intel later. Since Senator Oscar Diaz is in California speaking at a rally for gun control today, he punches the button for the fifth floor instead. His favorite senator is Rafael Luna, an Independent from Colorado and the newest kid on the block at only thirty-nine. Alex’s dad took him under his wing back when he was merely a promising attorney, and now he’s the darling of national politics for A, winning a special election and a general in consecutive upsets for his Senate seat, and B, dominating The Hill’s 50 Most Beautiful. Alex spent summer 2018 in Denver on Luna’s campaign, so they have their own dysfunctional relationship built on tropical-flavored Skittles from gas stations and all-nighters drafting press releases. He sometimes feels the ghost of carpal tunnel creeping back, a fond ache. He finds Luna in his office, horn-rimmed reading glasses doing nothing to detract from his usual appearance of a movie star who tripped and fell sideways into politics. Alex has always suspected the soulful brown eyes and perfectly groomed stubble and dramatic cheekbones won back any votes Luna lost by being both Latino and openly gay. The album playing low in the room is an old favorite Alex remembers from Denver: Muddy Waters. When Luna looks up and sees Alex in his doorway, he drops his pen on a haphazard pile of papers and leans back in his chair. “Fuck you doing here, kid?” he says, watching him like a cat. Alex reaches into his pocket and pulls out a packet of Skittles, and Luna’s face immediately softens into a smile. “Atta boy,” he says, scooping the bag up as soon as Alex drops it on his blotter. He kicks the chair in front of the desk out for him. Alex sits, watching Luna rip open the packet with his teeth. “Whatcha working on today?” “You already know more than you’re supposed to about everything on this desk.” Alex does know—the same health care reform since last year, the one stalled out since they lost the Senate in midterms. “Why are you really here?” “Hmm.” Alex hooks a leg over one armrest of the chair. “I resent the idea I can’t come visit a dear family friend without ulterior motives.” “Bullshit.” He clutches his chest. “You wound me.” “You exhaust me.” “I enchant you.” “I’ll call security.” “Fair enough.” “Instead, let’s talk about your little European vacation,” Luna says. He fixes Alex with shrewd eyes. “Can I expect a joint Christmas present from you and the prince this year?” “Actually,” Alex swerves, “since I’m here, I do have a question for you.” Luna laughs, leaning back and lacing his hands together behind his head. Alex feels his face flash hot for half a second, a zip of good-banter adrenaline that means he’s getting somewhere. “Of course you do.” “I wondered if you had heard anything about Connor,” Alex asks. “We could really use an endorsement from another Independent senator. Do you think he’s close to making one?” He kicks his foot innocently where it’s dangling over the armrest, like he’s asking something as innocuous as the weather. Stanley Connor, Delaware’s kooky and beloved old Independent with a social media team stacked with millennials, would be a big get down the line in a race projected to be this close, and they both know it. Luna sucks on a Skittle. “Are you asking if he’s close to endorsing, or if I know what strings need to be pulled to get him to endorse?” “Raf. Pal. Buddy. You know I’d never ask you anything so unseemly.” Luna sighs, swivels in his chair. “He’s a free agent. Social issues would push him your way usually, but you know how he feels about your mom’s economic platform. You probably know his voting record better than I do, kid. He doesn’t fall on one side of the aisle. He might go for something radically different on taxes.” “And as for something you know that I don’t?” He smirks. “I know Richards is promising Independents a centrist platform with big shake-ups on non-social issues. And I know part of that platform might not line up with Connor’s position on healthcare. Somewhere to start, perhaps. Hypothetically, if I were going to engage with your scheming.” “And you don’t think there’s any point in chasing down leads on Republican candidates that aren’t Richards?” “Shit,” Luna says, the set of his mouth turning grim. “Chances of your mother facing off against a candidate who’s not the fucking anointed messiah of right-wing populism and heir to the Richards family legacy? Highly fucking unlikely.” Alex smiles. “You complete me, Raf.” Luna rolls his eyes again. “Let’s circle back to you,” he says. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you changing the subject. For the record, I won the office pool on how long it’d take you to cause an international incident.” “Wow, I thought I could trust you,” Alex gasps, mock-betrayed. “What’s the deal there?” “There’s no deal,” Alex says. “Henry is . . . a person I know. And we did something stupid. I had to fix it. It’s fine.” “Okay, okay,” Luna says, holding up both hands. “He’s a looker, huh?” Alex pulls a face. “Yeah, I mean, if you’re into like, fairy-tale princes.” “Is anyone not?” “I’m not,” Alex says. Luna arches an eyebrow. “Right.” “What?” “Just thinking about last summer,” he says. “I have this really vivid memory of you basically making a Prince Henry voodoo doll on your desk.” “I did not.” “Or was it a dartboard with a photo of his face on it?” Alex swings his foot back over the armrest so he can plant both feet on the floor and fold his arms indignantly. “I had a magazine with his face on it at my desk, once, because I was in it and he happened to be on the cover.” “You stared at it for an hour.” “Lies,” Alex says. “Slander.” “It was like you were trying to set him on fire with your mind.” “What is your point?” “I think it’s interesting,” he says. “How fast the times they are a-changin’.” “Come on,” Alex says. “It’s . . . politics.” “Uh-huh.” Alex shakes his head, doglike, as if it’s going to disperse the topic from the room. “Besides, I came here to talk about endorsements, not my embarrassing public relations nightmares.” “Ah,” Luna says slyly, “but I thought you were here to pay a family friend a visit?” “Of course. That’s what I meant.” “Alex, don’t you have something else to do on a Friday afternoon? You’re twenty-one. You should be playing beer pong or getting ready for a party or something.” “I do all of those things,” he lies. “I just also do this.” “Come on. I’m trying to give you some advice, from one old man to a much younger version of himself.” “You’re thirty-nine.” “My liver is ninety-three.” “That’s not my fault.” “Some late nights in Denver would beg to differ.” Alex laughs. “See, this is why we’re friends.” “Alex, you need other friends,” Luna tells him. “Friends who aren’t in Congress.” “I have friends! I have June and Nora.” “Yes, your sister and a girl who is also a supercomputer,” Luna deadpans. “You need to take some time for yourself before you burn out, kid. You need a bigger support system.” “Stop calling me ‘kid,’” Alex says. “Ay,” Luna sighs. “Are you done? I do have some actual work to do.” “Yeah, yeah,” Alex says, gathering himself up from his chair. “Hey, is Maxine in town?” “Waters?” Luna asks, crooking his head. “Shit, you really have a death wish, huh?” As political legacies go, the Richards family is one of the most complex bits of history Alex has tried to unravel. On one of the Post-it notes stuck to his laptop he’s written: KENNEDYS + BUSHES + BIZARRO MAFIA OLD MONEY SITH POWERS = RICHARDSES? It’s pretty much the thesis of what he’s dug up so far. Jeffrey Richards, the current and supposedly only frontrunner for his mother’s opponent in the general, has been a senator for Utah nearly twenty years, which means plenty of voting history and legislation that his mother’s team has already gone over. Alex is more interested in the things harder to sniff out. There are so many generations of Attorney General Richards and Federal Judge Richards, they’d be able to bury anything. His phone buzzes under a stack of files on his desk. A text from June: Dinner? I miss your face. He loves June—truly, more than anything in the world—but he’s kind of in the zone. He’ll respond when he hits a stopping point in like, thirty minutes. He glances at the video of a Richards interview pulled up in a tab, checking the man’s face for nonverbal cues. Gray hair—natural, not a piece. Shiny white teeth, like a shark’s. Heavy, Uncle Sam jaw. Great salesman, considering he’s blatantly lying about a bill in the clip. Alex takes a note. It’s an hour and a half later before another buzz pulls him out of a deep dive into Richards’s uncle’s suspicious 1986 taxes. A text from his mother in the family group chat, a pizza emoji. He bookmarks his page and heads upstairs. Family dinners are rare but less over-the-top than everything else that happens in the White House. His mother sends someone to pick up pizzas, and they take over the game room on the third floor with paper plates and bottles of Shiner shipped in from Texas. It’s always amusing to catch one of the burly suits speaking in code over their earpieces: “Black Bear has requested extra banana peppers.” June’s already on the chaise and sipping a beer. A stab of guilt immediately hits when he remembers her text. “Shit, I’m an asshole,” he says. “Mm-hmm, you are.” “But, technically . . . I am having dinner with you?” “Just bring me my pizza,” she says with a sigh. After Secret Service misread an olive-based shouting match in 2017 and almost put the Residence on lockdown, they now each get their own pizzas. “Sure thing, Bug.” He finds June’s—margherita—and his—pepperoni and mushroom. “Hi, Alex,” says a voice from somewhere behind the television as he settles in with his pizza. “Hey, Leo,” he answers. His stepdad is fiddling with the wiring, probably rewiring it to do something that’d make more sense in an Iron Man comic, like he does with most electronics—eccentric millionaire inventor habits die hard. He’s about to ask for a dumbed-down explanation when his mother comes blazing in. “Why did y’all let me run for president?” she says, tapping too forcefully at her phone’s keyboard in little staccato stabs. She kicks off her heels into the corner, throwing her phone after them. “Because we all knew better than to try to stop you,” Leo’s voice says. He peeks his bearded, bespectacled head out and adds, “And because the world would fall apart without you, my radiant orchid.” His mother rolls her eyes but smiles. It’s always been like that with them, ever since they first met at a charity event when Alex was fourteen. She was the Speaker of the House, and he was a genius with a dozen patents and money to burn on women’s health initiatives. Now, she’s the president, and he’s sold his companies to spend his time fulfilling First Gentleman duties. Ellen releases two inches of zipper on the back of her skirt, the sign she’s officially done for the day, and scoops up a slice. “All right,” she says. She does a scrubbing gesture in the air in front of her face—president face off, mom face on. “Hi, babies.” “’Lo,” Alex and June mumble in unison through mouthfuls of food. Ellen sighs and looks over at Leo. “I did that, didn’t I? No goddamn manners. Like a couple of little opossums. This is why they say women can’t have it all.” “They are masterpieces,” Leo says. “One good thing, one bad thing,” she says. “Let’s do this.” It’s her lifelong system for catching up on their days when she’s at her busiest. Alex grew up with a mother who was a sometimes baffling combination of intensely organized and committed to lines of emotional communication, like an overly invested life coach. When he got his first girlfriend, she made a PowerPoint presentation. “Mmm.” June swallows a bite. “Good thing. Oh! Oh my God. Ronan Farrow tweeted about my essay for New York Magazine, and we totally engaged in witty Twitter repartee. Part one of my long game to force him to be my friend is underway.” “Don’t act like this isn’t all part of your extra-long game of abusing your position to murder Woody Allen and make it look like an accident,” Alex says. “He’s just so frail; it’d only take one good push—” “How many times do I have to tell y’all not to discuss your murder plots in front of a sitting president?” their mother interrupts. “Plausible deniability. Come on.” “Anyway,” June says. “One bad thing would be, uh . . . well, Woody Allen’s still alive. Your turn, Alex.” “Good thing,” Alex says, “I filibustered one of my professors into agreeing a question on our last exam was misleading so I would get full credit for my answer, which was correct.” He takes a swig of beer. “Bad thing—Mom, I saw the new art in the hall on the second floor, and I need to know why you allowed a George W. Bush terrier painting in our home.” “It’s a bipartisan gesture,” Ellen says. “People find them endearing.” “I have to walk past it whenever I go to my room,” Alex says. “Its beady little eyes follow me everywhere.” “It’s staying.” Alex sighs. “Fine.” Leo goes next—as usual, his bad thing is somehow also a good thing—and then Ellen’s up. “Well, my UN ambassador fucked up his one job and said something idiotic about Israel, and now I have to call Netanyahu and personally apologize. But the good thing is it’s two in the morning in Tel Aviv, so I can put it off until tomorrow and have dinner with you two instead.” Alex smiles at her. He’s still in awe, sometimes, of hearing her talk about presidential pains in the ass, even three years in. They lapse into idle conversation, little barbs and inside jokes, and these nights may be rare, but they’re still nice. “So,” Ellen says, starting on another slice crust-first. “I ever tell you I used to hustle pool at my mom’s bar?” June stops short, her beer halfway to her mouth. “You did what now?” “Yep,” she tells them. Alex exchanges an incredulous look with June. “Momma managed this shitty bar when I was sixteen. The Tipsy Grackle. She’d let me come in after school and do my homework at the bar, had a bouncer friend make sure none of the old drunks hit on me. I got pretty good at pool after a few months and started betting the regulars I could beat them, except I’d play dumb. Pick up the wrong stick, pretend to forget if I was stripes or solid. I’d lose one game, then take them double or nothing and get twice the payout.” “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Alex says, except he can totally picture it. She has always been scary-good at pool and even better at strategy. “All true,” Leo says. “How do you think she learned to get what she wants from strung-out old white men? The most important skill of an effective politician.” Alex’s mother accepts a kiss to the side of her square jaw from Leo as she passes by, like a queen gliding through a crowd of admirers. She sets her half-eaten slice down on a paper towel and selects a cue stick from the rack. “Anyway,” she says. “The point is, you’re never too young to figure out your skills and use them to get shit accomplished.” “Okay,” Alex says. He meets her eyes, and they swap appraising looks. “Including . . .” she says thoughtfully. “A job on a presidential reelection campaign, maybe.” June puts down her slice. “Mom, he’s not even out of college yet.” “Uh, yeah, that’s the point,” Alex says impatiently. He’s been waiting for this offer. “No gaps in the resume.” “It’s not only for Alex,” their mother says. “It’s for both of you.” June’s expression changes from pinched apprehension to pinched dread. Alex makes a shooing motion in June’s direction. A mushroom flies off his pizza and hits the side of her nose. “Tell me, tell me, tell me.” “I’ve been thinking,” Ellen says, “this time around, y’all—the ‘White House Trio.’” She puts it in air quotes, as if she didn’t sign off on the name herself. “Y’all shouldn’t only be faces. Y’all are more than that. You have skills. You’re smart. You’re talented. We could use y’all not only as surrogates, but as staffers.” “Mom . . .” June starts. “What positions?” Alex interjects. She pauses, drifts back over to her slice of pizza. “Alex, you’re the family wonk,” she says, taking a bite. “We could have you running point on policy. This means a lot of research and a lot of writing.” “Fuck yes,” Alex says. “Lemme romance the hell out of some focus groups. I’m in.” “Alex—” June starts again, but their mom cuts her off. “June, I’m thinking communications,” she goes on. “Since your degree is mass comm, I was thinking you can come handle some of the day-to-day liaising with media outlets, working on messaging, analyzing the audience—” “Mom, I have a job,” she says. “Oh, yeah. I mean, of course, sugar. But this could be full-time. Connections, upward mobility, real experience in the field doing some amazing work.” “I, um . . .” June rips a piece of crust off her pizza. “Don’t remember ever saying I wanted to do anything like that. That’s, uh, kind of a big assumption to make, Mom. And you realize if I go into campaign communications now, I’m basically shutting down my chances of ever being a journalist, because like, journalistic neutrality and everything. I can barely get anyone to let me write a column as it is.” “Baby girl,” their mom says. She’s got that look on her face she gets when she’s saying something with a fifty-fifty chance of pissing you off. “You’re so talented, and I know you work hard, but at some point, you have to be realistic.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “I just mean . . . I don’t know if you’re happy,” she says, “and maybe it’s time to try something different. That’s all.” “I’m not y’all,” June tells her. “This isn’t my thing.” “Juuuuune,” Alex says, tilting his head back to look at her upside down over the arm of his chair. “Just think about it? I’m doing it.” He looks back at their mom. “Are you offering a job to Nora too?” She nods. “Mike is talking to her tomorrow about a position in analytics. If she takes it, she’ll start ASAP. You, mister, are not starting until after graduation.” “Oh man, the White House Trio, riding into battle. This is awesome.” He looks over at Leo, who has abandoned his project with the TV and is now happily eating a slice of cheesy bread. “They offer you a job too, Leo?” “No,” he says. “As usual, my duties as First Gentleman are to work on my tablescapes and look pretty.” “Your tablescapes are really coming along, baby,” Ellen says, giving him a sarcastic little kiss. “I really liked the burlap placemats.” “Can you believe the decorator thought velvet looked better?” “Bless her heart.” “I don’t like this,” June says to Alex while their mother is distracted talking about decorative pears. “Are you sure you want this job?” “It’s gonna be fine, June,” he tells her. “Hey, if you wanna keep an eye on me, you can always take the offer too.” She shakes him off, returning to her pizza with an unreadable expression. The next day there are three matching sticky notes on the whiteboard in Zahra’s office. CAMPAIGN JOBS: ALEX-NORA-JUNE, the board reads. The sticky notes under his and Nora’s names read YES. Under June’s, in what is unmistakably her own handwriting, NO. Alex is taking notes in a policy lecture when he gets the first text. This bloke looks like you. There’s a picture attached, an image of a laptop screen paused on Chief Chirpa from Return of the Jedi: tiny, commanding, adorable, pissed off. This is Henry, by the way. He rolls his eyes, but adds the new contact to his phone: HRH Prince Dickhead. Poop emoji. He’s honestly not planning to respond, but a week later he sees a headline on the cover of People—PRINCE HENRY FLIES SOUTH FOR WINTER—complete with a photo of Henry artistically posed on an Australian beach in a pair of sensible yet miniscule navy swim trunks, and he can’t stop himself. you have a lot of moles, he texts, along with a snap of the spread. is that a result of the inbreeding? Henry’s retort comes two days later by way of a screenshot of a Daily Mail tweet that reads, Is Alex Claremont-Diaz going to be a father? The attached message says, But we were ever so careful, dear, which surprises a big enough laugh out of Alex that Zahra ejects him from her weekly debriefing with him and June. So, it turns out Henry can be funny. Alex adds that to his mental file. It also turns out Henry is fond of texting when he’s trapped in moments of royal monotony, like being shuttled to and from appearances, or sitting through meandering briefings on his family’s land holdings, or, once, begrudgingly and hilariously receiving a spray tan. Alex wouldn’t say he likes Henry, but he does enjoy the quick rhythm of arguments they fall into. He knows he talks too much, hopeless at moderating his feelings, which he usually hides under ten layers of charm, but he ultimately doesn’t care what Henry thinks of him, so he doesn’t bother. Instead, he’s as weird and manic as he wants to be, and Henry jabs back in sharp flashes of startling wit. So, when he’s bored or stressed or between coffee refills, he’ll check for a text bubble popping up. Henry with a dig at some weird quote from his latest interview, Henry with a random thought about English beer versus American beer, a picture of Henry’s dog wearing a Slytherin scarf. (i don’t know WHO you think you’re kidding, you hufflepuff-ass bitch, Alex texts back, before Henry clarifies his dog, not him, is a Slytherin.) He learns about Henry’s life through a weird osmosis of text messages and social media. It’s meticulously scheduled by Shaan, with whom Alex remains slightly obsessed, especially when Henry texts him things like, Did I tell you Shaan has a motorbike? or Shaan is on the phone with Portugal. It’s quickly becoming apparent the HRH Prince Henry Fact Sheet either omitted the most interesting stuff or was outright fabricated. Henry’s favorite food isn’t mutton pie but a cheap falafel stand ten minutes from the palace, and he’s spent most of his gap year thus far working on charities around the world, half of them owned by his best friend, Pez. Alex learns Henry’s super into classical mythology and can rattle off the configurations of a few dozen constellations if you let him get going. Alex hears more about the tedious details of operating a sailboat than he would ever care to know and sends back nothing but: cool. Eight hours later. Henry hardly ever swears, but at least he doesn’t seem to mind Alex’s filthy fucking mouth. Henry’s sister Beatrice—she goes by Bea, Alex finds out—pops up often, since she lives in Kensington Palace as well. From what he gathers, the two of them are closer than either are to their brother. They compare notes on the trials and tribulations of having older sisters. did bea force you into dresses as a child too? Has June also got a fondness for sneaking your leftover curry out of the refrigerator in the dead of night like a Dickensian street urchin? More common are cameos by Pez, a man who cuts such an intriguing and bizarre figure that Alex wonders how someone like him ever became best friends with someone like Henry, who can drone on about Lord Byron until you threaten to block his number. He’s always either doing something insane—BASE jumping in Malaysia, eating plantains with someone who might be Jay-Z, showing up to lunch wearing a studded, hot-pink Gucci jacket—or launching a new nonprofit. It’s kind of incredible. He realizes that he’s shared June and Nora too, when Henry remembers June’s Secret Service codename is Bluebonnet or jokes about how eerie Nora’s photographic memory is. It’s weird, considering how fiercely protective he is of them, he never even noticed until Henry’s Twitter exchange with June about their mutual love of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie goes viral. “That’s not your emails-from-Zahra face,” Nora says, nosing her way over his shoulder. He elbows her away. “You keep doing that stupid smile every time you look at your phone. Who are you texting?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and literally no one,” Alex tells her. From the screen in his hand, Henry’s message reads, In world’s most boring meeting with Philip. Don’t let the papers print lies about me after I’ve garroted myself with my tie. “Wait,” she says, reaching for his phone again, “are you watching videos of Justin Trudeau speaking French again?” “That’s not a thing I do!” “That is a thing I have caught you doing at least twice since you met him at the state dinner last year, so yeah, it is,” she says. Alex flips her off. “Wait, oh my God, is it fan fiction about yourself? And you didn’t invite me? Who do they have you boning now? Did you read the one I sent you with Macron? I died.” “If you don’t stop, I’m gonna call Taylor Swift and tell her you changed your mind and want to go to her Fourth of July party after all.” “That is not a proportionate response.” Later that night, once he’s alone at his desk, he replies: was it a meeting about which of your cousins have to marry each other to take back casterly rock? Ha. It was about royal finances. I’ll be hearing Philip’s voice saying the words “return on investment” in my nightmares for the rest of time. Alex rolls his eyes and sends back, the harrowing struggle of managing the empire’s blood money. Henry’s response comes a minute later. That was actually the crux of the meeting—I’ve tried to refuse my share of the crown’s money. Dad left us each more than enough, and I’d rather cover my expenses with that than the spoils of, you know, centuries of genocide. Philip thinks I’m being ridiculous. Alex scans the message twice to make sure he’s read it correctly. i am low-key impressed. He stares at the screen, at his own message, for a few seconds too long, suddenly afraid it was a stupid thing to say. He shakes his head, puts the phone down. Locks it. Changes his mind, picks it up again. Unlocks it. Sees the little typing bubble on Henry’s side of the conversation. Puts the phone down. Looks away. Looks back. One does not foster a lifelong love of Star Wars without knowing an “empire” isn’t a good thing. He would really appreciate it if Henry would stop proving him wrong. HRH Prince Dickhead OCT 30, 2019, 1:07 PM i hate that tie HRH Prince Dickhead What tie? the one in that instagram you just posted HRH Prince Dickhead What’s wrong with it? It’s only grey. exactly. try patterns sometime, and stop frowning at your phone like i know you’re doing rn HRH Prince Dickhead Patterns are considered a “statement.” Royals aren’t supposed to make statements with what we wear. do it for the ’gram HRH Prince Dickhead You are the thistle in the tender and sensitive arse crack of my life. thanks! NOV 17, 2019, 11:04 AM HRH Prince Dickhead I’ve just received a 5-kilo parcel of Ellen Claremont campaign buttons with your face on them. Is this your idea of a prank? just trying to brighten up that wardrobe, sunshine HRH Prince Dickhead I hope this gross miscarriage of campaign funds is worth it to you. My security thought it was a bomb. Shaan almost called in the sniffer dogs. oh, definitely worth it. even more worth it now. tell shaan i say hi and i miss that sweet sweet ass xoxoxo HRH Prince Dickhead I will not. CHAPTER FOUR “It’s public knowledge. It’s not my problem you just found out,” his mother is saying, pacing double time down a West Wing corridor. “You mean to tell me,” Alex half shouts, jogging to keep up, “every Thanksgiving, those stupid turkeys have been staying in a luxury suite at the Willard on the taxpayer dime?” “Yes, Alex, they do—” “Gross government waste!” “—and there are two forty-pound turkeys named Cornbread and Stuffing in a motorcade on Pennsylvania Avenue right now. There is no time to reallocate the turkeys.” Without missing a beat, he blurts out, “Bring them to the house.” “Where? Are you hiding a turkey habitat up your ass, son? Where, in our historically protected house, am I going to put a couple of turkeys until I pardon them tomorrow?” “Put them in my room. I don’t care.” She outright laughs. “No.” “How is it different from a hotel room? Put the turkeys in my room, Mom.” “I’m not putting the turkeys in your room.” “Put the turkeys in my room.” “No.” “Put them in my room, put them in my room, put them in my room—” That night, as Alex stares into the cold, pitiless eyes of a prehistoric beast of prey, he has a few regrets. THEY KNOW, he texts Henry. THEY KNOW I HAVE ROBBED THEM OF FIVE-STAR ACCOMMODATIONS TO SIT IN A CAGE IN MY ROOM, AND THE MINUTE I TURN MY BACK THEY ARE GOING TO FEAST ON MY FLESH. Cornbread stares emptily back at him from inside a huge crate next to Alex’s couch. A farm vet comes by once every few hours to check on them. Alex keeps asking if she can detect a lust for blood. From the en suite, Stuffing releases another ominous gobble. Alex was going to get things accomplished tonight. He really was. Before he learned of exorbitant turkey expenditures from CNN, he was watching the highlights of last night’s Republican primary debate. He was going to finish an outline for an exam, study the demographic engagement binder he convinced his mother to give him for the campaign job. Instead, he is in a prison of his own creation, sworn to babysit these turkeys until the pardoning ceremony, and is just now realizing his deep-seated fear of large birds. He considers finding a couch to sleep on, but what if these demons from hell break out of their cages and murder each other during the night when he’s supposed to be watching them? BREAKING: BOTH TURKEYS FOUND DEAD IN BEDROOM OF FSOTUS, TURKEY PARDON CANCELED IN DISGRACE, FSOTUS A SATANIC TURKEY RITUAL KILLER. Please send photos, is Henry’s idea of a comforting response. He drops onto the edge of his bed. He’s grown accustomed to texting with Henry almost every day; the time difference doesn’t matter, since they’re both awake at all ungodly hours of the day and night. Henry will send a snap from a seven a.m. polo practice and promptly receive one of Alex at two a.m., glasses on and coffee in hand, in bed with a pile of notes. Alex doesn’t know why Henry never responds to his selfies from bed. His selfies from bed are always hilarious. He snaps a shot of Cornbread and presses send, flinching when the bird flaps at him threateningly. I think he’s cute, Henry responds. that’s because you can’t hear all the menacing gobbling. Yes, famously the most sinister of all animal sounds, the gobble. “You know what, you little shit,” Alex says the second the call connects, “you can hear it for yourself and then tell me how you would handle this—” “Alex?” Henry’s voice sounds scratchy and bewildered across the line. “Have you really rung me at three o’clock in the morning to make me listen to a turkey?” “Yes, obviously,” Alex says. He glances at Cornbread and cringes. “Jesus Christ, it’s like they can see into your soul. Cornbread knows my sins, Henry. Cornbread knows what I have done, and he is here to make me atone.” He hears a rustling over the phone, and he pictures Henry in his heather-gray pajamas, rolling over in bed and maybe switching on a lamp. “Let’s hear the cursed gobble, then.” “Okay, brace yourself,” he says, and he switches to speaker and gravely holds out the phone. Nothing. Ten long seconds of nothing. “Truly harrowing,” Henry’s voice says tinnily over the speaker. “It—okay, this is not representative,” Alex says hotly. “They’ve been gobbling all fucking night, I swear.” “Sure they were,” Henry says, mock-gently. “No, hang on,” Alex says. “I’m gonna . . . I’m gonna get one to gobble.” He hops off the bed and edges up to Cornbread’s cage, feeling very much like he is taking his life into his own hands and also very much like he has a point to prove, which is an intersection at which he finds himself often. “Um,” he says. “How do you get a turkey to gobble?” “Try gobbling,” Henry says, “and see if he gobbles back.” Alex blinks. “Are you serious?” “We hunt loads of wild turkeys in the spring,” Henry says sagely. “The trick is to get into the mind of the turkey.” “How the hell do I do that?” “So,” Henry instructs. “Do as I say. You have to get quite close to the turkey, like, physically.” Carefully, still cradling the phone close, Alex leans toward the wire bars. “Okay.” “Make eye contact with the turkey. Do you have it?” Alex follows Henry’s instructions in his ear, planting his feet and bending his knees so he’s at Cornbread’s eye level, a chill running down his spine when his own eyes lock on the beady, black little murder eyes. “Yeah.” “Right, now hold it,” Henry says. “Connect with the turkey, earn the turkey’s trust . . . befriend the turkey . . .” “Okay . . .” “Buy a summer home in Majorca with the turkey . . .” “Oh, I fucking hate you!” Alex shouts as Henry laughs at his own idiotic prank, and his indignant flailing startles a loud gobble out of Cornbread, which in turn startles a very unmanly scream out of Alex. “Goddammit! Did you hear that?” “Sorry, what?” Henry says. “I’ve been stricken deaf.” “You’re such a dick,” Alex says. “Have you ever even been turkey hunting?” “Alex, you can’t even hunt them in Britain.” Alex returns to his bed and face-plants into a pillow. “I hope Cornbread does kill me.” “No, all right, I did hear it, and it was . . . proper frightening,” Henry says. “So, I understand. Where’s June for all this?” “She’s having some kind of girls’ night with Nora, and when I texted them for backup, they sent back,” he reads out in a monotone, “‘hahahahahahahaha good luck with that,’ and then a turkey emoji and a poop emoji.” “That’s fair,” Henry says. Alex can picture him nodding solemnly. “So what are you going to do now? Are you going to stay up all night with them?” “I don’t know! I guess! I don’t know what else to do!” “You couldn’t just go sleep somewhere else? Aren’t there a thousand rooms in that house?” “Okay, but, uh, what if they escape? I’ve seen Jurassic Park. Did you know birds are directly descended from raptors? That’s a scientific fact. Raptors in my bedroom, Henry. And you want me to go to sleep like they’re not gonna bust out of their enclosures and take over the island the minute I close my eyes? Okay. Maybe your white ass.” “I’m really going to have you offed,” Henry tells him. “You’ll never see it coming. Our assassins are trained in discretion. They will come in the night, and it will look like a humiliating accident.” “Autoerotic asphyxiation?” “Toilet heart attack.” “Jesus.” “You’ve been warned.” “I thought you’d kill me in a more personal way. Silk pillow over my face, slow and gentle suffocation. Just you and me. Sensual.” “Ha. Well.” Henry coughs. “Anyway,” Alex says, climbing fully up onto the bed now. “It doesn’t matter because one of these goddamn turkeys is gonna kill me first.” “I really don’t think—Oh, hello there.” There’s rustling over the phone, the crinkling of a wrapper, and some heavy snuffling that sounds distinctly doglike. “Who’za good lad, then? David says hello.” “Hi, David.” “He—Oi! Not for you, Mr. Wobbles! Those are mine!” More rustling, a distant, offended meow. “No, Mr. Wobbles, you bastard!” “What in the fuck is a Mr. Wobbles?” “My sister’s idiot cat,” Henry tells him. “The thing weighs a ton and is still trying to steal my Jaffa Cakes. He and David are mates.” “What are you even doing right now?” “What am I doing? I was trying to sleep.” “Okay, but you’re eating Jabba Cakes, so.” “Jaffa Cakes, my God,” Henry says. “I’m having my entire life haunted by a deranged American Neanderthal and a pair of turkeys, apparently.” “And?” Henry heaves another almighty sigh. He’s always sighing when Alex is involved. It’s amazing he has any air left. “And . . . don’t laugh.” “Oh, yay,” Alex says readily. “I was watching Great British Bake Off.” “Cute. Not embarrassing, though. What else?” “I, er, might be . . . wearing one of those peely face masks,” he says in a rush. “Oh my God, I knew it!” “Instant regret.” “I knew you had one of those crazy expensive Scandinavian skin care regimens. Do you have that, like, eye cream with diamonds in it?” “No!” Henry pouts, and Alex has to press the back of his hand against his lips to stifle his laugh. “Look, I have an appearance tomorrow, all right? I didn’t know I’d be scrutinized.” “I’m not scrutinizing. We all gotta keep those pores in check,” Alex says. “So you like Bake Off, huh?” “It’s just so soothing,” Henry says. “Everything’s all pastel-colored and the music is so relaxing and everyone’s so lovely to one another. And you learn so much about different types of biscuits, Alex. So much. When the world seems awful, such as when you’re trapped in a Great Turkey Calamity, you can put it on and vanish into biscuit land.” “American cooking competition shows are nothing like that. They’re all sweaty and, like, dramatic death music and intense camera cuts,” Alex says. “Bake Off makes Chopped look like the fucking Manson tapes.” “I feel like this explains loads about our differences,” Henry says, and Alex gives a small laugh. “You know,” Alex says. “You’re kind of surprising.” Henry pauses. “In what way?” “In that you’re not a totally boring asshole.” “Wow,” Henry says with a laugh. “I’m honored.” “I guess you have your depths.” “You thought I was a dumb blond, didn’t you?” “Not exactly, just, boring,” Alex says. “I mean, your dog is named David, which is pretty boring.” “After Bowie.” “I—” Alex’s head spins, recalibrating. “Are you serious? What the hell? Why not call him Bowie, then?” “Bit on the nose, isn’t it?” Henry says. “A man should have some element of mystery.” “I guess,” Alex says. Then, because he can’t stop it in time, lets out a tremendous yawn. He’s been up since seven for a run before class. If these turkeys don’t end him, exhaustion will. “Alex,” Henry says firmly. “What?” “The turkeys are not going to Jurassic Park you,” he says. “You’re not the bloke from Seinfeld. You’re Jeff Goldblum. Go to sleep.” Alex bites down a smile that feels bigger than the sentence has truly earned. “You go to sleep.” “I will,” Henry says, and Alex thinks he hears the weird smile returned in Henry’s voice, and honestly, this night is really, really weird, “as soon as you get off the phone, won’t I?” “Okay,” Alex says, “but like, what if they gobble again?” “Go sleep in June’s room, you numpty.” “Okay,” Alex says. “Okay,” Henry agrees. “Okay,” Alex says again. He’s suddenly very aware they’ve never spoken on the phone before, and so he’s never had to figure out how to hang up the phone with Henry before. He’s at a loss. But he’s still smiling. Cornbread is staring at him like he doesn’t get it. Me fuckin’ too, buddy. “Okay,” Henry repeats. “So. Good night.” “Cool,” Alex says lamely. “Good night.” He hangs up and stares at the phone in his hand, as if it should explain the static electricity in the air around him. He shakes it off, gathers up his pillow and a bundle of clothes, and crosses the hall to June’s room, climbing up into her tall bed. But he can’t stop thinking there’s some end left loose. He takes his phone back out. i sent pics of turkeys so i deserve pics of your animals too. A minute and a half later: Henry, in a massive, palatial, hideous bed of white and gold linens, his face looking slightly pink and recently scrubbed, with a beagle’s head on one side of his pillow and an obese Siamese cat curled up on the other around a Jaffa Cake wrapper. He’s got faint circles under his eyes, but his face is soft and amused, one hand resting above his head on the pillow while the other holds up the phone for the selfie. This is what I must endure, he says, followed by, Good night, honestly. HRH Prince Dickhead DEC 8, 2019, 8:53 PM yo there’s a bond marathon on and did you know your dad was a total babe HRH Prince Dickhead I BEG YOU TO NOT * * * Even before Alex’s parents split, they both had a habit of calling him by the other’s last name when he exhibited particular traits. They still do. When he runs his mouth off to the press, his mom calls him into her office and says, “Get your shit together, Diaz.” When his hard-headedness gets him stuck, his dad texts him, “Let it go, Claremont.” Alex’s mother sighs as she sets her copy of the Post down on her desk, open to an inside page article: SENATOR OSCAR DIAZ RETURNS TO DC FOR HOLIDAYS WITH EX-WIFE PRESIDENT CLAREMONT. It’s almost weird how much it isn’t weird anymore. His dad is flying in from California for Christmas, and it’s fine, but it’s also in the Post. She’s doing the thing she always does when she’s about to spend time with his father: pursing her lips and twitching two fingers of her right hand. “You know,” Alex says from where he’s kicked back on an Oval Office couch with a book, “somebody can go get you a cigarette.” “Hush, Diaz.” She’s had the Lincoln Bedroom prepared for his dad, and she keeps changing her mind, having housekeeping undecorate and redecorate. Leo, for his part, is unfazed and mollifies her with compliments between fits of tinsel. Alex doesn’t think anyone but Leo could ever stay married to his mother. His father certainly couldn’t. June is in a state, the perpetual mediator. His family is pretty much the only situation where Alex prefers to sit back and let it all unfold, occasionally poking when it’s necessary or interesting, but June takes personal responsibility for making sure nobody breaks any more priceless White House antiques like last year. His dad finally arrives in a flurry of Secret Service agents, his beard impeccably groomed and his suit impeccably tailored. For all June’s anxious preparations, she almost breaks an antique vase herself catapulting into his arms. They disappear immediately to the chocolate shop on the ground floor, the sound of Oscar raving about June’s latest blog post for The Atlantic fading around the corner. Alex and his mother share a look. Their family is so predictable sometimes. The next day, he gives Alex the follow - me - and - don’t - tell - your - mother look and pulls him out to the Truman Balcony. “Merry fuckin’ Christmas, mijo,” his dad says, grinning, and Alex laughs and lets himself be hauled into a one-armed hug. He smells the same as ever, salty and smoky and like well-treated leather. His mom used to complain that she felt like she lived in a cigar bar. “Merry Christmas, Pa,” Alex says back. He drags a chair close to the railing, putting his shiny boots up. Oscar Diaz loves a view. Alex considers the sprawling, snowy lawn in front of them, the sure line of the Washington Monument stretching up, the jagged French mansard roofs of the Eisenhower Building to the west, the same one Truman hated. His dad pulls a cigar from his pocket, clipping it and lighting up in the careful ritual he’s done for years. He takes a puff and passes it over. “It ever make you laugh to think how much this pisses assholes off?” he says, gesturing to encompass the whole scene: two Mexican men putting their feet up on the railing where heads of state eat croissants. “Constantly.” Oscar does laugh, then, enjoying his brazenness. His dad is an adrenaline junkie—mountain climbing, cave diving, pissing off Alex’s mother. Flirting with death, basically. It’s the flipside of the way he approaches work, which is methodical and precise, or the way he approaches parenting, which is laid-back and indulgent. It’s nice, now, to see him more than he ever did in high school, since Oscar spends most of his year in DC. During the busiest congressional sessions, they’ll convene Los Bastardos—weekly beers in Oscar’s office after hours, just him, Alex, and Rafael Luna, talking shit. And it’s nice that proximity has forced his parents through the era of mutually assured destruction to now, where they have one Christmas instead of two. As the days go by, Alex catches himself remembering sometimes, just for a second, how much he misses having everyone under one roof. His dad was always the cook of the family. Alex’s childhood was perfumed with simmering peppers and onions and stew meat in a cast iron pot for caldillo, fresh masa waiting on the butcher block. He remembers his mom swearing and laughing when she opened the oven for her guilty-pleasure pizza bagels only to find all the pots and pans stored there, or when she’d go for the tub of butter in the fridge and find it filled with homemade salsa verde. There used to be a lot of laughter in that kitchen, a lot of good food and loud music and parades of cousins and homework done at the table. Except eventually there was a lot of yelling, followed by a lot of quiet, and soon Alex and June were teenagers and both their parents were in Congress, and Alex was student body president and lacrosse co-captain and prom king and valedictorian, and, very intentionally, it stopped being a thing he had time to think about. Still, his dad’s been in the Residence for three days without incident, and one day Alex catches him in the kitchens with two of the cooks, laughing and dumping peppers into a pot. It’s just, you know, sometimes he thinks it might be nice if it could be like this more often. Zahra’s heading to New Orleans to see her family for Christmas, only at the president’s insistence, and only because her sister had a baby and Amy threatened to stab her if she didn’t deliver the onesie she knitted. Which means Christmas dinner is happening on Christmas Eve so Zahra won’t miss it. For all her late nights cursing their names, Zahra is family. “Merry Christmas, Z!” Alex tells her cheerfully in the hall outside the family dining room. For holiday flare, she’s wearing a sensible red turtleneck; Alex is wearing a sweater covered in bright green tinsel. He smiles and presses a button on the inside of the sleeve, and “O Christmas Tree” plays from a speaker near his armpit. “I can’t wait to not see you for two days,” she says, but there’s real affection in her voice. This year’s dinner is small, since his dad’s parents are on vacation, so the table is set for six in glittering white and gold. The conversation is pleasant enough that Alex almost forgets it’s not always like this. Until it shifts to the election. “I was thinking,” Oscar says, carefully cutting his filet, “this time, I can campaign with you.” At the other end of the table, Ellen puts her fork down. “You can what?” “You know.” He shrugs, chewing. “Hit the trails, do some speeches. Be a surrogate.” “You can’t be serious.” Oscar puts down his own fork and knife now on the cloth-covered table, a soft thump of oh, shit. Alex glances across the table at June. “You really think it’s such a bad idea?” Oscar says. “Oscar, we went through all of this last time,” Ellen tells him. Her tone is instantly clipped. “People don’t like women, but they like mothers and wives. They like families. The last thing we need to do is remind them that I’m divorced by parading my ex-husband around.” He laughs a little grimly. “So, you’ll pretend he’s their dad then, eh?” “Oscar,” Leo speaks up, “you know I’d never—” “You’re missing the point,” Ellen interrupts. “It could help your approval ratings,” he says. “Mine are quite high, El. Higher than yours ever were in the House.” “Here we go,” Alex says to Leo next to him, whose face remains pleasantly neutral. “We’ve done studies, Oscar! Okay?” Ellen’s voice has risen in volume and pitch, her palms planted flat on the table. “The data shows, I track worse with undecided voters when they’re reminded of the divorce!” “People know you’re divorced!” “Alex’s numbers are high!” she shouts, and Alex and June both wince. “June’s numbers are high!” “They’re not numbers!” “Fuck off, I know that,” she spits, “I never said they were!” “You think sometimes you use them like they are?” “How dare you, when you don’t seem to have any problem trotting them out every time you’re up for reelection!” she says, slicing one hand through the air beside her. “Maybe if they were just Claremonts, you wouldn’t have so much luck. It’d sure as hell be less confusing—it’s the name everybody knows them by anyway!” “Nobody’s taking any of our names!” June jumps in, her voice high. “June,” Ellen says. Their dad pushes on. “I’m trying to help you, Ellen!” “I don’t need your help to win an election, Oscar!” she says, hitting the table so hard with her open palm that the dishes rattle. “I didn’t need it when I was in Congress, and I didn’t need it to become president the first time, and I don’t need it now!” “You need to get serious about what you’re up against! You think the other side is going to play fair this time? Eight years of Obama, and now you? They’re angry, Ellen, and Richards is out for blood! You need to be ready!” “I will be! You think I don’t have a team on all this shit already? I’m the President of the United fucking States! I don’t need you to come here and—and—” “Mansplain?” Zahra offers. “Mansplain!” Ellen shouts, jabbing a finger across the table at Oscar, eyes wide. “This presidential race to me!” Oscar throws his napkin down. “You’re still so fucking stubborn!” “Fuck you!” “Mom!” June says sharply. “Jesus Christ, are you kidding me?” Alex hears himself shout before he even consciously decides to say it. “Can we not be civil for one fucking meal? It’s Christmas, for fuck’s sake. Aren’t y’all supposed to be running the country? Get your shit together.” He pushes his chair back and stalks out of the dining room, knowing he’s being a dramatic asshole and not really caring. He slams his bedroom door behind him, and his stupid sweater plays a few depressingly off-key notes when he yanks it off and throws it at the wall. It’s not that he doesn’t lose his temper often, it’s just . . . he doesn’t usually lose it with his family. Mostly because he doesn’t usually deal with his family. He digs an old lacrosse T-shirt out of his dresser, and when he turns and catches his reflection in the mirror by the closet, he’s right back in his teens, caring too much about his parents and helpless to change his situation. Except now he doesn’t have any AP classes to enroll in as a distraction. His hand twitches for his phone. His brain is a two-passenger minimum ride as far as he’s concerned—alone and busy or thinking with company. But Nora’s doing Hanukkah in Vermont, and he doesn’t want to annoy her, and his best friend from high school, Liam, has barely spoken to him since he moved to DC. Which leaves . . . “What could I possibly have done to have brought this upon myself now?” says Henry’s voice, low and sleepy. It sounds like “Good King Wenceslas” is playing in the background “Hey, um, sorry. I know it’s late, and it’s Christmas Eve and everything. You probably have, like, family stuff, I’m just realizing. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Wow, this is why I don’t have friends. I’m a dick. Sorry, man. I’ll, uh, I’ll just—” “Alex, Christ,” Henry interrupts. “It’s fine. It’s half three here, everyone’s gone to bed. Except Bea. Say hi, Bea.” “Hi, Alex!” says a clear, giggly voice on the other end of the line. “Henry’s got his candy-cane jim-jams on—” “That’s quite enough,” Henry’s voice comes back through, and there’s a muffled sound like maybe a pillow has been shoved in Bea’s direction. “What’s happening, then?” “Sorry,” Alex blurts out, “I know this is weird, and you’re with your sister and everything, and like, argh. I kind of didn’t have anyone else to call who would be awake? And I know we’re, uh, not really friends, and we don’t really talk about this stuff, but my dad came in for Christmas, and he and my mom are like fucking tiger sharks fighting over a baby seal when you put them in the same room together for more than an hour, and they got in this huge fight, and it shouldn’t matter, because they’re already divorced and everything, and I don’t know why I lost my shit, but I wish they could give it a rest for once so we could have one single normal holiday, you know?” There’s a long pause before Henry says, “Hang on. Bea, can I have a minute? Hush. Yes, you can take the biscuits. All right, I’m listening.” Alex exhales, wondering faintly what the hell he’s doing, but plows onward. Telling Henry about the divorce—those weird, tumultuous years, the day he came home from a Boy Scout camp-out to discover his dad’s things moved out, the nights of Helados ice cream—doesn’t feel as uncomfortable as it probably should. He’s never bothered to filter himself with Henry, at first because he honestly didn’t care what Henry thought, and now because it’s how they are. Maybe it should be different, bitching about his course load versus spilling his guts about this. It isn’t. He doesn’t realize he’s been talking for an hour until he finishes retelling what happened at dinner and Henry says, “It sounds like you did your best.” Alex forgets what he was going to say next. He just . . . Well, he gets told he’s great a lot. He just doesn’t often get told he’s good enough. Before he can think of a response, there’s a soft triple knock on the door—June. “Ah—okay, thanks, man, I gotta go,” Alex says, his voice low as June eases the door open. “Alex—” “Seriously, um. Thank you,” Alex says. He really does not want to explain this to June. “Merry Christmas. ’Night.” He hangs up and tosses the phone aside as June settles down on the bed. She’s wearing her pink bathrobe, and her hair is wet from the shower. “Hey,” she says. “You okay?” “Yeah, I’m fine,” he says. “Sorry, I don’t know what’s up with me. I didn’t mean to lose it. I’ve been . . . I don’t know. I’ve been kind of . . . off . . . lately.” “It’s okay,” she says. She tosses her hair over her shoulder, flicking droplets of water onto him. “I was a total basket case for the last six months of college. I would lose it at anybody. You know, you don’t have to do everything all the time.” “It’s fine. I’m fine,” he tells her automatically. June tilts an unconvinced look at him, and he kicks at one of her knees with his bare foot. “So, how did things go after I left? Did they finish cleaning up the blood yet?” June sighs, kicking him back. “Somehow it shifted to the topic of how they were a political power couple before the divorce and how good those times were, Mom apologized, and it was whiskey and nostalgia hour until everybody went to bed.” She sniffs. “Anyway, you were right.” “You don’t think I was out of line?” “Nah. Though . . . I kind of agree with what Dad was saying. Mom can be . . . you know . . . Mom.” “Well, that’s what got her where she is now.” “You don’t think it’s ever a problem?” Alex shrugs. “I think she’s a good mom.” “Yeah, to you,” June says. There’s no accusation behind it, just observation. “The effectiveness of her nurturing kind of depends on what you need from her. Or what you can do for her.” “I mean, I get what she’s saying, though,” Alex hedges. “Sometimes it still sucks that Dad decided to pack up and move just to run for the seat in California.” “Yeah, but, I mean, how is that different from the stuff Mom’s done? It’s all politics. I’m just saying, he has a point about how Mom pushes us without always giving us the other Mom stuff.” Alex is opening his mouth to answer when June’s phone buzzes from her robe pocket. “Oh. Hmm,” she says when she slides it out to eye the screen. “What?” “Nothing, uh.” She thumbs open the message. “Merry Christmas text. From Evan.” “Evan . . . as in ex-boyfriend Evan, in California? Y’all still text?” June’s biting her lip now, her expression a little distant as she types out a response. “Yeah, sometimes.” “Cool,” Alex says. “I always liked him.” “Yeah. Me too,” June says softly. She locks her phone and drops it on the bed, blinking a couple times as if to reset. “Anyway, what’d Nora say when you told her?” “Hmm?” “On the phone?” she asks him. “I figured it was her, you never talk to anyone else about this crap.” “Oh,” Alex says. He feels inexplicable, traitorous warmth flash up the back of his neck. “Oh, um, no. Actually, this is gonna sound weird, but,evs I was talking to Henry?” June’s eyebrows shoot up, and Alex instinctively scans the room for cover. “Really.” “Listen, I know, but we kind of weirdly have stuff in common and, I guess, similar weird emotional baggage and neuroses, and for some reason I felt like he would get it.” “Oh my God, Alex,” she says, lunging at him to yank him into a rough hug, “you made a friend!” “I have friends! Get off me!” “You made a friend!” She is literally giving him a noogie. “I’m so proud of you!” “I’m gonna murder you, stop it,” he says, alligator-rolling out of her clutches. He lands on the floor. “He’s not my friend. He’s someone I like to antagonize all the time, and one time I talked to him about something real.” “That’s a friend, Alex.” Alex’s mouth starts and stops several silent sentences before he points to the door. “You can leave, June! Go to bed!” “Nope. Tell me everything about your new best friend, who is a royal. That is so bougie of you. Who would have guessed it?” she says, peering over the edge of the bed at him. “Oh my God, this is like all those romantic comedies where the girl hires a male escort to pretend to be her wedding date and then falls in love with him for real.” “That is not at all what this is like.” The staff has barely finished packing up the Christmas trees when it starts. There’s the dance floor to set up, menu to finalize, Snapchat filter to approve. Alex spends the entire 26th holed up in the Social Secretary’s office with June, going over the waivers they’ve gotten for everyone to sign after a daughter of a Real Housewife fell down the rotunda stairs last year; Alex remains impressed that she didn’t spill her margarita. It’s time once more for the Legendary Balls-Out Bananas White House Trio New Year’s Eve party. Technically, the title is the Young America New Year’s Eve Gala, or as at least one late-night host calls it, the Millennial Correspondents’ Dinner. Every year, Alex, June, and Nora fill up the second-floor ballroom with three hundred or so of their friends, vague celebrity acquaintances, former hookups, potential political connections, and otherwise notable twenty-somethings. The party is, officially, a fundraiser, and it generates so much money for charity and so much good PR for the First Family that even his mom approves of it. “Um, excuse me,” Alex is saying from a first-floor conference table, one hand full of confetti samples—do they want a metallic color palette or a more subdued navy and gold?—while staring at a copy of the finalized guest list. June and Nora are stuffing their faces with cake samples. “Who put Henry on here?” Nora says through a mouthful of chocolate cake, “Wasn’t me.” “June?” “Look, you should have invited him yourself!” June says, by way of admission. “It’s really nice you’re making friends who aren’t us. Sometimes when you get too isolated, you start to go a little crazy. Remember last year when Nora and I were both out of the country for a week, and you almost got a tattoo?” “I still think we should have let him get a tramp stamp.” “It wasn’t going to be a tramp stamp,” Alex says hotly. “You were in on this, weren’t you?” “You know I love chaos,” Nora tells him serenely. “I have friends that aren’t y’all,” Alex says. “Who, Alex?” June says. “Literally who?” “People!” he says defensively. “People from class! Liam!” “Please. We all know you haven’t talked to Liam in a year,” June says. “You need friends. And I know you like Henry.” “Shut up,” Alex says. He brushes a finger under his collar and finds his skin damp. Do they always have to crank the heat up this high when it’s snowing outside? “This is interesting,” Nora observes. “No, it’s not,” Alex snaps. “Fine, he can come. But if he doesn’t know anybody else, I’m not babysitting him all night.” “I gave him a plus-one,” June says. “Who is he bringing?” Alex asks immediately, reflexively. Involuntarily. “Just wondering.” “Pez,” she says. She’s giving him a weird look he can’t parse, and he decides to chalk it up to June being confusing and strange. She often works in mysterious ways, organizes and orchestrates things he never sees coming until all the threads come together. So, Henry is coming, he guesses, confirmed when he checks Instagram the day of the party and sees a post from Pez of him and Henry on a private jet. Pez’s hair has been dyed pastel pink for the occasion, and beside him, Henry is smiling in a soft-looking gray sweatshirt, his socked feet up on the windowsill. He actually looks well-rested for once. USA bound! Pez’s caption reads. numberYoungAmericaGala2019 Alex smiles despite himself and texts Henry. ATTN: will be wearing a burgundy velvet suit tonight. please do not attempt to steal my shine. you will fail and i will be embarrassed for you. Henry texts back seconds later. Wouldn’t dream of it. From there everything speeds up, and a hairstylist is wrangling him into the Cosmetology Room, and he gets to watch the girls transform into their camera-ready selves. Nora’s short curls are swept to one side with a silver pin shaped to match the sharp geometric lines on the bodice of her black dress; June’s gown is a plunging Zac Posen number in a shade of midnight blue that perfectly complements the navy-and-gold color palette they chose. The guests start arriving around eight, and the liquor starts flowing, and Alex orders a middle-shelf whiskey to get things going. There’s live music, a pop act that owed June a personal favor, and they’re covering “American Girl” right now, so Alex grabs June’s hand and spins her onto the dance floor. First arrivals are always the first-time political types: a small gaggle of White House interns, an event planner for Center for American Progress, the daughter of a first-term senator with a punk rock-looking girlfriend who Alex makes a mental note to introduce himself to later. Then, the wave of politically strategic invites chosen by the press team, and lastly, the fashionably late—minor to mid-range pop stars, teen soap actors, children of major celebrities. He’s just wondering when Henry’s going to make his appearance, when June appears at his side and yells, “Incoming!” Alex’s gaze is met by a bright burst of color that turns out to be Pez’s bomber jacket, which is a shiny silk thing in such an elaborate, colorful floral print that Alex almost has to squint. The colors fade slightly, though, when his eyes slide to the right. It’s the first time Alex has seen Henry in person since the weekend in London and the hundreds of texts and weird in-jokes and late-night phone calls that came after, and it almost feels like meeting a new person. He knows more about Henry, understands him better, and he can appreciate the rarity of a genuine smile on the same famously beautiful face. It’s a weird cognitive dissonance, Henry present and Henry past. That must be why something feels so restless and hot somewhere beneath his sternum. That and the whiskey. Henry’s wearing a simple dark blue suit, but he’s opted for a bright coppery-mustard tie in a narrow cut. He spots Alex, and his smile broadens, giving Pez’s arm a tug. “Nice tie,” Alex says as soon as Henry is close enough to hear over the crowd. “Thought I might be escorted off the premises for anything less exciting,” Henry says, and his voice is somehow different than Alex remembers. Like very expensive velvet, something moneyed and lush and fluid all at once. “And who is this?” June asks from Alex’s side, interrupting his train of thought. “Ah yes, you’ve not officially met, have you?” Henry says. “June, Alex, this is my best mate, Percy Okonjo.” “Pez, like the sweets,” Pez says cheerfully, extending his hand to Alex. Several of his fingernails are painted blue. When he redirects his attention to June, his eyes grow brighter, his grin spreading. “Please do smack me if this is out of line, but you are the most exquisite woman I have ever seen in my life, and I would like to procure for you the most lavish drink in this establishment if you will let me.” “Uh,” Alex says. “You’re a charmer,” June says, smiling indulgently. “And you are a goddess.” He watches them disappear into the crowd, Pez a blazing streak of color, already spinning June in a pirouette as they go. Henry’s smile has gone sheepish and reserved, and Alex understands their friendship at last. Henry doesn’t want the spotlight, and Pez naturally absorbs what Henry deflects. “That man has been begging me to introduce him to your sister since the wedding,” Henry says. “Seriously?” “We’ve probably just saved him a tremendous amount of money. He was going to start pricing skywriters soon.” Alex tosses his head back and laughs, and Henry watches, still grinning. June and Nora had a point. He does, against all odds, really like this person. “Well, come on,” Alex says. “I’m already two whiskeys in. You’ve got some catching up to do.” More than one conversation drops out as Alex and Henry pass, mouths hanging open over entremets. Alex tries to imagine what they must look like: the prince and the First Son, the two leading heartthrobs of their respective countries, shoulder to shoulder on their way to the bar. It’s intimidating and thrilling, living up to that kind of rich, untouchable fantasy. That’s what people see, but none of them know about the Great Turkey Calamity. Only Alex and Henry do. He scores the first round and the crowd swallows them up. Alex is surprised how pleased he is by the physical presence of Henry next to him. He doesn’t even mind having to look up at him anymore. He introduces Henry to some White House interns and laughs as they blush and stutter, and Henry’s face goes pleasantly neutral, an expression Alex used to mistake as unimpressed but can now read for what it is: carefully concealed bemusement. There’s dancing, and mingling, and a speech by June about the immigration fund they’re supporting with their donations tonight, and Alex ducks out of an aggressive come-on by a girl from the new Spider-Man movies and into a haphazard conga line, and Henry actually seems to have fun. June finds them at some point and steals Henry away to gab at the bar. Alex watches them from afar, wondering what they could possibly be talking about that has June nearly falling off her barstool laughing, until the crowd overtakes him again. After a while, the band breaks and a DJ takes over with a mix of early 2000s hip-hop, all the greatest hits of songs that came out when Alex was a child and were somehow still in rotation at dances in his teens. That’s when Henry finds him, like a man lost at sea. “You don’t dance?” he says, watching Henry, who is very visibly trying to figure out what to do with to do with his hands. It’s endearing. Wow, Alex is drunk. “No, I do,” Henry says. “It’s just, the family-mandated ballroom dancing lessons didn’t exactly cover this?” “C’mon, it’s like, in the hips. You have to loosen up.” He reaches down and puts both hands on Henry’s hips, and Henry instantly tenses under the touch. “That’s the opposite of what I said.” “Alex, I don’t—” “Here,” Alex says, moving his own hips, “watch me.” With a grave gulp of champagne, Henry says, “I am.” The song crossfades into another buh-duh dum-dum-dum, dum-duh-dum duh-duh-dum— “Shut up,” Alex yells, cutting off whatever else Henry was saying, “shut your dumb face, this is my shit!” He throws his hands up in the air as Henry stares at him blankly, and around them, people start cheering too, hundreds of shoulders shimmying to the shouty, Lil Jon-flavored nostalgia of “Get Low.” “Did you seriously never go to an awkward middle school dance and watch a bunch of teenagers dry hump to this song?” Henry is holding onto his champagne for dear life. “You absolutely must know I did not.” Alex flails one arm out and snatches Nora from a nearby huddle, where she’s been flirting with Spider-Man girl. “Nora! Nora! Henry has never watched a bunch of teenagers dry hump to this song!” “What?” “Please tell me nobody is going to dry hump me,” Henry says. “Oh my God, Henry,” Alex yells, seizing Henry by one lapel as the music pounds on, “you have to dance. You have to dance. You need to understand this formative American coming-of-age experience.” Nora grabs Alex, pulling him away from Henry and spinning him around, her hands on his waist, and starts grinding with abandon. Alex whoops and Nora cackles and the crowd jumps around and Henry just gawks at them. “Did that man just say ‘sweat drop down my balls’?” It’s fun—Nora against his back, sweat on his brow, bodies pushing in around him. To one side, a podcast producer and that guy from Stranger Things are hitting the Kid ’n Play, and to the other, Pez is literally bending over to the front and touching his toes as instructed. Henry’s face is shocked and confused, and it’s hilarious. Alex accepts a shot off a passing tray and drinks to the strange spark in his gut at the way Henry watches them. Alex pouts his lips and shakes his ass, and with extreme trepidation, Henry starts bopping his head a little. “Fuck it up, vato!” Alex yells, and Henry laughs despite himself. He even gives his hips a little shake. “I thought you weren’t going to babysit him all night,” June stage-whispers in his ear as she twirls by. “I thought you were too busy for guys,” Alex replies, nodding significantly at Pez in the periphery. She winks at him and disappears. From there, it’s a series of crowd-pleasers until midnight, the lights and music blasting at full capacity. Confetti, somehow blasting into the air. Did they arrange for confetti cannons? More drinks—Henry starts drinking directly from a bottle of Mo?t and Chandon. Alex likes the look on Henry’s face, the sure curl of his hand around the neck of the bottle, the way his lips wrap around the mouth of it. Henry’s willingness to dance is directly proportionate to his proximity to Alex’s hands, and the amount of giddy warmth bubbling under Alex’s skin is directly proportionate to the cut of Henry’s mouth when he watches him with Nora. It’s an equation he is not nearly sober enough to parse. They all huddle up at 11:59 for the countdown, eyes blurry and arms around one another. Nora screams “three, two, one” right in his ear and slings her arm around his neck as he yells his approval and kisses her sloppily, laughing through it. They’ve done this every year, both of them perpetually single and affectionately drunk and happy to make everyone else intrigued and jealous. Nora’s mouth is warm and tastes horrifying, like Peach Schnapps, and she bites his lip and messes up his hair for good measure. When he opens his eyes, Henry’s looking back at him, expression unreadable. He feels his own smile grow wider, and Henry turns away and toward the bottle of champagne clutched in his fist, from which he takes a hearty swig before disappearing into the crowd. Alex loses track of things after that, because he’s very, very drunk and the music is very, very loud and there are very, very many hands on him, carrying him through the tangle of dancing bodies and passing him more drinks. Nora bobs by on the back of some hot rookie NFL running back. It’s loud and messy and wonderful. Alex has always loved these parties, the sparkling joy of it all, the way champagne bubbles on his tongue and confetti sticks to his shoes. It’s a reminder that even though he stresses and stews in private rooms, there will always be a sea of people he can disappear into, that the world can be warm and welcoming and fill up the walls of this big, old house he lives in with something bright and infectiously alive. But somewhere, beneath the liquor and the music, he can’t stop noticing that Henry has disappeared. He checks the bathrooms, the buffet, the quiet corners of the ballroom, but he’s nowhere. He tries asking Pez, shouting Henry’s name at him over the noise, but Pez just smiles and shrugs and steals a snapback off a passing yacht kid. He’s . . . worried isn’t exactly the word. Bothered. Curious. He was having fun watching everything he did play out on Henry’s face. He keeps looking, until he trips over his own feet by one of the big windows in the hallway. He’s pulling himself up when he glances outside, down into the garden. There, under a tree in the snow, exhaling little puffs of steam, is a tall, lean, broad-shouldered figure that can only be Henry. He slips out onto the portico without really thinking about it, and the instant the door closes behind him, the music snuffs out into silence, and it’s just him and Henry and the garden. He’s got the hazy tunnel vision of a drunk person when they lock eyes on a goal. He follows it down the stairs and onto the snowy lawn. Henry stands quietly, hands in his pockets, contemplating the sky, and he’d almost look sober if not for the wobbly lean to the left he’s doing. Stupid English dignity, even in the face of champagne. Alex wants to push his royal face into a shrub. Alex trips over a bench, and the sound catches Henry’s attention. When he turns, the moonlight catches on him, and his face looks softened in half shadows, inviting in a way Alex can’t quite work out. “What’re you doing out here?” Alex says, trudging up to stand next to him under the tree. Henry squints. Up close, his eyes go a little crossed, focused somewhere between himself and Alex’s nose. Not so dignified after all. “Looking for Orion,” Henry says. Alex huffs a laugh, looking up to the sky. Nothing but fat winter clouds. “You must be really bored with the commoners to come out here and stare at the clouds.” “’m not bored,” Henry mumbles. “What are you doing out here? Doesn’t America’s golden boy have some swooning crowds to beguile?” “Says Prince fucking Charming,” Alex answers, smirking. Henry pulls a very unprincely face up at the clouds. “Hardly.” His knuckle brushes the back of Alex’s hand at their sides, a little zip of warmth in the cold night. Alex considers his face in profile, blinking through the booze, following the smooth line of his nose and the gentle dip at the center of his lower lip, each touched by moonlight. It’s freezing and Alex is only wearing his suit jacket, but his chest feels warmed from the inside with liquor and something heady his brain keeps stumbling over, trying to name. The garden is quiet except for the blood rushing in his ears. “You didn’t really answer my question, though,” Alex notes. Henry groans, rubbing a hand across his face. “You can’t ever leave well enough alone, can you?” He leans his head back. It thumps gently against the trunk of the tree. “Sometimes it gets a bit . . . much.” Alex keeps looking at him. Usually, there’s something about the set of Henry’s mouth that betrays a bit of friendliness, but sometimes, like right now, his mouth pinches in the corner instead, pins his guard resolutely in place. Alex shifts, almost involuntarily, leaning back against the tree too. He nudges their shoulders together and catches that corner of Henry’s mouth twitching, sees something move featherlight across his face. These things—big events, letting other people feed on his own energy—are rarely too much for Alex. He’s not sure how Henry feels, but some part of his brain that is likely soaked in tequila thinks maybe it would be helpful if Henry could take what he can handle, and Alex could handle the rest. Maybe he can absorb some of the “much” from the place where their shoulders are pressed together. A muscle in Henry’s jaw moves, and something soft, almost like a smile, tugs at his lips. “D’you ever wonder,” he says slowly, “what it’s like to be some anonymous person out in the world?” Alex frowns. “What do you mean?” “Just, you know,” Henry says. “If your mum weren’t the president and you were just a normal bloke living a normal life, what things might be like? What you’d be doing instead?” “Ah,” Alex says, considering. He stretches one arm out in front of him, makes a dismissive gesture with a flick of his wrist. “Well, I mean, obviously I’d be a model. I’ve been on the cover of Teen Vogue twice. These genetics transcend all circumstance.” Henry rolls his eyes again. “What about you?” Henry shakes his head ruefully. “I’d be a writer.” Alex gives a little laugh. He thinks he already knew this about Henry, somehow, but it’s still kind of disarming. “Can’t you do that?” “Not exactly seen as a worthwhile pursuit for a man in line for the throne , scribbling verses about quarter-life angst,” Henry says dryly. “Besides, the traditional family career track is military, so that’s about it, isn’t it?” Henry bites his lip, waits a beat, and opens his mouth again. “I’d date more, probably, as well.” Alex can’t help but laugh again. “Right, because it’s so hard to get a date when you’re a prince.” Henry cuts his eyes back down to Alex. “You’d be surprised.” “How? You’re not exactly lacking for options.” Henry keeps looking at him, holding his gaze for two seconds too long. “The options I’d like . . .” he says, dragging the words out. “They don’t quite seem to be options at all.” Alex blinks. “What?” “I’m saying that I have . . . people . . . who interest me,” Henry says, turning his body toward Alex now, speaking with a fumbling pointedness, as if it means something. “But I shouldn’t pursue them. At least not in my position.” Are they too drunk to communicate in English? He wonders distantly if Henry knows any Spanish. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Alex says. “You don’t?” “No.” “You really don’t?” “I really, really don’t.” Henry’s whole face grimaces in frustration, his eyes casting skyward like they’re searching for help from an uncaring universe. “Christ, you are as thick as it gets,” he says, and he grabs Alex’s face in both hands and kisses him. Alex is frozen, registering the press of Henry’s lips and the wool cuffs of his coat grazing his jaw. The world fuzzes out into static, and his brain is swimming hard to keep up, adding up the equation of teenage grudges and wedding cakes and two a.m. texts and not understanding the variable that got him here, except it’s . . . well, surprisingly, he really doesn’t mind. Like, at all. In his head, he tries to cobble a list together in a panic, gets as far as, One, Henry’s lips are soft, and short-circuits. He tests leaning into the kiss and is rewarded by Henry’s mouth sliding and opening against his, Henry’s tongue brushing against his, which is, wow. It’s nothing like kissing Nora earlier—nothing like kissing anyone he’s ever kissed in his life. It feels as steady and huge as the ground under their feet, as encompassing of every part of him, as likely to knock the wind out of his lungs. One of Henry’s hands pushes into his hair and grabs it at the root at the back of his head, and he hears himself make a sound that breaks the breathless silence, and— Just as suddenly, Henry releases him roughly enough that he staggers backward, and Henry’s mumbling a curse and an apology, eyes wide, and he’s spinning on his heel, crunching off through the snow at double time. Before Alex can say or do anything, he’s disappeared around the corner. “Oh,” Alex says finally, faintly, touching one hand to his lips. Then: “Shit.” CHAPTER FIVE So, the thing about the kiss is, Alex absolutely cannot stop thinking about it. He’s tried. Henry and Pez and their bodyguards were long gone by the time Alex made it back inside. Not even a drunken stupor or the next morning’s pounding hangover can scrub the image from his brain. He tries listening in on his mom’s meetings, but they can’t hold his attention, and Zahra bans him from the West Wing. He studies every bill trickling through Congress and considers making rounds to sweet-talk senators, but can’t muster the enthusiasm. Not even starting a rumor with Nora sounds enticing. He starts his last semester, goes to class, sits with the social secretary to plan his graduation dinner, buries himself in highlighted annotations and supplemental readings. But beneath it all, there’s the Prince of England kissing him under a linden tree in the garden, moonlight in his hair, and Alex’s insides feel positively molten, and he wants to throw himself down the presidential stairs. He hasn’t told anyone, not even Nora or June. He has no idea what he’d even say if he did. Is he even technically allowed to tell anyone, since he signed an NDA? Was this why he had to sign it? Is this something Henry always had in mind? Does that mean Henry has feelings for him? Why would Henry have acted like a tedious prick for so long if he liked him? Henry’s not offering any insights, or anything at all. He hasn’t answered a single one of Alex’s texts or calls. “Okay, that’s it,” June says on a Wednesday afternoon, stomping out of her room and into the sitting room by their shared hallway. She’s in her workout clothes with her hair tied up. Alex hastily shoves his phone back into his pocket. “I don’t know what your problem is, but I have been trying to write for two hours and I can’t do it when I can hear you pacing.” She throws a baseball cap at him. “I’m going for a run, and you’re coming with me.” Cash accompanies them to the Reflecting Pool, where June kicks the back of Alex’s knee to get him going, and Alex grunts and swears and picks up the pace. He feels like a dog that has to be taken on walks to get his energy out. Especially when June says, “You’re like a dog that has to be taken on walks to get his energy out.” “I hate you sometimes,” he tells her, and he shoves his earbuds in and cranks up Kid Cudi. He thinks, as he runs and runs and runs, the stupidest thing of all is that he’s straight. Like, he’s pretty sure he’s straight. He can pinpoint moments throughout his life when he thought to himself, “See, this means I can’t possibly be into guys.” Like when he was in middle school and he kissed a girl for the first time, and he didn’t think about a guy when it was happening, just that her hair was soft and it felt nice. Or when he was a sophomore in high school and one of his friends came out as gay, and he couldn’t imagine ever doing anything like that. Or his senior year, when he got drunk and made out with Liam in his twin bed for an hour, and he didn’t have a sexual crisis about it—that had to mean he was straight, right? Because if he were into guys, it would have felt scary to be with one, but it wasn’t. That was just how horny teenage best friends were sometimes, like when they would get off at the same time watching porn in Liam’s bedroom . . . or that one time Liam reached over to finish him off, and Alex didn’t stop him. He glances over at June, at the suspicious quirk of her lips. Can she hear what he’s thinking? Does she know, somehow? June always knows things. He doubles his pace, if only to get the expression on her mouth out of his periphery. On their fifth lap, he thinks back over his hormonal teens and remembers thinking about girls in the shower, but he also remembers fantasizing about a boy’s hands on him, about hard jawlines and broad shoulders. He remembers pulling his eyes off a teammate in the locker room a couple times, but that was, like, an objective thing. How was he supposed to know back then if he wanted to look like other guys, or if he wanted other guys? Or if his horny teenage urges actually even meant anything? He’s a son of Democrats. It’s something he’s always been around. So, he always assumed if he weren’t straight, he would just know, like how he knows that he loves cajeta on his ice cream or that he needs a tediously organized calendar to get anything done. He thought he was smart enough about his own identity that there weren’t any questions left. They’re rounding the corner for their eighth lap now, and he’s starting to see some flaws in his logic. Straight people, he thinks, probably don’t spend this much time convincing themselves they’re straight. There’s another reason he never cared to examine things beyond the basic benchmark of being attracted to women. He’s been in the public eye since his mom became the favored 2016 nominee, the White House Trio the administration’s door to the teen and twenty-something demographic almost as long. All three of them—himself, June, and Nora—have their roles. Nora is the cool brainy one, the one who makes inappropriate jokes on Twitter about whatever sci-fi show everyone’s watching, a bar trivia team ringer. She’s not straight—she’s never been straight—but to her, it’s an incidental part of who she is. She doesn’t worry about going public with it; feelings don’t consume her the way his do. He looks at June—ahead of him now, caramel highlights in her swinging ponytail catching the midday sun—and he knows her place too. The intrepid Washington Post columnist, the fashion trendsetter everyone wants to have at their wine-and-cheese night. But Alex is the golden boy. The heartthrob, the handsome rogue with a heart of gold. The guy who moves through life effortlessly, who makes everyone laugh. Highest approval ratings of the entire First Family. The whole point of him is that his appeal is as universal as possible. Being . . . whatever he’s starting to suspect he might be, is definitely not universally appealing to voters. He has a hard enough time being half-Mexican. He wants his mom to keep her approval ratings up without having to manage a complication from her own family. He wants to be the youngest congressman in US history. He’s absolutely sure that guys who kissed the Prince of England and liked it don’t get elected to represent Texas. But he thinks about Henry, and, oh. He thinks about Henry, and something twists in his chest, like a stretch he’s been avoiding for too long. He thinks about Henry’s voice low in his ear over the phone at three in the morning, and suddenly he has a name for what ignites in the pit of his stomach. Henry’s hands on him, his thumbs braced against his temples back in the garden, Henry’s hands other places, Henry’s mouth, what he might do with it if Alex let him. Henry’s broad shoulders and long legs and narrow waist, the place his jaw meets his neck and the place his neck meets his shoulder and the tendon that stretches the length between them, and the way it looks when Henry turns his head to shoot him a challenging glare, and his impossibly blue eyes— He trips on a crack in the pavement and goes tumbling down, skinning his knee and ripping his earbuds out. “Dude, what the hell?” June’s voice cuts through the ringing in his ears. She’s standing over him, hands on her knees, brow furrowed, and panting. “Your brain could not be more clearly in another solar system. Are you gonna tell me or what?” He takes her hand and lets her pull him and his bloody knee up. “It’s fine. I’m fine.” June sighs, shooting him another look before finally dropping it. Once he’s limped back home behind her, she disappears to shower and he stems the bleeding with a Captain America Band-Aid from his bathroom cabinet. He needs a list. So: Things he knows right now. One. He’s attracted to Henry. Two. He wants to kiss Henry again. Three. He has maybe wanted to kiss Henry for a while. As in, probably this whole time. He ticks off another list in his head. Henry. Shaan. Liam. Han Solo. Rafael Luna and his loose collars. Sidling up to his desk, he pulls out the binder his mother gave him: DEMOGRAPHIC ENGAGEMENT: WHO THEY ARE AND HOW TO REACH THEM. He drags his finger down to the LGBTQ+ tab and turns to the page he’s looking for, titled with mother’s typical flair. THE B ISN’T SILENT: A CRASH COURSE ON BISEXUAL AMERICANS “I wanna start now,” Alex says as he slams into the Treaty Room. His mother lowers her glasses to the tip of her nose, eyeing him over a pile of papers. “Start what? Getting your ass beat for barging in here while I’m working?” “The job,” he says. “The campaign job. I don’t wanna wait until I graduate. I already read all the materials you gave me. Twice. I have time. I can start now.” She narrows her eyes at him. “You got a bug up your butt?” “No, I just . . .” One of his knees is bouncing impatiently. He forces it to stop. “I’m ready. I got less than one semester left. How much more could I possibly need to know to do this? Put me in, Coach.” Which is how he finds himself out of breath on a Monday afternoon after class, following a staffer who’s managed to surpass even him in the caffeination department, on a breakneck tour of the campaign offices. He gets a badge with his name and photo on it, a desk in a shared cubicle, and a WASPy cubicle mate from Boston named Hunter with an extremely punchable face. Alex is handed a folder of data from the latest focus groups and told to start drafting policy ideas for the end of the following week, and WASPy Hunter asks him five hundred questions about his mom. Alex very professionally does not punch him. He just gets to work. He’s definitely not thinking about Henry. He’s not thinking about Henry when he puts in twenty-three hours in his first week of work, or when he’s filling the rest of his hours with class and papers and going for long runs and drinking triple-shot coffees and poking around the Senate offices. He’s not thinking about Henry in the shower or at night, alone and wide awake in his bed. Except for when he is. Which is always. This usually works. He doesn’t understand why it’s not working. When he’s in the campaign offices, he keeps gravitating over to the big, busy whiteboards of the polling section, where Nora sits every day enshrined in graphs and spreadsheets. She’s made easy friends with her coworkers, since competence translates directly to popularity in the campaign social culture, and nobody’s better at numbers than her. He’s not jealous, exactly. He’s popular in his own department, constantly cornered at the Keurig for second opinions on people’s drafts and invited to after-work drinks he never has time for. At least four staffers of various genders have hit on him, and WASPy Hunter won’t stop trying to convince him to come to his improv shows. He smiles handsomely over his coffee and makes sarcastic jokes and the Alex Claremont-Diaz Charm Initiative is as effective as ever. But Nora makes friends, and Alex ends up with acquaintances who think they know him because they’ve read his profile in New York Magazine, and perfectly fine people with perfectly fine bodies who want to take him home from the bar. None of it is satisfying—it never has been, not really, but it never mattered as much as it does now that there’s the sharp counterpoint of Henry, who knows him. Henry who’s seen him in glasses and tolerates him at his most annoying and still kissed him like he wanted him, singularly, not the idea of him. So it goes, and Henry is there, in his head and his lecture notes and his cubicle, every single stupid day, no matter how many shots of espresso he puts in his coffee. Nora would be the obvious choice for help, if not for the fact that she’s neck deep in polling numbers. When she gets into her work like this, it’s like trying to have a meaningful conversation with a high-speed computer that loves Chipotle and makes fun of what you’re wearing. But she’s his best friend, and she’s sort of vaguely bisexual. She never dates—no time or desire—but if she did, she says it’d be an even split of the intern pool. She’s as knowledgeable about the topic as she is about everything else. “Hello,” she says from the floor as he drops a bag of burritos and a second bag of chips with guacamole on the coffee table. “You might have to put guacamole directly into my mouth with a spoon because I need both hands for the next forty-eight hours.” Nora’s grandparents, the Veep and Second Lady, live at the Naval Observatory, and her parents live just outside of Montpelier, but she’s had the same airy one-bedroom in Columbia Heights since she transferred from MIT to GW. It’s full of books and plants she tends to with complex spreadsheets of watering schedules. Tonight, she’s sitting on her living room floor in a glowing circle of screens like some kind of Capitol Hill s?ance. To her left, her campaign laptop is open to an indecipherable page of data and bar graphs. To her right, her personal computer is running three news aggregators at the same time. In front of her, the TV is broadcasting CNN’s Republican primary coverage, while the tablet in her lap is playing an old episode of Drag Race. She’s holding her iPhone in her hand, and Alex hears the little whoosh of an email sending before she looks up at him. “Barbacoa?” she says hopefully. “I’ve met you before today, so, obviously.” “There’s my future husband.” She leans over to pull a burrito out of the bag, rips off the foil, and shoves it into her mouth. “I’m not going to have a marriage of convenience with you if you’re always embarrassing me with the way you eat burritos,” Alex says, watching her chew. A black bean falls out of her mouth and lands on one of her keyboards. “Aren’t you from Texas?” she says through her mouthful. “I’ve seen you shotgun a bottle of barbecue sauce. Watch yourself or I’m gonna marry June instead.” This might be his opening into “the conversation.” Hey, you know how you’re always joking about dating June? Well, like, what if I dated a guy? Not that he wants to date Henry. At all. Ever. But just, like, hypothetically. Nora goes off on a data nerd tangent for the next twenty minutes about her updated take on whatever the fuck the Boyer–Moore majority vote algorithm is and variables and how it can be used in whatever work she’s doing for the campaign, or something. Honestly, Alex’s concentration is drifting in and out. He’s just working on summoning up courage until she talks herself into submission. “Hey, so, uh,” Alex attempts as she takes a burrito break. “Remember when we dated?” Nora swallows a massive bite and grins. “Why yes, I do, Alejandro.” Alex forces a laugh. “So, knowing me as well as you do—” “In the biblical sense.” “Numbers on me being into dudes?” That pulls Nora up short, before she cocks her head to the side and says, “Seventy-eight percent probability of latent bisexual tendencies. One hundred percent probability this is not a hypothetical question.” “Yeah. So.” He coughs. “Weird thing happened. You know how Henry came to New Year’s? He kinda . . . kissed me?” “Oh, no shit?” Nora says, nodding appreciatively. “Nice.” Alex stares at her. “You’re not surprised?” “I mean.” She shrugs. “He’s gay, and you’re hot, so.” He sits up so quickly he almost drops his burrito on the floor. “Wait, wait—what makes you think he’s gay? Did he tell you he was?” “No, I just . . . like, you know.” She gesticulates as if to describe her usual thought process. It’s as incomprehensible as her brain. “I observe patterns and data, and they form logical conclusions, and he’s just, gay. He’s always been gay.” “I . . . what?” “Dude. Have you met him? Isn’t he supposed to be your best friend or whatever? He’s gay. Like, Fire Island on the Fourth of July, gay. Did you really not know?” Alex lifts his hands helplessly. “No?” “Alex, I thought you were supposed to be smart.” “Me too! How can he—how can he spring a kiss on me without even telling me he’s gay first?” “I mean, like,” she attempts, “is it possible he assumed you knew?” “But he goes on dates with girls all the time.” “Yeah, because princes aren’t allowed to be gay,” Nora says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Why do you think they’re always photographed?” Alex lets that sink in for half a second and remembers this is supposed to be about his gay panic, not Henry’s. “Okay, so. Wait. Jesus. Can we go back to the part where he kissed me?” “Ooh, yes,” Nora says. She licks a glob of guacamole off the screen of her phone. “Happily. Was he a good kisser? Was there tongue? Did you like it?” “Never mind,” Alex says instantly. “Forget I asked.” “Since when are you a prude?” Nora demands. “Last year you made me listen to every nasty detail about going down on Amber Forrester from June’s internship.” “Do not,” he says, hiding his face behind the crook of his elbow. “Then, spill.” “I seriously hope you die,” he says. “Yes, he was a good kisser, and there was tongue.” “I fucking knew it,” she says. “Still waters, deep dicking.” “Stop,” he groans. “Prince Henry is a biscuit,” Nora says, “let him sop you up.” “I’m leaving.” She throws her head back and cackles, and seriously, Alex has got to get more friends. “Did you like it, though?” A pause. “What, um,” he starts. “What do you think it would mean . . . if I did?” “Well. Babe. You’ve been wanting him to dick you down forever, right?” Alex almost chokes on his tongue. “What?” Nora looks at him. “Oh, shit. Did you not know that either? Shit. I didn’t mean to like, tell you. Is it time for this conversation?” “I . . . maybe?” he says. “Um. What?” She puts her burrito down on the coffee table and shakes her fingers out like she does when she’s about to write a complicated code. Alex suddenly feels intimidated at having her undivided attention. “Let me lay out some observations for you,” she says. “You extrapolate. First, you’ve been, like, Draco Malfoy–level obsessed with Henry for years—do not interrupt me—and since the royal wedding, you’ve gotten his phone number and used it not to set up any appearances but instead to long-distance flirt with him all day every day. You’re constantly making big cow eyes at your phone, and if somebody asks you who you’re texting, you act like you got caught watching porn. You know his sleep schedule, he knows your sleep schedule, and you’re in a noticeably worse mood if you go a day without talking to him. You spent the entire New Year’s party straight-up ignoring the who’s who of hot people who want to fuck America’s most eligible bachelor to literally watch Henry stand next to the croquembouche. And he kissed you—with tongue!—and you liked it. So, objectively. What do you think it means?” Alex stares. “I mean,” he says slowly. “I don’t . . . know.” Nora frowns, visibly giving up, resumes eating her burrito, and returns her attention to the newsfeed on her laptop. “Okay.” “No, okay, look,” Alex says. “I know like, objectively, on a fucking graphing calculator, it sounds like a huge embarrassing crush. But, ugh. I don’t know! He was my sworn enemy until a couple months ago, and then we were friends, I guess, and now he’s kissed me, and I don’t know what we . . . are.” “Uh-huh,” Nora says, very much not listening. “Yep.” “And, still,” he barrels on. “In terms of like, sexuality, what does that make me?” Nora’s eyes snap back up to him. “Oh, like, I thought we were already there with you being bi and everything,” she says. “Sorry, are we not? Did I skip ahead again? My bad. Hello, would you like to come out to me? I’m listening. Hi.” “I don’t know!” he half yells, miserably. “Am I? Do you think I’m bi?” “I can’t tell you that, Alex!” she says. “That’s the whole point!” “Shit,” he says, dropping his head back on the cushions. “I need someone to just tell me. How did you know you were?” “I don’t know, man. I was in my junior year of high school, and I touched a boob. It wasn’t very profound. Nobody’s gonna write an Off-Broadway play about it.” “Really helpful.” “Yup,” she says, chewing thoughtfully on a chip. “So, what are you gonna do?” “I have no idea,” Alex says. “He’s totally ghosted me, so I guess it was awful or a stupid drunk mistake he regrets or—” “Alex,” she says. “He likes you. He’s freaking out. You’re gonna have to decide how you feel about him and do something about it. He’s not in a position to do anything else.” Alex has no idea what else to say about any of it. Nora’s eyes drift back to one of her screens, where Anderson Cooper is unpacking the latest coverage of the Republican presidential hopefuls. “Any chance someone other than Richards gets the nomination?” Alex sighs. “Nope. Not according to anybody I’ve talked to.” “It’s almost cute how hard the others are still trying,” she says, and they lapse into silence. Alex is late, again. His class is reviewing for the first exam today, and he’s late because he lost track of time going over his speech for the campaign event he’s doing in fucking Nebraska this weekend, of all godforsaken places. It’s Thursday, and he’s hauling ass straight from work to the lecture hall, and his exam is next Tuesday, and he’s going to fail because he’s missing the review. The class is Ethical Issues in International Relations. He really has got to stop taking classes so painfully relevant to his life. He gets through the review in a haze of half-distracted shorthand and books it back toward the Residence. He’s pissed, honestly. Pissed at everything; a crawling, directionless bad mood that’s carrying him up the stairs toward the East and West Bedrooms. He throws his bag down at the door of his room and kicks his shoes into the hallway, watching them bounce crookedly across the ugly antique rug. “Well, good afternoon to you too, honey biscuit,” June’s voice says. When Alex glances up, she’s in her room across the hall, perched on a pastel-pink wingback chair. “You look like shit.” “Thanks, asshole.” He recognizes the stack of magazines in her lap as her weekly tabloid roundup, and he’s decided he doesn’t want to know when she chucks one at him. “New People for you,” she says. “You’re on page fifteen. Oh, and your BFF’s on page thirty-one.” He casually extends her the finger over his shoulder and retreats into his room, slumping down onto the couch by the door with the magazine. Since he has it, he might as well. Page fifteen is a picture of him the press team took two weeks ago, a nice, neat little package on him helping the Smithsonian with an exhibit about his mom’s historic presidential campaign. He’s explaining the story behind a CLAREMONT FOR CONGRESS ’04 yard sign, and there’s a brief write-up alongside it about how dedicated he is to the family legacy, blah-blah-blah. He turns to page thirty-one and almost swears out loud. The headline: WHO IS PRINCE HENRY’S MYSTERY BLONDE? Three photos: the first, Henry out at a cafe in London, smiling over coffees at some anonymously pretty blond woman; the second, Henry, slightly out of focus, holding her hand as they duck behind the cafe; the third, Henry, halfway obscured by a shrub, kissing the corner of her mouth. “What the fuck?” There’s a short article accompanying the photos that gives the girl’s name, Emily something, an actress, and Alex was generally pissed before, but now he’s very singularly pissed, his entire shitty mood funneled down to the point on the page where Henry’s lips touch somebody’s skin that’s not his. Who the fuck does Henry think he is? How fucking—how entitled, how aloof, how selfish do you have to be, to spend months becoming someone’s friend, let them show you all their weird gross weak parts, kiss them, make them question everything, ignore them for weeks, and go out with someone else and put it in the press? Everyone who’s ever had a publicist knows the only way anything gets into People is if you want the world to know. He throws the magazine down and lunges to his feet, pacing. Fuck Henry. He should never have trusted the silver spoon little shit. He should have listened to his gut. He inhales, exhales. The thing is. The thing. Is. He doesn’t know if, beyond the initial rush of anger, he actually believes Henry would do this. If he takes the Henry he saw in a teen magazine when he was twelve, the Henry who was so cold to him at the Olympics, the Henry who slowly came unraveled to him over months, and the Henry who kissed him in the shadow of the White House, and he adds them up, he doesn’t get this. Alex has a tactical brain. A politician’s brain. It works fast, and it works in many, many directions at once. And right now, he’s thinking through a puzzle. He’s not always good at thinking: What if you were him? How would your life be? What would you have to do? Instead, he’s thinking: How do these pieces slot together? He thinks about what Nora said: “Why do you think they’re always photographed?” And he thinks about Henry’s guardedness, the way he carries himself with a careful separation from the world around him, the tension at the corner of his mouth. Then he thinks: If there was a prince, and he was gay, and he kissed someone, and maybe it mattered, that prince might have to run a little bit of interference. And in one great mercurial swing, Alex is not just angry anymore. He’s sad too. He paces back over to the door and slides his phone out of his messenger bag, thumbs open his messages. He doesn’t know which impulse to follow and wrestle into words that he can say to someone and make something, anything, happen. Faintly, under it all, it occurs to him: This is all a very not-straight way to react to seeing your male frenemy kissing someone else in a magazine. A little laugh startles out of him, and he walks over to his bed and sits on the edge of it, considering. He considers texting Nora, asking her if he can come over to finally have some big epiphany. He considers calling Rafael Luna and meeting him for beers and asking to hear all about his first gay sexual exploits as an REI-wearing teenage antifascist. And he considers going downstairs and asking Amy about her transition and her wife and how she knew she was different. But in the moment, it feels right to go back to the source, to ask someone who’s seen whatever is in his eyes when a boy touches him. Henry’s out of the question. Which leaves one person. “Hello?” says the voice over the phone. It’s been at least a year since they last talked, but Liam’s Texas drawl is unmistakable and warm in Alex’s eardrum. He clears his throat. “Uh, hey, Liam. It’s Alex.” “I know,” Liam says, desert-dry. “How, um, how have you been?” A pause. The sound of quiet talking in the background, dishes. “You wanna tell me why you’re really calling, Alex?” “Oh,” he starts and stops, tries again. “This might sound weird. But, um. Back in high school, did we have, like, a thing? Did I miss that?” There’s a clattering sound on the other side of the phone, like a fork being dropped on a plate. “Are you seriously calling me right now to talk about this? I’m at lunch with my boyfriend.” “Oh.” He didn’t know Liam had a boyfriend. “Sorry.” The sound goes muffled, and when Liam speaks again, it’s to someone else. “It’s Alex. Yeah, him. I don’t know, babe.” His voice comes back clear again. “What exactly are you asking me?” “I mean, like, we messed around, but did it, like, mean something?” “I don’t think I can answer that question for you,” Liam tells him. If he’s still anything like Alex remembers, he’s rubbing one hand on the underside of his jaw, raking through the stubble. He wonders faintly if, perhaps, his clear-as-day memory of Liam’s stubble has just answered his own question for him. “Right,” he says. “You’re right.” “Look, man,” Liam says. “I don’t know what kind of sexual crisis you’re having right now like, four years after it would have been useful, but, well. I’m not saying what we did in high school makes you gay or bi or whatever, but I can tell you I’m gay, and that even though I acted like what we were doing wasn’t gay back then, it super was.” He sighs. “Does that help, Alex? My Bloody Mary is here and I need to talk to it about this phone call.” “Um, yeah,” Alex says. “I think so. Thanks.” “You’re welcome.” Liam sounds so long-suffering and tired that Alex thinks about all those times back in high school, the way Liam used to look at him, the silence between them since, and feels obligated to add, “And, um. I’m sorry?” “Jesus Christ,” Liam groans, and hangs up. CHAPTER SIX Henry can’t avoid him forever. There’s one part of the post-royal wedding arrangement left to fulfill: Henry’s presence at a state dinner at the end of January. England has a relatively new prime minister, and Ellen wants to meet him. Henry’s coming too, staying in the Residence as a courtesy. Alex smooths out the lapels on his tux and hovers close to June and Nora as the guests roll in, waiting at the north entrance near the photo line. He’s aware that he’s rocking anxiously on his heels but can’t seem to stop. Nora smirks but says nothing. She’s keeping it quiet. He’s still not ready to tell June. Telling his sister is irreversible, and he can’t do that until he’s figured out what exactly this is. Henry enters stage right. His suit is black, smooth, elegant. Perfect. Alex wants to rip it off. His face is reserved, then downright ashen when he sees Alex in the entrance hall. His footsteps stutter, as if he’s thinking of making a run for it. Alex is not above a flying tackle. Instead, he keeps walking up the steps, and— “All right, photos,” Zahra hisses over Alex’s shoulder. “Oh,” Henry says, like an idiot. Alex hates how much he likes the way that one stupid vowel curls in his accent. He’s not even into British accents. He’s into Henry’s British accent. “Hey,” Alex says under his breath. Fake smile, handshake, cameras flashing. “Cool to see you’re not dead or anything.” “Er,” Henry says, adding to the list of vowel sounds he has to show for himself. It is, unfortunately, also sexy. After all these weeks, the bar is low. “We need to talk,” Alex says, but Zahra is physically shoving them into a friendly formation, and there are more photos until Alex is being shepherded off with the girls to the State Dining Room while Henry is hauled into photo ops with the prime minister. The entertainment for the night is a British indie rocker who looks like a root vegetable and is popular with people in Alex’s demographic for reasons he can’t even begin to understand. Henry is seated with the prime minister, and Alex sits and chews his food like it’s personally wronged him and watches Henry from across the room, seething. Every so often, Henry will look up, catch Alex’s eye, go pink around the ears, and return to his rice pilaf as if it’s the most fascinating dish on the planet. How dare Henry come into Alex’s house looking like the goddamn James Bond offspring that he is, drink red wine with the prime minister, and act like he didn’t slip Alex the tongue and ghost him for a month. “Nora,” he says, leaning over to her while June is off chatting with an actress from Doctor Who. The night is starting to wind down, and Alex is over it. “Can you get Henry away from his table?” She slants a look at him. “Is this a diabolical scheme of seduction?” she asks. “If so, yes.” “Sure, yes, that,” he says, and he gets up and heads for the back wall of the room, where the Secret Service is stationed. “Amy,” he hisses, grabbing her by the wrist. She makes a quick, aborted movement, clearly fighting a hardwired takedown reflex. “I need your help.” “Where’s the threat?” she says immediately. “No, no, Jesus.” Alex swallows. “Not like that. I need to get Prince Henry alone.” She blinks. “I don’t follow.” “I need to talk to him in private.” “I can accompany you outside if you need to speak with him, but I’ll have to get it approved with his security first.” “No,” Alex says. He scrubs a hand across his face, glancing back over his shoulder to confirm Henry’s where he left him, being aggressively talked at by Nora. “I need him alone.” The slightest of expressions crosses over Amy’s face. “The best I can do is the Red Room. You take him any farther and it’s a no-go.” He looks over his shoulder again at the tall doors across the State Dining Room. The Red Room is empty on the other side, awaiting the after-dinner cocktails. “How long can I have?” he says. “Five min—” “I can make that work.” He turns on his heel and stalks over to the ornamental display of chocolates, where Nora has apparently lured Henry with the promise of profiteroles. He plants himself between them. “Hi,” he says. Nora smiles. Henry’s mouth drops open. “Sorry to interrupt. Important, um. International. Relations. Stuff.” And he seizes Henry by the elbow and yanks him bodily away. “Do you mind?” Henry has the nerve to say. “Shut your face,” Alex says, briskly leading him away from the tables, where people are too busy mingling and listening to the music to notice Alex frog-marching the heir to the throne out of the dining room. They reach the doors, and Amy is there. She hesitates, hand on the knob. “You’re not going to kill him, are you?” she says. “Probably not,” Alex tells her. She opens the door just enough to let them through, and Alex hauls Henry into the Red Room with him. “What on God’s earth are you doing?” Henry demands. “Shut up, shut all the way up, oh my God,” Alex hisses, and if he weren’t already hell-bent on destroying Henry’s infuriating idiot face with his mouth right now, he would consider doing it with his fist. He’s focused on the burst of adrenaline carrying his feet over the antique rug, Henry’s tie wrapped around his fist, the flash in Henry’s eyes. He reaches the nearest wall, shoves Henry against it, and crushes their mouths together. Henry’s too shocked to respond, mouth falling open slackly in a way that’s more surprise than invitation, and for a horrified moment Alex thinks he calculated all wrong, but then Henry’s kissing him back, and it’s everything. It feels as good as—better than—he remembered, and he can’t recall why they haven’t been doing this the whole time, why they’ve been running belligerent circles around each other for so long without doing anything about it. “Wait,” Henry says, breaking off. He pulls back to look at Alex, wild-eyed, mouth a vivid red, and Alex could fucking scream if he weren’t worried dignitaries in the next room might hear him. “Should we—” “What?” “I mean, er, should we, I dunno, slow down?” Henry says, cringing so hard at himself that one eye closes. “Go for dinner first, or—” Alex is actually going to kill him. “We just had dinner.” “Right. I meant—I just thought—” “Stop thinking.” “Yes. Gladly.” In one frantic motion, Alex knocks the candelabra off the table next to them and pushes Henry onto it so he’s sitting with his back against—Alex looks up and almost breaks into deranged laughter—a portrait of Alexander Hamilton. Henry’s legs fall open readily and Alex crowds up between them, wrenching Henry’s head back into another searing kiss. They’re really moving now, wrecking each other’s suits, Henry’s lip caught between Alex’s teeth, the portrait’s frame rattling against the wall when Henry’s head drops back and bangs into it. Alex is at his throat, and he’s somewhere between angry and giddy, caught up in the space between years of sworn hate and something else he’s begun to suspect has always been there. It’s white-hot, and he feels crazy with it, lit up from the inside. Henry gives as good as he gets, hooking one knee around the back of Alex’s thigh for leverage, delicate royal sensibilities nowhere in the cut of his teeth. Alex has been learning for a while Henry isn’t what he thought, but it’s something else to feel it this close up, the quiet burn in him, the pent-up person under the perfect veneer who tries and pushes and wants. He drops a hand onto Henry’s thigh, feeling the electrical pulse there, the smooth fabric over hard muscle. He pushes up, up, and Henry’s hand slams down over his, digging his nails in. “Time’s up!” comes Amy’s voice through a crack in the doors. They freeze, Alex falling back onto his heels. They can both hear it now, the sounds of bodies moving too close for comfort, wrapping up the night. Henry’s hips give one tiny push up into him, involuntary, surprised, and Alex swears. “I’m going to die,” Henry says helplessly. “I’m going to kill you,” Alex tells him. “Yes, you are,” Henry agrees. Alex takes an unsteady step backward. “People are gonna be coming in here soon,” Alex says, reaching down and trying not to fall on his face as he scoops up the candelabra and shoves it back onto the table. Henry is standing now, looking wobbly, his shirt untucked and his hair a mess. Alex reaches up in a panic and starts patting it back into place. “Fuck, you look—fuck.” Henry fumbles with his shirt tail, eyes wide, and starts humming “God Save the Queen” under his breath. “What are you doing?” “Christ, I’m trying to make it”—he gestures inelegantly at the front of his pants—“go away.” Alex very pointedly does not look down. “Okay, so,” Alex says. “Yeah. So here’s what we’re gonna do. You are gonna go be, like, five hundred feet away from me for the rest of the night, or else I am going to do something that I will deeply regret in front of a lot of very important people.” “All right . . .” “And then,” Alex says, and he grabs Henry’s tie again, close to the knot, and draws his mouth up to a breath away from Henry’s. He hears Henry swallow. He wants to follow the sound down his throat. “And then you are going to come to the East Bedroom on the second floor at eleven o’clock tonight, and I am going to do very bad things to you, and if you fucking ghost me again, I’m going to get you put on a fucking no-fly list. Got it?” Henry bites down on a sound that tries to escape his mouth, and rasps, “Perfectly.” Alex is. Well, Alex is probably losing his mind. It’s 10:48. He’s pacing. He threw his jacket and tie over the back of the chair as soon as he returned to his room, and he’s got the first two buttons of his dress shirt undone. His hands are twisted up in his hair. This is fine. It’s fine. It’s definitely a terrible idea. But it’s fine. He’s not sure if he should take anything else off. He’s unsure of the dress code for inviting your sworn - enemy - turned - fake - best - friend up to your room to have sex with you, especially when that room is in the White House, and especially when that person is a guy, and especially when that guy is the Prince of England. The room is dimly lit—a single lamp, in the corner by the couch, washing the deep blues of the walls neutral. He’s moved all his campaign files from the bed to the desk and straightened out the bedspread. He looks at the ancient fireplace, the carved details of the mantel almost as old as the country itself, and it may not be Kensington Palace, but it looks all right. God, if any ghosts of Founding Fathers are hanging around the White House tonight, they must really be suffering. He’s trying not to think too hard about what comes next. He may not have experience in practical application, but he’s done research. He has diagrams. He can do this. He really, really wants to do this. That much he’s sure about. He closes his eyes, grounds himself with his fingertips on the cool surface of his desk, the feathery little edges of papers there. His mind flashes to Henry, the smooth lines of his suit, the way his breath brushed Alex’s cheek when he kissed him. His stomach does some embarrassing acrobatics he plans to never tell anyone about, ever. Henry, the prince. Henry, the boy in the garden. Henry, the boy in his bed. He doesn’t, he reminds himself, even have feelings for the guy. Really. There’s a knock on the door. Alex checks his phone: 10:54. He opens the door. Alex stands there and exhales slowly, eyes on Henry. He’s not sure he’s ever let himself just look. Henry is tall and gorgeous, half royalty, half movie star, red wine lingering on his lips. He’s left his jacket and tie behind, and the sleeves of his shirt are pushed up to his elbows. He looks nervous around the corners of his eyes, but he smiles at Alex with one side of his pink mouth and says, “Sorry I’m early.” Alex bites his lip. “Find your way here okay?” “There was a very helpful Secret Service agent,” Henry says. “I think her name was Amy?” Alex smiles fully now. “Get in here.” Henry’s grin takes over his entire face, not his photograph grin, but one that is crinkly and unguarded and infectious. He hooks his fingertips behind Alex’s elbow, and Alex follows his lead, bare feet nudging between Henry’s dress shoes. Henry’s breath ghosts over Alex’s lips, their noses brushing, and when he finally connects, he’s smiling into it. Henry shuts and locks the door behind them, sliding one hand up the nape of Alex’s neck, cradling it. There’s something different about the way he’s kissing now—it’s measured, deliberate. Soft. Alex isn’t sure why, or what to do with it. He settles for pulling Henry in by the sway of his waist, pressing their bodies flush. He kisses back, but lets himself be kissed however Henry wants to kiss him, which right now is exactly how he would have expected Prince Charming to kiss in the first place: sweet and deep and like they’re standing at sunrise in the fucking moors. He can practically feel the wind in his hair. It’s ridiculous. Henry breaks off and says, “How do you want to do this?” And Alex remembers, suddenly, this is not a sunrise-in-the-moors type of situation. He grabs Henry by his loosened collar, pushes a little, and says, “Get on the couch.” Henry’s breath hitches and he complies. Alex moves to stand over him, looking down at that soft pink mouth. He feels himself standing at a very tall, very dangerous precipice, with no intention of backing away. Henry looks up at him, expectant, hungry. “You’ve been dodging me for weeks,” Alex says, widening his stance so his knees bracket Henry’s. He leans down and braces one hand against the back of the couch, the other grazing over the vulnerable dip of Henry’s throat. “You went out with a girl.” “I’m gay,” Henry tells him flatly. One of his broad palms flattens over Alex’s hip, and Alex inhales sharply, either at the touch or at hearing Henry finally say it out loud. “Not something wise to pursue as a member of the royal family. And I wasn’t sure you weren’t going to murder me for kissing you.” “Then why’d you do it?” Alex asks him. He leans into Henry’s neck, dragging his lips over the sensitive skin just behind his ear. He thinks Henry might be holding his breath. “Because I—I hoped you wouldn’t. Murder me. I had . . . suspicions you might want me too,” Henry says. He hisses a little when Alex bites down lightly on the side of his neck. “Or I thought, until I saw you with Nora, and then I was . . . jealous . . . and I was drunk and an idiot who got sick of waiting for the answer to present itself.” “You were jealous,” Alex says. “You want me.” Henry moves abruptly, heaving Alex off balance with both hands and down into his lap, eyes blazing, and he says in a low and deadly voice Alex has never heard from him before, “Yes, you preening arse, I’ve wanted you long enough that I won’t have you tease me for another fucking second.” Turns out being on the receiving end of Henry’s royal authority is an extreme fucking turn-on. He thinks, as he’s hauled into a bruising kiss, that he’ll never forgive himself for it. So, like, fuck the moors. Henry gets a grip on Alex’s hips and pulls him close, so Alex is properly straddling his lap, and he kisses hard now, more like he had in the Red Room, with teeth. It shouldn’t work so perfectly—it makes absolutely no sense—but it does. There’s something about the two of them, the way they ignite at different temperatures, Alex’s frenetic energy and Henry’s aching sureness. He grinds down into Henry’s lap, grunting as he’s met with Henry already half-hard under him, and Henry’s curse in response is buried in Alex’s mouth. The kisses turn messy, then, urgent and graceless, and Alex gets lost in the drag and slide and press of Henry’s lips, the sweet liquor of it. He pushes his hands into Henry’s hair, and it’s as soft as he always imagined when he would trace the photo of Henry in June’s magazine, lush and thick under his fingers. Henry melts at the touch, wraps his arms around Alex’s waist and holds him there. Alex isn’t going anywhere. He kisses Henry until it feels like he can’t breathe, until it feels like he’s going to forget both of their names and titles, until they’re only two people tangled up in a dark room making a brilliant, epic, unstoppable mistake. He manages to get the next two buttons on his shirt undone before Henry grabs it by the tails and pulls it off over his head and makes quick work of his own. Alex tries not to be in awe of the simple agility of his hands, tries not to think about classical piano or how swift and smooth years of polo have trained Henry to be. “Hang on,” Henry says, and Alex is already groaning in protest, but Henry pulls back and rests his fingertips on Alex’s lips to shush him. “I want—” His voice starts and stops, and he’s looking like he’s resolving not to cringe at himself again. He gathers himself, stroking a finger up to Alex’s cheek before jutting his chin out defiantly. “I want you on the bed.” Alex goes fully silent and still, looking into Henry’s eyes and the question there: Are you going to stop this now that it’s real? “Well, come on, Your Highness,” Alex says, shifting his weight to give Henry a last tease before he stands. “You’re a dick,” Henry says, but he follows, smiling. Alex climbs onto the bed, sliding back to prop himself up on his elbows by the pillows, watching as Henry kicks off his shoes and regains his bearings. He looks transformed in the lamplight, like a god of debauchery, painted gold with his hair all mussed up and his eyes heavy-lidded. Alex lets himself stare; the whipcord muscle under his skin, lean and long and lithe. The spot right at the dip of his waist below his ribs looks impossibly soft, and Alex might die if he can’t fit his hand into that little curve in the next five seconds. In an instant of sudden, vivid clarity, he can’t believe he ever thought he was straight. “Quit stalling,” Alex says, pointedly interrupting the moment. “Bossy,” Henry says, and he complies. Henry’s body settles over him with a warm, steady weight, one of his thighs sliding between Alex’s legs and his hands bracing on the pillows, and Alex feels the points of contact like a static shock at his shoulders, his hips, the center of his chest. One of Henry’s hands slides up his stomach and stops, having encountered the old silver key on the chain resting over his sternum. “What’s this?” Alex huffs impatiently. “The key to my mom’s house in Texas,” he says, winding a hand back into Henry’s hair. “I started wearing it when I moved here. I guess I thought it would remind me of where I came from or something—did I or did I not tell you to quit stalling?” Henry looks up into his eyes, speechless, and Alex tugs him down into another all-consuming kiss, and Henry bears down on him fully, pressing him into the bed. Alex’s other hand finds that dip of Henry’s waist, and he swallows a sound at how devastating it feels under his palm. He’s never been kissed like this, as if the feeling could swallow him up whole, Henry’s body grinding down and covering every inch of his. He moves his mouth from Henry’s to the side of his neck, the spot below his ear, kisses and kisses it, and bares his teeth. Alex knows it’ll probably leave a mark, which is against rule number one of clandestine hookups for political offspring—and probably royals too. He doesn’t care. He feels Henry find the waistband of his pants, the button, the zipper, the elastic of his underwear, and then everything goes very hazy, very quickly. He opens his eyes to see Henry bringing his hand demurely up to his elegant royal mouth to spit on it. “Oh my fucking God,” Alex says, and Henry grins crookedly as he gets back to work. “Fuck.” His body is moving, his mouth spilling words. “I can’t believe—God, you are the most insufferable goddamn bastard on the face of the planet, do you know that—fuck—you’re infuriating, you’re the worst—you’re—” “Do you ever stop talking?” Henry says. “Such a mouth on you.” And when Alex looks again, he finds Henry watching him raptly, eyes bright and smiling. He keeps eye contact and his rhythm at the same time, and Alex was wrong before, Henry’s going to be the one to kill him, not the other way around. “Wait,” Alex says, clenching his fist in the bedspread, and Henry immediately stills. “I mean, yes, obviously, oh my God, but like, if you keep doing that I’m gonna”—Alex’s breath catches—“it’s, that’s just—that’s not allowed before I get to see you naked.” Henry tilts his head and smirks. “All right.” Alex flips them over, kicking off his pants until only his underwear is left slung low on his hips, and he climbs up the length of Henry’s body, watching his face grow anxious, eager. “Hi,” he says, when he reaches Henry’s eye level. “Hello,” Henry says back. “I’m gonna take your pants off now,” Alex tells him. “Yes, good, carry on.” Alex does, and one of Henry’s hands slides down, leveraging one of Alex’s thighs up so their bodies meet again right at the hard crux between them, and they both groan. Alex thinks, dizzily, that it’s been nearly five years of foreplay, and enough is enough. He moves his lips down to Henry’s chest, and he feels under his mouth the beat Henry’s heart skips at the realization of what Alex intends. His own heartbeat is probably falling out of rhythm too. He’s in so far over his head, but that’s good—that’s pretty much his comfort zone. He kisses Henry’s solar plexus, his stomach, the stretch of skin above his waistband. “I’ve, uh,” Alex begins. “I’ve never actually done this before.” “Alex,” Henry says, reaching down to stroke at Alex’s hair, “you don’t have to, I’m—” “No, I want to,” Alex says, tugging at Henry’s waistband. “I just need you to tell me if it’s awful.” Henry is speechless again, looking as if he can’t believe his fucking luck. “Okay. Of course.” Alex pictures Henry barefoot in a Kensington Palace kitchen and the little sliver of vulnerability he got to see so early on, and he thrills at Henry now, in his bed, spread out and naked and wanting. This can’t be really happening after everything, but miraculously, it is. If he’s going by the way Henry’s body responds, by the way Henry’s hand sweeps up into his hair and clutches onto a fistful of curls, he guesses he does okay for a first try. He looks up the length of Henry’s body and is met with burning eye contact, a red lip caught between white teeth. Henry drops his head back on the pillow and groans something that sounds like “fucking eyelashes.” He’s maybe a little bit in awe of how Henry arches up off the mattress, at hearing his sweet, posh voice reciting a litany of profanities up to the ceiling. Alex is living for it, watching Henry come undone, letting him be whatever he needs to be while alone with Alex behind a locked door. He’s surprised to find himself hauled up to Henry’s mouth and kissed hungrily. He’s been with girls who didn’t like to be kissed afterward and girls that didn’t mind it, but Henry revels in it, based on the deep and comprehensive way he’s kissing him. It occurs to him to make a comment about narcissism, but instead— “Not awful?” Alex says between kisses, resting his head on the pillow next to Henry’s to catch his breath. “Definitely adequate,” Henry answers, grinning, and he scoops Alex up against his chest greedily as if he’s trying to touch all of him at once. Henry’s hands are huge on his back, his jaw sharp and rough with a long day’s stubble, his shoulders broad enough to eclipse Alex when he rolls them over and pins Alex to the mattress. None of it feels anything like anything he’s felt before, but it’s just as good, maybe better. Henry’s kissing him aggressively once more, confident in a way that’s rare from Henry. Messy earnestness and rough focus, not a dutiful prince but any other twenty-something boy enjoying himself doing something he likes, something he’s good at. And he is good at it. Alex makes a mental note to figure out which shadowy gay noble taught Henry all this and send the man a fruit basket. Henry returns the favor happily, hungrily, and Alex doesn’t know or care what sounds or words come out of his mouth. He thinks one of them is “sweetheart” and another is “motherfucker” and some of it might be in Spanish. Henry is one talented bastard, a man of many hidden gifts, Alex muses half-hysterically. A true prodigy. God Save the Queen. When he’s done, he presses a sticky kiss in the crease of Alex’s leg where he’d slung it over his shoulder, managing to come off polite, and Alex wants to drag Henry up by the hair, but his body is boneless and wrecked. He’s blissed out, dead. Ascended to the next plane, merely a pair of eyes floating through a dopamine haze. The mattress shifts, and Henry moves up to the pillows, nuzzling his face into the hollow of Alex’s throat. Alex makes a vague noise of approval, and his arms fumble around Henry’s waist, but he’s helpless to do much else. He’s sure he used to know quite a lot of words, in more than one language, in fact, but he can’t seem to recall any of them. “Hmm,” Henry hums, the tip of his nose catching on Alex’s. “If I had known this was all it took to shut you up, I’d have done it ages ago.” With a feat of Herculean strength, he summons up two whole words: “Fuck you.” Distantly, through a slowly clearing fog, through a messy kiss, Alex can’t help but marvel at the knowledge that he’s crossed some kind of Rubicon, here in this room that’s almost as old as the country it’s in, like Washington crossing the Delaware. He laughs into Henry’s mouth, instantly caught up in his own dramatic mental portrait of the two them painted in oils, young icons of their nations, naked and shining wet in the lamplight. He wishes Henry could see it, wonders if he’d find the image as funny. Henry rolls over onto his back. Alex’s body wants to follow and tuck into his side, but he stays where he is, watching from a few safe inches away. He can see a muscle in Henry’s jaw flexing. “Hey,” he says. He pokes Henry in the arm. “Don’t freak out.” “I’m not freaking out,” he says, enunciating the words. Alex wriggles an inch closer in the sheets. “It was fun,” Alex says. “I had fun. You had fun, right?” “Definitely,” he says, in a tone that sends a lazy spark up Alex’s spine. “Okay, cool. So, we can do this again, anytime you want,” Alex says, dragging the back of his knuckles down Henry’s shoulder. “And you know this doesn’t like, change anything between us, right? We’re still . . . whatever we were before, just, you know. With blowjobs.” Henry covers his eyes with one hand. “Right.” “So,” Alex says, changing tracks by stretching languidly, “I guess I should tell you, I’m bisexual.” “Good to know,” Henry says. His eyes flicker down to Alex’s hip, where it’s bared above the sheet, and he says as much to Alex as to himself, “I am very, very gay.” Alex watches his small smile, the way it wrinkles the corners of his eyes, and very deliberately does not kiss it. Part of his brain keeps getting stuck on how strange, and strangely wonderful, it is to see Henry like this, open and bare in every way. He leans across the pillow to Alex and presses a soft kiss to his mouth, and Alex feels fingertips brush over his jaw. The touch is so gentle he has to once again remind himself not to care too much. “Hey,” Alex tells him, sliding his mouth closer to Henry’s ear, “you’re welcome to stay as long as you want, but I should warn you it’s probably in both of our best interests if you go back to your room before morning. Unless you want the PPOs to lock the Residence down and come requisition you from my boudoir.” “Ah,” Henry says. He pulls away from Alex and rolls back over, looking up to the ceiling again like a man seeking penance from a wrathful god. “You’re right.” “You can stay for another round, if you want to,” Alex offers. Henry coughs, scrubs a hand through his hair. “I rather think I’d—I’d better get back to my room.” Alex watches him fish his boxers from the foot of the bed and start pulling them back on, sitting up and shaking out his shoulders. It’s for the best this way, he tells himself; nobody will get any wrong ideas about what exactly this arrangement is. They’re not going to spoon all night or wake up in each other’s arms or eat breakfast together. Mutually satisfying sexual experiences do not a relationship make. Even if he did want that, there are a million reasons why this will never, ever be possible. Alex follows him to the door, watching him turn to hover there awkwardly. “Well, er . . .” Henry attempts, looking down at his feet. Alex rolls his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, man, you just had my dick in your mouth, you can kiss me good-night.” Henry looks back up at him, his mouth open and incredulous, and he throws his head back and laughs, and it’s only him, the nerdy, neurotic, sweet, insomniac rich guy who constantly sends Alex photos of his dog, and something slots into place. He leans down and kisses him fiercely, and then he’s grinning and gone. “You’re doing what?” It’s sooner than either of them expected—only two weeks since the state dinner, two weeks of wanting Henry back under him as soon as possible and saying everything short of that in their texts. June keeps looking at him like she’s going to throw his phone in the Potomac. “An invitation-only charity polo match this weekend,” Henry says over the phone. “It’s in . . .” He pauses, probably referring back to whatever itinerary Shaan has given him. “Greenwich, Connecticut? It’s $10,000 a seat, but I can have you added to the list.” Alex almost fumbles his coffee all over the south entryway. Amy glares at him. “Jesus fuck. That is obscene, what are you raising money for, monocles for babies?” He covers the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand. “Where’s Zahra? I need to clear my schedule for this weekend.” He uncovers the phone. “Look, I guess I’ll try to make it, but I’m really busy right now.” “I’m sorry, Zahra said you’re bailing on the fundraiser this weekend because you’re going to a polo match in Connecticut?” June asks from his bedroom doorway that night, almost startling another cup of coffee out of his hands. “Listen,” Alex tells her, “I’m trying to keep up a geopolitical public relations ruse here.” “Dude, people are writing fan fiction about y’all—” “Yeah, Nora sent me that.” “—I think you can give it a rest.” “The crown wants me to be there!” he lies quickly. She seems unconvinced and leaves him with a parting look he’d probably be concerned about if he cared more about things that aren’t Henry’s mouth right now. Which is how he ends up in his J. Crew best on a Saturday at the Greenwich Polo Club, wondering what the hell he’s gotten himself into. The woman in front of him is wearing a hat with an entire taxidermied pigeon on it. High school lacrosse did not prepare him for this kind of sporting event. Henry on horseback is nothing new. Henry in full polo gear—the helmet, the polo sleeves capped right at the bulge of his biceps, the snug white pants tucked into tall leather boots, the intricately buckled leather knee padding, the leather gloves—is familiar. He has seen it before. Categorically, it should be boring. It should not provoke anything visceral, carnal, or bodice-ripping in nature in him at all. But Henry urging his horse across the field with the power of his thighs, his ass bouncing hard in the saddle, the way the muscles in his arms stretch and flex when he swings, looking the way he does and wearing the things he’s wearing—it’s a lot. He’s sweating. It’s February in Connecticut, and Alex is sweating under his coat. Worst of all, Henry is good. Alex doesn’t pretend to care about the rules of the game, but his primary turn-on has always been competence. It’s too easy to look at Henry’s boots digging into the stirrups for leverage and conjure up a memory of bare calves underneath, bare feet planted just as firmly on the mattress. Henry’s thighs open the same way, but with Alex between them. Sweat dripping down Henry’s brow onto his throat. Just, uh . . . well, just like that. He wants—God, after all the months ignoring it, he wants it again, now, right now. The match ends after a circle-of-hell amount of time, and Alex feels like he’ll pass out or scream if he doesn’t get his hands on Henry soon, like the only thought possible in the universe is Henry’s body and Henry’s flushed face and every other molecule in existence is just an inconvenience. “I don’t like that look,” Amy says when they reach the bottom of the stands, peering into his eyes. “You look . . . sweaty.” “I’m gonna go, uh,” Alex says. “Say hi to Henry.” Amy’s mouth settles into a grim line. “Please don’t elaborate.” “Yeah, I know,” Alex says. “Plausible deniability.” “I don’t know what you could possibly mean.” “Sure.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Yep.” “Enjoy your summit with the English delegation,” she tells him flatly, and Alex sends up a vague prayer of thanks for staff NDAs. He legs it toward the stables, limbs already buzzing with the steady knowledge of Henry’s body getting incrementally closer to his. Long, lean legs, grass stains on pristine, tight pants, why does this sport have to be so completely repulsive while Henry looks so damn good doing it— “Oh shit—” He barely stops himself from running headfirst into Henry in the flesh, who has rounded the corner of the stables. “Oh, hello.” They stand there staring at each other, fifteen days removed from Henry swearing at the ceiling of Alex’s bedroom and unsure how to proceed. Henry is still in his full polo regalia, gloves and all, and Alex can’t decide if he is pleased or wants to brain him with a polo stick. Polo bat? Polo club? Polo . . . mallet? This sport is a travesty. Henry breaks the silence by adding, “I was coming to find you, actually.” “Yeah, hi, here I am.” “Here you are.” Alex glances over his shoulder. “There’s, uh. Cameras. Three o’clock.” “Right,” Henry says, straightening his shoulders. His hair is messy and slightly damp, color still high in his cheeks from exertion. He’s going to look like goddamn Apollo in the photos when they go to press. Alex smiles, knowing they’ll sell. “Hey, isn’t there, uh, a thing?” Alex says. “You needed to. Uh. Show me?” Henry looks at him, glances at the dozens of millionaires and socialites milling around, and back at him. “Now?” “It was a four - and - a - half - hour car ride up here, and I have to go back to DC in an hour, so I don’t know when else you’re expecting to show it to me.” Henry takes a beat, his eyes flickering to the cameras again before he switches on a stage smile and a laugh, cuffing Alex on the shoulder. “Ah, yes. Right. This way.” He turns on his boot heel and leads the way around the back of the stables, veering right into a doorway, and Alex follows. It’s a small, windowless room attached to the stables, fragrant with leather polish and stained wood from floor to ceiling, the walls lined with heavy saddles, riding crops, bridles, and reins. “What in the rich - white - people - sex - dungeon hell?” Alex wonders aloud as Henry crosses behind him. He whips a thick leather strap off a hook on the wall, and Alex almost blacks out. “What?” Henry says offhandedly, bypassing him to bind the doors shut. He turns around, sweet-faced and unbelievable. “It’s called a tack room.” Alex drops his coat and takes three swift steps toward him. “I don’t actually care,” he says, and grabs Henry by the stupid collar of his stupid polo and kisses his stupid mouth. It’s a good kiss, solid and hot, and Alex can’t decide where to put his hands because he wants to put them everywhere at once. “Ugh,” he groans in exasperation, shoving Henry backward by the shoulders and making a disgusted show of looking him up and down. “You look ridiculous.” “Should I—” He steps back and puts a foot up on a nearby bench, moving to undo his kneepads. “What? No, of course not, keep them on,” Alex says. Henry freezes, standing there all artistically posed with his thighs apart and one knee up, the fabric straining. “Oh my God, what are you doing? I can’t even look at you.” Henry frowns. “No, Jesus, I just meant—I’m so mad at you.” Henry gingerly puts his boot back on the floor. Alex wants to die. “Just, come here. Fuck.” “I’m quite confused.” “Me fucking too,” Alex says, profoundly suffering for something he must have done in a previous life. “Listen, I don’t know why, but this whole thing”—he gestures at Henry’s entire physical presence—“is . . . really doing it for me, so, I just need to.” Without any further ceremony, he drops to his knees and starts undoing Henry’s belt, tugging at the fastenings of his pants. “Oh, God,” Henry says. “Yeah,” Alex agrees, and he gets Henry’s boxers down. “Oh, God,” Henry repeats, this time with feeling. It’s all still so new to Alex, but it’s not difficult to follow through on what’s been playing out in elaborate detail in his head for the past hour. When he looks up, Henry’s face is flushed and transfixed, his lips parted. It almost hurts to look at him—the athlete’s focus, all the dressings of aristocracy laid wide open for him. He’s watching Alex, eyes blown dark and hazy, and Alex is watching him right back, every nerve in both bodies narrowed down to a single point. It’s fast and dirty and Henry is swearing up a storm, which is still disarmingly sexy, but this time it’s punctuated by the occasional word of praise, and somehow that’s even hotter. Alex isn’t prepared for the way “that’s good” sounds in Henry’s rounded Buckingham vowels, or for how luxury leather feels when it strokes approvingly down his cheek, a gloved thumb brushing the corner of his mouth. As soon as Henry’s finished, he’s got Alex on the bench and is putting his kneepads to use. “I’m still fucking mad at you,” Alex says, destroyed, slumped forward with his forehead resting on Henry’s shoulder. “Of course you are,” Henry says vaguely. Alex completely undermines his point by pulling Henry into a deep and lingering kiss, and another, and they kiss for an amount of time he decides not to count or think about. They sneak out quietly, and Henry touches Alex’s shoulder at the gate near where his SUV waits, presses his palm into the wool of his coat and the knot of muscle. “I don’t suppose you’ll be anywhere near Kensington anytime soon?” “That shithole?” he says with a wink. “Not if I can help it.” “Oi,” Henry says. He’s grinning now. “That’s disrespect of the crown, that is. Insubordination. I’ve thrown men in the dungeons for less.” Alex turns, walking backward toward the car, hands in the air. “Hey, don’t threaten me with a good time.”