Royal Academy

by McKenna James

  Why was I doing this anyway? Drew loved me. He wanted to be with me, and I wanted to be with him. What did anyone else's opinion matter?

  I wiped my face and perked up a little. This was our lives, to live as we pleased, and no one else had anything to do with it. If we wanted to be together, then damn it we were going to be together!

  I quickly put on my shoes, grabbed my backpack and keys, and sped toward school. I was growing more excited by the minute at the thought of making things right with him. My plan was that I would find Drew, explain to him what had happened, apologize for not answering and then kiss him to make it all better. I knew in my heart that he would be relieved, and I felt as if I was finally seeing the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

  I shoved my gear shift into park and ran inside the building with fifteen minutes to spare before class. My eyes scanned the room, only to find that Drew wasn’t in his usual seat—he was sitting next to Poppy. I started toward him but stopped because I wasn't sure that we were talking yet in front of others. Poppy giggled as she ran her fingers slowly down his arm in a flirting manner and tilted her head sideways. What could he be telling her that would cause her to blush and tussle her hair?

  My heart sank as he smiled back at her and reached out for her hand. My head was suddenly spinning, and I felt faint. I had to get out of there. Without looking behind me, I backed up into a desk causing it to move a couple of feet. The very loud screeching noise it made caused everyone to look in my direction, even Poppy and Drew.

  I saw the look of pain on his face as he looked into my eyes, and I didn't know what to say. I glanced at Poppy and saw the sneer that she wore so well. It was a look of “I am better than you; why are you even here?” I knew in that moment, somehow in my gut, that I truly was out of my element. Clayton had been right about everything that he'd said. I didn't fit in with them at that school. I didn't run in their circles, and I wasn't socially acceptable. I was the odd duck in a room full of graceful swans.

  I turned quickly and ran out as fast as I my feet would carry me. I jumped into my car and flew home faster than I had ever driven before. The humiliation I felt was more than I could bear, and I didn't want anyone else to see me in pain. There was no way I was going to allow them to revel in the fact that I wasn't in their league. I wanted no part of their “party” while they made fun of me.

  “Drew can just go ahead with Poppy; she is more his type anyway. She was made for the royal life. I wasn't,” I said as if I was explaining to him and not just talking to myself. I was trying my best to convince myself that I was okay with it all, when in reality, I wasn't. I was hurting more than I had ever hurt before; more than I ever knew was possible. This was a broken heart, and there was nothing I could do about it. It was my first, and I hoped it would be my last.

  After climbing the stairs and going inside, I locked my door, tossed my backpack in the chair, and practically threw myself onto the couch. As I lay there crying harder by the minute, I could actually feel an ache in my chest. It was unlike anything I'd ever felt before, and I never wanted to feel that way again.

  “Oh, Mum, I wish I could talk to you about this,” I said when I glanced at the picture of us on my table.

  Maybe I could call her and just talk about life in general. Maybe that would help me. I picked up my cell phone and dialed her.

  “Hello,” her soft voice answered. I felt a little better already just knowing that she was there when I needed her.

  “Hi, Mum,” I said, trying my best to sound as if I had not just been crying. She would be able to tell the moment I spoke, though, because my nose was stuffy.

  “Honey, what's wrong?” My mum knew me inside and out; there was nothing I could hide from her.

  “Oh, Mum, why do you ask that? Can't I just call you and talk without something being wrong?”

  I was trying my best, but it was going to be a losing battle.

  “Well, first of all, you should be in class,” she said.

  Damn! I skipped class and hadn't thought about her knowing that I had.

  “Oh, well, Professor Haddish turned us out early today because he had an emergency at home,” I lied to her.

  “Oh? I hope it's nothing serious,” she said, trying to play along with my made-up story. I never was good at hiding things from my mother. She always knew when I was tired, hungry, or happy just by looking at me. But now, she knew just by hearing my voice.

  “I don't know. I guess we'll find out next time.”

  I wasn't sure what I would say to her, but I wanted her to take the pain away somehow. I needed my mother to say something to me that would stop my heart from breaking. If only I could confide in her. She had always been my best friend, but now, when I needed her the most, I couldn't tell her the one thing that was hurting me the worst.

  “How's school going?” she asked to my relief.

  “It's great. I'm doing really well in all my classes. I have the highest grades possible, and I'm fairly certain that I'll make the Chancellor's Honor List for this semester.”

  I loved talking about my grades because school was truly where my heart was. My education had always been extremely important to me, and it was the one area in my life where I was in control of what was happening. I had made up my mind at a very young age that I was going to get the best education I could afford and then have a career where I could support myself and respect myself when I looked in the mirror. I wasn’t going to do what my father did and profit from other people's pain.

  “Oh, Eliza, that's wonderful. Let me get your father; he'll be so happy!”

  “No, Mum, you can tell him later.”

  There was no way that I wanted Dad on the phone, especially now.

  “Ollie, pick up the extension, Eliza has great news,” I heard her yell to him, a bit too loudly.

  “Mum, please,” I managed before I heard my dad's voice.

  “Hey, pumpkin,” he said.

  “Hey Dad,” I said, trying to change my voice a tad to cover my stuffy nose.

  “So, how are things in your life?”

  Oh, God, I had to tread the waters gently. “It's all good. I was just telling Mum that I will probably be making the Chancellor's Honor List this semester.”

  “Eliza, that's wonderful,” my father said in his Cockney accent.

  My father was proud of his accent, but I had hated it when I was growing up. I tried my best to lose it as early as possible because I wanted to sound more sophisticated and well-bred. My dad used to tease me about my lack of enthusiasm over our dialect. “Eliza,” he would say when I would practice another accent. “You must be proud to speak as we do. We have the accent of the working class.”

  I never saw it the way he did. Quite the opposite, I always thought it was the accent of the less educated and uncultured. I tried not to tell him that because he would never understand how I felt about it, and it would have hurt his feelings. My father considered being working class a wonderful thing. He always told my sister and me that every job was a real job when you could provide for yourself and your family. In my mind, his job was the bottom of the dung heap.

  “Thanks, Dad.” I was hoping he would just congratulate me and then hang up. I really needed to talk to my mother, and he was only delaying that.

  “Well, I'm so proud of my little girl. You worked very hard for years to save money to go to that snobby school and now there you are,” he said in a tone that I didn’t like. “You're one of them.”

  My father's word stung like a thousand bees at once. What did he mean, I was one of them?

  “Oh, Ollie, stop teasing her,” Mum said before I could react.

  “Come on, Mother, she knows I'm horsing around,” he said. “Don't you, pumpkin?”

  There was a thread of truth in his statement, but to keep down an argument I decided to agree with him. “Of course, Dad.” I had known for years that my father resented my decision to attend Whitby. He had tried to get me and my sister to follow him into the busin
ess of “journalism.”

  “Well, I'll get off here and let you talk to your mum. Goodbye, dear.” With that, he hung up before I could say another word.

  “I hope you know he's only joking with you,” Mum said, probably trying her best to keep me from exploding.

  “I guess.”

  “What else is going on?” she asked.

  “Not much.” I wanted to confide in her so badly, but I dared not. I was too afraid that she might let something slip to my dad.

  “Eliza, I have always known when something was troubling you. Please, dear, let me know what is going on.”

  Her tender voice with its sincere concern was more than I could handle, and I broke under what little pressure she exerted. I let all common sense go straight out the window, and I unloaded all of my heartbreak on the one person who I knew cared more than anyone else.

  “Oh, Mum,” I said as I broke down. “I'm so sad.”

  “Honey, what has happened?”

  I was sobbing by the time I spoke again. Reaching for a tissue, I began to tell mum how I had met Drew, how we had become partners, and then how we had fallen in love. It was so much of a burden I had been carrying and keeping to myself, that I felt relieved by the time I had spilled it all.

  “Wow,” was all she said.

  “Mum?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please don't tell Daddy about this.” I sniffed and wiped my nose with the tissue. “You know he might use it in a story, and I wouldn’t want to hurt Drew that way. I couldn't live with myself if Dad did that to him.”

  “I won't say anything to your father. I wish that you would have told me sooner. I would like to meet this young man.”

  “You can't, Mum. I have decided to break it off with him for good.”

  “Honey, you can't let what his friends say about you determine your happiness. People are always going to talk and say things, but if you're happy with him and he's happy with you, then you shouldn't allow others to dictate your life.”

  She made sense.

  “Mum, there's more.”

  She remained silent as I told her about seeing him with Poppy this morning and how it hurt to see him laughing and smiling as she touched him.

  “I think I've already lost him. He looked so at home with her. She's more of his type. You know, the royal type.”

  “Well, darling, I will say this,” she said as she inhaled and exhaled. “You need to think about what it is that you really want in life and then determine whether or not it's worth going after. If it is, then you must pursue it with everything in you. If not, then let it go and find your happiness elsewhere.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I love you, Mum, and I knew you would give me good advice. You always have.”

  “Well, honey, I try. I like to think I've learned a thing or two after raising your sister. I'm wiser now, and I have much better advice to give to you. Parents are always better with the second child than with the first.”

  I laughed because it was true. My mum had been a bit more lenient and loving with me than with my sister.

  “Honey, I'll let you go because you have some decisions to make. I love you, and please call anytime you need to talk.”

  “Thank you, Mum. I love you, and I'll call soon.”

  When we hung up, I felt better than I had in the past two days. My mother had made perfect sense. If Drew and I loved each other, then it was no concern for anyone else.

  Chapter 15

  Drew

  Seeing Eliza's face as I talked to Poppy was all I needed to know that she was hurt and that I had caused it. She already felt inferior to the girls that we attended university with us, but there was nothing I could do about it. That was a personal issue that she had to work on.

  Besides, she was the one who had ignored me all day yesterday and last night. What was I supposed to think when she refused to answer her phone or text me back? Not to mention the fact that she didn't even care enough about me to let me in when I stood there buzzing her door for almost fifteen minutes.

  No, Eliza had done this to herself. She disappeared on me without an explanation, and I had tried to find her and talk without success. She was the one who wrote me off, and I wasn’t going to allow her to cause me to feel bad for talking to a friend at school. I had put my effort into finding out what was going on, and she ran away from me. That wasn't fair.

  I felt embarrassed for her when she tripped over the desk, but it was kind of funny. She was a tad clumsy, but the sound it made and how it echoed across the room did cause me to laugh.

  “Hey, would you like to get something to eat?” I asked Poppy after we had stopped giggling about the desk fiasco.

  “Yes, I would,” she replied as she took my hand in hers.

  It felt weird. I didn't want her to hold my hand. I wanted Eliza's hand in mine, but that wasn't going to happen. She had made it clear to me when she ignored me. Eliza didn't want me, and I had to accept that fact and move on.

  “Well, since we have class in a few minutes, how about we meet in the cafeteria after physics?” I asked her.

  “That sounds wonderful.”

  She was pretty and sweet and she had always liked me, and I had liked her too, but not in the way a young man should like a woman like her. She was a bit too stuffy for me. She was proud and snobby, and I wasn't looking for that in a girlfriend.

  I was looking for someone down to earth, someone who wasn't afraid to do crazy things like ride in my convertible and get her hair messed up. I was looking for someone who would sit on the couch with me and eat pizza from the box while drinking beer from the bottle. Poppy wouldn't dream of doing those things.

  No, those were things that Eliza would do. I wanted Eliza. She made my heart skip a beat. She made my head spin and my body ache for hers. She made me happy and angry at the same time. I wanted her, but it was evident that she didn’t want me. So what was I to do? I was going to move on and try to forget about her. Maybe Clayton had been right all along. Maybe we were just no good together. Maybe two different worlds couldn’t exist together cohesively.

  ***

  “Hey, there you are,” Poppy said from the other side of the cafeteria after our classes were over for the day.

  “Over here,” I said as I stood up and waved.

  “What a day I've had already,” she exclaimed as she put down her books and took a seat next to me.

  She smelled good, like roses. Not like the peaches that Eliza smelled of, but still good, nonetheless. She was pretty. Tall, long, lean legs, with long hair that looked like spun silk. She had the best that money could buy, and you could tell that she was very well taken care of by her parents. She would never have to scrape and save for anything in life like Eliza had done.

  No, Poppy had been handed everything. It was through no fault of her own and there was nothing wrong with it, because she truly was a good person, but she wasn't Eliza.

  “What shall we have?”

  “I don't know,” I returned as I looked at her. “You want to get out of here and go somewhere else?”

  Her smile told me that she was on board. “Yes, I do.”

  We stood, and I took her books in my arms. “Right this way.” I allowed her to go in front of me. As we exited, I saw Clayton and Riley staring at me. Just before I cleared the door, he shot me a wink and a thumbs up. He approved of my choice. It wasn't because of him that I was with Poppy; it was because Eliza no longer wanted me. She was done with me, and I had no say in the matter. I was pissed that she shut me out, that she didn’t respect me enough to even explain, but I was determined to make it as fast of a recovery as I could.

  “So, where to?” I asked once we were seated in my car.

  She looked at me with sultry eyes and caught me off guard with her reply. “How about your place?”

  My place? Did she just say she wanted to go to my condo?

  “Uh, okay. I guess I could have the chef whip up something if he's there,” I said, and she sensed my nerves
because she laughed.

  “No, silly. Not to eat.” She lightly stroked the back of my hand that was holding the gear shift.

  I was speechless. What should I do? Go for it? After all, I was a free man, right? I had no ties to anyone. I wasn't anyone's boyfriend, Eliza had made that much clear with her sudden silence. I was free alright, except my heart was still bound to Eliza.

  “Poppy, look,” I said.

  Before I knew what was happening, she leaned over and stuck her tongue down my throat. She kissed me hard, and she tasted so sweet—like honey. My body responded naturally, but my brain couldn’t keep up. My only thought was with Eliza. I pushed Poppy away and sat up a little straighter.

  “What’s your problem, Andrew?”

  “Get out.”

  “You can’t be serious?” she pouted, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Oh, but I am, Poppy. Get out of my vehicle. Now.” I pressed the unlock button and waited impatiently.

  “You’re pathetic, Andrew.” She slung the door open and stepped out on the sidewalk.

  My cock ached for relief, and Poppy would have happily fucked me ten ways from Sunday. She wasn’t who I envisioned when she kissed me.

  She wasn’t Eliza.

  Chapter 16

  Eliza

  Morning sneaked up on me and left me feeling as if I hadn't slept much at all. Looking at the clock, I saw that I had, in fact, been asleep for twelve hours. It was almost noon, and I was surprised. “Wow, I must have been super tired to have slept that long and still feel worn out,” I said as I stumbled to the bathroom to pee and brush my teeth.

  Sitting on my bed, I yawned, stretched, and grabbed my phone. There were no messages from Drew, so I decided to swallow my pride and call him.

  It rang four times before voicemail picked up. “Drew, hey, this is Eliza. Um, I'm not sure where to start, but I just want you to know that I am so very sorry for not answering your calls and texts the other night. I have my reasons, and they are valid, but I don't want to leave them here on your voicemail. So, if you would please give me a call as soon as you listen to this, I would appreciate it. Drew...” I stumbled over the words, unsure of whether or not to say them. “I love you, and I miss you terribly. If you will allow me to explain it all to you, I think you'll understand why I ran away from you.”