“Is it so bad to want to make sure I’m with the perfect person before I have sex for the first time?” I ask Paul, seriously now, because I have a feeling this will be the last time I ever see him and I have a lot to get off my chest. “For some crazy little reason, I had a hunch it wasn’t you.”
The thought occurs to me that this might not have been the first time he and Sheila have banged. It’s just the first time she wanted me to know about it. But I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of asking, or even dwelling on such things. I just want to forget about it all and move on.
“Oh, come on,” Paul shrugs again. “You can’t blame me for taking your step sister up on her offer when you weren’t putting out…”
“Enough,” I tell him, doing my best to restrain the tone of my voice.
I don’t want Sheila to know she’s gotten to me. And I also don’t want my step mom to overhear anything if she’s here. Of course, she’ll just take Sheila’s side as always, and rub it in my face that if I only lost weight and cared a little bit about my looks, then I too could snag someone else’s boyfriend.
“Get out of here,” I tell Paul, grabbing his messenger bag— yes, he actually carries a messenger bag; what the hell was I thinking? — and practically shoving it into his chest.
“And you too,” I hurl at Sheila. “You can both have each other. You deserve each other.”
“Awww, poor little Ella’s a sore loser,” Sheila says, but she follows Paul out of the room, of course—like a fucking puppy dog— and that’s all I want. I’m so glad they’re both gone.
And it doesn’t hurt that Paul looks rather annoyed to see Sheila trailing along after him. They make a funny sight, with her still looking gleeful and undoubtedly thinking, Yes, I fucked her man and stole him as my boyfriend, and him looking like the proverbial deer caught in headlights, probably thinking oh shit, was this even worth the easy lay?
Once they’re gone, I sit down on my bed and allow myself the luxury of crying, now that I’m in private. I finger the necklace I’m wearing: it has a tiny orange pumpkin with a green heart-shaped stem on it.
I know what you’re thinking: What an odd choice in jewelry. Almost as bad of a fashion statement as that mustard on your shirt. But my dad gave it to me, because he always called me his little Pumpkin.
I wear it every day and I become especially fixated on it when I’m going through hard times. Sometimes it feels like not only is this silly yet precious necklace the only thing I have of his, but it’s also the only thing I have in the whole world.
Every fairy tale has a sad beginning, and this is mine. The problem is, though, that this isn't even the worst thing that's ever happened to be, by far.
This is just the part where you joined in, because this is where, hopefully, things start to get good. Now that I’ve gotten rid of the guy willing to hop out of his Armanis at the first chance he gets to shag my step sister.
Chapter 3 – Gregory
My mother’s dress swashes back and forth as she hustles and bustles around the grand family room area of the Palace, pacing and murmuring and trying to make sure everything is ready. If she wasn’t my mother, I’d be thinking that if she doesn’t stop buzzing around like a fly, I’m going to be tempted to swat at her like one.
Okay, maybe I actually am thinking that, just a little bit. I would never actually hit any woman, especially my own mother, but that doesn’t mean I can’t let my imagination run wild and at least think about bottling her up in a mason jar for a little while, until she settles down and I can let her back out.
“Do you have the passports, Dear?” she asks me, and I try to stop myself from grimacing.
“Yes, Mother.”
Most people say nothing ever goes right when you’re planning something big: a trip, a wedding, a family vacation. But those people have never had Queen Calinda Carrington as their mother.
Because we happen to be preparing for all three things mentioned above, at once, she is particularly on the ball today, running down her list of to-do’s and making sure everything is crossed off, even though that’s what we pay servants for. And very handsomely, I might add.
“Did you see to it that Lionel and Deron packed our suitcases?” she asks, as if speaking of the devils.
And they are little devils— I always have to go find them wherever they’re off roughhousing or daydreaming, and babysit them while they do whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing for all that money, even though sometimes it would be easier to just do it myself. I swear they act more like twelve year olds than twenty two year olds.
“Yes, Mother,” I sigh.
“Your tux?”
“Yes!”
“And over there in America, have they already picked up Meredith’s… wedding dress?”
She gulps as she asks the end of this last question, as if she doesn’t want to say those three words together.
“Ma.” I squint my eyes at her, in a warning. “You said we weren’t going to get into this today. That you wouldn’t do this again. Or ever again. I’ve made my choice, and that’s that.”
“Do what?” she asks, batting her eyelashes at me in feigned innocence. “I was just trying to make sure we have all the necessities. I wouldn’t want you to not be able to get married.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” I tell her, although I don’t believe her.
I’m sure she was trying to insinuate that Meredith would be flighty and forgetful. My mom has a lot of strong opinions about my fiancée, even though she’s never even met her. Which is part of the problem.
But that’s about to be rectified. After all, there’s no better time than just before my wedding for my mom to meet my fiancée, right? I figure that that way, Mom can’t find anything else about her to be upset about.
“Gregory, I don’t like the way you’re doubting me,” she says, reaching up to put a hand on my shoulder.
I look down at her, wishing that she could just let go and be happy for me.
“You seem awfully concerned about making sure I get married to someone you’ve specifically said I shouldn’t get married to,” I tell her. “Don’t you think that’s a little fake?”
“Well, Gregory,” she says with a pout. “I can’t really help it. I’m only expressing concerns because I love you and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I appreciate your concern, but we’ve been over this. You’re the one—” I lower my voice, so my dad can’t hear, even though his room is far away and the door is usually closed. “You’re the one who said I had to choose a bride, before…”
I don’t say the rest. Not just in case he hears. But because I can’t say it out loud. Before my dad, the King, dies.
“I didn’t know you’d choose some floozy you met on a vacation to the States,” my mom erupts, clearly unable to contain herself any longer.
Both her green eyes—nearly a spitting image of my own, in a female version of course— and her pink lips— which she always keeps perfectly lipsticked, even when she’s not planning to leave the Palace— are widened in surprise, although she’s had months to get used to this fact.
“Mom,” I protest, having had it up to here with her meddling and— more importantly— her unkind words against my fiancée. “I’ve chosen her. Meredith. She’s the one.”
I sigh, annoyed that I have to go through this with her again.
“I know you don’t like it and I know it’s untraditional for the royal family to even let the prince get a say in this, so I appreciate the leniency,” I tell her, trying to be respectful. My mother is the Queen of Ambrosia, after all. Not to mention the fact that she gave birth to me and changed my poopy diapers. “We’re dealing with it in exactly the way you wanted us to, so I’d ask you to respect your side of the bargain and not talk negatively about my future wife.”
Mom nods resolutely.
“You’re right, Gregory. That wasn’t nice of me. I apologize.”
She sniffles as she says it, as if she’s a
bit embarrassed to have to apologize yet again. Mom just can’t seem to help herself when it comes to being critical of Meredith— nor when it comes to letting me in on many other opinions she holds about everything and anything under the sun.
A part of me understands, as this isn’t exactly a match made in heaven. It’s more like a match made in a kingdom that still wants to believe that fucking fairy tale marriages exist. And one that forces me to go along with it by marrying someone, anyone, before I take my rightful place as King.
Chapter 4 – Gregory
I guess this is the part where I should explain why I’m marrying Meredith. Even though I don’t particularly understand it myself.
Forced to quickly choose a bride, I went for the one girl I fell head over heels in love— or at least in lust— with when I met her in Miami while both of us were vacationing there with friends. I was exploring the States with single friends since I knew I only had a little time left to spend doing that before having to tie the knot— after finding a woman to tie the knot with, of course.
And Meredith was apparently there on something called Spring Break, when college girls go wild. There was a lot to learn about American women, apparently.
We had an amazing time together, if “amazing” equals buzzed, drunk or hungover the whole trip. She told me she’d never seen a guy as ripped or a cock as big as mine. No one can go wrong with flattery such as that. I may be the fucking Prince of Ambrosia, but I still like hearing an attractive woman tell me all about the many ways in which I’ve got it going on.
We spent one too many hot Miami nights drinking ice cold cuba libres and fucking under both the water and the stars. After a long night of drinking— again— I accidentally overslept and missed my flight to Boston, which was supposed to be my next destination.
So, I decided to extend my trip, as did Meredith. She postponed her flight back to Denver, where she’s an acting student, so that we could spend another few drunken, festive nights together.
That week was like something out of a dream, and I guess I just got caught up in an escapist fervor. In a way, it was my only chance to pretend I’m a normal, college kid rather than outdated royalty from some place no one’s ever heard of.
In case you’re wondering, Ambrosia is a small island nation in the Baltic sea, just off the coast of Estonia and Latvia. It’s so tiny and insignificant that if you look it up on a map it probably won’t even show up.
But we still have royalty there, although we don’t do anything important. It’s all just for show, some family history no one ever wanted to let go of, even though everything is really run by a parliamentary republic. If you look up what that is, you probably won’t understand it, since no one really does.
Thanks to some fucking relic of royalty law and important family tradition I don’t care about but my parents do, I have to get married to someone. I don’t think I even believe in marriage. I used to think I was just too young to figure out whether I did or not; I figured I was just spending time spreading my royal wild oats.
But now I’m in my early thirties and I think I’d probably know by now if I wanted to settle down. In fact, though, the opposite was true. I liked having any girl any time I wanted her, and then moving on to the next.
I was under so much pressure, with my mom saying it’s embarrassing that the prince is still a bachelor at this age and people are starting to talk about whether or not I’ll ever get married. Once my father was diagnosed with a terminal illness it became clear that everyone was wondering who the king that takes his place is going to have as a wife. And it was unheard of in our family history for the king to not have a wife.
So, Mom decided there had to be a royal wedding. It’s all fake, a big sham, a show we put on to impress the commoners, so I figured it didn’t really matter who I picked. I might as well pick a fun girl with a tight little pussy and a nice ass. Meredith just happened to be in the right place at the right time, I guess.
She’s got “junk in the trunk”— a phrase I picked up when I was in America— and she’s good “in the sack”— that’s another one— and those seemed like good enough reasons to ask if she wanted to become the next princess of Ambrosia. Why not, right?
She said yes, of course— what girl wouldn’t say yes to that? When I phoned my mother to tell her the news, I thought she’d be pleased that I’d done what she’d requested and found a mate, but she was livid.
“An American girl?” she’d exploded, before I’d even been able to tell her more.
Not that there was much more I wanted to tell her, since I don’t exactly know how that conversation would go: So, Mom, I picked a girl who’s hot and who’s down to fuck a lot, okay?
I should have imagined that under these circumstances, Mom and Meredith would be off to a bad start right away.
“She doesn’t understand our culture, our tradition, the fact that we’re royalty,” Mom went on. “How are we going to explain to the people of Ambrosia that you’re marrying a… a…?”
“Commoner?” I guessed. “A foreigner?”
She had mumbled, “Something like that,” and I had just sighed. If she’d wanted to put conditions on my choice of a princess, then she should have said something before I’d asked Meredith to marry me.
Mom didn’t see it that way. And from there, things just got worse. I flew to Denver a few times and partied more with Meredith, but Mom always asked why we never did anything substantial together, and why Meredith never came to Ambrosia to visit me.
“Good idea,” I’d told Mom, deciding to ask Meredith to do it right away, just so she could start getting accustomed to life in her future kingdom.
When I did propose the trip to Meredith, though, she’d said she had to study and that maybe she’d come after her finals were over. Once she had finished them up, I told Mom I was going to invite her again.
But Mom had said, “Hold on a second,” and then she’d told me it’s probably better if Meredith didn’t come to Ambrosia until after we got married in the States.
“Why not?” I’d asked, baffled.
It seemed to me that my mom couldn’t make up her mind up about what she wanted. No matter what I did, she would want the opposite.
“Well, didn’t you say Meredith wanted to get married in Denver?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I told her. “But I figured you would insist…”
“The typical royal wedding here at the palace can happen later, Dear,” Mom was quick to interrupt. “Once we see how things go and people have time to adjust to the idea of…”
She had trailed off but I had already realized the implications of what Mom was saying. Apparently, Meredith wasn’t good enough for a royal Palace wedding, or at least not until she’d “proven” herself to my mom.
My mom’s biggest fear is looking bad in front of people— she is a Queen, after all, with impossibly high standards to live up to— and she knows that if I marry Meredith in front of the entire kingdom, it’s a done deal. Instead, she wants a “trial period” where we say I’m married to appease everyone’s curiosity, but we keep it hush hush and get married in the States.
Then Meredith and I will have our honeymoon and she’ll come back and live with us in Ambrosia but it will be at the country house and we’ll still keep a low profile. If all goes well and Mom approves of her, we’ll officially “unveil” her at a royal wedding celebration here at home. But if things don’t go well my mom says there’s always a backup plan. I don’t know what it is— I don’t even know if there is one yet— and I hope I never have to find out.
Now, Mom looks at me with pleading eyes, begging me to cooperate, as usual.
“Gregory, I know there’s no path that has come before us on such a thing as a royal marriage to… a random American girl,” she says. “And you know that so many people have advised us not to let you do this. There are plenty of other, more suitable women to choose from here in our very own kingdom, and…”
“But, Mom,” I remind her, �
��You said I could do it.”
The way she says “random American girl” makes my skin crawl.
“I did,” she agrees. “And I’ll stand by my word. But I have a bad feeling about this choice of yours…”
“Oh, Mom,” I groan. “You’d have a problem no matter who I picked. You don’t think anyone is good for your little boy.”
“Gregaroo-roo,” she says, harkening back to the nickname of my childhood. “It’s very true that you will always be my little prince. The one I bounced on my knee during the day and rocked to sleep at night. I do know, however, that I have to let you go. I just didn’t realize it would be…”
She sees me shaking my head in annoyance, so she stops. What she probably doesn’t realize is that I’m also touched. I know she only wants the best for me.
“It’s not just that she’s an American girl I’ve never met,” my mom says, trying to explain herself for what has to be at least the tenth time. “It’s that she doesn’t even seem to want to meet us. To be involved in your life. Half the time you call her, she doesn’t even answer.”
“There’s a big time zone difference, Ma,” I complain, but inside, I’m thinking, Hmmmm. Is that true? Half the time? Really?
Meredith better not end up making a fool out of me. Sure, this is a sham marriage but it’s important to my family and I also don’t take lightly to being a laughingstock. I suppose I inherited some of my mother’s genes when it comes to caring about what people think.
“Well, Mom, I appreciate your concern,” I tell her, realizing that it’s sweet that she wants my fiancée to be into me. “But everything is fine. This is a big change for Meredith too, you know. But she’ll adjust and everything will turn out exactly the way you want it to, don’t worry.”
“Okay,” she says, slowing nodding her head, her gray hair bouncing up and down along with it. “I won’t.”
“Don’t you have some other things on your to do list to worry about instead, before we leave?” I ask her, with a grin.
Perfect Fit Page 2
