by Holly Rayner
“Damn,” she mumbled, shoving her phone back into her purse.
“Having an off-day?” A man appeared next to her, holding a coffee cup, his blond hair plastered down his forehead from the rain. His eyes were bright, and he looked pleased to be speaking to Lisa—a beautiful, if somewhat harassed-looking woman, with mascara running down her cheeks.
“Isn’t every day an off-day?” she asked, giving him a fake smile. “You win some, you lose some. Right?”
“Isn’t that the old cliché?” he asked, flirting with her. “As my dad used to say: ‘you can’t win ‘em all kid.’”
“What about ‘you miss all the shots you don’t take?’” Lisa asked, finding a bit of laughter within her. She sipped her coffee, eyeing him in a friendly way, hoping she wasn’t leading him on. “I’m Lisa, by the way.”
“Connor,” the man said, shaking her hand. “Full disclosure, I know who you are.”
Lisa’s eyes nearly popped from her skull. “What?” she asked harshly.
“I followed you from the Prince’s apartment,” he said, sitting cockily beside her. His bright, youthful face had been replaced by a snake’s. “I assumed the two of you would be coming out together. I had my camera ready. But you know all about that.”
“You mean you’re paparazzi?” she whispered, eyeing him fiercely. There was no camera, nothing that gave him away; there was no way she could have known he wasn’t just a guy trying to pick her up for a date. “What the hell, man? I’m just trying to enjoy this coffee.”
“Isn’t that what they’re all doing?” Connor asked cheekily. “Just trying to walk their kids to school. Just trying to go to yoga. Just trying to live their lives with as much normalcy as possible, and yet—we’re always there to take the shots.” He winked at her. “You know, I read up on you last night, Lisa. You’ve had a few good shots published. That one of that basketballer—”
“And the ice cream. Yeah,” Lisa sighed, placing her face in her hands. She suddenly felt the weight of the world upon her shoulders.
“Remarkable work, to say you don’t even have a degree.”
“I was trying to save up for one,” Lisa whispered. “I was working my ass off.”
“And then you met the Prince,” Connor said, his teeth flashing in the coffee house light. Lisa had half a mind to shove him from the wonky stool on which he sat, teetering back and forth.
“No. I know your game,” Lisa said. “I’m not going to tell you anything.”
“Not even how you met? Not even an affirmation of whether you were with him at the jazz club last night? Not even that you bribed his driver to learn about his dinner at the Matador, and then snuck your way onto the wait staff, only to be taken home by him?” Connor was practically sweating with excitement, lifting his note pad from his pocket in anticipation.
Lisa felt trapped, like a rat in a cage, the snake coiling around her. “I didn’t,” she murmured. “I didn’t spend the night at the Prince’s, and I definitely didn’t go to the jazz club with him. I don’t even know which prince you’re talking about. The Prince of Wales? The Prince of Monaco? The Prince of—”
But Connor lifted his hand, halting her. “That’s about enough,” he stammered. “You know quite well. Look at you. You’re on your walk of shame, soaking wet. If you can just confirm that you went back to his place last night, I can guarantee that your name won’t appear, and I’ll name a different source. Is that clear?”
“And let me guess,” Lisa murmured. “You’ll pay me a small fee for my trouble.”
“But of course, Lisa. I looked that up about you, as well. What a dismal credit score. Looks like you’re in need of money pretty badly. How about five hundred dollars now, and five hundred more after it prints?” He reached for his pocket book, ready to buy her off.
But Lisa just gave him a sarcastic smile, lifting herself from her stool. “I could have sold my own story to my editor for much, much more than that. You just followed me fifteen blocks, through the fall rain, and you’re going to get nothing but a head cold.” She felt contempt throttle through her. “Enjoy your day, sir. I hope the door doesn’t hit you on your way out.”
She fled from the café, then, and high-tailed it into the subway, throwing furtive glances behind her as she went. Connor hadn’t run after her, but could others have followed her? Was she now a target of her own grimy troupe of paparazzi?
She pushed into the subway car and allowed herself to be enveloped by the crowd of lunchtime commuters, the swarm of people enabling her to forget, momentarily, that this was the single-worst day of her life. She gripped the pole of the car each time the train halted, thrusting her body forward like a rag doll’s, and resolved to shove all thoughts of Prince Francesco—of the way he held her, of the way he kissed her—from her mind. She deserved a chance at a life, and she couldn’t do it knowing that the Prince was out there, living, not needing her. Not wanting her.
Chapter 9
Two months later, it was early December. Lisa checked her watch as she slipped on her black heels, missing once and staggering through her apartment. “Shoot,” she grumbled, shoving her foot back into the shoe. “I can’t do this.”
Not long after Lisa first moved to New York City, as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed 21-year-old, she’d met Nancy—a photographer herself. The two of them had been close friends until a couple years ago, when Nancy quit the paparazzi business, got married, and settled with her husband in a tiny Brooklyn apartment, where she spent her days knitting things and waiting to get pregnant.
Lisa had been spending more time with the now-pregnant Nancy since her falling-out with Rocco. The editor still tossed her the occasional bone, including a children’s bonfire at which an A-lister’s niece and nephew had roasted marshmallows and giggled. Lisa had hated herself as she’d snapped the shot, but she had eaten heartily that evening, feeling like a hunter-gatherer, always just days away from hunger.
Nancy had many friends, almost all of them with children, and they had piled into a rented restaurant space for Nancy’s baby shower. The parents sipped lattes and stared at each other big-eyed, telling tales of how cute their children were. Lisa mostly smiled and nodded, offering an occasional contribution to their conversations. “Oh wow, she’s really walking now? That’s amazing.” “He lost two teeth in the same day? He must have freaked out!”
But soon, she found herself hovering by the counter, sipping her second coffee.
“You okay there?” the barista asked, giving her a warm smile.
“Oh, um, sure. I just really don’t like baby showers,” she echoed back.
“Oh, darling. You’re here,” Nancy cried, finally noticing Lisa. She wrapped her arms around her friend’s neck from behind, nearly pouring Lisa’s coffee down her shirt. “I’m so glad you could make it. You know, we’re all kinds of worried about you.”
Lisa’s eyebrows rose high as she turned to her friend, whose face and body were creamy with youth and vitality. Lisa assumed she’d begun to look tired and old in Nancy’s eyes.
“Well, actually, you’re glowing,” Nancy said, her eyes widening. “What kind of face cream are you using these days? Wow. You look great.”
Lisa sensed the lie in Nancy’s words, but she smiled and asked all the appropriate questions—how was she feeling, how was her husband doing, and so on. Soon, Nancy’s smile began to falter, and she turned her attention toward another woman near edge of the group, giving her a wide, soccer-mom smile.
Left to her own devices again, Lisa felt oddly lost. She leaned heavily against one of the booths, her mind tracing thoughts of Francesco for what seemed like the tenth time that afternoon. It had been two months since she’d spent the night with him, two months since she’d smelled his delicious musk. And still, she awoke to dreams about him nearly every night. Dreams in which they stood on a beach, their hands clasped, gazing out at the horizon—a metaphor, she assumed, for a beautiful future together.
Ugh.
The reality was rather
horrible. In the weeks that followed her affair with the Prince—if she could even call it that—Lisa had found herself living like a hermit in her apartment block, drinking endless cups of tea, and living off of granola bars. She’d eyed the news uneasily, hopeful that her face wouldn’t pop up. “Paparazzo Spotted with Prince—Is It Love?” She’d imagined the headlines.
But nothing had come of it. Even Connor, that snake, hadn’t published a single word about her leaving the Prince’s apartment building. Perhaps he didn’t have proof that they’d spent the night together, or perhaps he’d sensed something unhinged within her, a clear signal that she wasn’t to be messed with; that she would bite back.
Instead of seeing herself in the tabloids, Lisa saw plenty of Prince Francesco. He was an eternal figure, strolling through Manhattan, socializing with models and actors at awards shows. About two weeks after Lisa had met the Prince, rumors had surfaced that he and Princess Rose were breaking up.
“Royal Family’s Horror as Prince Turns to Drink in Wake of Breakup”, one tabloid had spouted. “Princess Rose’s Affair with her Butler”, another had claimed. The photos had been wretched, taken by an unscrupulous, untalented photographer. And the copy had been even worse, making assumptions about where the Prince and Princess had been, and whether or not they were “on” or “off.”
Lisa had wanted nothing more than to wipe her hands of the entire business. But, as it was her only income, she had clung to it.
“Have you heard the latest about the Prince?”
The voice of one of Nancy’s friends came ringing through Lisa’s ears. She turned rapidly, joining the conversation, plastering on a soccer-mom smile of her own.
“What about him?” Lisa asked brightly. “Oh, don’t mind me. I am just obsessed with royalty.”
“Me too,” another mom confessed. “I can’t get enough of his on-again, off-again relationship with Princess Rose. God, he seems too good for her, don’t you think?”
Lisa took pleasure in everyone’s nods. She hated herself for it.
“He’s simply gorgeous,” another mom affirmed. “And such fine taste, too. I saw in a magazine a few weeks back. His New York apartment, and his place in London. They were simply divine.”
Lisa parted her lips, wanting to explain that she’d seen it all in the flesh. She’d gazed at the tapestries. She’d felt the emotions that design was meant to evoke. The mothers peered at her, sensing she was going to speak.
“I mean. I saw that magazine as well,” Lisa said, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “Man, to be a fly on that wall.”
“Right,” the mother said, raising her left eyebrow slightly. “Anyway. I read that he and the Princess are back together. Isn’t that just awful?”
“When did they break up?” another woman piped.
“Maybe a month ago?” another one replied.
“Six weeks,” Lisa whispered, remembering the tabloid photograph—and the burst of hope that had come with it.
“Boy, you really do know your Prince Francesco trivia,” the woman teased, jabbing her lightly with her elbow. Her flowery perfume wafted into Lisa’s nose.
“I guess so,” Lisa murmured. “Why did it say they were back on? I read that they were really unhappy. Always bickering.”
“Oh, you should see the latest photographs that were taken of the pair of them. Especially of Francesco’s abs, of course.” The woman leafed into her purse for her phone and began to flick through the photographs on the Daily Sneak app. She held it out so Lisa could see for herself.
There they were: the Prince and the Princess, holding hands and standing in their swimsuits, gazing out at the horizon—not unlike the dream Lisa had had about her and the Prince.
Lisa’s breath caught in her throat. She wrapped her suddenly clammy fingers around the phone and brought it toward her, sighing evenly. “I didn’t realize.”
“Well, I suppose we can never really know what goes on behind closed doors, can we?” the mother said, shrugging slightly. “Just a weird window into someone else’s life. That’s all these tabloids give us. And God, I appreciate them. My life right now is nothing but bibs and cooking. And diapers. So many diapers.”
“Here, here,” another mother said, raising her mug. “We need something to keep us young.”
Lisa handed the phone back to the mother and scrambled toward the exit of the baby shower, feeling her stomach clench. She reached the exterior, where the chilly winter air calmed her stomach. She leaned heavily against the building’s wall, without her coat, feeling overheated. The barista joined her, offering her a cigarette. But she shook her head primly, pointing at her stomach.
“Let me guess, morning sickness?” he asked, snapping the lighter in front of the cigarette.
Lisa shook her head, her brow furrowing. “Oh, no, I’m not pregnant—” she began, her fingers folding over her stomach. “I’m just catching some air.”
“I see,” the man said, exhaling languidly. He puffed perfect rings of smoke from his lips, and Lisa wondered how he had mastered the skill. But her stomach clenched again before she could ask.
“Maybe I should go home,” she murmured, slipping a strand of stray hair behind her ear. “I think I’ve spoken to all these moms and moms-to-be here, anyway.”
“It’s not like you didn’t try,” the barista agreed, giving her a slight smile. “Go on. The minute anyone asks about you—the pretty blonde who definitely isn’t pregnant—I’ll tell them you definitely didn’t go home. Deal?”
“I’m not pregnant,” Lisa said, her eyes flashing. “Believe me.”
“Oh, I do,” he affirmed. “I absolutely do.”
Lisa grabbed her coat, anxious to avoid the eyes of her old friend, now mom-to-be, Nancy. She’d bought her a gift and a card. She’d said hi. That had to be enough.
She scurried from the building and into the busy, Saturday-afternoon streets, wrapping her arms over her chest. She couldn’t get the barista’s words out of her head. She paused outside of a pharmacy, feeling anxious and silly, before entering and grasping a pregnancy test.
“Just in case,” she reasoned with herself, purchasing the test in cash, rather than using her card. That way, she wouldn’t have to look back on her statements and remember “that day she took a pregnancy test for no reason whatsoever.”
The teenage clerk slipped the pregnancy test into a small brown bag, and Lisa flung it into her purse before taking the final blocks at a quick march, her arms at her sides. She rushed up the steps to her building, feeling the blood pulse through her, and then staggered into her apartment, having to drink two glasses of water before calming down enough to get her breath back.
“What is going on with my body?” she whispered to herself, pulling the test from its container and eyeing the instructions.
Even as she bounded toward the bathroom, she reasoned all the ways she definitely wasn’t pregnant. Her periods had never been reliable, and she’d never been bothered by them. When she’d been 21, she hadn’t gotten her period for five months—and she’d chocked it up to good luck.
She closed her eyes as she took the test, shaking with nerves. She set it on the sink and then busied herself in the kitchen for a while, washing dishes, trying to figure out if she should eat, but too anxious to do so.
Could she really be pregnant? The Prince was the only person she’d slept with in months. But they’d used protection. Hadn’t that been enough?
As she waited for the courage to rise up within her, she turned her attention back to her phone, flipping through the many photographs of the Prince and the Princess on vacation. “In Love Again!” the Daily Sneak declared.
As she read the articles, assessing the photographs and the seeming “love” between the two people, Lisa couldn’t help but feel betrayed. The electricity between her and Francesco had been palpable, an assurance of their chemistry. She sensed no such chemistry between the Prince and Princess.
In fact, Francesco had told her, point-blank, that he didn’t
love her. That he’d never loved her.
Furious, Lisa collapsed onto her chair, shifting her hand over her abdomen, wondering at the slight bulge. It was true that her pants had been slightly tighter lately, but it was also true that her mother had sent a large box of Christmas cookies, all frosted and coated in sprinkles, and she’d eaten all but a couple of them in the previous days, feeling sorry for herself.
Finally, she sighed and lifted from the chair, knowing that the afternoon would stretch to evening, and the pregnancy test would remain there, bearing its truth, regardless of if she went back into the bathroom or not.
She sniffed sharply, wondering who she’d call to laugh about this with once the negative result was confirmed. But she hadn’t told a single soul about her affair with the Prince, especially since Connor harassed her at that café. And so, she would hold memory of this within her, as yet another secret. They were accumulating fast.
She entered the bathroom, the fluorescent light bright and blinding, and turned her attention toward the small stick near the sink. It waited for her, a beacon that would decide her future.
Chapter 10
Lisa hovered over the pregnancy test, blinking rapidly. The pink plus sign was soft, beautiful, against the cream of the stick. She hadn’t expected such beauty. And yet, the tiny pink cross was delivering terrifying news. It was the assurance that everything in her life was about to change.
She lifted it into the light, remembering the way the Prince’s eyes had glittered as they’d spoken, whispering secrets over the pillow. Already, she could picture the child they’d created together: dark curls descending across pink cheeks.
But as her mind turned, she began to wilt to the ground. She felt as if she’d been punched. Oxygen couldn’t race to her brain quickly enough, and she began to see black.
“Snap out of it,” Lisa murmured, rising to her feet. She flung herself to the kitchen, searching for her phone. She didn’t have to be a single mother—at least, not in the traditional sense. She and this man, this prince, had felt something together. Surely, he thought of her fondly, despite her press credentials.
