Royal Disaster

by Parker Swift

  “But last night was lovely—”

  “Yes, eventually, after I roped you back in. After I distracted you by putting your hand between my legs. Dylan, I want you to talk to me.”

  Silence.

  A sigh.

  “Lydia,” he started, but he didn’t continue.

  “Dylan,” I replied, trying my best to convey that I was serious.

  Dylan looked at me as though he were lost, as though no one had ever asked this of him in his life. Like I was asking him to jump into a volcano or swim with sharks. And I realized in that moment no one probably ever had asked him. Not only that, but it was highly likely that no one had ever really communicated with him. Maybe if I wanted him to open up to me I needed to do more of it myself. Maybe I wasn’t communicating with him either.

  I let the silence remain between us for another moment, giving him a chance to start speaking, and when he didn’t, I took a deep breath and decided to try leading by example.

  “I’ll go first,” I said. “I’m scared.” I felt my chest tighten a little as I thought about what I was saying—this was hard.

  He looked at me again, longer, harder, almost as though me saying something so bold, so vulnerable, was tilting his world into a different axis.

  “I think about my dad every day,” I continued, taking a deep breath, tightening the sheet around me, and inching closer to him. “I think about how wrong it feels that I am in love with you, and my father didn’t even get to know you. I think about how I am living in a new city, a city he once lived in with my mother, the city where I was born, and I don’t get to tell him I am finally seeing it, that I get it, that I see what is so beautiful about this place. I think about how you shut down after seeing your father, and it must be something so intense that is happening between you two—something so painful or stressful or scary or maybe even good sometimes—but how you won’t share it with me, not really. And how that, even more than not being able to talk to my father, that makes me feel alone. That very fact scares me.”

  I glanced up and Dylan’s eyes were glassy, his hand smooth on my back.

  “So please,” I pleaded. “Talk to me.”

  “Lydia,” he said again. “I…”

  I waited, my hand on his chest, unflinching, as though if I moved I risked reminding him that he was someone who never shared anything with me.

  “What you want from me…I can’t….” He sounded sad as he said this. “I don’t…” He sighed again, and I could feel the sadness in his chest, his shoulders. “I just need you to trust that I tell you everything I can, trust that I love you. You know more about me than anyone.”

  I waited a moment longer, waited for a conversation that might still happen.

  “I do,” I said, because I didn’t doubt that.

  “Your father sounds like a good man,” he said after a few moments.

  “He was,” I said, and as I said it, he pulled me down to lie next to him and stroked my side, as though he knew the tears were forming in my eyes.

  “My father isn’t a good man,” he said, and the way he said it I knew that it was more of a confession than it even sounded.

  His grip on me grew tighter. He kissed the top of my head and then pulled me up as he slid down, bringing us face-to-face. He looked at me for a long moment.

  “I’m sorry, baby. I know you want more from me. I’ll try,” he whispered, and he kissed my cheek, each of my eyelids, my lips. Then my neck more firmly as his hand reached for my breasts. “I’ll give you everything. I will.”

  With each kiss he tried to tell me that even if I didn’t understand all he was going through, even if he couldn’t fully open up to me, that it was all there for me, waiting. It felt like a promise. And it was so close to enough.

  “Move in with me,” he said, as he did at least once a week, and his kisses became more forceful, deeper, begging.

  “No,” I replied, half-smiling at his predictable plea but half-sad as he kissed my collarbone. I couldn’t give him more until he gave more to me.

  He grunted in frustration, and even with the disappointment of not knowing more, of still feeling in the dark, and even though I knew I might be fooling myself, I let him promise me that there was more to come.

  * * *

  Later that morning we sauntered down the high street—or more accurately, I sauntered and Dylan took march-like strides, pausing to impatiently wait for me every once in a while. It was as though as soon as we were out of the house, out of our bed, his stress, his Dylan-esque need for efficiency took hold. During the week I was all for the urban power walk through city streets, but on a weekend I just wanted to relax with him, not check things off some invisible list.

  Dylan got a phone call and gave me the one-minute sign with his finger as I window-shopped while I sipped my coffee. The store I stood in front of was just opening, and I ducked inside. The sign read LOCK & CO. It was a proper hat shop, and I wanted to touch those hats, try them on. Milliners were definitely not something we had in such abundance back in New York.

  I browsed the men’s hats, arranged and labeled by type: trilby, homburg, fedora, panama. And I had the realization that these esoteric names, these specialty hats, were oddities in my world, costumes or something a hipster Brooklyn guy would wear and talk about to sound cool. But Dylan probably knew just the occasion for a Vienna fedora versus a Town Coke; in fact, he probably owned versions of these somewhere and maybe even wore them for their intended uses. On one hand, it was so cool—my boyfriend was of this deep, traditional, storied past, and I thought it was beautiful and unique and odd, all at once. On the other hand, even a simple hat seemed to symbolize the gulf between our worlds.

  I picked one up from the ladies’ section, a purple disk purporting to be a hat, with a thick fan of felt feathers radiating from its side, and I stood in front of the mirror. I was holding the hat perched on my brow, experimenting, when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I looked out the shop window and Dylan was pacing in front of the store, still on his phone. I looked down at my own and saw it was a text message from Fiona.

  SUNDAY, 9:45 am

  Don’t freak out, but also maybe don’t look at the Daily Mirror?

  Oh fuck.

  I hastily put the hat down, skewed and out of place on the table, and walked out of the shop. Whatever was in the Daily Mirror was obviously bad. And there was no way the deep, aching pit in my stomach was going to go away before I knew exactly what it was.

  I walked past Dylan, who immediately started to follow while chattering away about mahogany from Brazil, oblivious to my anxiety, and I approached the first newsagent I saw.

  I didn’t even have to go inside.

  There. Outside the shop, on the tented sandwich board, was pinned an enlarged copy of the newspaper’s front page. A huge picture of me in that gorgeous green dress at the Serpentine. Standing next to Dylan, who was charmingly engaged in conversation with his ex-fiancée. But I was looking off to the side, away from him, with an unmistakable look of displeasure on my face. The headline, bold, in white capital letters:

  TROUBLE IN PARADISE FOR DyLy?

  Those fucking shoes.

  Or more accurately, my fucking inability to ignore the pain I felt because of those shoes. I hated this. I felt dirty. I felt guilty, like somehow my expression had been about Dylan, which of course it hadn’t. But it was like the newspaper somehow made it true. Or that he would think it had been about him. Or his parents would. Or Caroline. Or Hannah. That anyone would believe this made me cringe. I hated this, and I hated myself in that moment. How could I have been so careless? How could I have let my guard down?

  The thing in HELLO! magazine had been both of our faults, but this fell on me. Then again, this wasn’t my fault. How was I supposed to know that I couldn’t even flinch or a photographer would catch it? This whole thing felt like a glaring sign that I wasn’t good at this, that I didn’t know what I was doing.

  I felt Dylan’s quiet presence behind me as I stood there
, staring at the sandwich board, willing its contents to change. I knew what my best friend, Daphne, would say if she were here and not back in New York: This would pass. That it felt bad now but in a few days no one would be thinking about it. That these things simply happen, and they are not the end of the world. Intellectually, I knew that was all true. But it was the sudden lack of control over how I was perceived in the world and the fact this affected more than just me that had me spinning, wishing I could turn back time. The panic was making my chest tight, making it hard to breathe. He wrapped his arms around me, holding me against his body.

  “It’s all right,” he said quietly.

  I just shook my head, horrified, and threw his arms off of me. I was both paralyzed and agitated. I wanted to be comforted and to crawl out of my own skin. I was furious, with no one but myself. How couldn’t he be too? “It’s not all right! What if people think it’s true? Look what I’ve done!” I said, dejected, pointing to the sign.

  “What they’ve done—” Dylan started, trying to interrupt me.

  “No. I shouldn’t have been so careless. I made such a rookie mistake, letting something as silly as discomfort show on my face, when I knew full well that photographers were there.” A woman passing turned her head, and I immediately pulled myself together, tried to put on a blank expression, and started walking back towards my house. Game face: on.

  But Dylan grabbed me by both arms, halting me, and pulled me back into his chest. We were off to the side, under the awning of a coffee shop. I felt a single tear escape from my eyes, as though simply being held firmly by him had allowed me to release some of the panic.

  “Listen to me, damsel.” Dylan spoke quietly and calmly into my ear from behind. “The photographers at that party had been vetted. Someone’s head will roll for selling this photo—I promise you that. This isn’t your fault. This takes practice. You were stunning that night, lovely, and this asshole got one off moment.” He turned me around towards him, and wrapping his large hand around the base of my head and arching my lips to his, he kissed me. He kissed me with possession and fervor. He kissed me to reassure me that he knew what the paper said was crap, that there wasn’t an ounce of trouble in DyLy land. He kissed me to calm me down and bring me back to us, to our safe bubble.

  But the problem was that with every day that bubble felt smaller and smaller, and the aggressive world outside seemed to be pushing against its walls. And I didn’t know how to make it stop.

  Chapter 9

  That afternoon Dylan had to go into the office at Hale Architecture and Design. He probably could have pushed off whatever project he was working on—he was the boss after all, and it wasn’t as though he was hurting for clients. But I had a feeling it was more about him needing to go and work on what he loved, to stay connected to his craft, to design. The more often he saw his dad, the more time he spent at Humboldt Park and at Hale Shipping, the more he needed to draft and, cruelly, the less time he had to do it.

  While he was doing that, I settled onto the couch and called Daphne.

  “So how are things with His Royal Highness?” she asked, never missing an opportunity to make fun of Dylan for his aristocratic title and life. She’d recently addressed an email to both of us: To my best friend and the Baron of the Bedroom, which prompted a conversation between Dylan and I about exactly how much I’d shared with Daphne about our sex life. I’d told him she was part of the package and that he got exactly zero say in what I revealed to her. After that he started referring to her as the Minister of Internal Affairs.

  “Busy,” I replied quickly.

  “Well, thankfully he wasn’t too busy to have Thomas arrange my flight over for Thanksgiving,” she said, “which was awfully accommodating of him. I’ll have to think of something nice to do for that duke and his court jester.”

  “Which one is Dylan?” I asked, harboring a suspicion.

  “The court jester. Obviously,” she said. “He—Thomas, I mean—said he needed a copy of my passport and my social security number first, something about security?”

  I breathed through my lips, annoyed on her behalf. “I know. It seems ridiculous, but Dylan’s security people are taking things to a new level given this whole email situation. I’m sorry. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not. It’s not like I have anything to hide, except you know, my porn-y search history on my computer.”

  “Like you watch porn,” I said sarcastically as I removed the sea-green nail polish from my toes with a cotton ball, but she was mysteriously silent on the other end. “Wait. Daphne. Do you? Watch porn?” Silence. “Daphne!”

  “I plead the fifth.” I could practically see her zipping her lips with her fingers as she spoke.

  “No way! Like what? What are you into?” I’d abandoned the nail polish removing instantly. This was too good.

  “No. I’m not doing this.”

  “You so are.”

  “I’m so not!”

  “I told you about that night at Dylan’s country house!”

  “But only because someone creepy emailed you about it!” She was protesting through an audible smile, giving herself away completely.

  “You’re so annoying. I will so get this out of you,” I said, and I would. “Speaking of, I received another email last week.”

  “Oh god. Really?” she asked, and I could hear all the concern in her voice.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay? Wanna talk about it?” she asked, and I could tell she was settling in for a good long chat.

  “Nah. I’m never without Dylan or Frank around, and I don’t really think I’m in danger anyway. The worst part is just having it be this open-ended thing that’s happening. Dylan’s dealing with all of it. He’s consulted with his security team, and they seem to be on it—out there gathering the passports of my best friends and who knows what else. But he hasn’t really told me anything about it.”

  “What about the police?”

  “He doesn’t trust the police anymore. Not after some of them were complicit in tapping his phone a few years ago. If it gets worse, or if anything too threatening happens, he said he’d bring them in, but he’d rather handle it on his own. And by ‘his own,’ he means him and his security. On one hand, I appreciate that he wants to protect me from the whole thing, but on the other hand, I hate not knowing what’s going on. This feels like it should be our thing to deal with, you know? I want to help. And it’s the same thing with everything else in his life.” I had abandoned my place on the couch and was now pacing a bit, making my way towards the kitchen, towards more wine. “Did I tell you that he’s working for Hale Shipping now?”

  “What? No. How is he doing that and running his own architecture firm? And why? I thought he had no interest in the shipping business.”

  “Thank you! Exactly! I should be able to answer these questions for you, but I can’t. Because he doesn’t talk about it. Not really. His dad is pressuring him, wants him to take over. But anytime I ask, he gives me some little tidbit and then distracts me. Asks me to trust him. It’s like he’s physically incapable of just saying ‘Lydia—’” I began, saying my name in my Dylan accent, deep and English.

  “Damsel,” Daphne corrected me.

  “Right. ‘Damsel, so here’s who I think is sending you threatening, terrifying emails, and by the way this is the history of why my relationship with my father is really complicated, and here is why I feel pressured about working with him, even though I have concerns about my own company, and I can’t really talk about it easily because no one in my family talks about these things, and I didn’t really get enough love as a child, and…’” My fake accent had fallen away, and I was silent for a moment. Now that I was saying out loud everything I wanted from him, it was bigger than I’d realized. “I guess these aren’t simple things to talk about.”

  “They might not be simple, but talking about the tough stuff is important. Have you talked to him?” she asked, not-so-subtly reminding me that I had a tendency
to do the same thing, especially recently.

  “Yes!” I exclaimed defensively. “This morning! I told him a little about my dad, and I told him this whole not-talking-to-me thing was bothering me.”

  “Good. Lead by example,” she said in her Daphne-knows-best tone. “Lyd, he might not be ready to talk about some of this stuff. You might have to be patient.”

  “You don’t think this is a bad sign? That he won’t open up to me? That he’s always just saying ‘Trust me’ and expecting it to be enough?”

  “Well, do you? Trust him, I mean?”

  Why was that so hard to answer? I knew how wrong it would feel if I were to say I didn’t—I couldn’t even utter the words. They weren’t true. I did trust him. “I do, but I just also feel like I’m waiting. I’m waiting for the part when I get to support him through whatever it is he’s going through, when I get to feel more like part of a team and less like a…like a concubine,” I said indignantly. I’d been trying to make her laugh, and it had worked, but it was also honest.

  “Daphne?”

  “Yeah?” she said calmly.

  “Do you think I’m right for him?”

  “Lydia!”

  “Stop—I’m not having a self-esteem crisis here. I mean, is this a good idea? Are we some ill-fated Romeo and Juliet situation?”

  “Are you guys going to commit joint suicide on me?” Now she was just being snarky and a know-it-all, a classic Daphne tell that she was getting impatient with something she thought was unreasonable. A lecture wasn’t going to be far behind. Thank god. I probably needed one.