Royal Disaster

by Parker Swift

  “You know what I mean! Don’t you think his life might be easier for him if he was with someone who was as high-powered and high society as he is? Someone who knows how to navigate all of this press and media without causing trouble or creating more chaos? And don’t you think my life would be easier if I wasn’t trying to figure out how to adapt to being in the press, to walking through the world without showing emotions?”

  “Good luck with that. You’re the most transparent person I know.”

  “Daphne! I’m serious. I feel like not only do I have to learn how to be in a relationship, but I also have to learn how to dress for things, like meeting the queen—”

  “Wait, what? Seriously?”

  “Yeah, see what I mean? I come from a—”

  “You’re meeting the queen?! Like the real one?”

  “Yes. But aren’t you listening? It’s the queen! And, I mean, who am I?”

  “Lydia, stop. Holy hell. I can’t. Okay. I mean. What are you going to wear?”

  “Daphne!”

  “Okay, okay, okay. But we’re coming back to the whole queen thing. Lydia, you have a three-point-nine GPA from a leading university. You’re kicking ass at your first real job. You bravely moved to a whole other country and totally landed on your feet. So this is your first time at the rodeo when it comes to the paparazzi, but you’re a smart girl. Give yourself some credit. And cut yourself some slack. Dylan obviously doesn’t feel this way.”

  I let out a slightly relieved laugh—I loved it when Daphne got onto one of her Shut-up-and-listen-to-me-because-I-love-you rants.. “You two can figure this out, if you want. Don’t lose yourself, okay? Don’t move in with him until you’re ready. And if you really can’t stand him not talking to you, well, only you can know your limits on that one. But remember that two months ago this guy told you you were going to have just a sex fling with no strings attached. Now he’s fending off paparazzi and sending jets to pick up your friends.”

  I exhaled deeply, resigned to being baffled by this whole relationship thing.

  “And I hear you about him talking to you about his dad and why that’s frustrating. But I kind of see his point with the email stuff—he has a whole team of people who can handle this stuff. This seems to fall into his wheelhouse. Lydia, why are you so on edge about this exactly?”

  “I just—” I couldn’t finish the thought. I didn’t know why, but I just felt icky. I hated screwing up with the paparazzi. I hated being the target of these emails. I hated not knowing what was going on with Dylan, not being able to make him feel better.

  “Oh, I get it,” she said before I could even get started.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said in a way that suggested she knew the key to my problems but didn’t think I’d want to hear it, in a way that made me want to throttle her through the phone.

  “Daphne!”

  She sighed, and then, as I knew she would, she caved. “This isn’t about you taking care of him. It’s about letting him take care of you.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve never done that before. I agree—he should open up to you more. And I understand that you want to support him—that’s, like, your natural habitat. But compared to where he was a month ago, he might as well be a guest on Oprah. You, on the other hand—you’ve never let anyone take care of you.”

  I was silent. I didn’t like where this was going.

  “It’s okay,” she continued, and all of a sudden she had her Daphne-knows-best tone again, which drove me really crazy. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

  “Has anyone ever told you you’re really annoying?” My toes were curling into the blanket at my feet, and I felt…I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t want to think about the idea that maybe I was resisting Dylan’s comfort, his desire for me to trust him, his protectiveness, simply because I wasn’t ready or it was too foreign. Because even if that was true, I was right to want more. I was right to want to be a team. I wanted to take care of him, and he wasn’t letting me. But I guess I wasn’t letting him either. All of a sudden what had just felt frustrating felt so confusing. Meanwhile, Daphne sighed and chuckled a little. “Daphne,” I said, quieter than I’d been all night, “this is hard. Harder than I thought it would be.”

  “I know. But you love him, right?”

  “So, so much.”

  Chapter 10

  By Monday morning, I had to admit that I was happy to be rescued from a weekend plagued by my own personal foibles with the press and Dylan’s ever-morphing stress. The moment I arrived at work I was balls-to-the-wall busy. Things were humming, buzzing. It was one phone call to the next, one email to another. I was totally in the zone. And thankfully Hannah seemed too distracted to confront me about my hotel tryst—either that or she didn’t read HELLO! magazine. Either way I was grateful. At least at work, if not in the rest of my life, everything was going perfectly, and it felt amazing.

  By noon, I had the store’s location squared away—a small space on the ground floor of a large old banking building. Right on the corner, next to a mews. It was unassuming, but elegant. Small, but bright. And it situated Hannah Rogan right where she should be, within spitting distance of other great shops—agnès b., Carolina Herrera, Alexander McQueen, and others.

  Now I was waiting for a call from the marketing team, who would arrange the COMING SOON signs that would hide the construction. I was feverishly scanning through the information I’d been sent by our business advisor about stocking and projected sales for the spring line when our intern returned with lattes for Fiona and me and the largest portfolio carrier I’d ever seen. The poor girl looked like she was auditioning for the balancing act in the circus.

  “What in god’s name is that?” I asked her, rising to relieve her of the coffees.

  “The interior designers, Holt and Carroll, sent a messenger, who was just leaving this with Josh when I came in,” she said, huffing and ruddy cheeked from carrying it just from the reception desk. Holt and Carroll were the interior designers Dylan had used for his last two buildings, and he’d been adamant that I use them for the store. He hadn’t taken kindly to me demanding a detailed pitch about their merits over dinner, but secretly I think he admired that I didn’t just take his advice without question. He had, of course, been right—they were amazing—and Hannah had been over the moon about the choice.

  “Ah, wow. I didn’t expect to see anything from them until—” Just then Hannah swung our office door open.

  “Lydia,” she said, almost smiling, which for Hannah might as well have been doing jumping jacks of joy. Fiona, the intern, and I all looked up, at attention. “I just got off the phone with the team at Holt and Carroll, and they said they were sending over some swatches and plans. Oh—” she interrupted herself. “Those must be them?”

  “I think so—” I started.

  “I can’t believe you secured them. I don’t know how you did it. Did you know that they just did Jason Wu’s Paris shop last year? People are raving about it.” She was talking a mile a minute, something none of us had ever seen before. “Tom Ford apparently heard through Carolina Herrera, and he just called to congratulate me on the shop,” she said in a way that was dangerously close to giddy gossip. Given her tone of voice, I half expected her to suggest we all sit down and paint each other’s nails.

  We all looked at each other in disbelief—this store was apparently turning out to be something bigger than I had imagined, and apparently bigger than even Hannah had imagined. She grabbed the heavy portfolio by the handle and looked right at me. “Come to my office after lunch, and we’ll go through these together.” As she left I was pretty sure she was actually humming.

  “Well, that was unexpected,” started Fiona, who then returned her gaze to her computer. “I guess we won’t be going out for a cuppa later, then?” She looked at me, confirming that for what was definitely not the first time I would be ditching her last minute for something store related.

  My meeting wit
h Hannah turned out to be an all-out devouring of the materials the designers had sent over. She and I spent three hours on our hands and knees making decisions about fabrics, flooring, and couch options. I was in my element. One part business, one part collaboration, and one part creativity. We were in the flow of it. Even though Hannah was my boss, and I was pretty sure I’d always be just a little intimidated by her, it felt incredible to be collaborating, to be getting lost in something.

  When I finally emerged from Hannah’s office at nearly five, Josh was sitting at my desk, and he and Fiona were giggling about something on Josh’s phone.

  “Hey, guys,” I said.

  “Oh, hi,” said Fiona, cooling visibly.

  “Hi, lovey,” said Josh, definitely with more warmth. He looked between me and Fiona, and it was clear that Josh also knew there was tension between us.

  “How about a drink?” I asked, suddenly feeling the very real pull to get my friends on the right side of a bar with some proper cocktails in front of us. The flagship store was coming along perfectly, but these friendships were important, and I’d been neglecting them. I’d had to decline the last two times they’d asked me to go clubbing.

  Fiona opened her mouth, and I have no idea what she would have said because Josh quickly put his hand over hers, gripped it, and answered for both of them: “Absolutely.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later we were at the wine bar around the corner. Fiona and I had suggested the pub, but Josh had scoffed, claiming he was going gluten-free or something. So wine it was.

  “So, ya wee Yank, fill us in. What is going on with you and the Greek god you share a bed with?” Josh curled his fingers around the stem of his wineglass and gave me a look that said Tell me everything.

  “You have such a way with words, Josh,” Fiona added.

  I thought for a moment and realized that when it came to most aspects of my relationship with Dylan, they only knew what the media knew or what little bits of information I let slide about upcoming events or whether I’d spent the previous night at his place or mine.

  “You know,” I began, “it’s weird. It’s like the wall between his life—you know, all his aristocratic stuff, his architecture firm, most of his friends and, god, his family—that wall is just as thick, just as fortress-like, as it was when we were a secret.” Josh’s and Fiona’s faces were still, like they’d expected more of the same from me, which is to say no real information. In that moment, I realized I’d been withholding from them the same way Dylan had been withholding from me. Keeping them at an arm’s length with hollow phrases like “fine, thanks” or “busy but good”—the kinds of phrases that actually told them nothing. I’d been self-conscious about the attention from Hannah, about having my picture in the paper, about dating someone everyone seemed to know everything about. I realized I’d been receding, hoping that maybe, somehow, if I didn’t say much, Josh and Fiona would not notice all of this was happening. I realized in that moment how idiotic that was, how absurd.

  “I guess I just thought,” I continued, “that when we went public, his personal life would be public to me too or something. Like he’d just open up. The book of Dylan would fall open, and I’d be let into the inner sanctum. But it’s not like that. He’s such a private person. There are still so many private hidden parts of his life. It’s just that I’m not one of them anymore.

  “And it’s harder than I thought it would be, being a public part of his life, I mean. I keep ending up in the papers in a way that makes me look bad, or him, or I don’t know.” Josh put his hand on mine, which was resting on the table, but I noticed that Fiona remained calm and cool, leaning back in her chair. I gave them the details behind the “quickie” incident and the Serpentine Massacre.

  “Aw, sweets, the media are just vultures, aren’t they?” Josh said indignantly, and I could feel Fiona roll her eyes.

  “They are, but I should have known that. He did try to warn me—I just never really understood I guess.” I couldn’t go into the email business—no one knew about that, so I’m sure my reactions seemed outsized to them, but my anxiety seemed to want to lay itself out on the table. “It’s just an adjustment, that’s all. I finally understand why he made such an effort to keep his life so simple, so private and uncomplicated for so long. And I just wish I could fix it, make things easier. But instead I feel like I’m prancing around London like some kind of fool demonstrating to everyone, every Amelia, every other person out there, that I’m not fit to be Dylan Hale’s girlfriend.” I exhaled through my lips, in a weird lip-fluttering sigh, and I looked and sounded defeated. Josh was sweetly rubbing my arm.

  “Well, that’s just bollocks, a heaping pile of rubbish,” Josh said, defending me, and I smiled weakly at him.

  “I know. It is, right? It’s just hard to remember that in the moment. I mean, I know I’m fit to be his girlfriend, but it kills me to give that…that…”

  “Hoity toity twat,” Fiona finished for me, almost reluctantly.

  “Exactly. To give the Amelia Reynoldses of this town, not to mention all the other women he’s slept with,” I added and rolled my eyes for good measure, “the satisfaction of thinking, even for a minute, that something’s awry.”

  “Fuck the lot of them—that’s what I say!” exclaimed Josh, and I laughed, so relieved for his vibrant, enthusiastic humor. Even Fiona couldn’t help but laugh when Josh went into his overdramatic mode. “Blimey, Lydia, your life is so deliciously dramatic,” he added.

  “Oh, well, there’s another thing,” I said, looking at them to make sure I hadn’t yet overstayed my welcome with Dylan talk. “I’m going to meet the queen,” I said, covering my face with my hands for a moment and then only peeking out through my fingers to see their reactions. It just felt so surreal, so silly, so completely like someone else’s life to be saying that out loud that I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed.

  “What?!” They both said in unison, and I nodded into my hands, as though they could save me from the huge part of that upcoming event that stressed me out.

  We ended up setting up residence in that booth for another two hours. I told them about my upcoming tea with the queen, and they shared every story they’d ever heard about their friend’s aunt’s best friend who’d met Her Majesty at some point. We gossiped about the intern, we strategized about Josh’s love life, and we commiserated about the horrible new HR person and the tongue lashings she’d given each of us on various occasions. But Fiona seldom looked at me—she was mad or hurt or maybe just tired of sharing an office with the girl who was dating Dylan and demanding so much of their boss’s attention.

  * * *

  The tea with the queen was fast approaching, and I enlisted Dylan’s sister’s help in preparing. After a series of emails and texts, Emily and I had finally figured out that Friday was the day to meet up. I’d liked her when I’d met her at the Savoy, and we’d talked about getting together, and now we had a good excuse—she was going to help me figure out what on earth one was supposed to wear to meet a monarch.

  I had taken the afternoon off, and Emily was taking a break from her studying. We’d decided to begin the excursion by fueling ourselves.

  “Have you been here before?” she asked me. She settled into the banquette, perching her excruciatingly on-trend designer handbag on the seat beside her. Emily somehow pulled off the socialite look while also looking like the down-to-earth, kind, and funny person I was beginning to understand she was. It was on her face and in her body language—she was as smart as a whip and totally genuine. It really had to be her eyes that did it, because as soon as she slipped on those Chanel sunglasses, she looked just as cold, aristocratic, and socialite-y as the Amelia Reynoldses of the world. And technically Emily, as the daughter of a duke, outranked Amelia.

  Today she was wearing a flirty floral dress that I was sure Urban Outfitters was knocking off; a trim, tailored jacket; and knee-high riding boots. With her long dark hair flowing down her back, she was a knockout. I was
three years older than she was, but there was still some part of me—the Brooklyn, beer-drinking, pizza-eating part of me—that was intimidated by her.

  “I haven’t,” I replied as I slipped into the other side of the curved, red banquette.

  “I love it. The food is fabulous, and I like the atmosphere, but because it’s stuck back here in the land of finance geeks, none of the usuals are ever here. I never have to worry about running into people I don’t want to run into, except for maybe one of Dylan’s business friends or one of my father’s cronies, but none of my set, which is a relief.” She nodded at a waiter or host behind me in a practiced way that was seamless.

  The restaurant was a simple brasserie on the ground floor of a big banking building just a couple of blocks from the Thames.

  “Perfect,” I said, slumping a little in my seat with relief. Not that I was worried about seeing Emily’s friends. It was more that I figured it also meant the paparazzi might be less likely to be lurking about, hoping to catch a picture of some socialite, or me. I accepted a menu and was grateful for the water being placed on our table.

  “They’ve been rough on you guys, haven’t they?” she asked, reading my mind.

  “It’s fine. It’s part of the deal. I know that.”

  “Yeah, but it must be brutal. I’ve never had to deal with that really, unless I’ve been out with Dad or Dylan. That’s the relief, I guess, of being neither the heir nor a spare.”

  “What do you mean? Aren’t you the spare? And if you had been born first, wouldn’t you be a duchess? Or a marchioness? Or wait—how does it work?”

  Emily was already shaking her head before she began. “Primogeniture,” she said, as though that explained everything. “The title and the estate only go down the male line. So it’s Dylan or bust, I’m afraid.” She took a sip of water before continuing, “I’m a lady, and the buck stops there, unless I acquire a different title when I marry.”