He lets go of me and reaches behind the paper towel holder that’s beside the handicapped stall’s sink, half pulling the thing off the wall, and yanks out a pack of cigarettes.
I try to act cool, but I know I must look totally shocked.
“When I’m really, really having a bad day, I sneak down here and grab a smoke.” He tosses the pack in the air, catches it with one hand, then tucks it back behind the holder and slams the metal cover back into place.
I’m so surprised I don’t even know what to say. I thought Georg was Mr. Perfect. I mean, he plays soccer and gets awesome grades and doesn’t even blast his music. Though I know the quiet music is because his parents want him to appear proper and all, I think he’d be smart and basically a clean-living guy without the pressure from his parents.
But ties just normal like me. I mean, really normal.
“I know you probably think it’s disgusting,’ he says, but there isn’t an apology in his voice. “But sometimes, I just need to do something—”
“Like in an emergency situation?”
“Yeah. I hate the smell on my clothes.” The wicked grin returns, and he adds, “Plus my parents would kill me if they smelled it. I don’t think they’d believe I smoke, but they’d be angry thinking I was even hanging out with anyone who smoked. God forbid some photographer snapped it.”
“No kidding.” I smile, just to let him know I don’t think it’s a big deal, and I totally wouldn’t judge him for it.
I mean, he has no clue how relieved I am that he won’t judge me.
I’m about to tell him that I’ve had a couple of emergency cigarettes too, and all about the Wendy’s Dumpster and Jules and Natalie and Christie. I want to tell him I hate the smell and would never want to endanger my health, but that sometimes doing something dangerous or risky relieves all the pressure and stress at school—just like it took off all the pressure to do something risky tonight and sneak out of the reception—when the door opens so hard it whacks against the tile wall and sends the big letter H (which Georg tells me stands for Herren, the German word for “men”) swinging on its screw.
Georg moves to shut the door to the handicapped stall, but it’s too late. My dad has seen us.
Thankfully the tuxedoed man he’s leading into the restroom hasn’t. My dad eases the guy, who reeks like you wouldn’t believe, into the next stall where he proceeds to worship the porcelain god very loudly.
My dad pulls the stall door shut behind the guy and says, “I’ll be right here. Let me know if you want a towel.”
The guy moans, then begins heaving again.
My dad isn’t paying attention though. He’s just glaring at me and Georg. Then his eyes drift past me to the floor, where the cigarettes have fallen from behind the paper towel holder onto the floor.
Oh, shit.
“I think you two need to head back to the ballroom,’ he says very quietly, though I doubt the guy on his knees in the next stall is in any shape to notice he and my dad aren’t alone in here.
I want to tell my dad that we were not smoking. We weren’t doing anything wrong. Not even hooking up—yet—but Georg just nods, then grabs my hand and pulls me behind my dad and out of the restroom.
“How much trouble are you in?” he whispers once we’re out of there.
I shrug. “My dad’s pretty cool. I doubt hell rat you out to your parents.”
Georg quirks his mouth, like it’s no big thing. “I asked how much trouble you will be in.”
“Truth? I don’t know. But”—I feel the same wicked grin Georg gives me spreading across my face—“I got busted last year with cigarettes. My parents know I don’t smoke—it was an emergency situation thing—but they weren’t exactly doing cartwheels. Getting caught twice could be bad.”
“Wow. We really are alike,” he says. He looks completely caught off guard by this, but in a good way. Like I just went up a notch in his mind, even though smoking isn’t exactly a quality I want a guy to appreciate in me.
“You’ll tell him we weren’t smoking, right?”
“Of course,” I say. “I’ll tell him they were in the stall when we got there. He should know I’m telling the truth. It wasn’t like one of us was standing there holding a lighter or the bathroom reeked.”
“Not until the minister of the treasury showed up and gave back his quail.”
The minister of the friggin’ treasury? The guy who was sitting with us at dinner? I let out a little laugh, just to let Georg know I think everything will be okay. “If my dad can handle someone that important getting totally smashed, I bet he can handle seeing me in the men’s room hanging with you.”
“I suppose, if you explain it that way.” Georg stops at the top of the stairs, pulling me over to the wall just before I turn the corner into the hall outside the ballroom. The Schubert morphs into Mozart—I think it’s Mozart—but despite the fact the music is all classical, you can tell there’s a serious party going on. The stairs are quiet compared to the boisterous chatter and clinking glasses of the ballroom.
“Before we go back”—he looks past me to make sure no one sees us, then back into my eyes—“I want you to know this has been one of the best nights of my life.”
“Me too.” I grin like a total goof, then take his tuxedo jacket off my shoulders and hand it back to him.
“I really like you, Valerie. A lot. I just—I mean—I want us to be together.”
The knot in my throat is threatening to choke me, even more than the bird on my dinner plate did. “Thanks,” I say, even though it’s probably moronic to thank someone for liking you. “I really like you a lot too. If you didn’t notice out in the garden.”
He grins at that, and our freaky-cool connection feels stronger than ever. “So would you like to dance with me? In front of everybody?”
“Steffi will have a stroke.”
“Steffi won’t know.” He’s lying of course, and we both know it, because of course Ulrike’s dad will ask Ulrike who I am when he gets home, and he’ll tell her I was dancing with Georg, and Ulrike will tell Steffi. That’s just how things work. By tomorrow morning the whole school will know.
What Georg is really telling me, though, is that he likes me enough that he doesn’t care what Steffi knows or doesn’t know. Or what the world knows.
Which is completely, totally cool.
So we go back into the reception hall, and even though we don’t hold hands or dance so close we look like we need to get a room or anything, we have a great time. We’re the only people under the age of thirty on the dance floor, but it doesn’t matter.
And just when I’m thinking how glad I am Dad made me learn to dance like a proper lady, even though I’ve always been certain I’d never want to dance to anything like Mozart or Wagner or whatever it is the orchestras playing, I catch his eye across the room. He’s handing the minister of the treasury a glass of water like it’s no big thing, but he’s looking at me.
And he smiles. Well, until Georg’s facing the other way. Then he’s not. And it’s not good.
I can tell from the way he very pointedly shakes his head that we’re going to talk later, and it’s going to be, as he would put it, a bit unpleasant. But he’s beginning to warm to the idea of me seeing Georg, I can tell. He doesn’t want me developing a smoker’s rasp like Karl’s, or hanging out in the palace men’s room, but he wants me to be happy, even if getting to a happy place involves facing the risks that come with dating Prince Manfred of Schwerinborg’s only child. That much I can tell.
Geez, at least I hope so. What if he’s really ticked off this time? What if he threatens to send me back to Virginia over this? It’s definitely possible….
No. I won’t think about that. I’ll deal with Dad tomorrow. There’ll be some way for me to get out of this. I have to. Because now I have a BOYFRIEND.
And I don’t want to have to leave him. Let alone live with Mom and Gabrielle and deal with all the crap that’s going to be coming my way from Christie, Jules, an
d Natalie.
Georg grabs my hand and spins me around, and I just can’t help but smile to myself.
Who’da thought that my mom announcing she was gay could get me a boyfriend? A boyfriend who isn’t a safety boyfriend, like Jason Barrows could have been, or someone like David Anderson either, who’d probably only think of me as his Armor Girl.
Probably.
Christie’s my friend, so I’ll let her say her piece, and I’ll even make myself think through everything she has to say—I owe a girlfriend that much, I mean, hos before bros, right?—even though I know in my heart I’m not going to change my mind about Georg.
I cannot believe I have actually found someone who makes my stomach do flip-pity flops every time I look in his eyes. Someone who gets me and doesn’t care if I’m popular or that my mother is a lesbian. Someone flat-out gorgeous who can kiss me inside out.
Someone who’ll let me see just what it feels like to hook my fingers in the back pockets of his Levi’s while he kisses me.
I can’t wait to try that.
No matter what it takes with Dad, I’m so not going back to Virginia. This is where I belong.
Valerie Winstow never thought life in Schwerinborg could be so great. But then she never thought she would be dating the prince, either!
What she doesn’t realize is that things are about to take a turn-for the much worse. Prince Georg decides they need to cool off for a while just as her dad decides to send her back to Virginia to visit her mom.
Valerie’s crushed-until she decides to go out with her old crush David Anderson. David may not be a prince, but he should be able to take her mind off Georg for a while-shouldn’t he?
Don’t miss the princely sequel to ROYALLY JACKED:
SPIN CONTROL By Niki Burnham
Available January 2005 from Simon Pulse
Royally Jacked (Romantic Comedies, The) Page 13
