“So? He didn’t even mention her to you until what, two weeks ago? Please, this chick is a friend of a friend at best. You’re his childhood sweetheart.”
“Hardly.”
“You can refuse to be consoled, or you can do something about this.”
Jess shrugged and fell silent. I wanted to find a nice quiet corner where I could bang my head against the wall, repeatedly. This was such torture. Jess had always been better with boys. I tried to think what she would do and then immediately regretted it. She’d saunter back in there, hips swaying, and walk right up to Nik and lay on the flirting like no one was watching.
This was a different situation entirely. He was one of my best friends. I had no idea how he felt and I could ruin everything by jumping the gun. I’d seen plenty of Lifetime movies that ended that way. But when I looked up and saw Selene watching him with a much less pure version of the same look I was sure was on my own face, I felt my blood boil.
I’d rather lose him to my own embarrassment and stupidity than to some other girl who barely knew him. So I steeled myself, and returned to the party.
* * *
I took a deep breath, and walked over to the group where she was standing. I was going to face this head on. Jess uttered a surprised squeak, and followed me across the room.
“So, Selene,” I said. I had been drawing out her name all night in a kind of singsong. “Who’s your favorite Stooge?”
“Stooge?”
She said it with a tilt of an accent but this time it was not alluring. It was infuriating.
“You know? Three Stooges? They’re Nik’s favorite American movie,” I said.
He once sent me four letters about the topic. His father had never let him watch it and his roommate was from California and forced him to watch them one night. Nik was instantly in love with the lowbrow comedy of American slapstick humor. Who knew?
“I’ll have to look into it then,” she said with a smile and mischievous sideways look at Nik, who shrugged. Dammit. “Tell me, Isabel, who is your favorite of the playwrights up for Pulitzers this year?”
Okay. This girl was good, and high on adrenaline as I was, I couldn`t think of a single one at the moment. Would it be too obvious if I immediately took out my phone and started Googling them?
“Isabel here is more of the TV type,” Jess said, stepping forward and placing her arm over my shoulder. “Maybe not super high class but I don’t know anyone else who can pick out the exact episode and season of Friends based on a three-word quote.”
I smiled at her and she winked before turning back to Selene with a look of triumph. It seemed like Selene was about to open her mouth to say something when her attention got pulled to the band behind her. When she turned back it was with a look of pure victory.
“You remember this one, Niko?” she said, grabbing Nik’s arm. “This was our first dance.”
I felt my stomach churn and my heart drop. She was pulling him by the arm onto the dance floor while he laughed. They took their positions and he led her in a slower waltz while I felt steam come out of my ears. This girl was really good.
“Well,” Jess announced. “I’m going for more of that fondue before that senator from Germany gets it all. Hugo, ask Isabel to dance.”
“Uhh…”
I slapped my forehead like a cartoon character but Hugo was laughing and shrugged, offering me his hand.
“Would you like to?”
“I’m an awful dancer.”
“There is only one way to learn.”
“In a room full of people?”
“Think of it as incentive to do well.”
I could see why Nik liked Hugo. He had a friendliness about him, a charm that made even a nervous girl with two left feet walk proudly out to the dance floor. It wasn’t pretty, but Hugo and I doing goofy versions of the sprinkler while Selene looked on from her rigid, traditional dance with Nik was kind of fun.
I did catch his face once or twice and hoped I saw some hints of longing as he watched. I pretended not to notice him, though. I was having enough fun to be past my embarrassment, and enjoying Hugo`s company.
“I think it might be time to hit the hay, there C-bear,” my father said from behind me. I turned to look at him and clasped my hands in front of me, pleading. “I’m glad you had fun, but we`re going back over to the guest house.”
“Ok, Daddy.”
I gave Hugo a kiss on the cheek in thanks and he gave me a dramatic bow in return. I rolled my eyes and waved to him, promising to use the phone number he gave me. My father made the rounds of goodbyes with me by his side and I eventually grabbed Jess who was in the middle of making eyes at one of Nik’s cousins.
I hadn’t seen Nik during our goodbyes, but as we left the room, I turned one last time and found his eyes already settled on me, as if he’d been watching for ages. He didn’t turn away or pretend to look anywhere else. I saw his shoulders heave in a sigh and he gave me a small wave through a frown. I sent one back to him.
* * *
Bedtime in the guest house wasn’t exactly enforced. My parents retired to bed and Jess and I changed into our comfy clothes and sat out on the back patio with the hoard of food we’d taken with us from the party. We tossed grapes in each other’s mouths and took turns daring each other to try different foods off the tray. We tried to keep our giggles to a minimum since my mother was a light sleeper, but the sky was so clear here, and there were so many more stars than back home.
A rustling came from the bushes, and Jess was convinced it was some form of Heledian serial killer coming to off us or kidnap us for money. When the perpetrator raised his head, it was Nik, still dressed in his party clothes.
“Uhh,” Jess said. “I just remembered I have to do something…not here.”
She was always incredibly graceful and subtle. I tried not to glare at the back of her head as she stumbled off somewhere to eavesdrop. Nik didn’t seem to notice as he stepped forward with a nervous smile.
“We didn’t get a chance to speak at the party too much,” he said. “I know tomorrow is your last day here and I just wanted to see if we could talk.”
“Because 1 a.m. is when you normally schedule your meetings?” I teased, and he laughed. It felt good.
“You were never just a meeting, Isabel,” he said quietly.
He stepped forward and pulled out one of the patio chairs. As he dropped into it he eyed the pile of food we’d ferried away from the party and gave me a raised eyebrow. I shrugged.
“Don’t judge, fitting in that dress was stressful.”
He laughed some more and leaned back and relaxed. Whatever he was nervous about was dissipating a little bit, and I liked that too. I liked the idea that I was seeing parts of him that no one else got to see. This wasn’t ‘diplomatic party’ Nik or even ‘respectfully dancing with Selene’ Nik. This was my friend Nik. My ‘maybe one day we could be more than that’ Nik, if I let my daydreams run a little wild.
“Is it as fun as you remember from childhood?” he asked. “The palace?”
“Well, I had fun dancing with Hugo,” I muttered, he smiled at the barb.
“One day we’ll have a real party,” he said. “Just you, me, Hugo, some friends and a bottle of wine.”
“That’s not very royal.”
“Trust me, it’s the most royal thing we could ever do.”
We laughed a little more before we sank into some silence beneath the stars again. Everything about the night sky outside the city always fascinated me. Stars were everywhere and it felt like everything was so exposed. The shield of the Earth had been peeled away to show what was truly hiding behind blue skies. It felt like anything could happen, in both good and bad ways.
Nik had always thought I was overly romantic about the night sky, but I told him he just always took it for granted. He said that was probably true and sent me a telescope for my fourteenth birthday. It was the best gift anyone had ever given me.
“Lots of things have changed since
when we were kids,” he mused, a little quieter.
“Yeah,” I said, and wished I had something a little more elegant to add to it. He seemed to be so lost in his own thoughts that it didn’t even reach his ears.
“I should let you get to sleep,” he said. “But I just wanted to see you.”
I hoped the nighttime air would hide my blush as he stood up and offered a hand for me to stand as well. When I was out of my chair he didn’t let go of my hand as he brought the knuckles to his lips and pressed gently with a mischievous smile.
“While I appreciate your dance moves more than you know,” he said. “There’s no need to feel jealous of Selene.”
“I—I uh, I don’t know what you mean,” I stammered. “My dance moves are amazing.”
“Another time I think we should talk. But….I just want you to know, Selene is just my friend.”
“And what am I?”
It came out quietly and without me meaning for it to, but I kept eye contact with him anyway as he smiled. His feet shuffled as he backed up, disappearing into the night and back to his own bedroom. I felt a little light and a little flushed as I watched him disappear completely and more rustling went on behind me as Jess appeared, snickering.
“Well, well, well,” she said. “What was it you were saying about just being friends?”
“Shut it.”
“Oh come on, what’s the point of you dating a prince if I can’t make fun of you? That’s part of the best friend contract.”
“We’re not dating.”
“The word ‘yet’ goes in that sentence somewhere.”
As much as I wanted to correct her, it was fun to smile and think about all the things that could happen. I still wanted to be cautious; I didn’t know anything about his feelings yet. But I did have a strong suspicion now. He’d made it kind of obvious and I hoped I wasn’t just seeing what I wanted to see.
As we turned to go inside for the night I tried to push away all the thoughts of how this wasn’t going to work. I tried not to think about how I was as far from royalty as you could get, or how plenty of women, not just Selene, were eyeing him with the same intentions. But I had something they didn’t – a friendship with him.
If nothing else, Nik would always be in my life. He’d always be one of my closest friends. If there came a time when I’d have to watch him smile and be happy and in love with another woman, then I’d be okay just knowing I got to be there in some way too. At least, I convinced myself I could be happy with just that much.
What would be, would be, I hoped. That’s what people always said, when things they wanted were completely out of their control. They hoped the reason they wanted it so bad was because some part of them knew it was their destiny to have it. Maybe I had known Nik in a past life. Or maybe I was just in too deep.
* * *
My last day in Heledia was kind of uneventful. My dad was busy with the king and Nik had gotten whisked away with them to sign things, or kiss babies, or do who-knew-what else. Hugo and Selene had taken a flight back to France to be there a few days before school resumed. So my mom took Jess and I out to see more than just the palace grounds for once.
I’d only ever really seen the airport and the Rose Palace before. Even with a guard of plain-clothed security and some fancy, bulletproof black cars, it still felt pretty cool. Heledia wasn’t a country that boasted metropolises or vast urban centers. There was no skyline here like I knew back home, no big sports stadiums, no trafficked highways. Their most popular sport, cricket, was played in quiet, small arenas; everyone drove tiny cars or biked; and the center of any town or city was a cobblestoned marketplace.
“I don’t think I could quite survive without a Starbucks,” my mom said. “But there’s something nice about taking a few days here to just relax. Grocery shopping must be so much less stressful.”
Heledia’s version of a grocery store was a series of wooden carts lined together, with produce from local farms. People paid with cash only, and there were no screaming kids in strollers asking for the Star Wars edition of some frozen pizza. The smell of bread baking hung in the air and felt incredibly welcoming. Though I liked being able to run to Target or Walmart when a new BluRay came out, there was something about this that felt so right.
“Imagine how those hipsters at Whole Foods would be if they could see this,” Jess said. “What a real marketplace looks like.”
I laughed and nodded and looked at some of the vegetables. My mom said if we got anything we had to make sure it could get through customs without causing a headache. So I sprang for some items from a used bookstore on the corner.
Most of the things inside were in languages I didn’t understand: Italian, German, French, Greek. But I loved the smell and the feeling of being surrounded by shelves and shelves of used books. I decided I would just grab a couple. Maybe Nik could help me read one them, one day. Or maybe I could use one to actually learn another language like the proper daughter of a diplomat.
“This is very you,” Jess said.
I turned to see that she was holding a small painting in her hand. It was oil on a small canvas the size of a sheet of printer paper and the image on it was of various dark roses. She always did like to make fun of me for that day we met. But with everything that had happened this week at the palace, it felt fitting to take this small token with me.
So I pretended to be offended by her insinuations, even as I took the painting from her and brought it to the cashier to pay. If nothing else, even if everything with Nik amounted to nothing, at least I would always have the roses.
* * *
That night we sat down to a dinner with the royal family. It was the first time I’d ever said more than two sentences to Sonia, Nik’s sister.
“I can help you pick out some books,” she said, excitedly. She’d just turned fourteen and had been over the moon when I mentioned the bookstore. “Once you get the hang of a language it’s amazing to see how beautiful some works can be, when you are reading them the way they were meant to be read. Not that I have anything against English.”
I laughed.
She’d been seated at my left, Jess on my right. Nik was off down the table at his father’s right hand and my father and mother were to the left, after the queen. It was all very purposefully put together and strict. I could see the frown on Nik’s face from where I sat, chatting about books and town while he had to pretend to be interested in politics. It was kind of funny, even if I itched to be able to speak to him.
I’d catch his glances, every now and then. He’d look over and roll his eyes and I’d shrug and take a sip of the wine we’d been given at dinner. Then he’d give me a smirk and I’d stick my tongue out at him and we’d go back to whatever it was we were doing before. We developed a very good cross-table repertoire and Jess made fun and pinched me in the side every time she saw it happen.
After dessert was served and Sonia had given me a long list of books to try the next time I found myself in a foreign shop, we bid each other goodbye. I curtsied when I was supposed to curtsy and Jess did the same, with a little less grace. When I got to Nik he pulled me into a hug.
“I’ll come visit you next time,” he whispered into my ear. “I promise. We should still have that talk. And you can show me American things.”
All I could do was nod because I didn’t trust my voice with his so close to my ear.
I pulled back and smiled and gave Sonia a hug as well to make sure that exchange didn’t look too strange to everyone else (even if Jess knew instantly and wouldn’t stop grinning).
When we went to bed in the guest house for the last time that night, I tried to pretend I wasn’t going to dream of Nik’s smiling face.
Chapter 3
Life back home was just as boring and uninteresting as I was afraid it would be. Getting off the plane and into the familiar smell of the DC airport, back to the familiar sights and sounds of honking cars, people everywhere, and street car vendors that reeked of diesel was far le
ss appealing than wandering the streets of Heledia. There had been an inkling of homesickness while I was in Heledia, but it had vanished completely when I remembered exactly what I had left behind.
Our brownstone home was in a quiet street of Capitol Hill and, for a moment, I could pretend that we were back in the countryside.
We’d dropped Jess off at home and promised to talk more once the week started and we were ready to commiserate over schoolwork. But for now, all I wanted to do was nap and pretend I was anywhere but back exactly where I had started.
I considered trying to pen a letter to Nik but I was afraid to be too eager. Writing and sending a letter a day after we last saw each other had to seem a little needy, even for pen pals. Did the three days rule apply here? There was no one I could really ask and I was not about to spill to my mom exactly what was going on inside my head. She’d have nothing but wet blanket things to say about the whole thing.
I considered Googling my question: how to not look needy as a pen pal. But I knew the kind of things that would return.
I was so restless that I decided, instead, to take a long walk through the town. Capitol Hill could be bustling with people around the Capitol Building when congress was doing things and my father was complaining left and right about whatever it was. But today was a quiet, balmy, Sunday afternoon. The only people out were families walking their dogs, kids getting some play time in before school started, and the overachieving runners.
I walked past the library and to the main road where my favorite bagel shop sat across the street, usually bustling with people around 8 a.m. I had to get there early or call ahead to ask Mario to get my bagel ready if I wanted to get to school on time with a lox and cream cheese spread. There was a pizza place over there too, where we liked to go for dinner sometimes. It was the kind of place where all the toppings had fancy names and you had to eat it with a fork and knife.
There was a certain closed feeling here. It wasn’t like the small villages in Heledia, but this town square was mine, and situated far from the tourist trap of downtown DC. What I was really missing, I realized, was Nik.
Letters from a Prince: The Royals of Heledia (Book 1) Page 3
