The return address was one I’d seen many times, and had written myself on plenty of envelopes since childhood. This card was from Nik.
“The asshole actually sent you something?” Jess asked, peering over my shoulder.
“I guess,” I mumbled.
“Well, open it.”
Part of me didn’t want to. Though Nik would really have no idea if I ever opened it or not, it felt like some kind of cosmic justice to simply leave it unopened on the kitchen table for as long as possible. But I was also just as curious as Jess to see what he had to say, what kind of apology he had cooked up for ignoring me, running off with some other girl, and then drunk dialing me from the middle of a club.
I gave in. I tore it open and managed to give myself a paper cut in the process. A fancy letter came tumbling out and it took two seconds of reading to understand what it was.
His Royal Highness, Nikolas, Prince of Heledia sends his official well wishes for your…
I didn’t need to read anymore. It was a form letter on Nik’s official stationary. His signature was pre-signed at the bottom with all his titles printed in a neat, perfect font.
“What a complete ass,” Jess said, taking the letter out of my hands and staring at it incredulously. “He seriously had the balls to send you some prewritten official letter crap?”
I shrugged and threw the envelope in the trash. I held out my hand for the letter too, and Jess handed it over. I dropped it in the trash as well, and felt a little liberated.
“It’s my birthday, he’s not going to ruin it.”
“Damn straight.”
* * *
The birthday dinner at Jennifer’s house was much better than I thought it could ever be when Jennifer first suggested it. Her family was the exact opposite of her. With her attitude in school all these years I would have thought they’d be some kind of rich power couple who spoiled her rotten. But they were normal people who made jokes and told embarrassing stories about her. My parents were having a good time, too.
Things had to be dampened, of course.
“We got the invitation for Nikolas’s coronation today,” my father said.
Both Jennifer and Jess gave me sympathetic looks. My parents had no clue at all about the mental and emotional torment I’d been through these past few weeks. Perhaps it was time to bring it up to my mother. Even if I never talked to Nik again it seemed wrong to hide from my mom that I’d almost dated the prince.
“Oh,” I said, quietly.
“It’s in two weeks. You’d have to take off school to go, but the decision is yours,” my father said, casually.
Then he turned to Jennifer’s parents and started explaining my childhood friendship with Nik and how cute they thought the whole thing was, while I suddenly didn’t want any of my birthday cake, despite how smothered in chocolate it was.
Jess was mumbling something to Jennifer who looked practically murderous by the end of the story and I assumed she told her what Nik had sent me as an excuse for a birthday card. She looked at me and I shrugged and frowned, staring back down at my birthday cake.
Our parents chatted more while we went into the living room to channel surf and rest with our stomachs full of food. “Food babies,” Jennifer called them.
“I can’t believe he did that,” Jennifer said. “He seemed like such a nice guy when I ran into you guys at the movies, and super into you.”
“Who knows, people change,” I said.
“I spent a whole weekend at the guy’s house and I never would have thought he’d act like this about something,” Jess said. “I understand losing a parent is traumatic but he’s been nothing but a first rate A-hole for a month now. His sister and mother aren’t acting like jerks about everything.”
“Are you going to go to the coronation?” Jennifer asked.
“Probably not, why should I?”
“Good, make a statement.”
Part of me wanted to go, if only to scream in his face, but another part of me wanted to stay away, freeze him out, and see if he noticed. The thing I was forgetting, of course, in all this was that he was about to become a king and yelling at a king for acting like a jerk after a really sweet and romantic weekend wasn’t the most grown-up thing to do. Which was probably why it was best if I didn’t go.
We changed the subject when we found some reruns of Chopped and started heckling the chefs from the couch. We did that until my parents came in to drag me back home and Jess followed. Jennifer and her family wished me a happy birthday one more time and we stepped out of the house to get into the car.
* * *
I’d decided I wouldn’t be attending his coronation, and I wouldn’t say a word about it when my parents showed up without me. I liked the idea of freezing him out and getting revenge. In my mind I replayed a scenario that ended with me slamming the door in his face. (But then maybe someday we’d make up, because who was I kidding?)
That plan was going well until another letter from Nik threw quite the wrench in my plans. This time the envelope was plain, closed with a plain sticker, and the addresses were handwritten. It came from Nik’s mailbox in the palace again, and I considered throwing it away without opening it.
My dearest Isabel,
I am so, so sorry.
I know that’s not enough and that writing these words on a page won’t ever make them enough. I never thought I’d be standing here, in the wake of my own father’s funeral, needing to apologize. But no matter what I was going through, it doesn’t excuse my behavior. And that apology goes for everyone, the entire world that has had to watch my meltdowns, my family who has had to deal with the consequences, and you, my closest friend whom I fear I’ve hurt permanently with my actions.
I’m writing this at 2 a.m., completely sober and incredibly exhausted. I told myself I would write it and send it before I could talk myself out of it. So here I am and I apologize for any misspelled words. I felt alone and scared and vulnerable all at once. And I know these feelings are not unique to me when it comes to dealing with loss, but I saw my entire future flash before my eyes and knew I was not ready. How could I ever be ready? No one is ever ready to carry on without a parent, but I would be doing so as a king who never really learned how to be a leader. I was scared, so I ran in the only way someone like me knows how. Royalty has always had debauchery to fall back on. For us it’s an elegant and romantic form of breaking down. But for the people closest to us, it’s every bit as painful as the real thing.
So here I am, apologizing to you. Not as a prince or a king-to-be but as your friend, a grown man who acted like a little boy and may very well have wrecked one of the most important relationships he’s ever had. The truth is, I’m terrified of what’s coming, what’s going to be expected of me. And the only person I ever thought of when I wanted to talk to someone about it, was you. I know that must sound selfish, me asking your forgiveness so I can talk to you about my problems but it’s a start at least. If nothing else, I got the chance to explain myself and apologize, even if this is the last letter we ever send between us.
I hope to see you in two weeks, but if not, I understand why.
Forever and always yours,
Nik
Yeah, so that it made it a lot harder to say no about everything. I knew him well enough to feel everything he was trying to say with those words. I believed him when he said he wrote it in the early hours of the morning and had been sober at the time.
I wished I hadn’t opened it, though, because my choice would be so much easier if I remained oblivious to how scared, and sorry, and humble he was about it all. Crap.
I wondered if I should call Jess but she’d be the devil on my shoulder. Jennifer would, perhaps, be the angel. To give him a chance, or to close the door before more damage could be done? Which carried a higher risk of me getting hurt and taking years to recover? Which would hurt Nik more? Angry as I was, I didn’t want to cause him undue anguish because I felt the need to hold onto a grudge.
M
aybe it was time to finally talk to my mom about all this.
To get a better grasp of it all, I opened up the scrapbook I’d started long ago of the letters Nik had sent me over the years. They went all the way back to our very first. I looked how at the handwriting evolved, and the words got longer and the sentences more eloquent. I read a few lines and picked out the parts where Nik snuck in compliments, and I noticed the beginning of veiled flirting. I looked for the parts where he asked about my life and went on for paragraphs about a story I told him the letter before.
This was a boy who cared, deeply. And that’s the person who wrote me that letter. The man falling out of clubs and drunk dialing me in the middle of the night was someone I did not recognize, but it seemed even Nik knew that person was not him. That was grief and immaturity and fear all wrapped up into a handsome package wearing his face.
So where, then, did that leave me?
To go or not to go? Was everything in Shakespeare this annoying? (Yes)
“What’s got you pacing?” my mother’s voice asked from the hallway. “Last time you looked like this is was right before your fourth grade talent competition.”
I think that was the universe’s way of telling me to get over myself and talk to my mom.
“I need advice,” I groaned, dropping onto the bed, face first in a pillow.
I heard her come in the room and walk over. I felt the bed dip as she sat down next to me, and a warm palm splayed out over my back. There was always something so ridiculously calming about my mom showing up exactly when I needed her. Like that time in preschool I hit my head on the monkey bars not five minutes before she came to pick me up.
I certainly hit my head on something this time.
“Lay it on me, kid,” she said. “There’s nothing I haven’t heard already.”
So I did. By the end she was frowning and staring off as I watched her think. I’d gotten everything out in a ten minute ramble that was interrupted only by a series of breaths I took when I was sure my face was going to turn blue from the effort.
“Well, I stand corrected,” she said, eventually. “I have not heard anything like that before. How long ago did you get his letter?”
“Today, so I’ve had, like, zero time to process it all,” I said.
“Well, here’s what I’m going to tell you on this front.” She paused, and for a minute I wondered if there was anything else coming. But she continued, “On the one hand, I want to tell you that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. By which I mean I’d rather have you be angry about how things turned out, than see you regretting never taking the chance.”
“Uh…” I was at a loss.
“But on the other, hand, I want to be honest. Nikolas is going to be a king. That comes with a lot of obligations, and I don’t know whether that includes, ultimately, marrying someone else who is of royal descent…whether that might be his choice, or not.”
“I see.” And I did. It was something I realized I had known anyway, and had just not wanted to acknowledge. When I thought of myself with Nik in the future, I didn’t see myself as Queen of Heledia. Nik’s importance to me was not connected to that.
And there was my answer.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, I’ll go. I know it might only be to show that I am his friend, and that’s ok.”
She smiled and kissed my forehead.
It wasn’t over, but at least I felt a little lighter. I was moving forward. And maybe that final destination was an end to everything I had built with Nik, or maybe it was the beginning of some mature, better version of our childhood relationship. No matter what it was, I was heading toward it.
Chapter 6
I should have been used to long flights. When I was younger there was nothing more exciting than being on an airplane. The entire ordeal of going to the airport and checking bags and getting on the plane and watching a movie while they served weird, microwaved food was magical to me. It might have been because I associated it with vacations and breaks. But as I got older, the boring, cramped nature of flying became more obvious.
Luckily, between then and now they had invented iPods and wifi hotspots on planes. It also didn’t hurt that first class on a flight that wasn’t overly populated was also pretty great. First class on international flights meant you basically had your own micro bedroom in a seat. The chair could go all the way back to be a makeshift bed; there were massagers, and small partition walls that separated you from the seats near you.
I’d never been this nervous, angry and anxious all at the same time. And all contained in a pressurized vehicle several thousands of feet in the air. The distraction of my Spotify playlist was not doing the trick, and I couldn’t get comfortable in any position as the sun quickly set, the farther east we moved.
“Remind me to get you some Benadryl or Nyquil for the ride home,” my mother grumbled as I accidently bumped her for the third time in my scramble to find a comfortable way to stay still in my seat.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Isabel, you know what I always say about worrying,” she said. “Thinking about tomorrow’s problems won’t get them solved, it only disturbs today’s peace of mind. So relax. As of right now, all you have to worry about is the battery on your phone lasting you through the last 4 hours of this flight.”
Or not even, since there was a plug. But I nodded; she was right. She said the same sort of thing every time I had a test or was worrying about hearing back about colleges, or was trying to figure out what to wear for picture day. She wanted me to leave yesterday’s problems to yesterday and leave tomorrow’s problems for tomorrow. Today there was nothing for me to worry about except trying to get comfortable without pissing off people in every other seat around me. Which was, of course, easier said than done.
I’d shelled out the $10 for the in-plane wifi and had been texting Jess and Jennifer practically the entire time. Even as the hours passed and my time zones didn’t favor it, they kept responding, though the messages had become a little more garbled and clearly sleep addled as time went on.
Just nap out, Jess texted.
I told you, you should have nabbed something from the duty free place at customs, Jennifer said.
Those two were more alike than I would have thought possible. If they ever actually put their heads together and realized it, they could probably make my life completely miserable. For now, I looked at their messages, which contained several versions of the same message: chill the hell out.
And they were right. How was I supposed to deal with any of this if I couldn’t handle myself for a few hours on a plane? What was going to happen when I saw Nik for the first time? Would I just go completely red-faced and embarrass myself as I forgot how to speak? Would I launch into a tirade at him, the king-to-be, in front of everyone? Or would I simply combust, and that would be the end of that?
Thinking about what could happen wasn’t helping either. Even though I told myself I was preparing for all possible outcomes, all I was doing was making myself sweat.
You just need to be honest, Jess said in her last message. Whatever that honesty means to you, even if it sucks, you gotta stay true to you, girl.
I looked what Jennifer said.
Let him have it if that’s what you want. Or don’t say a word to him. Just make sure you do it your way, no matter what it is.
Why did I have to make friends with wise people? Teenage girls were supposed to be confused and pissed off most of the time, why did my two friends have to be sages when it came to the world’s weirdest and most complicated relationship?
My mom was already asleep and I was glad I had taken her up on her offer to have the window seat. I entertained myself by pressing my face to the glass and looking below at the thousands of blinking lights that denoted cities, still awake even as the night got deeper and deeper.
It was kind of therapeutic, just mindlessly watching cities and towns below go
by in the dark. It made everything seem quieter and stiller. It was much more calming than listening to my playlist for the third time in a row. There were far too many love songs on there. Too many things that had made me think of Nik over the years. It was better to watch the cities, like Earth’s own stars glittering from its surface. It was nothing but me and the lights.
The sounds of the plane got quieter and quieter as passengers fell asleep, and I was jealous of them all, though there was something nice about having the lights to myself and feeling comfortably alone in the night time. Well, as alone as I could be with the specter of Nikolas haunting my thoughts.
* * *
We landed in the small airport in Heledia by sunrise and my internal clock was so completely off I thought I might just stumble and fall asleep right on the tarmac. We disembarked from the airplane and the people around us walked toward the airport to greet relatives or friends and whoever else came to greet them. The airport here was small. There were no real terminals. You just got off the plane and then walked inside.
But waiting for us was a line of black cars and men in black suits with sunglasses and stern faces. One walked up to my father and shook his hand while another took our luggage from us without a word, even as I mumbled a thank you. I was no stranger to the ways of Secret Service and security guards. But even now I wondered if it would kill them to just try and smile.
They opened doors for us and ushered us into a limo while one of them was reading off an itinerary or something.
“You’ll be taking breakfast in the Fountain Plaza,” said the head security guard, with a heavy accent. “Though his Highness wanted to make it clear that you are not obligated to do so, if you are tired from your flight.”
I just might take Nik up on that offer to run and hide and sleep in my room. I was incredibly tired and the idea of trying to have a civil conversation while ignoring the massive elephant in the room between us? Not something I was really interested in dealing with at 8 a.m. (which was like midnight my own time).
Letters from a Prince: The Royals of Heledia (Book 1) Page 8
