But now I was back on that familiar, long flight across the Atlantic to the crystal coast of Heledia for the rest of the summer. Nik had gushed for a solid week leading up to my flight about all the things he had planned and how he was cashing in on vacation days – because even kings have vacation days, it turns out. I did my best to sleep through the flight to try and make it go faster, but the giddiness of it all only kept me up the entire time.
“Ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking, we’ll be starting our descent into…”
Those were magic words to me over the crackly and quiet loudspeaker of the plane. I was almost there. I stared out the window and watched as the glittering water turned into green, and soon towns and roads were visible as we found ourselves finally over the small island and heading for the landing strip where we finally touched down with a solid bounce.
A car was waiting for me on the tarmac with a stern looking man dressed in a black suit, sunglasses, and the telltale wire winding out of one of his ears. He stepped forward to help take my bags from me when I got close enough.
“Good afternoon Miss Isabel,” he said in a heavy accent. I told myself I’d make an effort to learn their language, or at least learn one of their second languages of Italian or Greek so I could communicate better.
“Hey,” I said awkwardly, giving a tiny wave which he didn’t acknowledge as pulled the door of the limo open and I stepped inside.
“Fancy meeting you here,” said another accented voice, and I felt a cloud of butterflies erupt in my stomach.
I launched across the seat to hug Nik, who was sitting in the seat opposite me, his back to the closed partition.
“Miss me that much?” he asked, his voice muffled in my hair. “You must really have a big old crush on me.”
I rolled my eyes and pulled back to give him a light shove and he grinned, a little too pleased with himself.
“How are you?” he asked softly, moving over to sit next to me and put an arm around me.
“Tired, hungry, and only marginally less grumpy at seeing you.”
“Sounds like the Isabel I know.”
* * *
The first few days in the country were amazing. We had lunches in beautiful spots around the palace or sometimes he took me out to some trendy place in town with fancy drinks and even fancier food. We went for walks a lot when Nik needed breaks and on his days off he took me to the beach and to some museums and it almost felt like we were a normal couple.
By the second week, however, I could have done without the flashing cameras.
The first time it happened we were walking through some national park that Nik wanted to show me. Across the grass slope, crouched behind a tree, I saw a man with a camera pointed right at us. I didn’t think much of it until we had passed the tree and I turned back to find him still looking right at us.
“It was bound to happen at some point,” Nik said as we got back in the car. “I’m sorry if it was bothering you, I can understand if—“
“Whatever nonsense you’re about to spew, save it,” I said. “Yes, it was annoying but I’m not going to let it ruin my day or anything. I’ll just have to make sure I’m dressed to impress next time we go out.”
I winked for good measure, but he only smiled sadly, and that turned into a frown when he thought I wasn’t looking. I understood his nervousness; it was probably how actors or singers felt when they started dating some nobody they met at the grocery store or happened to bump into at a club.
I was determined to stick with it, however, no matter how many cameras got shoved in my face.
That sentiment was put to the test, though, as the days progressed and paparazzi got bolder and more pictures of us ended up in the paper.
Party Prince Settling Down?
Has the King Found a Queen?
Who is the Mystery Girl on His Majesty’s Arm?
The headlines weren’t terribly creative but none of them were mean either. The men and woman actually taking the pictures were a little less polite about it, however.
“Give us a smile honey!”
“You get a look at the crown jewels yet?”
“You’re not a mail order American bride right?”
Sometimes the things they shouted to get my attention were downright cruel. Nik would glare when he heard it and somehow large, black suited men would always appear to shove the photographers back when they got too close or too vulgar.
On one particular day, to escape them, we remained inside the palace for the day. It was just as well, as a light rain pattered on the windows and walls. Nik had arranged a brunch in the ballroom and the entire time he was a fidgety mess.
“Everything cool?” I asked as I cut through my pancakes.
“Yeah, everything’s cool,” he said, not convincing me in the slightest, but I let it go because his chef’s apricot and apple pancakes were the stuff of the gods, really. But Nik didn’t eat a thing. He just sort of watched me and then would look anywhere in the room but at me when I caught him doing it.
“Okay seriously, what’s up?” I asked, placing my napkin down on the table and holding his gaze as long as I could before he dropped his eyes again.
“Nothing’s up,” he said. “I just have a lot going on in my head, is all.”
“Well then, tall, dark, and broody you can feel free to share with the class if something is bugging you.”
His anxious face softened slightly and he looked like he was trying to decide something or figure something out.
“Screw it,” he mumbled before he got up without warning and walked over to me.
Then he dropped down to kneel in front of me and whipped something out of his pocket so fast I didn’t have time to register what was happening before I was staring at a shiny, expensive looking, and utterly dazzling ring.
Oh. Oh.
This was happening. This was staring me in the face. The very first thing that came to my mind was holy crapballs but I managed to keep myself from saying that out loud.
“Yeah, so,” he said, clearing his throat. “I was thinking about this and I wanted to do something cool or memorable but I was making myself crazy thinking about it and cameras are everywhere, which sucks, and I wanted this to just be for you and me so I decided to just do it here. We met here, so it’s kind of a cool—”
“Nik,” I said. “Shush.”
He closed his mouth instantly.
“I…this is a lot,” I said without meaning to sound like I was about to crush his hopes and dreams. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I want this. It’d be amazing. But…I’m just starting school and—”
“It doesn’t have to be right now,” he said, hastily. “Think of it like a promise or something. You don’t even have to wear it if you don’t want. Just like, before we separated again for a ton of months I wanted to get this out there. I’ve known you almost my whole life and you’re my best friend and the only person I’d want to tolerate the rest of my life with, and you’ve put up with so much crap from me too. I’d love to be able to say you’re going to be my wife one day.”
I thought about it as hard and fast as I could. My parents were going to kill me, especially since I was 90% sure Nik hadn’t mentioned this to them at all. Not that it was their business or their decision in any way. But still, 18 was a legal adult but it still somehow felt like accepting a marriage proposal while I was still living at home was kind of a bad move without mentioning it to my parents.
“I do want to be your wife one day,” I said honestly and he seemed to relax a little. “And while this isn’t a 100% yes let’s get married right now, I will accept the sentiment that you want me to be your wife one day, and in a few years, if we still feel that way, we can make it happen.”
So I might win the award for most unromantic, unsexy proposal acceptance of all time but someone had to be the levelheaded adult about all this, as annoying as that would be. Besides, it was bound to be complicated.
“And while I’m not putting t
hat on my finger, I wouldn’t be opposed to sliding it on the chain with my locket and keeping it nearby?” I offered, and he smiled even more, taking it out of the box and gently setting it in my open palm.
“It’s not an heirloom or anything,” he said. “I couldn’t dare to ask my mother for her ring. She still wears it.”
I nodded.
“But I did pick this one out just for you, which I guess makes it more special—or special in a different way. It was custom designed, just for you.”
I smiled and gave him a quick kiss that quickly started turning into more before we moved out the ballroom and accidently scarred some unfortunate staff member or, worse, his sister.
That night, as we laid up in his bed playing a game of rummy with an old deck of cards he had, I felt happy, but something was biting at the back of my mind. It wasn’t the calmness I’d known during those nights at the beach thinking about Nik and surrounded by friends. There was a heavy uneasiness sitting in my chest, even as I laughed and kissed him and we talked about all the things we were going to do with the rest of our weeks together.
* * *
The uneasiness I felt turned out to be related to something a lot more complicated than I imagined.
It happened the last day I was at the palace before going home to get ready to move my entire bedroom to a tiny dorm at NYU. Nik was pacing around his office when I finally found him, huffing and puffing and clenching and unclenching his fists constantly.
“Hey,” I said. “Tough morning?”
He grunted before going to the window and staring out of it, hands firmly planted on his hips, and letting out an aggravated sigh.
“What’s the deal Nik?” I asked, sighing myself. “I’m not going to put up with your silent, grumpy treatment.”
“It’s complicated, political stuff,” he said. “You don’t need to worry about it.”
“Yeah, because I, the daughter of an ambassador, who lives on Capitol Hill, would never be able to digest your incredibly complicated and dense political matters,” I said.
“You can get snarky about it all you want.”
“Nik, seriously, before I start getting actually angry with you, just talk to me.”
He turned around and looked at me with a softened face. He moved his hands from his hips and ran them through his messy hair as he walked over to me. He gently put his hands on my hips and pulled me in to place his forehead against mine.
“It’s long and complicated and wordy but…well, it’s difficult to talk about,” he said.
“Just talk to me.”
“I spoke with my mother this morning, and she told me something that’s going to…affect us. My great-great-great grandfather, Dimitri II was kind of an asshole,” he said, and I giggled. “His mother had been a ruling queen in her own right after his father died and she was the daughter of some merchant in France. Apparently Dimitri wasn’t the biggest fan of her, so when she died and he became king, he outlawed anyone in the royal family marrying anyone below their own royal status.”
Oh.
Well, that was something.
“Well, you’re king,” I said. “Can’t you just…undo it?”
“It’s not that simple,” he said. “Monarchs don’t have absolute power anymore like they did back then. To do something like that, trivial as it seems, I’d have to put it through parliament. I have no idea how long that could take and they might never approve the change.”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“Because there’s certain advantages to being difficult.”
So things weren’t totally perfect anymore, not that they had been, really. Nik was legally not allowed to marry me. But we had time. We’d said we’d give it a few years. Maybe if he put his motion forward, by then the whole matter would be fixed and we could go about our lives.
That was wishful thinking, though.
* * *
“Well that really freaking sucks.”
I didn’t tell Jess and Jennifer until I was safely tucked into my dorm for the first night, and clearly out of any possible, accidental earshot of my parents. They hadn’t noticed Nik’s ring, which I kept on a necklace and tucked into my shirt when they came by.
“What’s he going to do about it?”
“He has to put a motion through parliament to repeal the law but he’s nervous about doing that because it’s going to open up a whole can of questions about why he’s doing it, so he wants to wait until we’re closer to actually saying ‘yes, let’s get married’ but the problem with that is it could take a long time for them to deliberate on it so we might be stuck waiting even longer if we do that…”
“Well, crap.”
My roommate wasn’t overly interested in the woes of my romantic life as she sat on the other side of the room, nose hidden inside some summer reading she had to do already for a lit class she was taking.
“I’m trying to think of what to do or how to give him advice but it gives me a headache every time I think about it and I’m trying to focus on starting classes in like T-minus three days,” I huffed.
“I know engagements are stressful but this is a whole new level. It kind of sucks.”
“Tell me about it.”
And when classes started in the fall semester, that anxiety and nervousness boiling in my chest was only starting to build. With each new syllabus that got slapped on my desk in front of me with tons of books listed for reading requirements and several papers throughout the year, I started to feel the weight of Nik’s ring around my neck.
It was supposed to be a source of comfort, a memory of warmth and happy times and all the great things that were going to happen. And now it was nothing more than a reminder of everything that was putting weight on my shoulders and driving me to early wrinkles.
Did we even really need to get married? Plenty of people just stayed “partners” for the rest of their lives and had kids and lived together and were perfectly happy without a big party and fancy certificate saying they were married.
But Nik was a king. He couldn’t have illegitimate children or have a live-in girlfriend for the rest of his life. And that realization was the first moment I, without realizing it, blamed Nik for it all. Blamed him for who he was born, for where he was born, for what he had to do with his life.
He had no say in any of this. He was royalty by chance and a king too soon because sometimes life was just cruel and had awful timing. None of this was his fault and he was doing his best to be a good boyfriend and a good leader. But being both was difficult. I was beginning to feel like a childish part of his world, something from his days as a party boy on the front page. He needed an “equal” to be his wife, and that wasn’t me.
Those thoughts tumbled in my head for a solid week before I decided to finally let them out in the most unproductive and unhealthy way I could possible think of: I got dragged to my first college party.
* * *
NYU wasn’t like the other schools you heard about when it came to parties. Instead of meatheads doing keg stands in the basements and trashed backyards of frat houses it was some bohemian, loft apartment that belonged to one of the sculpting students. It was filled with randomly placed furniture and smelled of burning incense in practically every room. The ambient music playing was weird and sounded nothing like how I’d imagined a college party.
But it was the first time my quiet roommate and I had started bonding, and if I spent the night curled up in our room thinking about all the things I was afraid of, I’d probably go insane.
The most nerve wracking thing about all this, however, was that, for some reason, before going to the party I took the necklace off. I told myself it was to keep it safe, which was probably very true, but I couldn’t help but feel like a wife who had taken off her wedding band while going out with friends.
It took only a brief few minutes for a boy to sidle up to me and throw an arm around my shoulders. I brushed him off and told him I had to go meet a friend and retreated to the first quie
t corner I could find.
After a while of self-imposed sobriety in the corner, I gave in and cracked open a can of room temperature beer I found floating in a cooler where the ice had melted long ago. It was disgusting, but the more I drank the more I thought about my time in Heledia with Nik, and I wished I could go back, before the paparazzi and official royal laws.
It was around my third beer that another boy found his way next to me on the couch. It started out less forward than the other.
“Hey,” he said, giving me a small wave that was a little too endearing.
“Hi,” I said back.
“You found the quietest spot here,” he said and threw in an awkward sounding chuckle.
I shrugged and agreed and took another sip of the beer. It tasted like stale bread and I couldn’t wait to brush my teeth in a few hours.
“How do you know the host?” he tried.
“My roommate is in one of her drawing classes,” I said. “No idea where said roommate went, though.”
He laughed some more and asked about my major and where I was from and what life was like as the daughter of a diplomat. I used my usual joke that I had diplomatic immunity in 30 countries (which wasn’t true) and could whack anyone he wanted and get away with it. It got another laugh and we slid into pretty easy conversation after that.
His name was Dev and he was nice and normal and sweet. His family came from the UK but his grandparents were originally from India. He was studying film and played soccer in the intramural league at the school (since NYU made a joke about having absolutely no sports programs).
Talking with him was easy, and so was laughing with him. In another life, if things had gone differently, I could see how easy it would be to fall into the arms of a stranger at school, in the din of a party, under the influence of cheap alcohol. It was almost tempting, just to see what pretending for a moment or two would be like. For a few hours I could be me again without the stress of international politics weighing on my shoulders.
Letters from a Prince: The Royals of Heledia (Book 1) Page 16
