Sleeping with the Enemy
Page 8
Another thing I know is that love is the greatest risk a human will ever take. Love won’t necessarily kill you, but losing someone you love will make you wish you were dead, all the same. I know Thomas is still at war with himself over the feelings he felt for me, and for men in general. He will never be the man who takes me by the hand and proudly introduces me to his circle of friends as his boyfriend. He’s too scared for that, and that will never be him.
But at the same time, no risk, no reward. I could walk away right now and save myself from any potential pain, sure. But I would also be forfeiting any chance I had at attaining the most valuable prize any human ever found: real, true love.
“Don’t look at me like you hate me,” Thomas says, trying to laugh, but looking somewhat worried nonetheless. “Oh – and happy Valentine’s Day, by the way. What do you say?”
I bite my lip. Over the last year, I learned about one last thing. In psychology there is something called the “sunken cost fallacy” – I learned about it in a writing class I’m taking. People want to be able to make rational decisions based on how well a choice will fare for their future – for example, I know that going jogging tonight instead of drinking wine would give me a better state of mind tomorrow, so part of me will want to jog.
But some people are ruled by their emotions. Some people get bogged down by the cost of their pasts. Part of me knows pursuing anything with Thomas, ever again, would be stupid and reckless and wasteful. But another, deeper part is too attached to what he means for my history – all our memories, everything we’ve ever done and seen together, all of that is tied up in a knot in my brain. The emotional part of me will always want to keep trying with him, to run back to him, simply because of everything I have invested in him – the “cost” of his presence in my life. I’ve deposited too much into that bank to turn back now, right? Why not get something useful out of it?
But no, my rational brain knows the truth: that would be stupid. We will never end in the way I want us to. Like Lo said last year, he will never be the person I want him to be. Not now, not ever.
So I smile, meet his eyes, and give him my answer. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t. I’m busy today. I do have something to ask you, though.”
“What? What is it?”
Everything else goes silent. His face is all I can see – everything else becomes a blur. “Just…just keep me in your heart, okay? That’s all I ask.”
He inhales. “But…you’re already there.”
“I…I am?”
“That’s what I’ve been wanting to tell you. I could just never say it before. And I couldn’t just text it to you, either.” He points at his chest as I realize this is the first time the tables have ever turned, and he is pursing me. “You’re there, Wade. You always were.”
A flickering thought blooms in my head, sepia-toned and shocking: what if I never see Thomas again? What if I lay my head down on my death bed in sixty years and know that Beech Mountain held the last memories we would ever make together, simply because I was too proud to give him another chance to love me?
“Well, what do you say?”
I stand there, my posture wavering a little, with the stoniest face I can muster.
But slowly, ever so slowly, that stone cracks into a smile.
The End
Dedicated to Terrianne Summers, trans activist
1950 – 2001
Murdered for the crime of checking her own mail
Terrianne was a passionate local LGBT+ activist who organized action against Winn-Dixie supermarkets after they fired a trans truck driver (who didn’t even present as female while on the job). In December 2001 she was shot and killed by an anonymous sniper in her own driveway while checking her mail in my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida, after several reported cases of harassment by neighbors and passersby. I was eleven, and never forgot the articles. (I suspect none of the LGBT+ youth in my city did, either.) Terrianne’s mail was still clutched in her hand when they found her body
Terrianne battled for years to live authentically, and yet was denied this simple dignity even in her death – the police report described her as a “white male” and reported “the victim was killed in his driveway.” In police files, her own neighbors also referred to Terrianne, in her death, as a “faggot.” The case was never solved
May you rest in dignity, Terrianne, and may your family one day find justice. Either way, we will remember your name
(turn page for more)
COMING SOON FROM SETH KING
TITLE: TO-BE-ANNOUNCED
After years of speculation, Britain’s most eligible bachelor, 25-year-old Prince Louis, has finally met his match. This fairy tale just comes with one modern twist: his match is a man.
Nate Keller is an American exchange student in London who starts chatting with an anonymous user on a gay dating app and makes a surprising discovery: all along the profile belonged to Prince Louis, rambunctious little brother to the heir of the British throne. And after a series of secret trips to Kensington Palace, sparks fly – with potentially historic consequences.
The bond between Nate and Louis proves too passionate to deny, and Nate’s life soon becomes a glamorous whirlwind of palaces, butlers and galas. But the British monarchy is notoriously conservative, and there is simply no precedent for an openly gay royal. Through a storm of disapproving courtiers, prying reporters and a looming constitutional crisis, Nate realizes that loving Prince Louis may just become the battle of his life.
Prologue
Nate Keller
I gulp and take in the chaos outside my window.
The small drive in front of the Dorchester, London’s fanciest hotel, is clogged with reporters, paparazzi, and hordes of random tourists stopping to see who everyone is waiting for. As I listen, I overhear someone say Madonna is staying at the hotel; another tourist interrupts and says that no, Adele is having lunch in the hotel restaurant. My heart jumps as a paparazzo on the curb cuts into the chat: “No, it’s that gay guy the Prince wants to marry.”
“Oh,” they all say, nodding. The tourists all seem to be of different nationalities, and yet they all seem to know who I am.
Of course they do. I’m the guy who might bring down the Monarchy.
I brace myself on the elegant back of a chair along the wall. If you told me a few months ago that my life would look like this, I would’ve just stared at you. If you told me the charming, mysterious guy I was chatting with on that dating app while studying abroad in London was going to turn out to be fourth in line to the crown, and that reporters from the Daily Mail would be calling everyone I ever knew going back a decade, and that cousins I never met would be selling stories about me to trashy blogs, and that my days would be spent in castles and country estates and private restaurants, and that I’d be sitting in a hotel room right now that costs the average worker’s monthly salary – I never would’ve believed any of it.
But most of all, I never would’ve believed that I could ever love someone as much as I love Louis Phillippe Edward Francis David Albert. Just thinking about him gives me the shivers. He has wrapped my days in wild light and filled my nights with a passion I have never known, and my love for him cuts through our differences in class, money, nationality, whatever. He is the other half of me, and even now, I feel his stinging absence everywhere.
But there is a very big problem, as the paparazzo so articulately stated. One day Louis may have to become King, even though he dreads it like a dentist appointment. And kings have to marry queens. They can’t be queens, themselves. There aren’t even any rules regarding our love, since it has literally never happened before – they wouldn’t even know where to start untangling the legal mess. That’s what we’re awaiting right now, the special session in Parliament where they’re going to address this whole debacle for the first time since the Daily Mail broke the story last week and my life exploded. And I have no idea what will happen next. A gay sovereign is unprecedented on all counts. The idea itself is
unthinkable, and this relationship has brought down my world. Louis’ world, too. I can’t forget that. I am so guilty for my part in this, I want to crawl out of my own skin sometimes.
But I can’t change it. I love him so much it makes me want to die sometimes.
In truth, I don’t know if I even want these people to accept me, after all. Even if England comes to appreciate me as a feature in Louis’ life, my own life will never, ever be the same if I stay here. I don’t care about his palaces and helicopters and chauffeurs – okay, wait, maybe the royal perks are a little fun. The luxury is unimaginable, and come on, anyone with a pulse would enjoy the life of a prince. After all, Louis has given me memories I will hold forever – sleeping in Queen Victoria’s bed at Ludgrove, the rambling country estate in Scotland; soaring over London at sunset in the garnet-red royal chopper; dinner for two in the Tower of London among the glittering crown jewels. But all along we were being so stupid, so reckless, and it all came at such a cost. If I stay with him, I will never again be able to walk down the street unnoticed. For the rest of my life I will be “that gay guy” who somehow landed England’s favorite son, the one everyone hoped would live happily ever after with some preppy blonde girl with a title in front of her name. And who would, or could, ever pay that price? My life wouldn’t be my life anymore.
But then again, if I flee I would be giving up the best person I have ever met in my life, the person who makes me jump out of bed in the morning instead of lingering in the sheets and dreading the very act of being alive…
I lock eyes with a little kid on the pavement and turn away from the spectacle. The Art Deco salon of the Dorchester’s Royal Suite, which is actually more of a full-floor apartment, is bathed in tones of cream and seafoam and eggshell – but even though Louis thought it would be a good place to stick me while the national storm intensifies, it still feels like a pastel prison. I’ve been avoiding the papers, as my own face stares out from all of them, and the tone has been highly condescending. (Of course, since I’m so new to the tabloid scene, they keep using the same ugly pictures stolen from Instagram and Facebook again and again, so that’s not helping, either.) GIVE US A KING WE CAN BELIEVE IN, says one paper from a rural conservative area. FOR GOD’S SAKE, LET LOUIS BE LOUIS! another, from liberal Birmingham, screams. Other papers are currently raking through my past, taking innocent pictures bribed from old friends, and blowing them totally out of proportion. PALACE PARTYBOY? one reads, along with a simple shot of me at a college party with some red Solo cups in the foreground. Prince Louis’ New ‘Close Pal’ Known to Enjoy the Nightlife; Buckingham Palace Mum on Latest Shock Pics.
I ignore the coffee table covered in lame headlines and instead scroll through the single album in my phone, of Louis and me smiling at some private club in Soho a few weeks ago, before the news broke. Despite myself, I smile. I never asked for any of this, you know. I didn’t expect to fall in love with a prince. I didn’t even know Louis was gay – well, I mean, nobody knew that, not even his father. He’d played the part of debonair playboy very convincingly for years until finally breaking down and matching with me on that anonymous gay app.
These things just don’t happen, even if the world is becoming slightly more modern in some ways. In the fairy tales, the princess snags her prince and they run off to the castle together. They don’t slam up against phrases like “constitutional crisis” and “widespread public rejection” and “an immediate threat to the monarchy.” Early polls guess that forty percent of Louis’ subjects would object to him having a potential male spouse – meaning four out of every ten people would disown him. The British monarchy would not survive me.
But at the end of it all the truth remains: if I could, I would go back and do it all over again, just to relive every kaleidoscopic second with Louis, even through all the mess. He is that remarkable, royal or not, and I don’t deserve him. Which is exactly the problem…
My new phone buzzes against the marble tabletop. (My last number was breached by the press, and Louis had to send an assistant to get a new one. I’m guessing it’ll only be a few hours of silence before this number leaks to someone, too, and they’ll start texting me offering me a hundred thousand pounds for an interview.)
Please be reasonable, darling, Louis says, and my heart twitches. Suddenly I see his deep blue eyes, his strawberry hair, his thick cock…
He first texted an hour ago, but I didn’t say anything. I guess this means his big meeting with his grandmother is over, but I don’t even want to know how it went yet. Again his blue eyes swim in my mind, his floppy, glossy hair flashes in my memories. If only we could be together right now – ugh, I need him with every breath. My chest aches for him already. Especially now.
But this is all careening out of control.
I’m scared, why aren’t you responding? he says, and I jump to reply.
Hi floppy, I say, thinking of how strange it is that our relationship started via texting and may very well end via texting, too. I’m here.
I am dead serious, he continues. Look, I know you’re horrified by all this. But Natie…
Yes?
You – you are the only person since my mum died to ever make me remember that love is a real thing that can be felt, he says, and I melt all over again. He’s desperate, but right now I don’t mind it. I want to live my life with you. Please stay. Please wait for me to figure something out. I am so sorry for the last few weeks, but I never asked to be born into this situation. You never know – maybe Parliament will deliver us a miracle today…
I don’t say anything. The idea of the governing body of England discussing my personal life right now makes me want to jump out of this window. I didn’t ask for this. But then again, neither did my poor Louis…all he did was get born, into an institution that disagrees with his very nature…
So…what’ll it be? he asks next. You staying in London, or what?
I glance at the plane ticket receipt on my dresser – one way, straight back to America. I’ve arranged a driver, a handler at the airport to protect me from the media storm, everything. And if I leave, I know I will never be able to come back. Ever.
A tear clouds my eye as that overpowering guilt hits me again – for making Louis feel like this, for taking a wrecking ball to his life, for endangering his whole future. But I love him, and I respect him too much to complicate his life in this way. He doesn’t deserve me, doesn’t deserve this mess we’ve made together.
And I am supposed to be at Heathrow airport in two hours.