The Royal We (27 page)

Inside, we rescued Cilla from a conversation with Six-Names and her new boyfriend, and made our way to Clive and Gaz, near a display of bikinis with the Universal No symbol stamped someplace scandalous. Gaz had his arm around a petite, bobbed brunette in a prim shirtdress.

“You all remember Philippa,” Gaz said.

“Brilliant. It’s the Ivy League,” Philippa said, but she was glaring at me. “Daddy said your beach holidays singlehandedly made this happen.” This sounded like an accusation.

“Oh, I’d say
his
hands had a lot to do with it, too,” Lacey said sweetly, tucking her arm protectively through mine. We all glanced over to where Tom was peacocking with Joss. They were in matching snug leather trousers and identical platinum bouffants, like they were members of a Duran Duran tribute band rather than business partners. Philippa let out a guttural yawp; a tattoo artist set up between the jumpsuits and the tube tops was sketching the word
guns
on her father’s right bicep, as he and Joss nuzzled.

“I am going to stab that bitch,” Philippa said, stomping across the room.

“Bit crackers, that one,” Gaz said. “Always on at me about my family landholdings.”

“I did warn you,” Clive said.

“There’s no future in it, anyway,” Gaz said. “She said curry makes her teeth hurt.”

“Blasphemy,” Cilla said heartily. “You are a magician with curry.”

Gaz looked delighted, unlike Joss, who was currently getting the business end of Philippa’s rage.

“Poor Joss,” I said.

“Poor nothing,” Clive said. “She got Sexy Bexy in her clothes again. Mission accomplished.”

I groaned. “But I regret these jeans.”

“You need a drink,” Lacey advised, scanning the room for the bar and then charging off in that direction.

“This party has a very unusual guest list,” Clive said, raising an eyebrow at two girls with half-shaved heads loitering near the handbags, whom I suspected were former fashion school classmates of Joss.

“Yes, that’s right, only poncey society to-dos for you now,” Gaz said. “No one with fewer than three surnames allowed.”

“Can’t complain. It’s been ripping for my career,” Clive said, drawing himself to his full height. “I’ve managed to use my connections without severing any of them. I’m hoping the
Recorder
won’t be able to resist giving me a Man About Town column, if the
Mail
doesn’t jump on me first.”

“I bet they will,” I said. “I told you things would turn around for you.”

“I really should do an anonymous one with all the dirt I wish I could print, if it wouldn’t get me ostracized,” he said. “For example, from the rumors I’ve heard, there’s a certain pug—”

Clive was interrupted by a flurry of flashbulbs outside the store, and then my shell-shocked sister pawing through the crowd.

“He’s here,” she hissed. “Hide your pants.”

The whole room slowed down the instant I saw Nick. He was exactly as I remembered—kind face, piercing blue eyes, hair slightly tousled. As if he’d just rolled out of my bed.

“Oh, aces,” Joss said, coming up behind us. “I suppose he did actually say
maybe
, but that usually means no.”

Lacey and Cilla appeared to be wrestling with which of them would sock Joss first. I opened my mouth to say it was fine—it had to be, I had no choice—but then a blonde walked in beside Nick and took his hand. Ceres Whitehall de Villency looked like a gleaming golden angel in a leather pencil skirt and a sexy white top. I looked like a hobo, and I felt like a fool.

“I can’t,” I heard myself whisper.

Clive heard, too, and roared with laughter as if I’d just said something amazing. “Come with me,” he leaned down to whisper. “We can be on a flight to Paris in thirty minutes.”

“Yes,” I whispered back. “Take me.”

Bad choice of words.

My head pounded so hard that my vision blurred. I crawled out from under Clive and into the bathroom, all indigo and white tile and gold-trimmed fixings (it was, at least, the prettiest place in which I had ever felt like refried death). My makeup had relocated to all the wrong spots on my face, my breath smelled like my downward spiral, and my hair stood up as if I’d been dragged through a hedge. I heard footsteps and lurched to lock the door, then curled up on the cool floor to try to pull myself together. I recalled a bottle of bubbly on Davinia’s father’s jet, and some limoncello, among other liquid sins, at a nightclub in Montmartre—which unearthed a memory of meeting that random couple, whom Clive then invited for a nightcap at the Hotel Unpronounceable Frenchy Thing. I saw hazy images of strip blackjack, and being goaded into betting a kiss when I lost my last euros, and the other two whooping as Clive collected on that bet. That’s where the reel in my head snapped and stopped. But what more did I need to see? I had been telling myself so vehemently that pretending to enjoy the wild life would somehow magically turn me back into the Old Bex, who only ever had vigorously noncommittal fun and never gave anyone her heart to break. But sprawled there naked on the floor with a mottled memory of the night before, I had to accept that this was the opposite of fun. It was dangerous, and it was exhausting.

So I threw up. Four times. I hurled with the might of someone hoping to purge
everything
, not just her stomach, and then did a swish of the complimentary mouthwash and put on the hotel robe. With a shaky hand and a deep breath—but not too deep; even my lungs were pissed at me—I steeled myself and opened the door. Clive had put on his boxers and was lying on the bed, clutching the last intact thing from the minibar to his forehead: an aluminum can of lemonade that had to be, at best, lukewarm. Our guests were nowhere to be seen.

“Why did we drink so much?” he whispered.

“Did we have sex last night?”

Clive lifted up the can, a picture of surprise. “You don’t remember?” He plonked the can back into his forehead. “Well. That is not flattering.”

“I know we kissed.” I closed my eyes. I had a flash of myself removing his pants, of us lying on the bed, of me laughing wildly. “Oh, man. Maybe I do remember.”

“It was not,” Clive said with a wince, “our finest hour.”

I kicked debris off the other double bed and crawled between its cool sheets, where I should have been all along.

“What is wrong with us? You have a girlfriend! And I have…” My voice trailed off. “Issues,” I finished. “I got spooked and totally lost control. I’m so sorry.”

Clive slowly righted himself. “We both did it, not just you,” he said. “Two old friends got too drunk, emotions ran high, we blew off some steam. It doesn’t mean anything.”

He paused to pick a long brown strand of hair off his chest. “So, no need to tell Davinia. And without doubt I won’t tell Nick,” he added.

“He has Ceres. He wouldn’t care.” I sighed at my bruised tone. “It turns out I’m not dealing with this very well.”

“Bex,” Clive said patiently, “
no one
thought you were dealing with this very well.”

I put my hands over my face. “I need to go home.”

“It’s five thirty in the morning,” Clive said.

“Then I need to call Lacey.”

“And I need grease,” Clive said. “Let’s order breakfast. What do you want?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Pancakes. Eggs. Sausages. Everything.”

I angled myself sideways and scrabbled at the mess on the floor. I found my underwear, a hair band, ten pounds, a torn condom wrapper that was a huge relief, and my passport, and then finally my cell jammed into the rear pocket of my foot pants. Lacey’s phone barely rang.

“Why are you calling at this hour?” Freddie’s voice asked.

“Why are you answering my sister’s cell?”

Across the room, Clive looked up from the room service menu.

“It’s not what you think,” Freddie said. “Actually it’s—what? No, Lacey, I’m not going to lie. We’re all safe, Bex, but we’re awake, because…well, there’s been an incident with Nick.”

G
iven the choice, I would’ve liked my first post-breakup conversation with Nick to have included really good hair—a little
Shakespeare in Love
, a little Gisele—and a preternatural amount of self-possession. Instead, I’d scraped my unwashed locks into a bun, scrubbed off as much makeup as the hotel washcloth would take, and picked up discount mascara and lip gloss at the Chunnel terminal. It wasn’t a bad patch job, but I was still green around the edges, on the whole more Zombie Apocalypse Survivor than the beguiling heroine of my own movie.

Freddie had shared only the barest details: Nick had almost decked a paparazzo outside a club, Gaz stepped in front of his fist, and then he popped Nick in the face in return.

“What the hell is the matter with them?” I had squawked.

“Well, we only talked for a second, but…
stop it
, Lacey, she’s going to find out eventually,” Freddie said irritably. “Er, so it sounds like the photographer said something rather offensive about you.”

I clapped a hand over my mouth. “Nick, you idiot,” I whispered. “Where is he, Fred?”

“This might not be the best time,” he warned.

I rubbed my temples. “Yeah, I’m done hearing that phrase from your family,” I said. “I’ll find him, but it’d be a lot faster if you just told me.”

In the end, it was also faster to take the Eurostar than wait for a Luxe Airlines flight. Clive had been a prince himself, of a sort, dashing down to the hotel gift shop and getting me a cotton shift that might have been intended as a nightgown, but which passed faintly for a casual dress. (Nothing would scream
walk of shame
to Nick louder than the same pair of foot pants I’d been wearing when I ran away from him.) It wasn’t until our taxi dropped me at the Gare du Nord that I even looked Clive in the eye again. My hangover was hitting me in waves, as was a deep embarrassment.

“Clive,” I said softly.

“Don’t mention it,” he said.

“I’m serious, I never meant—”

Clive held up a hand. “
I’m
serious. Don’t mention it.”

The two-hour Chunnel trip sped by as I scrolled through the reports already flooding the Internet, like
ROYAL RUMBLE; NICK TUMBLES
, and
GINGER ‘DAVID’ FELLS PRINCE GOLIATH
, accompanied by photo after photo of Nick falling, then landing hard as his PPOs swarmed him and Gaz. My brain ricocheted between raking myself over the coals for backsliding into bed with Clive, and trying to figure out why I thought I should see Nick in my current state given that I had indirectly caused
his
current state. I’d reached no helpful conclusions by the time my cab pulled up to Joss’s place in an unremarkable part of Fulham. Every slender maisonette in the row had a different hint-of-color paint job that failed to hide the crookedness of the windowsills and mouldings. And when I pressed the bell, it sounded like a duck stuck in an air vent. No one would look for Nick here.

The curtains twitched, then Joss ushered me inside, her hair matted on the left as if she’d been woken from a deep, motionless slumber. We shambled into her microscopic white-and-yellow kitchen, where we came upon a very pale Cilla in a snug red tank dress, her heels in a heap near the sink as she blotted Gaz’s split lip with a wet cloth.

“God, Gaz. Look at you. What
happened
?” I said.

“You should see the other bloke,” Gaz quipped through one side of his mouth.

“I don’t know how you caught that punch,” Cilla said. “I barely knew myself what was happening until it was over.”

“Piece o’ doddle. Catlike reflexes, and all,” Gaz said, but fatigue and worry blocked his grin from reaching his eyes. “That photographer bastard leant right in at us and said…
the thing
, and I somehow just knew Nick was going to have a go at him. So I sort of swung ’round at the right moment, and bam, Bob’s your uncle.”

“Didn’t even fall down,” Cilla said. “He was bloody brilliant.”

“Or a bloody idiot, because then I shouted that Nick was a horse-fearing geezer and socked him back,” Gaz said. “I just felt like it had to look
real
, like we’d been quarreling rather than anything to do with that mustachioed slug.”

“Bowled Nick clean over,” Joss said, leaning against the doorjamb. “It was almost hot.”

“It was
extremely
hot,” Cilla corrected.

Gaz looked proud, but just for a second. “I assumed I’d miss,” he admitted.

I snorted and then covered my mouth and nose with both hands. “Shit, sorry. It’s not funny,” I said. “I just can’t believe you were faster than Stout
and
Popeye. You are seriously impressive, Gaz.”

“I’m a disaster,” he said morosely. “I’m finally a sensational hunk of manhood, and it’s going to get me chucked in the Tower.”

“No,” I said firmly. “It’s going to get you a medal. You know as well as anyone how hard that guy would’ve sued the Royal Family. You totally stepped up.”

“Too right,” Cilla agreed.

Gaz flushed to the tips of his hair. “Cor,” he said. “I just did what any mate would do.”

Cilla threw the rag aside and took his face in her hands. “Garamond Bates, you did what only an
exceptional
mate would do,” she said. And then she pulled him toward her, practically by the ears, and kissed him so hard he’d have seen stars if he weren’t already. Gaz’s obvious astonishment eventually faded as he wrapped his arms around Cilla and responded in kind.

Joss and I hadn’t been sure our conversation was finished, but after a full minute passed in a fumbling blur of plummy auburn locks and vibrant carrot-colored ones, we backed away into her dining room.

“I had fifty quid on this happening right after we graduated,” Joss said. “Could’ve used the cash back then. Christ, they’re loud.”

“I should go talk to Nick,” I said. “I assume he’s upstairs?”

“Is that
moaning
? Can I come with you?”

I just looked at her.

“Oh, all right.” Joss grunted. “I suppose the good news is that now Cilla won’t need to crash here when she’s in the city. I should sublet and move in with Hunty. Maybe I’ll go tell him the news.”

“Good plan,” I said, scooting to the stairs as Cilla roughly backed Gaz against the wall oven and Joss slipped out the front door, a protective hand over her eyes. I stared with trepidation up the steps, then started to climb toward what I’d been dreading.

Joss’s flat was decorated in the style of someone with a pathological addiction to flea markets: odd geometric tables, fringed lampshades, colored glass jugs, and one entire shelf of brass candlesticks. Despite my nerves, I still almost snickered at the sight of Nicholas Wales lying on her green and pink-flowered bedspread, holding a bag of frozen corn over his face while a three-foot statue of David made out of chicken wire stood watch. I hadn’t thought to ask if Nick knew I was coming, but when his eye opened and he saw me, he answered the unspoken question by sitting up so fast that the vegetable bag dropped onto his thigh. A vibrant bruise bloomed over his right cheekbone and up around to his temple, a butterfly bandage held together a cut over one eye, and his left hand was red and swollen and cut.

“What are you doing here?” he stammered.

I perched on the edge of the bed. It felt too intimate, but there was nowhere else to sit in Joss’s room. “I heard the fastest fists in Britain were on the premises and I had to see for myself.”

He glanced at his hand. “Pretty gruesome.”

“I was talking about Gaz.”

Nick’s laugh quickly morphed into a sigh. “How’s he faring?”

“I suspect he has never been better,” I said, “considering he and Cilla are finally going at it downstairs. Apparently getting clocked in the jaw is an aphrodisiac.”

Nick looked surprised, then very pleased, then agonized. “Be that as it may, I strongly recommend against getting into a fistfight,” he said. “Everything hurts. Even my feet are screaming at me.”

“So are Barnes, and Marj, I’ll bet,” I said.

“I made Freddie talk to them for me.”

“You didn’t have to do it,” I said softly.

“Of course I did.” He swung his legs around to sit next to me. “Freddie never does anything responsible. It was glorious making him handle those calls.”

“What did he say?” I asked. “And don’t give me any glib crap about Freddie. I’m talking about Mustache.”

“I’d rather not repeat it.”

“What do you think I’m going to do about it, Nick? Punch him?” I gave him a reproachful look. “Who’d be
that
stupid?”

“No one,” Nick agreed. “That would be epically stupid.”

“Even stupider than drinking Pimm’s from a hose,” I said.

“Even stupider than
Cats
.”

“Even stupider than
Devour
.”

“See, now you’ve gone too far,” Nick said. “Don’t make me defend your honor and
Devour
’s in the same night.”

“Just tell me.”

Nick looked queasy. “He said, ‘So are you done slumming it with that Sofa Queen slag? Are we shot of that low-class bitch at last?’”

I let that wash over me; surprisingly, sadly, I found I’d heard its equal enough that I was now immune. Nick got up, creakily, and tugged at his hair, as if weighing what and how much more to say.

“He’s been needling me for a while. I’d been out with Ceres a bit”—at this, he paused, but I managed to remain impassive—“and he’d started tossing out stuff here and there about your bikinis, or who you’d been with. You know how he is. Loves to get a rise. But he must’ve really wanted me to crack, because suddenly it got worse. Really misogynistic. I shouldn’t have repeated it.”

I shrugged. “He’s said it to me, too. Nothing as American as
bitch
, but you English have a vibrant array of words for what he thinks I am.
Slapper
, that’s a good one.”

“None of them gives a toss about Freddie sleeping with half of London, but you chat up a movie star and it’s open season,” Nick said. “It’s vile.”

I closed my eyes briefly, and when I opened them again, he was looking at me protectively. But there was also a new emotional distance between us. I had been afraid I would come here and break down and dive at him, but instead maybe the tide was ebbing. I waited to have a feeling—of sadness, or remorse, of lust, of anything—but it was like I’d vomited them out hours ago and a country away, and so it was time, in classic Bex fashion, to just open my mouth and see what else came out of it.

“Thank you. I mean it,” I said. “I’m touched that you stuck up for me. But you can’t fight my battles anymore, Nick. It’ll just make things worse for you.”

“I am not going to let people talk about you like that,” Nick said fiercely.

“And I lo—” I caught myself. “I
appreciate
you for feeling that way,” I amended. “Mustache is a chauvinistic oaf, but let him be my problem. You have enough to worry about on your own.”

Nick went quiet for a second. “What happened to you at Joss’s party?” he asked.

I hadn’t remembered to come up with a suave excuse for that one.

“Are you dating Ceres?” I asked instead.

“It’s casual,” he said. “Are you dating anyone?”

I thought of Clive. “Not even casually,” I said, perhaps too emphatically, but Nick didn’t seem to notice. “Did you really yell something in Majorca about being free at last?”

“I think I was referring to being off the ship, but I was rat-arsed at the time, so who knows,” he said. “And you didn’t answer my question about Joss’s party.”

“Okay, fine. I ran away,” I confessed.

“From me?”

“Did you
see
my pants?”

“Only very briefly. You were moving quite fast,” he said.

“Yeah. Well. This whole thing hasn’t been easy for me,” I told him.

“That makes two of us.” He flexed his bruised hand. “You know, in that second before I swung, it felt really good to just do what I actually wanted to do, damn the consequences.”

That he’d realized this, months beyond the point where it could have saved us, was something I’d rather not have known.

“Just don’t get hurt punching people for me anymore,” I said. “I can throw my own.”

Nick looked at me for a long time. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “I will try not to assault people in your name if you stop running off anytime we bump into each other.”

“I don’t know if I can, Nick,” I said. “I really
am
okay, or at least I will be. But I’m not ready to pal around London with you like we never happened.”

He looked sad. “But this was a good step, right? Seeing each other, I mean. Not the Mustache part.”

“It was a very good step. Let’s take another one sometime.”

We lapsed into silence, companionable, but still more remote than I could fathom feeling around someone I’d loved so much. Back in that stale Paris hotel room, I’d known I had to make some changes, but Nick’s black eye drove home that I wasn’t the only person who would benefit from me putting down the bottle and picking myself up instead.

“Is it always going to be like this, do you think?” I wondered.

“Like what?”

“Well, it’s funny,” I said. “When we were together, whatever I did blew back on you. Once we broke up, I assumed that would stop, but it hasn’t. People will always connect the dots, and wonder if I’m pining for you, or if we’re secretly hooking up, or if we hate each other. It never ends.”

“You make it sound so appealing to have been with me,” he said wryly.

“It was. I don’t regret it for a second,” I told him. “But it’s just…a strange feeling. To be so tied to you in public now, when we never got to be tied to each other in public
then
. I guess being your girlfriend was temporary, but being your ex is for life.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just annoyed I couldn’t go on as many dumb benders as it took to get over you without people judging me for it. And now it’s made trouble for both of us.”

“Bex, the only trouble you’ve ever been for me is the fun kind,” he said gently.

And as our eyes met, the tide came in again. I had the turbulent thought that I could take his head in my hands and then just take
him
, like Cilla had with Gaz, and that he wanted me to and would let me. There was a softness in his bruised face, a hint of a question in his eyes. But if Nick and I were going to happen again, it couldn’t be three hours after Clive’s naked body inspired me to ralph in a hotel bathroom. I refused to be reckless with him. So I screwed up my nerve and turned away, and the charge fizzled as quickly as it had sparked.