American Queen

She must have seen it too, because she froze, staring at the door. Then she turned to me. “Just stay out of my way tonight,” she mumbled. “Just stay away from me.”

Stung, I watched her walk through the doors as the doorman opened them for her and give Grandpa Leo a big hug, a fake smile plastered onto her face. I wanted to yell at her, tell her that I was the only reason she was going to the party in the first place. I wanted to scream and kick, because couldn’t I have one night, just one, that wasn’t all about her, that she didn’t upstage or steal or poison with her drama?

And most of all, I wanted to cry, because Abilene was my best friend, maybe my only friend, and the whole world felt off-kilter when she was like this with me.

But what could I do? What could I say or scream or beg that would make her understand?

So I did what Greer Galloway usually did.

I quietly followed in her footsteps.

I went through the doors and into Grandpa’s arms and then climbed into the car with her. We sat shoulder by shoulder, my skirt overflowing onto hers, her soft hair brushing against the skin of my arm, and we didn’t say a word to each other the entire drive.

Within minutes of arriving at the party, Abilene disappeared. I made to go find her, but Grandpa Leo held me back with a hand on my arm and a shake of his head. “She’ll be fine after a few minutes,” he promised. “Some space to cool down will do her good, and besides, I’d like to introduce you to a few of my friends.” I knew introduce was Grandpa Leo-speak for planting me as his spy, that he would want me to circulate and listen, or stand by his side and observe people while he talked, and I wanted to do that, I really did, but I also wanted to fix whatever was wrong with Abilene and me before the night grew any older.

I bit my lip, scanning the crowd for any sign of dark red hair, but I saw nothing. She was long vanished into a sea of tuxedos and circulating cocktail trays. I reluctantly allowed Grandpa to pull me deeper into the party.

Women cooed over me and men complimented me, their eyes trailing along my body in a way that I wasn’t used to, and I knew it was all because Abilene wasn’t next to me. They couldn’t see how marred my face was, how boring my body, without a gorgeous redhead the same age standing beside me for comparison. This thought should have made me happy, that without Abilene’s radiant charm, I could finally bask in the kinds of compliments she gathered so effortlessly, but it didn’t. I only felt more miserably aware of her absence. After an hour of this, I excused myself from Grandpa and a circle of guests to go find her, and that’s when I ran—literally—into Merlin Rhys.

He reached down to steady me by the elbow, keeping the amber drink in his other hand from sloshing as he did so. “Pardon me,” he apologized, even though it was my fault.

“No, it was my mistake,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He peered down into my face and something shifted in his expression. “You’re Leo Galloway’s granddaughter,” he said. No inflection, no follow up. Just that one fact, the one fact that identified me wherever I went, as if the ghost of President Penley Luther was standing right behind me.

“Yes,” I said. “We met once, you and I, but I was a little girl.”

You predicted my parents’ deaths.

You warned me never to kiss anyone.

“I remember,” Merlin replied, and the way he looked at me almost made me feel as if he could read my thoughts. Like he’d heard them as clearly as if I’d spoken them aloud.

“Merlin!” A man in military attire appeared next to us and clapped a hand on Merlin’s shoulder. Merlin smiled tightly at him. “I was wondering when I’d catch up to you. How have you been?”

Merlin turned to answer the general, and I took the opportunity to vanish, my heart pounding in my chest.

Merlin unsettled and frightened me, and through all these years I thought it was because I’d met him as a little girl, at an age when almost anything can seem scary. But he still scared me at sixteen. There was something about him…not hostile necessarily, but aggressive. You felt his mind pushing at yours, challenging the walls around your thoughts, slithering through the defenses you kept around your feelings. It made me feel exposed and vulnerable, and I’d had enough of that from Abilene tonight.

I found my cousin in the townhouse’s library—a large lovely room with open French doors leading to a wide patio outside—with an empty champagne flute dangling from her fingers as she let a man older than her father kiss a trail of sloppy kisses down her neck. I cleared my throat and he straightened up, embarrassed. He beat a hasty retreat with a muttered apology in Italian, leaving Abilene against the wall looking livid.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” she demanded once he left the room. “I told you to leave me alone, not barge in here and ruin my life!”

“I’m not trying to ruin your life!” I exclaimed. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

She snorted in disgust. “Yeah, right.”

“What is going on with you tonight?” I asked. “You’ve been angry with me since the hotel.”

“I’m not angry,” she maintained, her nostrils flaring. “I just don’t want to be around you right now. God, why is that so fucking hard to understand?”

“It’s not—”

“And you know what, you always do this,” she went on, her eyes starting to shine with unshed tears. “You always push and push and push, like you have to know fucking everything, and one of these days, you’re not going to like the answer.”