American Queen

“I’ve heard meditation helps,” I say, a little dryly.

“You know, I’ve heard that too,” he says, just as dryly.

“I shared a bed with my cousin for years, and she kicks and grunts in her sleep. I can handle you.”

He laughs a little laugh. “I wish I could get to the point where I can sleep long enough to talk in my sleep. But probably I’ll end up going over to the office to work at some point in the night. I just don’t want you to feel abandoned or worried if you wake up and don’t find me next to you.”

I rub my ass against his cock again. “I’ve heard of something other than meditation that puts men to sleep.”

That earns me a real pinch, and I let out a little yelp.

“Go to sleep, Greer,” comes his voice in the dark.

“Yes, Sir.”

And I do.

11

Five Years Ago

When I was sixteen, I lied by omission twice. Both lies landed with cats-paw softness, light and silent, and for many years I thought that both were harmless.

I thought wrong.

The first lie was to Ash. I wrote to him that the girls at my school were obsessed with him, obsessed with the fact that Abilene and I had been at the same party mere weeks before his heroic act launched him into fame. I didn’t tell him that Abilene herself was the most obsessed with this fact.

And the second lie was to Abilene.

It wasn’t abnormal for me to keep things to myself for a few days before I confided in her, and so I didn’t tell her about Ash and the kiss for a week after it happened. And then the story broke about the village of Caledonia. The news showed a formal picture of Ash in his uniform, and his face was strong and noble on the screen in our dorm common room.

Abilene, who had refused to speak to me since the night of my birthday, forgot her anger and turned to me with her dark blue eyes alight. “I remember him!” she exclaimed. “He was at the party in Chelsea!”

Which is when I should have said, I know, I made out with him in the library.

What I said instead was, “I remember seeing him there too.”

And then Abilene went and told every girl she could find about our brush with the famous.

As the news and Internet outlets began churning out detailed profiles of Ash, Abilene’s fascination only grew. She printed out his military photo and carried it in her binder. She obsessively memorized every fact about his life: his absent parents, his early life in a foster home, becoming valedictorian at his high school. She started telling anyone who would listen that she would marry him some day. She joined groups online dedicated to Colchester fan-worship. And I knew, with all the perception that Grandpa Leo had drilled into me, that the truth would wound her instantly and fracture whatever peace we’d managed to restore after the night of my birthday.

Anyway, it had only been a kiss, and as the weeks wore on and my emails to Ash went unanswered, I decided that a kiss wasn’t worth destroying our friendship over. In the heat of her adoration for the newly famous war hero, she had once again welcomed me into her confidence, and things were finally back to how they’d been before the party. I couldn’t bear to give that up. Not again.

And aside from our repaired trust, I also assumed she would get over Ash as quickly as she got over most things. Abilene wasn’t flighty by any means, but she was passionate, and one passion could easily drive out another. After a few months she would meet a new boy or start a new sport and she would forget all about Maxen Colchester.

How wrong I was.

The years passed. I turned seventeen and stopped writing to Ash, although my chest never stopped squeezing when I heard his name. I turned eighteen and graduated from Cadbury Academy. Abilene left for college back home, I applied to Cambridge and got in. I turned nineteen and picked a major that definitely wasn’t politics or business, much to Grandpa Leo’s disappointment. I turned twenty, glanced around at my barebones flat with its beat-up teakettle and air mattress, and bought a plane ticket home for the summer.

I’d been home frequently to visit Grandpa, but something about that summer felt different. Maybe it was the ten solid weeks in America looming ahead of me or maybe it was the fact that Grandpa was traveling for work and I had the Manhattan penthouse mostly to myself, but I felt displaced and lonely. So when Grandpa invited Abilene and me out to Chicago to stay with him while he worked on his latest green energy acquisition, I jumped at the chance, finding a flight the very next day.

My plane landed at the same time as Abilene’s, and when we met each other, we fairly collided into an embrace, jumping up and down.

“My God,” Abilene said, pulling back, “you finally figured out how to do your own makeup.”

“Nice to see you too,” I teased.

She smiled, her eyes flicking from my hair to my bright pink dress, but there was a new shadow in her smile.

She’s jealous of you.

I shook the thought away. She looked gorgeous in her short shorts and halter-top, hair glossy and red, and her pale shoulders smattered with freckles. That old fight couldn’t reach us here, now, not when we hadn’t seen each other in so long and had an entire week to spend together. I slung my arm around her shoulders, having to reach up as I did so since she was a few inches taller than me, and squeezed her into my side. “I missed you, Abi,” I said. “I wish we were going to the same school.”

Abilene rolled her eyes but put her arm over my shoulders too. “If you want that, you’re going to have to come to Vanderbilt. There’s no way I can handle another rainy summer in England.”