American Royals

Nina remembered how she and the twins used to love watching these, back when they were all too young to attend the party. Sam would insist that Nina come sleep over, and they would sneak onto this very terrace before the fireworks began, all three of them wrapped in a heavy wool blanket.

“I’ll stay for a minute,” she heard herself say. “Just until the fireworks are over.” For old times’ sake.

Jeff gestured toward the flagstones as if offering Nina the most elegant chair in the world. She ignored his hand and lowered herself to the stone floor of the balcony, pushing up the skirts of Sam’s gown to slip her legs through the railings. Her bare feet with their unpolished toes dangled over the expanse of air.

“Do you see that?” Jeff pointed back toward the palace, where an empty birds’ nest was tucked precariously in one of the beams. A hook seemed to tug and pull at Nina’s heart. She’d forgotten that she and the twins used to prowl around the palace looking for birds’ nests. Usually they would leave crumbs out, hoping the birds would eat them.

“Next time we need to bring some leftover scones to crumble,” Jeff mused.

Next time? Nina shot him a questioning glance, but Jeff was looking away.

There was something inherently regal about his profile, his square jaw and high cheekbones and aquiline nose. It was the sort of face that the Romans would have stamped onto a coin.

They sat there for a while in companionable silence. The fireworks kept erupting overhead, shades of American red, blue, and gold unfurling in vibrant showers of sparks. They were so fast that each firework lit up the whisper of smoke left over from the one before.

Sitting like this, watching the fireworks the way they always used to, Nina could almost pretend that they were friends again. But she knew there would be no rewinding the clock, no going back to being “just friends.” Not for her.

Nina couldn’t pinpoint when, exactly, she’d fallen in love with Jeff. She’d been friends with him for years, had grown up with him right alongside Sam. All she knew was that one day she woke up and her love for him was simply there, like newly fallen snow. Maybe it had been there all along.

When he’d started dating Daphne, Nina had almost doubled over from the pain of it. Suddenly Daphne was invited to all the same events and vacations that Nina came to with Sam, and Nina had to watch, powerless, as their relationship unfolded before her.

She hated Daphne. Hated her perfect smile, her shining hair that never seemed to fall out of place, the sweet yet proprietary way she rested a hand on Jefferson’s arm. Most of all she hated Daphne for being so utterly eligible—for being the type of girl everyone expected Jeff to go out with. Nina could never compete with a girl like that.

Until the night of the twins’ graduation party, when everything changed.

The twins were leaving early the next morning, for one of the royal family’s annual tours of the country. Even so, the king and queen had agreed to let them throw a graduation party at the palace. Nina laughed, dancing with Samantha and a couple of Sam’s private-school friends. They’d all had a lot to drink; the party’s signature cocktail was some fruity mixed thing that Sam had invented, playing bartender in the palace kitchens.

Eventually the party felt too hot and crowded for Nina. She stepped into the hallway—only to collide with the prince.

Jeff put his hands on her shoulders to steady her, because she tottered a little in her wedges. “You okay?”

Nina was curiously unsurprised to find Jeff here, alone. Of course he was here: in her drunk, happy mind, it seemed that fate had led him here, just for her.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving tomorrow. It won’t be the same without you,” Nina blurted out, then immediately wished she could take it back. “I mean, without you and Sam …”

“Nina Gonzalez.” Jeff grinned. “Are you saying that you’ll miss me?”

Nina couldn’t tell whether he meant it seriously or not. She didn’t know how to answer.

He leaned forward. Magic lay thick and heavy in the air. And somehow—Nina had replayed that moment in her head a million times, and even now she couldn’t say for certain which of them had started it—somehow they were kissing.

It felt to Nina like she’d spun out of this universe altogether, and into some new place where anything might happen.

“Do you want to go upstairs?” Jeff murmured. Nina knew she should say no, of course not.

“Yes,” she whispered instead.

They stumbled through his sitting room and into his bedroom. Nina fell back onto the bed, pulling Jeff down next to her. The air seemed thinner, or warmer, or maybe all the oxygen had simply drained from her blood, because the entire world had turned on end. She was here, with Prince Jefferson.

His hand slipped under the strap of her dress, and it forced Nina brutally to her senses.

She’d made out with a few boys from her class at school, and that one guy at the bar in Cabrillo, on a trip with Sam, but none of it had gone past kissing. It was crazy and foolish and Nina had refused to even admit it to herself, but she knew that some part of her had been waiting, hoping, for this. That she would eventually be here, with the only boy she’d ever loved.

She couldn’t let herself go any further right now, because if she did, she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to stop.

Reading her hesitation, Jeff carefully replaced the strap of her dress. “No pressure,” he said quietly.