Chapter 35
It’s so hot back in Florida.
There’s a part of me that loves it, that wants to soak in the sun, the vaguely salty air, the bright colors. And for the first couple of days, I do. I shake off my jet lag lying on a blanket in our backyard, watching tiny lizards run over the palm fronds. I slather myself in sunblock and let the smell of coconut remind me that I’m home now, and that everything that happened in Scotland is in the past.
Of course, it can’t really stay in the past—the wedding is still very much on and will be in Scotland in December. Then I’ll have to go back and face everything I left behind. Ellie and I are fine, so at least that’s good, but I’ll still have to deal with Alex’s family. With Seb.
With Miles.
That’s the one that still hurts. I hadn’t talked to him before I left, and even though I have his email—thanks to Sherbet—I don’t want to risk it. The whole thing had been such a mess, and it seems like it’s better to leave it alone. Maybe now that I’m gone, Miles can repair his relationship with “the palace,” and by the time I come back in the winter, it won’t be a big deal anymore.
That’s probably wishful thinking.
Isa told me that it was all over the blogs, and I haven’t ventured out of my house since I got back, afraid to suddenly see my face on all those magazines.
I guess it’s impressive, how the palace spun the story of what happened at the polo match, and from everything Isa told me, the stories had Glynnis’s fingerprints all over them. There was no mention of Seb’s declaration of love to Ellie, and now Alex had punched him because he’d besmirched my honor or something. A total misunderstanding was turned into me being some kind of scarlet woman, breaking up the Royal Wreckers, and while Miles and Seb had definitely not been fighting over me—well, not really—I guess the end result is the same anyway.
For those first few days I’m back, I mostly just sit either in the backyard or in my room, checking in with Isa (and, yes, asking her to check the blogs for me), too afraid to go out. The paparazzi have never bothered us here in Perdido, but that was before I became a story, and every time I lie out in the backyard, I tense for the clicking of shutters. I won’t even wear a bathing suit when I lie out, just in case.
It’s on day four of my self-imposed hermitdom that Dad comes into my room wearing one of his loud shirts and a pair of long cutoffs. His gray hair is a mess, and he’s got his sunglasses perched on top of his head with his regular glasses balancing on the end of his nose.
In other words, typical Dad.
“C’mon,” he says, and I look up from my laptop, frowning.
“What?”
“No more of this,” he replies, gesturing around my room. “Baptism by fire, here we go.”
He wants me to go out.
I scoot up the bed, pulling my knees to my chest. “Nope. No baptisms, no fire, no outside.”
But when Dad is in one of these moods, he can’t be talked out of it. “You can’t live in this room forever, Daisy Mae,” he reminds me. “Eventually you’re going to have to go to school, or maybe get another job so that you can pull your weight around here. Can’t raise a moocher, you know.”
“Mrs. Miller said I could have my job back at the Sur-N-Sav,” I say in a low voice. “But I don’t . . .”
“You don’t want to see yourself on magazines, I suspect,” Dad finishes, then quirks an eyebrow at me. “Or perhaps you don’t want to go back to your former life of unglamorous servitude now that you’ve tasted the finer things.”
That irks me as, I guess, Dad had thought it would. “That’s not it,” I tell him, and he shrugs.
“Prove it, then. Let’s go to the Sur-N-Sav right now and tell Mrs. Miller in person that you will be donning the smock this week, shall we?”
Which is how I find myself back in the land of linoleum and cheap bread just fifteen minutes later, wincing as we pass the rows of magazines by the registers. Isa isn’t working today, but Bradley, one of the kids from my school, is, and when he sees me, he gives me a wave. Nothing else, no look or weirdness, just a wave.
I’m beginning to think things might actually be normal after all when I see the first cover.
“CRAZY FOR DAISY!”
Seriously, why is that their favorite headline?
It’s me at the polo match, before everything went wrong, standing with Miles, and there’s a little inset picture of Alex punching Seb.
My stomach drops, and my knees are weak, everything inside me suddenly feeling liquidy and queasy, and I nearly turn and bolt out of the store.
But Dad stops me. “Now wait just a tick,” he says, and ambles up to the stand.
“Dad,” I say, trying to keep my voice low, but there’s a clear edge of desperation to it.
Dad either doesn’t hear it or chooses to ignore it. “Now then,” he says, flipping through the pages, “is any of this true?”
It’s not what I’d been expecting, so I only stare at him, confused, and shake my head.
“None of this happened, then? Prince Sebastian was not desperately in love with you, only to lose you to his best friend?”
Now my face is turning red, and I’m glad the store is fairly empty. “No,” I say in a whisper. “You know that.”
“I do,” Dad agrees. “Well, most of it. Not sure how much I really want to know about all this if I’m being honest. Your mum knows the truth. Ellie does. Isabel does, I’m sure.”
I tug at the hem of my T-shirt. “Still not sure where you’re going with this, Dad.”
He puts the magazine back on the rack, then places both his hands on my shoulders, looking into my eyes. “Is there anyone at all, anyone who matters to you, who thinks any of these stories are true?”
The Sur-N-Sav is fairly quiet except for “Lost in Love” playing over the speakers and the occasional beeping of the scan belt and the squeaking of wheels on the carts. And the answer to Dad’s question suddenly seems so easy.
“No,” I say. “There isn’t.”
Dad shrugs his bony shoulders. “Then there you have it.” Jerking his head back toward the magazines, he adds, “This is a bonkers world your sister has entered, and you can’t stay out of it because she’s family. Even when you’re here, even when things seem normal, they never really will be. But you”—he squeezes my arms slightly—“you can stay as normal as you want, my Daisy Mae. So long as you remember that all that matters is the truth as you know it, and as the ones who love you know it.”
I’m suddenly really afraid I’m going to start crying in the middle of the Sur-N-Sav, and then I may never get any of my dignity back. “Thanks, Dad,” I manage, and he pulls me in for a quick hug.
I leave that afternoon, my green apron back in my hand, and as we make our way out of the store, I don’t stop to look at the magazines even once.
Two weeks later, I’m wearing that apron, at my usual register, and while there are still two magazines with my face and name on the cover, I’m not quite the hot story I was. Luckily for me, Seb got caught making out with some model at a party. Normally, that would’ve just been, like, a Thursday for Seb, but this particular supermodel was dating Declan Shield, and when he went after Seb at a fashion show the next week, there was an all-out brawl. “PRINCE AND ROCK STAR BRAWL OVER VICTORIA’S SECRET ANGEL” beats whatever I had going on by a mile.
And there are a few times I look at the new covers with Seb’s face on them and wonder if he did it for me. Maybe not. Maybe he just liked the chance to finally be himself, hot mess that he is, but we had gotten to be friends.
Kind of.
That’s probably crazy thinking, and this is just normal Seb behavior, but still—the timing is good.
My line is busy today, so I don’t even have time to look at magazines anyway, especially when some lady comes in with a massive coupon binder. I’ve just helped her load her roughly 500 boxes of Kleenex into her cart when I hear, “Is there a special on something called ‘Cap’n Crunch’?”
The voice makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and I whirl around to see Miles standing there.
Miles.
In the Sur-N-Sav.
His hair is shorter now, not even touching the collar of his shirt, and he stands there, his arms full of . . .
I take a closer look at the stuff he’s pulled off the shelves, and a smile spreads across my face, so broad it actually hurts.
“There’s not right now,” I tell him, “but I think there’s a coupon for peanut butter.”
He drops his purchases all on the belt with a sheepish shrug. Not just peanut butter, but Cap’n Crunch, Goldfish crackers, two bottles of ranch dressing . . .
“American grub,” he tells me very seriously. “So I can blend in.”
I’m so busy staring at him, wondering why he’s here—knowing why he’s here, but wanting to hear it anyway—that I nearly miss that last bit.
And then I look up at him, eyebrows raised. “Blend in?” I echo, and Miles nods, tucking his hair behind his ear.
“The more I thought about next year, the less some, let’s see, how did a charming American girl put it to me? Ah, yes, some ‘stick-up-its-ass university where everyone wears striped ties and spits at poor people’ seemed to fit.” He smiles a little then, just the one side of his mouth quirking up. “Figured I might take the risk my ancestors never did and explore the colonies a bit.”
I shake my head, suddenly very aware of Isabel leaning over her own register and very happy there is no one in my line but him. Miles. Here in Perdido, Florida, wearing a jacket even though it is roughly a million degrees outside, his hair a mess from the humidity, smiling at me. A real smile from a real boy who, it seems, might really like me.
“Seb’s family—” I start, but Miles shakes his head.
“It’s fine,” he says. “Or it will be.” That dimple flashes in his cheek. “Turns out I don’t really like living my life at other people’s beck and call. Apparently the courtier genes skipped me.”
“Or maybe you were just under a bad influence this summer,” I suggest, and his eyes move over my face in a way that makes my heart flip-flop.
“Could be,” he agrees softly. “In any case, after you left, I kept thinking about you. About the summer. About how little I was actually faking anything when it came to you. So.” He lifts his shoulders. “America it is. For a little while at least.”
“You might need a guide,” I say. “Someone to show you the ropes. Make sure you don’t get in over your head.”
With a sigh, Miles leans against the belt. “That’s presumptuous,” he tells me, even as he reaches out to cover one of my hands with his. “Only a real ponce would make an offer like that.”
I lean closer. “I happen to like ponces.”
He leans closer, too, enough so that I can feel the warmth of his breath on my mouth as he replies, “As do I.”
And then we’re kissing at my register at the Sur-N-Sav, no hiding, no sneaking around. Full-on snogging, as he would say, right there in front of everyone.
Okay, so everyone in this case is Isabel and the one old lady in her line, but still. So I lean even closer, awkward with the conveyor belt between us, but hey—
“NO BOYS!”
The cry is muffled but still very loud and accompanied by a frantic knocking sound.
I pull back and look up toward the window of Mrs. Miller’s office. She stands there, one fist propped on her hip, the other rapping the window. “NO BOYS!” she shouts again through the glass, and Miles looks up at her, brow wrinkled.
“Is that the norm here?” he asks as I waggle my fingers at Mrs. Miller.
“In America, no, but at the Sur-N-Sav, yes.”
He looks back at me, green eyes bright. “Then can we leave the Sur-N-Sav, please?”
I glance back up at Mrs. Miller, who’s turning away from the window now, purple smock fluttering, and probably on her way down here to lock me in a chastity belt or set Miles on fire.
Still, I grin and pull Miles back to me, my fingers twisted in the collar of his shirt. “In a minute,” I promise, and then we’re kissing again.
Maybe not in a palace or a bothy or a Rolls-Royce, but there’s no place else I’d rather be.