Forever Princess

And maybe it isn’t an engagement ring.

But it’s the next closest thing.

And that’s not all. When we were dancing just now, I said, just casually commenting, really, because it’s something I’ve been thinking about since my close call with the carriage ride yesterday, “J.P., do you think it’s weird how everywhere you and I go together, the paparazzi show up? Like tonight, for instance?”

And J.P. said, “Well, it’s good press for Genovia, don’t you think? Your grandmother’s always saying every time you appear in the papers, it’s like a free tourism ad for your country.”

And I said, “I guess. But it’s just strange because they show up so randomly. Like when I went to Applebee’s the other night with Mamaw and Papaw, I was terrified the paps were going to show up and get a shot of me. And that would have ruined Dad’s chances in the election. Can you imagine if TMZ or whoever had gotten a shot of me eating in an Applebee’s? But they didn’t.”

And they didn’t show up yesterday, when I was in the old-timey horse carriage with Michael. But I didn’t add that part out loud. Obviously.

“I just don’t get how sometimes they know where I’m going to be, and sometimes they don’t,” I went on. “I know Grandmère’s not tipping them off. She’s evil, but she’s not that evil—”

J.P. didn’t say anything. He just kept holding me close and dancing.

“In fact,” I said. “They mostly only seem to show up when I’m with…you.”

“I know,” J.P. said. “It’s so annoying, isn’t it?”

Yeah. It is. Because it only started happening, really, when I started going out with J.P. My very first date with J.P., when we went to see Beauty and the Beast together. That was the first time the press got a shot of us, coming out of the theater, looking like a couple, even though we weren’t.

I’d always wondered who’d called and told them we were there together. And every other subsequent date we’d gone on, many of which there’d been no way they could have known about in advance—like when we’d gone to Blue Ribbon Sushi the other night. How had they known about that, a casual sushi date around the corner from my house? I go out to eat around the corner from my house all the time, and the paps never show up.

Unless J.P. is there.

“J.P.,” I said, looking up at him in the blue and pink party lights. “Are you the one who’s been calling the paps and telling them where they can find us?”

“Who, me?” J.P. laughed. “No way.”

I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was that laugh…which sounded just slightly nervous. Maybe it was the fact that after all this time, he still hadn’t read my book. Maybe it was the fact that he’d put that sexy dancing scene in his play, for everyone to laugh at. Or maybe it was the fact that his character, J.R., seemed to want to be a prince so very, very badly.

But somehow, I just knew:

That “No way” was J.P. Reynolds-Abernathy IV’s Big Fat Lie Number One. Actually, make that Number Two. I think he was lying about the hotel room reservation, too.

I couldn’t stop staring at him, gazing down at me with that nervous smile on his lips.

This, I thought, wasn’t the J.P. I knew. The J.P. who didn’t like it when they put corn in his chili and who kept a creative writing journal that was a Mead composition notebook exactly like all of mine and who’d been in therapy for way longer than I had. This was some different J.P.

Except it wasn’t. This was the exact same J.P.

Only I knew him better now.

“I mean,” J.P. said, with a laugh. “Why would I do that? Call the paparazzi on myself?”

“Maybe,” I said, “because you like seeing yourself in the paper?”

“Mia,” he said, looking down at me with the same nervous smile on his face. “Come on. Let’s just dance. You know what? I heard a rumor we might get voted prom king and queen.”

“My foot hurts,” I said. This was a lie. But for once, I didn’t feel guilty about it. “These are new shoes. I think I have to sit down a minute.”

“Oh, no,” J.P. said. “I’ll go see if I can find you a Band-Aid. Stay here.”

So J.P. is looking for a Band-Aid.

And I’m trying to figure this out.

How could J.P.—J.P., who is so big and blond and good-looking, the guy with whom I have so much in common, the guy everyone liked so much better for me than Michael—be someone it turns out I may have nothing in common with at all?

It can’t be possible. It can’t be.

Except…what was Dr. Knutz talking about the other day?

His story about his horse, Sugar. The thoroughbred, who looked so good on paper, but in whose saddle he could never find a comfortable place? Dr. Knutz had to give up Sugar, because he never wanted to ride her, and it wasn’t fair to Sugar.

I get it now. I so get it.

Some people can seem perfect…everything about them can, on paper, be just right.

Until you get to know them. Really know them.

Then you find out, in the end, while they might be perfect to everyone else, they just aren’t right for you.

On the other hand…

What’s so wrong about a guy who loves his girlfriend getting a hotel room for the two of them on prom night, months in advance? Oh, big crime.

So he screwed up with the play? If I ask him to, I’m sure he’d change it. I—