Red, White & Royal Blue (36 page)

Henry is quiet. He says enough for Alex to glean that Philip is apoplectic and Her Majesty is annoyed but pleased Henry has finally found himself a girlfriend. Alex feels horrible about it. The stifling orders, pretending to be someone he’s not—Alex has always tried to be a refuge for Henry from it all. It was never supposed to come from his side too.

It’s bad. It’s stomach-cramps, walls-closing-in, no-plan-B-if-this-fails bad. He was in London barely two weeks ago, kissing Henry in front of a Giambologna. Now, this.

There’s another piece in their back pocket that’ll sell it. The only relationship in his life that can get more mileage than any of this. Nora comes to him at the Residence wearing bright red lipstick and presses cool, patient fingers against his temples and says, “Take me on a date.”

They choose a college neighborhood full of people who’ll sneak shots on their phones and post them everywhere. Nora slides her hand into his back pocket, and he tries to focus on the comfort of her physical presence against his side, the familiar frizz of her curls against his cheek.

For half a second, he allows a small part of him to think about how much easier things would be if this were the truth: sliding back into comfortable, easy harmony with his best
friend, leaving greasy fingerprints along her waistline outside Jumbo Slice, laughing at her crass jokes. If he could love her like people wanted him to, and she loved him, and there wasn’t any more to it than that.

But she doesn’t, and he can’t, and his heart is on a plane over the Atlantic right now, coming to DC to seal the deal over a well-photographed lunch with June the next day. Zahra sends him an email full of Twitter threads about him and Nora that night when he’s in bed, and he feels sick.

Henry lands in the middle of the night and isn’t even allowed to come near the Residence, instead sequestered in a hotel across town. He sounds exhausted when he calls in the morning, and Alex holds the phone close and promises he’ll try to find a way to see him before he flies back out.

“Please,” Henry says, paper-thin.

His mother, the rest of the administration, and half of the press at this point are caught up for the day dealing with news of a North Korean missile test; nobody notices when June lets him climb into her SUV with her that morning. June holds onto his elbow and makes half-hearted jokes, and when they pull up a block from the cafe, she offers him an apologetic smile.

“I’ll tell him you’re here,” she says. “If nothing else, maybe that’ll make it a little easier for him.”

“Thanks,” he says. Before she opens the door to leave, he catches her by the wrist and says, “Seriously. Thank you.”

She gives his hand a squeeze, and she and Amy are gone, and he’s alone in a tiny, secluded alleyway with the second car of backup security and a twisted-up feeling in his stomach.

It takes all of an hour before June texts him,
All done,
followed by,
Bringing him to you.

They worked it out before they left: Amy brings June and Henry back to the alley, they have him swap cars like a political prisoner. Alex leans forward to the two agents sitting silently in the front seats. He doesn’t know if they’ve figured out what this really is yet, and he honestly doesn’t care.

“Hey, can I have a minute?”

They exchange a look but get out, and a minute later, there’s another car alongside him and the door is opening, and he’s there. Henry, looking tense and unhappy, but within arm’s reach.

Alex pulls him in by the shoulder on instinct, the door shutting behind him. He holds him there, and this close he can see the faint gray tinge to Henry’s complexion, the way his eyes aren’t connecting. It’s the worst he’s ever seen him, worse than a violent fit or the verge of tears. He looks hollowed-out, vacant.

“Hey,” Alex says. Henry’s gaze is still unfocused, and Alex shifts toward the middle of the seat and into his line of vision. “Hey. Look at me. Hey. I’m right here.”

Henry’s hands are shaking, his breaths coming shallow, and Alex knows the signs, the low hum of an impending panic attack. He reaches down and wraps his hands around one of Henry’s wrists, feeling the racing pulse under his thumbs.

Henry finally meets his eyes. “I hate it,” he says. “I
hate
this.”

“I know,” Alex says.

“It was …
tolerable
before, somehow,” Henry says. “When there was never—never the possibility of anything else. But, Christ, this is—it’s
vile.
It’s a bloody farce. And June and Nora, what, they just get to be
used
? Gran wanted me to bring my own photographers for this. Did you know that?” He inhales, and it gets caught in his throat and shudders violently on the way back out. “Alex. I don’t want to
do
this.”

“I know,” Alex tells him again, reaching up to smooth out Henry’s brow with the pad of his thumb. “I know. I hate it too.”

“It’s not fucking
fair
!” he goes on, his voice nearly breaking. “My shit ancestors walked around doing a thousand times worse than any of this, and nobody
cared
!”

“
Baby,
” Alex says, moving his hand to Henry’s chin to bring him back down. “I know. I’m so sorry, babe. But it won’t be like this forever, okay? I promise.”

Henry closes his eyes and exhales through his nose. “I want to believe you. I do. But I’m so afraid I’ll never be allowed.”

Alex wants to go to war for this man, wants to get his hands on everything and everyone that ever hurt him, but for once, he’s trying to be the steady one. So he rubs the side of Henry’s neck gently until his eyes drift back open, and he smiles softly, tipping their foreheads together.

“Hey,” he says. “I’m not gonna let that happen. Listen, I’m telling you right now, I will physically fight your grandmother myself if I have to, okay? And, like, she’s old. I know I can take her.”

“I wouldn’t be so cocky,” Henry says with a small laugh. “She’s full of dark surprises.”

Alex laughs, cuffing him on the shoulder.

“Seriously,” he says. Henry’s looking back at him, beautiful and vital and heartsick and still, always, the person Alex is willing to risk ruining his life for. “I hate this so much. I know. But we’re gonna do it together. And we’re gonna make it work. You and me and history, remember? We’re just gonna fucking fight. Because you’re it, okay? I’m never gonna love anybody in the world like I love you. So, I promise you, one day we’ll be able to just
be,
and fuck everyone else.”

He pulls Henry in by the nape of his neck and kisses him hard, Henry’s knee knocking against the center console as his hands move up to Alex’s face. Even though the windows are tinted black, it’s the closest they’ve ever come to kissing in public, and Alex knows it’s reckless, but all he can think is a supercut of other people’s letters they’ve quietly sent to each other. Words that went down in history. “Meet you in every dream … Keep most of your heart in Washington … Miss you like a home … We two longing loves … My young king.”

One day,
he tells himself.
One day, us too.

The anxiety feels like buzzing little wings in his ear in the silence, like a petulant wasp. It catches him when he tries to sleep and startles him awake, follows him on laps paced up and down the floors of the Residence. It’s getting harder to brush off the feeling he’s being watched.

The worst part is that there’s no end in sight. They’ll definitely have to keep it up at least until the election is over, and even then, there’s the always looming possibility of the queen outright forbidding it. His idealistic streak won’t let him fully accept it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

He keeps waking up in DC, and Henry keeps waking up in London, and the whole world keeps waking up to talk about the two of them in love with other people. Pictures of Nora’s hand in his. Speculation about whether June will get an official announcement of royal courtship. And the two of them, Henry and Alex, like the world’s worst illustration of the
Symposium
: split down the middle and sent bleeding into separate lives.

Even that thought depresses him because Henry’s the only
reason he’s become a person who cites Plato. Henry and his classics. Henry in his palace, in love, in misery, not talking much anymore.

Even with both of them trying as hard as they are, it’s impossible to feel like it’s not pulling them apart. The whole charade takes and takes from them, takes days that were sacred—the night in LA, the weekend at the lake, the missed chance in Rio—and records over the tape with something more palatable. The narrative: two fresh-faced young men who love two beautiful young women and definitely not ever each other.

He doesn’t want Henry to know. Henry has a hard enough time as it is, looked at sideways by his whole family, Philip who knows and has not been kind. He tries to sound calm and whole over the phone when they talk, but he doesn’t think it’s convincing.

When he was younger and the anxiety got this bad, when the stakes in his life were much, much lower, this would be the point of self-destruction. If he were in California, he’d sneak the jeep out and drive way too fast down the 101, doors off, blasting N.W.A., inches from being painted on the pavement. In Texas, he’d steal a bottle of Maker’s from the liquor cabinet and get wasted with half the lacrosse team and maybe, afterward, climb through Liam’s window and hope to forget by morning.

The first debate is in a matter of weeks. He doesn’t even have work to keep him busy, so he stews and stresses and goes for long, punishing runs until he has the satisfaction of blisters. He wants to set himself on fire, but he can’t afford for anyone to see him burn.

He’s returning a box of borrowed files to his dad’s office in the Dirksen Building after hours when he hears the faint
sound of Muddy Waters from the floor above, and it hits him. There’s one person he can burn down instead.

He finds Rafael Luna hunched at his office’s open window, sucking down a cigarette. There are two empty, crumpled packs of Marlboros next to a lighter and an overflowing ashtray on the sill. When he turns around at the slam of the door, he coughs out a startled cloud of smoke.

“Those things are gonna fucking kill you,” Alex says. He said the same thing about five hundred times that summer in Denver, but now he means,
I kinda wish they would.

“Kid—”

“
Don’t
call me that.”

Luna turns, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray, and Alex can see a muscle clenching in his jaw. As handsome as he always is, he looks like shit. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“No shit,” Alex says. “I just wanted to see if you would have the balls to actually talk to me.”

“You do realize you’re talking to a United States senator,” he says placidly.

“Yeah, big fucking man,” Alex says. He’s advancing on Luna now, kicking a chair out of the way. “Important fucking job. Hey, how ’bout you tell me how you’re serving the people who voted for you by being Jeffrey Richards’s chickenshit little sellout?”

“What the hell did you come here for, Alex, eh?” Luna asks him, unmoved. “You gonna fight me?”

“I want you to tell me
why.
”

His jaw clenches again. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re—”

“I swear to God, if you say I’m too young, I’m gonna lose my shit.”

“This isn’t you losing your shit?” Luna asks mildly, and the
look that crosses Alex’s face must be murderous because he immediately puts a hand up. “Okay, bad timing. Look, I know. I know it seems shitty, but there’s—there are moving parts at work here that you can’t even imagine. You know I’ll always be indebted to your family for what you all have done for me, but—”

“I don’t give a shit about what you
owe
us. I
trusted
you,” he says. “Don’t condescend to me. You know as much as anyone what I’m capable of, what I’ve seen. If you told me, I would get it.”

He’s so close he’s practically breathing Luna’s reeking cigarette smoke, and when he looks into his face, there’s a flicker of recognition at the bloodshot, blackened eyes and the gaunt cheekbones. It reminds him of how Henry looked in the back of the Secret Service car.

“Does Richards have something on you?” he asks. “Is he making you do this?”

Luna hesitates. “I’m doing this because it’s what needs to be done, Alex. It was my choice. Nobody else’s.”

“Then tell me why.”

Luna takes a deep breath and says, “
No.
”

Alex imagines his fist in Luna’s face and removes himself by two steps, out of range.

“You remember that night in Denver,” he says, measured, his voice quavering, “when we ordered pizza and you showed me pictures of all the kids you fought for in court? And we drank that nice bottle of scotch from the mayor of Boulder? I remember lying on the floor of your office, on the ugly-ass carpet, drunk off my ass, thinking, ‘God, I hope I can be like him.’ Because you were brave. Because you stood up for things. And I couldn’t stop wondering how you had the nerve to get
up and do what you do every day with everyone knowing what they know about you.”

Briefly, Alex thinks he’s gotten through to Luna, from the way he closes his eyes and braces himself against the sill. But when he faces Alex again, his stare is hard.

“People don’t know a damn thing about me. They don’t know the half of it. And neither do you,” he says. “Jesus, Alex, please, don’t be like me. Find another fucking role model.”

Alex, finally at his limit, lifts his chin and spits out, “I already
am
like you.”

It hangs in the air between them, as physical as the kicked-over chair. Luna blinks. “What are you saying?”

“You know what I’m saying. I think you always knew, before I even did.”

“You don’t—” he says, stammering, trying to put it off. “You’re not like me.”

Alex levels his stare. “Close enough. And you know what I mean.”

“Okay, fine, kid,” Luna finally snaps, “you want me to be your fucking sherpa? Here’s my advice: Don’t tell anyone. Go find a nice girl and marry her. You’re luckier than me—you can do that, and it wouldn’t even be a lie.”