The Royal We (31 page)

F
or a long moment, we just stood there, Nick on the verge of motion, me swaying, still holding my luggage, wondering if the grief was making me hallucinate the one person in the world who could help me feel whole again. He wore a Cubs cap Dad sent for Christmas one year, and his cornflower-blue eyes were red-rimmed and wet.

“I still had my keys,” he finally said awkwardly. “I pulled some strings to get off the ship. I just…had to be here.”

My knees buckled. I let out a low sob and dropped my bags, and in a flash Nick crossed the room and scooped me into his arms. I felt his own tears on my hair, his body shaking as he wept with me, to the point where I don’t even know what we were crying for anymore: for Dad, for us, for the way my face still fit into that spot of his neck where it had always belonged. All the feelings I’d tried to ignore for the past two years came pouring into the empty spaces Dad had left, as if by magic an essential something was being restored to me, even though hours earlier I could’ve sworn my life would never have any magic in it ever again.

I lifted my head and searched Nick’s face. He searched back, brimming with exquisite care and worry, and something deeper—something I hadn’t seen in such a long, awful time.

So I kissed him. Our arms slid around each other in desperate sync, pressing us closer, tighter, dizzier.

He broke away. “Are you sure?” he whispered.

I silently pulled my sweater over my head, and then my tank top, and took his face in my hands. “I don’t want to be sad anymore, Nick. Please, help me not be sad. Just for a little while.”

“My love,” he murmured, kissing me again, his hands warm on my body.

Afterward we lay in my bed, my head pillowed on his chest.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, stroking my hair.

“Surely not for
that
,” I told him.

“Definitely not for that.” I could hear his smile. “But it’s wretched about your dad. I liked him so much. He treated me just like any other guy you might have been dating.”

“Dad had a good eye for people.” My voice cracked.

“I keep thinking about when I phoned to get the Thanksgiving recipes,” Nick said, running a hand down my arm and lacing our fingers. “He shouted, ‘Nancy, he’s in love with her, you owe me a steak.’”

“You never told me that!”

“If memory serves, we were otherwise occupied that night,” he said. “Anyway, he rang off by telling me I should only use the Chex Mix if I really, really meant it. I swore I didn’t have any impure intentions, and he made the most amazing noise. He knew before
we
even said it.”

“And you used the Chex Mix.”

“Well,” he said, “I really, really meant it.”

We were still holding hands. He squeezed mine. “Every day, I wake up and tell myself that today is the day I’ll feel normal again,” he said. “And it never happens.”

“I’ve tried not missing you. I’ve tried so hard,” I said, rolling onto my back. “But if it works, it never lasts.” I shook my head. “Sometimes I just wanted to talk to my friend Nick about my ex-boyfriend Nick.”

“And I wanted to tell Friend Bex that Ex-Bex can wear trousers with a foot printed on the bum and still look devastating,” he said. “Friend Bex probably would’ve told me to stay away tonight in case I upset you more, but I couldn’t let you leave your mum in Iowa without me here when you walked in that door. And if that was inconsiderate, or arrogant, or presumptuous…”

“It wasn’t any of those things,” I said. “It was perfect. You were perfect.”

I sat up and wrapped the eiderdown around me, suddenly feeling extremely exposed even though he’d seen it all and then some.

“That being said,” I started, “I don’t have any delusions. My dad died, and we’re both messed up about it, and I’m crazy vulnerable, and you’re probably taking extreme advantage of a bereaved lady because you’re a dangerous sex addict.”

“That would be the headline in the
Daily Mail
, yes,” Nick said.

“You’re off the hook, is what I’m saying,” I continued. “I loved this. I needed this. But I will not be
needy
about this. I’m not the kind of person who assumes that sex is a cure-all and that suddenly all our old problems are gone. Or even that this has to mean anything.”

Nick heaved himself upward and sat against the headboard.

“That’s marvelous,” he said, “except that I’ve no interest in being off the hook. I came here thinking I could just hug you and give you this possibly terrible lasagna I tried to make, but when I touched you, it was like I’d finally woken up after sleepwalking for two years.”

I can’t truly have stopped breathing while he talked, but broken ceiling fans push air with more purpose than my lungs did.

“I tried dating other people, and it felt so insincere, like I didn’t really mean it. And I didn’t. Because I am, as ever, completely, utterly, irrevocably in love with you,” Nick said, and as he quoted himself from Windsor, the tips of his ears began to vibrate, that old embarrassed tic I hadn’t seen since Oxford. “I don’t even know if you want to hear all this, and I’m certain this is the worst possible time for me to be telling you. But I learnt from you that sometimes just blurting things out leads to the best outcome.”

He closed his eyes. “And there’s one more thing I need to confess,” he said. “Which is that I believe I’ve burnt the lasagna.”

It was then that I noticed the acrid smell of charred tomato sauce floating through the flat.

“My father is dead, and you torched my dinner so that we could have sex,” I said, after he’d turned off the oven and crawled back into bed. “If you’re not being sincere, things may take an ugly turn. You know how I am when I get low blood sugar.”

Nick pressed his hands against his eyes and laughed. “Always so glib.”

“Okay, how’s this for sincere,” I said. “I am, as ever, completely, utterly, irrevocably in love with you, too.”

He sat up and pushed a stray strand of my hair behind my ear, such a familiar, comforting gesture, one he’d done a thousand times before and I never thought he’d do again. “Please don’t feel you have to say it back,” he said. “I just couldn’t
not
tell you any longer.”

“I have never wanted to say anything more,” I said, and it wasn’t until he tenderly wiped them that I realized my cheeks were wet again. It is amazing how many tears the human body can produce once it gets going. “I love you. And I am so, so sad. Those two things can be equally true. I learned that the night we broke up.”

“I went about us all wrong, Bex,” he said ruefully. “I took the wrong lesson away from Mum. The press might’ve been the trigger, but she was a loaded gun.” His eyes were bright with feeling. “Every day, I’ve thought that if I could do it over, I wouldn’t be so scared. I would tell Barnes and Marj and my father to get stuffed, and I wouldn’t keep you a secret from anyone. God, that last time I kissed you, I didn’t even do it properly.”

“Well,” I said, choking up again, “it turns out it
wasn’t
the last time. We got another chance.”

“We got another chance,” he affirmed. “And I want you to know I don’t intend to waste it. But most of all, there is something else I want, and it doesn’t involve any more talking.”

My feelings whipsawed between sadness and euphoria during those few days Nick and I had together before the Navy reclaimed him, but he didn’t seem to mind. He took care of me. He let me cry. He kept me fed, and hydrated, and brought me frozen spoons for my puffy eyes; mostly, we spent more than half our time in bed and the rest of it doing only the essentials so that we could get
back
into bed—as if we owed it to ourselves to recoup every single lost touch.

“I am the world’s biggest idiot,” Nick said, kissing my back the second morning. “We could have been doing this all along. I made a bloody mess of things.”

“Give me a little credit. I worked hard to help screw things up,” I said. “Like wasting all that energy on Gemma, for one thing. I’m guessing you didn’t know she’s a lesbian, either?”

Nick’s eyes widened.

“I caught her with Bea,” I told him.

“
Bea?
”

“In a tree house,” I added.

“Cripes, I don’t know which part of this story is more interesting,” Nick said, bemused. “I had no clue. I’ve known them both my whole life. Gem was my first.” He looked thoughtful. “You know, I honestly never considered trying to have it off with her until after you and I broke up. And even that was partly because you were out wearing those cruel bikinis. But she wasn’t interested. I assumed I’d just been
that
crap when I was fifteen. Perhaps I was. Perhaps I revolted her.”

“Why do guys always assume women being lesbians is about them?” I asked. “It’s not like quitting pasta because of one bad burned lasagna.”

“Touché,” he said, grinning. “I think a bloke just hopes that if he’s someone’s last, he provided a lovely send-off.”

We laughed, but remembering Freddie’s similar reaction gave me a guilty pang. I had zero remorse about ignoring the Clive incident, but Freddie was Nick’s brother, his best friend, his teammate in that chilly hierarchy of a family.

“Speaking of Gemma,” I began. “We can’t ignore the past two years. Things happened. With other people. I need to tell you—”

He held up a hand. “Freddie told me about Three Testicles Guy. That’s all I can take.”

“It was three nipples,” I said, “and I should have known Freddie wasn’t to be trusted.”

Nick wiggled to a sit. “Seriously, I will be happy to discuss the particulars of our time apart.” He paused. “Well. Not
happy
. I’ll do it, if that’s what you want, but I can’t think what good will come of it. I didn’t take a vow of chastity when we split up, and I certainly didn’t expect you to, either.”

“We can’t pretend it doesn’t matter, though.”

“Did you kill someone?” Nick asked.

“No.”

“Have a love child?”

“Not that I know of,” I said.

“Good. We could’ve made that work, but Barnes would’ve needed a raise,” he said. “Eat any babies?”

“Not for ages.”

“Root for the Yankees?”

“Now you’re just being disgusting,” I said.

He smiled. “Then I sincerely don’t care. Nothing counts except what we do now.”

I looked at Nick and knew he meant it. And if I said that one particular petty sin out loud, it might spin us back into the dark place we’d just left, so instead I kissed him and buried it deep.

Next to him, on the bedside table, my phone rang. Nick picked it up impulsively.

“Hi, Lacey,” he said, then chuckled. “I don’t know why I answered this. Sorry.”

“Nicely done,” Lacey said when I came on the phone. “I just read an article in
Cosmo
about the importance of the Grief Bang. It’s when you deal with bereavement via a sexual affirmation that you yourself are alive. Nick is an extremely classy Grief Bang.”

“Well, it’s not
exactly
a Grief Bang,” I said, looking over at him. He had pulled out a folded cryptic crossword from his wallet. “I think we’re back together.”

“And no more bossing you and Freddie around,” Nick said loudly, for Lacey’s benefit. “Ring him whenever you like. Part of the New World Order.”

“Did you get that?” I asked.

“Hard to miss it,” she said, a little flatly. “Tell him not to write checks the Crown can’t cash.”

“Nah, you heard the man. Live and let live,” I said. “Grief bang and let grief bang.”

“If you say so,” she said. “Well, I just called to see how you’re doing. Obviously, you’re in good hands. Maybe I will call Freddie.” There was a pause. “I’m glad something good came out of all the sadness. Just promise me there’ll still be room for all of us.”

“I promise.”

“I really am happy for you, Bex.” Her tone was light again.

“I know. I love you, Lace.”

When we hung up, I turned and looked at Nick. “So this is really happening.”

“As long as you’re in,” Nick said, putting down the crossword and reaching across the bed to take my hand.

“I’m in,” I said.

“Then there is one thing I’d like to do straightaway, before we go any further. Before I have to go back to my ship.” He swallowed hard. “I want you to meet my mum.”

Since her disease eclipsed her mind, Emma, Princess of Wales, divided her time at Richard’s behest between verdant Trewsbury House in Gloucestershire and a cottage in Cornwall overlooking the water. Emma had loved the sea, but Osborne House—where they’d met and fallen in love, of a sort—was too impractical for Nick and Freddie to visit. Cornwall, on the other hand, is the duchy of every sitting Prince of Wales, so no one blinked when Richard bought himself a bolt-hole there. Nick enjoyed the four-hour trek, which he routinely made in rented cars to avoid press scrutiny, and so we set off the next day in a boring, borrowed white sedan, expertly tailed by PPO Popeye. It was the first time I’d sat next to Nick in a car instead of under a blanket in the back.

“I don’t know quite how to prepare you for this,” Nick said as he shifted gears. “She’s always different. Sometimes she doesn’t seem to know I’m there. Sometimes she’ll talk, although it won’t make sense. Sometimes she’ll get angry, and sometimes there will be times where she seems like herself…” He cleared his throat. “But they’re illusions, really. Like a stopped clock being right twice a day. Whatever’s happening in her mind accidentally lines up with the real world for a split second and I can see what…things might have been like.”

I rubbed his shoulder. He smiled before turning back to watch the road.

“It’s nice being based near her,” he said. “I see her loads. I don’t think Freddie’s been lately, though, and Father never bothers at all.” His tone was cross.

“Freddie told me it’s hard without any real memories of her to speak of,” I said, hoping this wasn’t violating a confidence.

“I know. I’m not actually angry at him,” Nick admitted. “It just always gets ugly whenever anyone discusses Mum. Freddie has never cared one way or the other if it’s a secret. I’ve always felt like we owe it to her not to let the press know it beat her. But I also think it’s wrong to trot her name out falsely, and that’s where Father disagrees. He puts her name in family statements as if she’s actively involved, and it doubly hacks me off because he can use it like an alibi. If there is a perception of a functioning Princess of Wales, it gives him some benefit of the doubt if he’s seen in town with other people.”