We all downed the silky liquor, and I settled back into my corner.
Ginuwine’s “Pony” started playing, the bass bumping throughout the building. Sam let out a squeal.
“Let’s go dance!” she yelled at Vince as she grabbed his arm and pulled him to a small sliver of the dance floor.
Birdie and Oliver sat across from me on the other couch and Tej sat next to me, eyeing a shirtless bartender across the room.
“Go talk to him,” I encouraged, nudging Tej with my elbow.
“What? He’s working.”
“So? You could still get his number and invite him back to the hotel.”
Tej mulled it over for a bit and then stood, fixed hisshirt, and strolled across the room to the bar, striking up a conversation with the bartender.
Oliver and Birdie’s conversation grabbed my attention from watching Tej trying to score.
“So, if someone posts a picture of you sitting next to me, will your fiancée freak out? I don’t want to cause any trouble.” Birdie laughed, mostly to herself. “I think I’d be super jealous if the future king was hanging out with some random girls while away from home.” She took a drink of the beer she had just opened. “I bet being a prince, girls throw themselves at you all the time hoping to score with the future king.”
“No, that sounds more like my brother,” Oliver laughed.
“Oh, you have a brother?” she said with her head cocked to the side like she was trying to remember something. “He must be younger?”
“No, he’s four years older. He was supposed to take the crown, but he abdicated a few months ago.”
“Wow! Why did he give it up?” She started to bring her beer to her full lips but stopped midway. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. You don’t have to answer that; it’s none of my business. I apologize.”
Oliver chuckled. “No, it’s fine. Honestly, you could pull up any European gossip magazine and find Xavier’s face plastered all over the pages.” He looked annoyed, rather than mad or embarrassed. I knew he was still processing his feelings about Xavier and his abdication. Oliver sighed. “We have a rule that you must be engaged to marry before your coronation. Xavier refused. He doesn’t want to marry. Even at thirty-four, he would rather continue partying and”—he smiled wryly—“hooking up than put down roots.”
“Oh, wow,” Birdie said, her beer drifting back down to her lap.
“Anyway, it was get married and give up his ‘friends withbenefits’ lifestyle or abdicate. He chose the latter. So here I am, a few months away from my own coronation.”
“And what about your fiancée, what does she think of all of this?”
“Well…I don’t have a fiancée just yet.”
Birdie’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, I must be confused. I thought you said this was a bachelor party? Does that mean something different in Wexstone?”
Oliver looked over at me with a sly smile. “No. My friends and I are here to celebrate before the contest begins.” He looked down at the ice in his glass.
Birdie looked between Oliver and me. “Contest?”
“It’s all so ridiculous,” Oliver sighed.
“Well, you’ve sparked my interest, Prince Oliver. What contest?”
“You see, I was thrown into all of this so fast. I was casually dating a woman I had grown up with but broke it off about a month before Xavier decided to abdicate. And now…”
Vince walked back to us, grabbed a bottle of water, and downed half of it in one go. I saw something fly through the air and land in Oliver’s lap. Oliver reached down and brought up a long-stemmed rose. I looked around to see where Vince had even gotten it, then spotted a woman in the center of the dance floor with two huge bouquets, throwing them at people and screaming, “Fuck all men, and especially fuck men who try to make up with you by sending flowers from his wife’s floral shop! Fuck you, Jeremy!”
“What’s going on?” Birdie asked, taking the rose as Oliver handed it to her and watching with trepidation as Vince walked away, Sam grinning mischievously behind him.
“Well, you know that TV showThe Bachelor?”
“I’m an American millennial, of course I know aboutTheBachelor,” she replied, the suspicion in her voice growing by the moment.
“It’s a little bit like that. Several noble families are each sponsoring a woman. I date them through a series of events over the course of a couple of months and…pick the one whom I think would be the best fit for my country and myself.”
