“What terms?” I cry. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Theo! I’ve never felt so lost in my life. If I go back home, everyone else has their life figured out, and I can’t even pick a major! All I know is that I love you, and if I’m the queen, I’ll have plans and a purpose again. Iwantthat. I’mexcitedfor it.” I push the words out in a desperate plea, and only realize they’re a lie once I’ve said them.
I want to be with Theo, but neither one of us wants it like this.
Immediately, it’s easier to breathe. “Leave with me,” I say quickly.
Theo’s eyes widen in shock. “What?”
“Tonight. Right now. Let’s go. You’ve run away once; you can do it again.” The pressure on my chest eases, each word bringing me closer to the surface.
Theo glances around the empty street, his mind calculating. After a long moment, I see the instant he gives up on us. He straightens his spine, a note of bitterness in his voice. “And what would that future look like for us?”
I close my eyes and see nothing but black. I can’t even conjure a hazy daydream of Theo and me in this impossible, hypothetical future, but I don’t care if it’s easy or clear or makes immediate sense. I want it anyway.
“I’m leaving tonight. Are you coming with me or not?”
His mouth twists as he blinks away unshed tears, and his silence is my answer. I pull my eyes away from his, so he won’t see me fall apart.
“You said I won’t be happy here, but areyouhappy?” I ask.
“Being royal has very little to do with happiness, Wheeler.”
Wheeler.It strikes me right in the heart. “Don’t call me that.”
Pain flashes across his features, and I can feel the weight of a backpack strap pulling me to the ocean floor. My lungs burn for air, and I realize he’s right. If I stay, I’ll drown.
I yank the chain from my neck and let it slip through my fingers. “You deserve to be happy too, Your Highness.”
Tears blur the sight of Theo’s ring landing on the ground, and I take off running into the black.
CHAPTER39
WEEKS SINCE KING THEO’S CORONATION:FOUR
It turns out that the “too long; didn’t read” version of almost marrying the king of England is just the word “almost.” It could have happened, but it didn’t. Close but no cigar. The happily-ever-after-that-wasn’t.
And just like Princess Louise predicted, the tl;dr version of King Theodore Geoffrey Edward George’s coronation ceremony is:Boring ceremony, big hat, stolen jewels.(Now with a side of heartbreak.)
I’ve never felt so helpless as when I watched the live stream of the event and saw the desperation in his eyes. I wanted to be the one to make him happy, but I couldn’t. Theo and I were impossible from the very beginning; we fell in love in between life and death, the sea and the stars, reality and make-believe. It wasnevergoing to work, but I still feel mystified that it didn’t.
After the coronation, I quickly deleted my Google Alert for “Comet, dog,” and then blocked everything royal from my social media feeds, but it didn’t help. It’s the irony of my life thatfate wasn’t enough to keep Theo and me together, while the plane crash has made sure it’s all anyone wants to talk about. Everywhere I go, I’m “one of the plane-crash girls.” At the library and the dining hall and freshman movie night in the dorm, I’m bombarded with royal news.
“Did you date King Theo?”
“Did you hear about Prince Henry’s real father?”
“Princess Victoria’s having a blowout eighteenth-birthday party. Were you invited?”
Kind of, yes,andobviously not.
I’d pay a hundred bucks just to have someone ask what my major is instead. (Still undeclared, but I’m trying every day to embrace the uncertainty instead of stressing over it.)
I’m packing up my things after the end of a Psych 101 lecture when my phone buzzes. It’s a message from Naomi. She texts about two hundred times a day to check on me, which is equal parts thoughtful and emotionally draining. I’m never sure how to explain that even though leaving was the right thing, I still sometimes feel like I’m trying to breathe from the bottom of a muddy river.
I step out of Swift Hall, and my eyes are drawn to the water. Northwestern’s campus is located on the shores of Lake Michigan, and not a day goes by that I don’t think about the way the Eiffel Tower lights reflect off the Seine or how the sunset burns over a beach in Amorgos. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still smell passion fruit on an imaginary breeze and feel the sticky sweet juice on my fingers.
All of that is great, but there’s something special about Chicago in October. The photography club met yesterday afternoon and we drank maple lattes and took pictures of each other crunching orange and red leaves underfoot. It turns out“the future” is an overwhelming concept, but that’s not reason enough to latch on to something that promises easy answers, and going to college and joining clubs and figuring things out one day at a time isn’t as scary as I thought it’d be.
My phone buzzes again. I open the texts from Naomi as I wander down Campus Drive.
