“Actually, I thought you were quite charming,” I admitted. “You were trying so hard to make me comfortable and I’ve never been anything but damnably awkward. I knew as soon as you asked that you were exactly the person I wanted to share my time in America with, and I’ve been happy with that choice ever since.”
“Yeah?” Andy asked.
“Yes. Every single day. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better friend if my fairy godmother had appeared and offered to make one for me. I’m sorry, Andy. I really am. I didn’t ever mean to hurt you.”
There was a brief pause as the gravel crunched under our feet, snow already melted into it.
“Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” Andy asked as we stepped into the light coming from the house.
“A great many things, but most of them aren’t very exciting.” I shrugged. “I’m not sure what else would be important enough to warrant a mention. You’ll probably find out a lot about me while we’re here that you didn’t know before, but… I’m still me.”
“I guess you don’t know everything about me, either.”
“Well, consider me an open book. Anything you want to know, I’ll tell you. Whatever you ask. Total honesty, no more secrets. Promise.”
“Okay.” Andy paused again, looking up at the doors as he had this morning. “You’re paying more rent than me, aren’t you? That’s why you offered to handle it.”
“Yes,” I confessed. “But you are providing the very valuable service of being a patient housemate who guides me through all the strange little things I don’t know about America, so I do feel I’m getting excellent value for money.”
“I don’t need a rent break for that, I would’ve done it anyway.”
“I know, but if you were paying a full half you wouldn’t have been able to afford it and you wouldn’t have agreed to move in with me. I’d choose your company over the money any day. You could stop paying rent entirely, if you like.”
“No,” Andy said, wrinkling his nose. “But I won’t ask how much it really is.”
“Wise of you,” I agreed.
“I knew that apartment was too nice for me.”
“It isn’t nearly as nice as you deserve,” I said, raw and vulnerable and unable to get my heart off my sleeve and back behind the protective armour of my ribcage, where it should have been.
If Andy noticed my sudden turn toward the sentimental, he didn’t say anything about it.
We paused outside the front door as we had earlier, both of us with our hands in our pockets.
“Hey, Kit?” Andy spoke up after a moment, taking a half-step toward me, closing the gap that had formed between us. “I forgive you. For not telling me.”
“Well, you would, wouldn’t you? I’m your best friend.” I beamed at him, stomach suddenly un-knotting all at once.
I was forgiven. I hadn’t lost Andy, even though he knew who I really was now.
“You love that, huh?”
“I do. And you really are my best friend. Sometimes I think you might be my only friend. It’s nearly impossible to tell with everyone else, since they know exactly what I am. You wanted to be my friend long before you knew I might be king one day.”
“I thought you said that was almost impossible?” Andy raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, well, almost isn’t quite, is it?” I turned to smile at him. “Would you like to be prince consort?”
“Didn’t the last guy who married an American get in a lot of trouble?”
“Yes, but again, by the time they got to me the options would be very thin on the ground. I think they’d have to grant an eccentricity or two.”
“I’m an eccentricity?”
“You’re certainly far too good for them. They wouldn’t deserve you.”
“I already forgave you.”
