Royally Crushed (26 page)

“
What
was obvious?” Natalie demands. I know she suspects what we’re hinting at now, but she can’t bring herself to believe it. She looks at Christie, whose eyes are huge, because Christie’s in awe of Jules for figuring it out so easily. Natalie looks at Jules for confirmation, then to me. “No way. NO WAY! Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. Unfortunately.”

“Oh, wow. Your mom’s a dyke now? Gay?” She pauses for a second before asking, “What
is
the proper word? ‘Lesbian,’ I guess? Unless she’s bi—?”

“Well, definitely not ‘dyke,’” I tell her, though I’m really not sure about any of this stuff either. “I think ‘lesbian’s the most accepted, but ‘gay’ works, too. And no, I don’t think she’s bisexual. Just gay.”

“That completely blows. I was hoping I was wrong.” Jules turns my desk chair around and sits in it backward. “Just for that, I completely forgive you for keeping the Prince Georg thing to yourself. There will be no retribution whatsoever. The boots are off.”

“Gee,” I say, and I can’t help but grin at her. “My ass and I both thank you.”

I can tell that Jules and Natalie really do feel bad for
me, which wasn’t at all what I expected. I know, I know, they’re my
buds
, and I should trust them. But this isn’t something any of us have dealt with before. Jules’s situation was completely different, plus you never really know where most people stand on the whole gay issue until they’re face-to-face with it, no matter what they’ve said in the past. It’s just too dicey for most people to handle.

“How’s your dad dealing with it?” Christie asks. “I hope he’s okay.”

She’s always been really tight with my parents, so this can’t be easy news for her, either. She’s been coming over to my house to hang out and for sleepovers since we were little.

“He doesn’t talk about it much.” I give them all a half-shrug. “I mean, he’s probably got plenty to say, but he wants me and Mom to stay close. I think he’s afraid if he gets negative about the situation, it’s going to make me more ticked off at Mom than I already am.”

“About her being gay?” Nat asks.

“No. I’m not mad about that.” I don’t think. “Though I’m not
happy
about it, you know? I’m more mad that she was lying to us all this time.”

“Did she know she’s . . . well, you know. Do you think she’s known all along?” Christie asks.

I can tell from the way she’s scrunching her nose that
ever since Christie arrived and discovered the truth, all this has been slowly percolating in her head. And now that I think about it, she was pretty quiet when we were having our Ho Ho time downstairs.

She’s probably been thinking about all the times Mom has seen her naked, or at least in her bra and underwear. Like when we’ve gone to the day spa as a treat from Mom, or when Mom stuck her head in my room when Christie and I were changing clothes to go running or to a dance or whatever.

Or maybe Christie’s more enlightened than most people, and instead, she’s thinking about all the other stuff that had me going berserk the first week or so after I found out. I mean, my mom declaring she’s gay is as close as it gets to Christie having her own mother come out of the closet.

Well, except Christie’s mom used to be a nun (before she met Christie’s dad). And Christie’s pretty religious herself. So maybe she’s just thinking that my mom’s a horrible sinner, and how awful it is for me that my mom might go to hell.

Whoa. I hope that’s not what Christie thinks.

I flop onto the bed next to Natalie. Careful to choose just the right words, I say, “I dunno. I think she was lying to herself as much as to me and Dad about her orientation.”

I catch Christie’s eye, just for reassurance, and I realize that at least part of my hunch about Christie’s feelings is dead on. While I can’t tell whether she thinks Mom is committing some huge sin, as far as she’s concerned, we’re in this together. My bad news is her bad news.

I am so so so so glad she’s my best friend. No matter what her belief system tells her, she’s at least going to
try
to be understanding.

“You’re angry because you think your mom cheated on your dad,” Jules says before Christie does. “Otherwise, how could she have hooked up with Miss Thang down there so quickly, right?”

I just nod. The whole room suddenly fills with this whispered chorus of
I’m so sorrys
and
oh that’s terribles
, and I can’t help but not want to hear it anymore.

“Can we talk about something else?” I ask, even though I know what they’re going to want to talk about. “Not that I’m blowing you guys off, but another topic would sure make me feel better. I’m sick of thinking about the whole my-mother-is-gay thing right now.”

“Hmmmm . . . Georg the Gorgeous?” Jules gets a wicked grin on his face. “You know if he lived within a twenty-mile radius of here, he’d be mine.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say, as Natalie tosses one of my pillows at Jules’s head and tells her to give me a break.

So I fill them in on everything—starting with my meeting Georg and our flirting a little, then our date to his dad’s fancy event. I tell them about making out in the palace garden and in the public restroom, though I try to be casual about that part, as if I’ve kissed lots of guys and making out with Georg that night is just another part of the story and not the absolute best, most mind-blowing thing that’s happened to me in my life.

I also tell them about the cigarettes (that we were
not
smoking) and about my dad catching us. I finish up with all the stuff about the
Majesty
reporter, the bizzaro conversation at lunch with Ulrike and her buddies, the photos in the European papers, and the entire concept of spin control.

“So you don’t know if you and Georg are together or not?” Christie’s incredulous as she asks this. “You have to have a gut instinct—I mean, you don’t even have a hint, like from his tone of voice or anything?”

“Nope. Not a clue.” Was she not listening? I mean, I suppose I could tell them about the little smile he gave me in the hall at school, but then they’d tell me I was giving him credit where credit’s not due, or they’d tell me I’d imagined it. Either way, I don’t want to hear it.

“How well do you really know him?” Natalie asks. “Not to be harsh on the guy, because it does sound like he’s pretty damned incredible, and I mean, he’s a freaking
prince.
But how can you not know if you’re together?”

“Look, things were kind of crazy right before I left. How many relationships have you been in where the entire staff of a press office wants to weigh in on every little thing you do? It changes things.”

Not that I have any basis of comparison, and neither do they. Jules and Natalie are both short-term-relationship types. Their modus operandi with guys is to go out, make out, and then get out.

And Christie’s had one—ONE—boyfriend. They’ve been together for quite a while now, which explains why she responds: “But if you two really like each other, and want to be together, that shouldn’t matter. I mean, look at Jeremy and me. If we’re separated, like when he goes to running camps in the summer to train for cross-country season, we’re still a couple. We don’t have to talk about it or anything, it’s a given.”

“So you guys are telling me that ‘cool it’ means Georg has dumped me?”

They all look at one another, then Jules shrugs. “Maybe. I mean, we weren’t there, and since you left us out of the loop it’s not like we can give you a fair assessment.”

“What I think,” Natalie tells me in a very deliberate tone, “is that you need to decide whether
you
want to be with
him
. That’s what really matters.”

I frown at her, because she’s sounding like my mother or, more accurately, like one of Mom’s self-help gurus. “I can’t be with him if he doesn’t want me, so I don’t know that that’s helpful. I mean, what if I
do
want him, but he doesn’t want me?”

“Then forget him,” Jules mutters, “and I’ll have a crack at the boy.”

I ignore her. In the most unemotional and firm voice I can manage, I say, “Well, we can debate it all day long, but there’s no point. I won’t know anything for sure until I get back to Schwerinborg and Georg and I can sort it all out.”

Assuming the spin control plan actually works and we’re allowed to have more than a five-minute face-to-face conversation alone, that is.

“That’s not true,” Christie cuts in. “Just go out with David while you’re here. I bet you decide pretty quickly whether Georg is really the guy for you once you’re out with David. Even if Georg is a prince and you think he ‘gets’ you.”

Right. I can tell what she’s really saying is: 1) Georg
doesn’t
get me, or he would have known to explain “cool it”—or to not even say “cool it” in the first place; and 2) David
does
get me, so who cares if Georg does or not, since I’ve been crushing on David practically my whole life?

“I agree with Christie,” Natalie says. “What can it hurt?”

Well, it can hurt Georg. But I’m not going to say that aloud because it’s clear to me that they’re all in David’s corner.

“Okay, fine. I’ll go out with David.” I point a finger at Christie. “But it is not a date. Casual really has to mean casual, okay? Make that crystal clear to David and to Jeremy. I still believe I’m the Armor Girl.”

“You’re wrong,” Christie says. “But you can wait and see for yourself.”

I forgot how completely, totally, unequivocally gorgeous and witty David is. I had a crush on him for nearly a
decade
for a very, very good reason.

I keep peeking over at him in the next chair, watching him watch the movie (and hoping he doesn’t see me doing it), and thinking about how his surfer-blond hair and smooth, tanned-even-in-the-winter skin makes him look like he belongs in a movie himself.

And speaking of the movie . . . yeah, it’s one with an Aussie actor in the lead. And it’s one of those historical dramas. Christie knows I get all hot and bothered by a guy with an accent wearing a fancy costume, so this is totally intentional. To top it off, David bought me a Diet Coke and a small popcorn, no butter, which is exactly what I like to have. He bought himself Reese’s Pieces (which I love but never buy, because everyone will think I’m an oinker) and made a point of offering me some.

I feel like there’s a massive conspiracy going on around me. Massive. It’s not normal to have everything fall into place so perfectly. We laughed our asses off at dinner, talking
about all kinds of things over TGI Friday’s buffalo wings and Caesar salad—fun topics without a mention of Schwerinborg, my mother (I still assume that Jeremy and David do
not
know), or David’s father’s ultraconservative politics.

David brushed my hand a couple times under the table, and he even made the same jokes about the ketchup I always make. He kept grinning at me with his perfect mouth and his perfect eyes, both of which sparkled. (Okay, that might have been the TGI Friday’s lighting, but they sure seemed to have a sparkly kind of shine whenever he looked at me.)

It was
all
perfectly perfect, and anything that perfect makes me suspicious.

Especially since I am feeling incredibly guilty now. To take my mind off the fact my evening—let alone my
life
—has been planned without my consent, I spent this afternoon going through all my e-mail from Vienna West, since I discovered that the high school didn’t close my account like they were supposed to when I transferred to Schwerinborg.

And there it was. It almost made me call Christie and back out of the date-that’s-not-officially-a-date.

Actual communication from Georg.

His e-mail was dated yesterday, the day he got to Zermatt, and it said everything I’ve wanted to hear from
him ever since the whole tabloid-newspaper-spin-control mess started.

He wants me. For real.

I know because that’s what he told me the night of the dinner. We had that same aura of everything-tonight-is-perfect around us that’s now being created between me and David in the movie theater. But that time, it didn’t feel like a conspiracy. It just
happened
.

I shouldn’t have come. Even before Mrs. Toleski showed up in her minivan to drive me (well, all of us) to TGI Friday’s, I
knew
things would be okay with me and Georg. But then I figured nothing bad could happen if I just went along with Christie’s plan and played it cool. David couldn’t really be
that
interested in me. Half the girls in school would kill to go out with him, and I’m headed back to Schwerinborg in a week. And by not canceling, I keep Jules, Natalie, and especially Christie from giving me any more grief about it.

But now I’m feeling the vibe. The aura. The psychic whatever-it-is that makes me think this thing between me and David actually might be a
thing
.

Just like I felt with Georg.

I think.

They can’t both be true, can they? I can’t possibly have feelings like this—that a relationship is cosmically ordained—for two completely different guys at the same
time. It’s just wrong, at least with one relationship, and maybe with both.

“You know that’s completely inaccurate historically,” David leans over and whispers in my ear as the main character strolls down a street that looks vaguely European and knocks on a weathered door.