“I ought to call PPO Furrow and have you reevaluated,” Nick said.
I held up the latest Devour episode. “No sudden moves, Nicky. I can end this for you right here, right now.”
Nick took his usual spot on the fluffy rug and raised a hand. “Twinkies, please,” he said airily. “Be a good subject and pass them along. It’s what your father would want.”
I threw the pack at his head, which he caught deftly before it smacked him in the nose.
“Treason,” he said. “I quite like your dad. I can’t wait to meet him.”
I grabbed the Cracker Jack and grunted.
When the credits ran—Spencer Silverstone threw supernatural acid at her romantic rival, a mortal named Carrie, and it gave her a mind-controlling scar with a murderous agenda—we plunged back into the end of season two (known to me and Lacey as The Ill-Fated Talking-Candle Experiment), which led to a lively debate about the laws of shape-shifting. Nick finally groaned and rolled over straight into a half-eaten microwave curry from the local supermarket.
“I am numb,” he said, picking congealed lumps of chicken off his arm. “Oh God, is it getting light outside?”
He ran to my window. “It has gotten light outside,” he amended, squinting at my travel clock. “It’s seven fifteen, Rebecca Porter.”
I yawned forcefully. “Night Bex and Night Nick strike again.”
“Rebecca,” Nick said in a whisper-bellow. “This is very bad.”
“Why?” I peered up at him, crunching my pillow under my cheek.
Nick began pacing, picking things up and then immediately putting them down again.
“Well, for starters, I have spent another full night in your room and Clive is not going to like that,” he said.
“Clive underst—”
“And beyond that,” Nick said, not hearing me, “I have an event today. Father and I are opening an exhibit of family ancestral writings at the Ashmolean.”
I sat up. “That’s today?”
“Yes, Rebecca, that is today.”
“Why do you keep calling me Rebecca?”
Nick pulled every hair on his head straight into the air. “Because, Rebecca,” he said, “I have gone insane. My father is due in three hours. Why did we stay up so late? I am an idiot.”
He was doomed; I was sure of it. His eyes were bloodshot and his face looked gray. But I decided this was one time honesty was not what Nick needed.
“Everything is going to work out,” I said instead. “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to leave my room and you’re going to take a cold shower.”
“This already sounds like the worst plan.”
“It’ll wake you up, dumbass.”
Nick didn’t even flinch at that, which I now know is because Freddie has called him worse at least once a day their entire lives.
“Then,” I continued, “chug a pot of coffee and, like, a gallon of water. The caffeine will wake you up and the water will keep you hydrated. And get some greasy food. But no pastries, Nick. Pure carbs will make you crash.”
“How do you know all this?” Nick asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Nicholas,” I said. “You may have named her, but Night Bex has existed since long before I met you. One day, I’ll tell you about the time I only slept two hours before my aunt Kitty’s wedding, where I had to give an insanely long reading in German, which I don’t speak.”
“How much more could there be to tell?” he said.
“Focus,” I commanded him. “You are not going to blow this. I promise.”
Nick grabbed me in a tight hug. Improbably, he smelled delicious, an indescribable scent that I will always only be able to define as him. And maybe a bit of tikka masala.
“I’d be lost without you,” he said. And as he scampered off to his room, I turned around and passed out on my bed.
* * *
Everything about Prince Richard is narrow, from his body to the oval of his head to the line of his longish nose. But his bearing, the way he carries his position with just enough pomposity that you feel it but not enough that you wholly dislike him for it, gives him an aura of being good-looking even though the sum of the parts is fairly plain. I’d long been familiar with his face, because my parents went to London in the eighties and brought back a commemorative Royal Wedding wastebasket that’s in their downstairs bathroom (“He’s going to be king. He should live in the throne room,” Dad had said). But seeing someone in magazines—or tossing used Kleenex into him—is different than watching him move and speak in person, especially after the passage of more years than my parents or Richard might care to admit.
That night, Richard and Nick were hosting a grand reopening of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum after a large renovation. The new modern lobby and balconies were packed with donors, rich alleged art lovers, local looky-loos who’d won a ticket lottery, and us, Nick’s motley support crew—stuck upstairs against a glass railing that put us nose-to-nethers with a giant naked statue of Apollo from the fifth century BC. This delighted Gaz, who loudly wondered if he could distinguish one huge dick from the other.
“It gives me great pleasure to have my son with me today, in our first joint venture since he gave up polo,” Richard was saying into a microphone. His speaking voice is not the rich baritone I always expect; it’s higher, thinner, a touch raspy. The Queen Mum once told me she thinks his tantrums as a young boy made it that way forever. I love her.