Royal Date (31 page)

“You can. I will be there every step to help you. Come on.”

I had wanted so badly to go back and have everything be normal.

But would anything in my life ever be normal again?

“What do you mean a clerical error?”

First thing that Monday morning I had made my way to the financial aid office. I had to walk the entire way across campus with the paparazzi taking pictures and shouting their questions. Everyone looked at me as I walked across the quad and through the hallways, and I knew why. I was on every celebrity gossip site, and I had even managed to make both the local television news and newspaper. On the positive side, since I didn’t have a phone, I didn’t have to deal with all the requests. Somehow they found Lemon’s number and bombarded her nonstop. She got so used to saying, “No comment,” to every phone call she received that she’d nearly hung up on her mother, who had not been pleased.

The financial aid woman I was speaking to typed a few things into the computer and stared at her monitor. “All I can tell is that we were in error when we said your scholarship had been defunded. It is fully funded, and we have a check waiting for you.” She got up out of her seat and walked over to a filing cabinet.

All that stress and worry about my tuition, rent, and ability to eat had been for nothing. Just some kind of clerical error. This seemed surreal.

Especially since, just two weeks ago, this same woman had apologized and told me there was no mistake, the scholarship money had run dry and that she didn’t know what to tell me.

She returned with a check and handed it to me. Enough to pay for everything that I would need for the next four months.

I was safe. I would graduate. My life would go on as I’d planned.

This should have made me elated.

It didn’t.

After my morning class in Management in Human Services Organizations, I had arranged to meet Lemon for lunch in the student center. Another struggle through the paparazzi. They said the most horrible things to me, trying to get me to react. I kept my head down and my sunglasses on. I missed my mountain Lorenz, who would have shoved everyone out of the way. Giacomo, who would have told me what to say.

But most of all, Nico, who would have protected me from all of this. Which made me both angry and sad.

We sat down together at a table after we got our food, ignoring all the other students who were staring at us and whispering. Pretending like there weren’t reporters outside the windows still trying to get my attention.

“You should go to the dean,” Lemon told me. “This is unbelievable. He should keep them off campus.”

“Maybe I’ll go there next,” I told her. I had fieldwork that afternoon and needed to prepare some notes for the field seminar scheduled for the end of the week.

If I could just keep busy, if I could just keep my mind on school, I wouldn’t think about him.

I dropped my bag onto the table, and the cell phone spilled out. I had unpacked last night when we got home, putting my Barbie and my necklace in the back corner of my closet shelf. I couldn’t bear to see them or what they represented.

But the phone I’d dropped in my book bag. I didn’t know why. It made me feel better knowing it was there.

Lemon picked it up. “Is this the phone from the paparazzi?”

“Yeah, I disabled the SIM card so it’s basically a glorified iPod at this point. I feel bad for keeping it.”

“Don’t. Consider it payment for services rendered for everything that redheaded snake is putting you through. Why don’t we go over to the place across the street and get you a phone number on my family’s plan?”

Before I could protest, she held up a hand. “Don’t do that Miss Independence thing you do when you’re upset and won’t let anyone help you. You don’t have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. You have people who love you. I’ll take care of it for now, and you can take the payments over when you get your job. I’m so tired of you not having a phone. When I’m shopping I
need
to be able to take pictures of myself in outfits and text them to you right then to see what you think.”

I knew that wasn’t why she wanted it for me. I also knew she was trying to make me laugh. But I felt like I didn’t have any laughter left inside me. I could only manage a weak smile.

“That sounds good,” I told her.

My own cell phone would certainly make my life easier in arranging my appointments, study groups, and talking to my advisor. Lemon promised to keep the number private so that I wouldn’t have to deal with any reporters.

She got up to throw her trash away, and I held up the phone, refraining from opening the camera’s gallery. I wasn’t ready to see his family. Or him. Not yet.

I wondered if I ever would be.

One week went by. Two. Then three. A full month passed. I kept time by the number of paparazzi outside of my apartment. The dean had banned them from campus, but that didn’t stop them from camping out on the sidewalk next to my home. I did everything Lemon said. I wore the same clothes every day. Ignored them. Didn’t react. Little by little they left, until there was only Seamus O’Brien. And then even he gave up. I had my life back, and it had only taken thirty days of hell.

And whatever idiot said time heals all wounds should be tied up to a railroad track and run over by a train repeatedly. Then we’d see how well time would heal those wounds.

Because time wasn’t healing my wounds. I felt like I was the one who had been hit by a train, sleepwalking in constant pain through my life. I smiled when I was supposed to, replied when I was supposed to. Did my schoolwork. Concentrated on finishing up my thesis.

My wounds weren’t healing. They were all open and festering.

I missed Nico. I missed him so badly it was an actual physical pain that never went away. I thought about him constantly. He was always the last thing on my mind when I went to bed, and my first thought when I woke up.

If I’d had any doubt about whether or not I was in love with him, that had been erased. I knew it as well as I knew anything. I loved him.

I didn’t tell Lemon. She would have done something to make me talk to him if I had. I pretended like I was fine, but when she thought I wasn’t looking, she had an expression of worry and concern on her face.

There were a lot of things I’d been doing that I hadn’t told Lemon about. Like hanging out with the Italian Club. They met once a week and had lunch together, and spoke Italian the whole time. I had no idea what anyone was saying and I never participated, but it made me feel better to hear his language being spoken.

I started meeting with a counselor in the counseling office. As a student, I could meet with a professional on a weekly basis for free. I thought it might be a good idea given the legion of personal issues I’d managed to accumulate over the years. I really liked Bethany. She felt comfortable and never pushed me farther than I was willing to go. Sometimes we talked about Nico, but I tried to steer clear of all mention of him.

Even with Lemon I’d had to put a moratorium on all mentions of Nico and anything that was Fiorelli-related. I knew she was still deeply involved with them because of her thesis and the work she was doing for them.

Sometimes she broke the ban, like last night when she showed me a video from Chiara and Serafina. Serafina sang “Let it Go” for me, told me she missed me, and wanted to know when I would be back.

My heart ached to see them. I actually ran my finger over the phone screen, as if I could reach out and touch them.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Just tell her I miss her too.” Any more than that, and it really would break my heart.

Not that a broken heart was anything new to me. I walked around in a haze, feeling like somebody had taken a piece of me and I couldn’t function without it. Like the human version of the Tin Man.

Lemon had even set me up on a blind date, saying I needed to get back out there again. Whatever that meant.

I had only gone so that she wouldn’t constantly bug me about it.

Matthew was nice enough, I suppose. He took me to a diner near campus, and I thought I should try. I should make conversation. I should find out about him.

But I didn’t care. I didn’t want his brown hair and brown eyes. I wanted Nico’s black hair and blue eyes. I didn’t want Matthew’s smiles. I wanted Nico’s smiles.

I wanted Nico there to tease me and comfort me and love me. Matthew was a very poor and pale substitute.

I listened to him talk, my food tasting like sawdust in my mouth. Which made me even more sad, because I had always loved the burgers there. Matthew certainly loved talking about himself. He was a boy who cared about boy things. Like PlayStation games and how drunk he planned on getting that weekend.

Nico was a man worrying about the fate of nations and taking care of hundreds of thousands of people. He worried about curing cancer and providing financially for families with sick loved ones.

There was just no comparison. At least Matthew was smart enough to figure it out. When he walked me home, he didn’t try to kiss me or say he’d call me. I was relieved.

The one thing that time was doing for me was giving me the opportunity to more objectively analyze that night with Nico.

I had considered writing everything down. In one of my classes we had learned about the technique that was often used with abused children and soldiers with PTSD—by writing down their stories they were better able to psychologically let go.

I couldn’t write about Nico. I tried, but I couldn’t. I had thought maybe I could write a romance about our situation. But it proved impossible because one, nobody would believe a guy like Nico would be interested in a girl like me, and two, I didn’t want to share him with anyone.

Not to mention the lack of an actual happily ever after.

As I remembered that night, making notes, I was better able to put things in perspective. I remembered every word he’d said to me, as clearly as if he were standing in the room and saying it again. I wrote it down in my notebook so that I could study it.

I want there to be no misunderstanding between us. More than anything in the world, I want to accept your invitation. But I can’t dishonor you and disrespect your values. You would hate me tomorrow for it, and I would hate myself. So I think I should say good night before I lose the ability to walk away from you
.

When my own emotions could be taken out of it, when I could look at his words and really see what he had said, I realized how dumb I had been.

He didn’t reject me. He wasn’t turning me down. He wanted me. He said he’d wanted me. He wanted me so much he wasn’t sure he could walk away. He tried really hard to make sure that I wouldn’t freak out the way that I did. He wanted to respect me. He wanted me to keep my promise. He knew me well enough to anticipate the fallout of him coming into my room. And he was right. I would have hated both of us. I wouldn’t have been okay with it the next morning, no matter how much I wanted him that night. Not that that was how anyone else would have felt about it, but Nico knew me well enough to predict exactly how I would have felt.

He cared about me and wanted me, and I had walked away. I’d once accused Violetta of acting like a spoiled brat breaking her toys, and that was exactly what I had done. I had ruined everything because I was so caught up in my own drama and immaturity.

But I didn’t know how to fix it. I couldn’t just call him up and say, “Just kidding! Let’s get married, ’kay?”

Because caring about me and wanting me was not the same as loving me. And despite what Lemon thought, despite what I wished for, he’d never said he loved me. He’d never said he wanted to marry me.

Caring about me was not enough. I couldn’t be with a guy that I loved who only cared about me.

I was worth more than that.

A few days later, as I sat in a class designed to help parents be reunited with the children that had been taken from them, my phone rang. The number showed up as “Unknown.” Only a few people had this number, and they were all in my contact list. I wondered who it was. I told the instructor I was shadowing that I’d be right back.

I stepped out in the hallway, about to click Accept when I noticed a little message under the “Unknown” that said the call was international.