11. Lily #2
“Are you two …” She gestured between us.
I opened my mouth to say no, but Sebastian cut me off. “About to have lunch? Just the two of us? Yes. Thanks so much. Nice to meet you, though.”
She grimaced and strode off without saying goodbye.
“Sorry.”
“Lily, please sit. And no need to apologize.” Sebastian shook his head. “Why are some women like that? She was nice until you appeared.”
Chuckling, I sat down at the table, dumping my backpack at my feet. “I’d like to think most of our generation has evolved past catty competitiveness, but it still exists.” I snorted. “How the heck do you forget the name Hermione ?”
Sebastian laughed, abashed. “She came up to me and introduced herself so quickly. Said she followed me on socials and always wanted to meet me. Didn’t know I was so famous,” he muttered.
“My sister googled you.” I winced in apology. “She told me you have quite a few followers.”
“Not of my doing. Now and then some tabloid or magazine will do an article on the royal family or something repulsive like a list of the best- and worst-looking members of the royal family. It’s pretty bloody awful when someone you care about is on the worst. Anyway, I get a flood of new followers from those things. ”
I’d never really paid attention to tabloids or lists like those, but I couldn’t imagine someone listing me as the worst-looking member of my family on a public forum. “That’s atrocious.”
“I know. Thankfully it doesn’t happen all that often. My family aren’t exactly black sheep, but we stay away from a lot of public events and only attend the musts. Weddings, funerals. Ascot. That sort of thing.” His expression hardened as he looked away. “But that might change.”
I was about to ask why when he tapped the menu in front of me. “Choose something.”
Going with the change of subject, I picked a sandwich and salad.
“Is that what you really want or what you think you should eat in front of me?” he asked bluntly.
Taken aback by the question, I replied quietly, “It’s what I really want. Why would you ask that?”
Sebastian pressed his lips together, then sighed before explaining, “I notice you seem a little self-conscious about your body and I know you talk about it on your podcast.”
My cheeks burned. “ Okay ?”
“I … first, you should know you’re absolutely gorgeous just as you are, and you have no bloody reason to be self-conscious.”
My cheeks burned even hotter.
“And second, I want you to be comfortable around me.”
Irritated and uncomfortable , I decided to be honest about it.
“I am the opposite of that right now.” I glowered at him.
“I don’t have a problem with food. I order what I want to eat and don’t really think about people thinking about me eating.
Pointing out my self-consciousness only makes me embarrassed and self-conscious and now all I’m going to be thinking about when I’m eating is the fact that you are, in fact, thinking about what I’m eating. ”
He gaped at me. Then blanched. “Bugger, that’s a clusterfuck, isn’t it.”
Before I could respond, he got up, and for a second, I thought he was about to leave. Instead, he rounded the table and slid onto my bench. He rested his arm along the back of it so we were cocooned on this side.
“What are you doing?” I looked him up and down, my skin buzzing with awareness at his sudden proximity. I made a mental note to ask him when it was less weird what cologne he wore.
“I felt very far away from you during an important discussion.”
My lips twitched. “You’re kind of an odd duck, do you know that?”
Sebastian’s eyes twinkled and I noted his shoulders drop a little, as if he was visibly relaxing. “I’m sorry for making you uncomfortable. Believe it or not, it was the exact opposite of my intentions.”
His eyes roamed my face as if marking every detail in his mind for later. It was confusing. The way he looked at me was confusing, considering he only wanted to be my friend.
“What were your intentions?”
“We’re friends now,” he said, as if he’d read my mind and was making things absolutely clear. “And I care about my friends. I want you to see yourself the way you really are and the way you really are … You are gorgeous, Lily Sawyer. Inside and out. Nothing to be self-conscious about. Ever.”
Then why don’t you want me?
I shoved out the melancholy thought and smiled.
“I appreciate that. And I’ll take it on board.
I promise. But just so you know when I was sixteen…
someone made me feel self-conscious about my weight.
From then, I was always on some fad diet because I thought I was fat.
I’ve finally gotten to a place where I just want to be healthy, and I stopped the fad dieting and just try to eat well.
But people being weird about food reminds of that time so?—”
“Lily, I’m so sorry.” Sebastian leaned in close. Close enough to kiss. His expression was anguished. “I won’t ever bring it up again. I’m an arsehole.”
“You’re not an arsehole.” You are very close and way too good-looking, though . His eyes were a mossy green around the iris, but the green melted into a Mediterranean Sea blue. Beautiful eyes.
“Good. So, we’re still friends?”
“We’re still friends.”
“I’ll go order the food.”
“Let me pay?—”
“Nope.” He slid off the bench.
“Thorne, if we’re to be friends, we need to share the cost of stuff.”
“Not today.” He was gone before I could argue further.
While Sebastian waited at the bar to place our order, the girl from earlier, Hermione, approached me with a girl at her side. They had their bags, so it seemed as if they were leaving.
“Hi again,” she said, a little friendlier this time.
“Hi.”
“Sorry about earlier. I didn’t know he was taken.”
Knowing it would be dishonest to pretend he was, I shook my head. “We’re just friends.”
Her pretty eyes lit up. “Really?” She stuffed her hand into her bag and pulled out a pen and paper. Tearing a corner of a sheet of A4, she leaned on the table and scribbled on the piece. “Will you give him this? I tried reaching out on socials, but he apparently doesn’t answer his messages.”
I looked down to see her name and number on the paper. Feeling like I’d swallowed a brick, I nodded and took it. “Of course.”
“Thanks. You’re a sweetheart.” She grinned at me and sauntered off with her companion.
Less than a minute later, Sebastian returned. “What did Hogwarts want?”
Laughing, I held out the paper to him. “She gave me her number to give to you.”
He frowned and took it. Then he crumpled it up.
At my shocked look, he huffed. “I do have some standards. She was ugly to you.”
“She was nicer when she found out we’re not dating.”
“Oh, well then, that makes all the difference,” he replied dryly.
Warmth filled my chest.
Sebastian did that intense staring thing again.
“What?”
He shrugged. “I like looking at you.”
Confusion replaced the warmth until I reminded myself that Sebastian was a self-confessed flirt. He flirted with everyone. Wanting to find some even footing again, I asked tentatively, “What did you mean earlier?”
“Earlier when?”
“You were talking about your family not being involved in the institution.” I referred to the royal family. “You said ‘But that might change.’ What did you mean?”
Sebastian ran a hand through his hair, disheveling it and making me think naughty thoughts I immediately threw out of my head when he leaned across the table and confessed, “My parents separated over the summer.”
The crushed look on his face made my chest ache. “I’m so sorry.”
“They haven’t gone public with it. And I … I haven’t told anyone. Not even Harry. Juno and I talk about it, but … anyway, it was a big shock.”
“You can talk to me about it.”
Frustration hardened his features. “It came out of nowhere, Lily. I mean, my parents used to joke that Juno and I had to be adopted because neither of us are interested in monogamy while our parents were attached at the hip. Our childhood was idyllic. We had parents who adored each other. Yes, I went to boarding school, and it wasn’t always fun, but going home was magical.
I had two parents who loved us and loved each other.
There were no clues, no disagreements or strangeness between them.
There was no buildup to this separation.
Of course, Juno and I are out of the house now, so if there was anything going on, it happened quickly.
Sometime between last Christmas and this summer. It shocked the hell out of us.”
“Did they give you a reason?”
“They won’t talk about it.”
Sympathy had me reaching over to squeeze his hand. “I’m sorry.”
He patted the top of my hand with his other. “Thanks. It’s … I’m a grown man and it shouldn’t bother me this much, but it is messing with my head a little.”
“Of course it is. If I was forty years old and my parents turned around and told me they were divorcing, it would mess with my head. Never mind not explaining why.”
It was an interesting case. There had to be a reason, of course, and one Sebastian and his sister had to let their parents work through before they were ready to explain.
It was also interesting that Sebastian was a commitment-phobe considering his description of his parents as such a loving couple.
Usually, people were less likely to want serious connections with people if there was some kind of trauma, either parental divorce or familial loss.
At Sebastian’s grim expression, I switched off my analytical wannabe-therapist thoughts and pulled back my hand. “Why does that mean things will change with the royal family?”
Before he could respond, our food arrived.
He’d ordered a cheeseburger and fries, and honestly, I did have food regrets as soon as I saw it.
Sebastian seemed to read me. “You are very welcome to my fries.”
Grinning, I reached over and took one. “Don’t mind if I do.”
After a bite, he swallowed and answered my last question.
“My mum made herself a little bit of a black sheep by marrying my father, a commoner. We weren’t ousted or anything, but my parents didn’t partake in a lot of the royal events because of it.
We saw our family at private affairs all the time, though.
However, Mum decided she wants back in .
Apparently, that means trying to set Juno and me up with ‘suitable’ partners. ”
“What does suitable entail?”
“So far, the last remnants of the aristocracy. She tried to set me up with Lady Amelia Shrewsbury who is only eighteen years old and in her first year here.”
I tried not to laugh at his expression, like he’d just tasted sand in his burger. “You can tell her to stop, you know.”
“Oh, I have. But I don’t recognize her right now. She’s not the mum I grew up with.”
At the sad bitterness in his tone, I reassured him, “It’ll pass.
This separation and whatever has caused it must be devastating for your parents, no matter if they say it’s not.
And I imagine they’ll act in all kinds of uncharacteristic ways until they themselves make peace with the change.
You need to be patient. As difficult as it might prove.
And know I’m here on the days it is more difficult to deal with. You can always talk to me.”
Sebastian tilted his head, studying me.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m just so glad you decided to be my friend.”