3. Ivy
Ididn’t see Lex again after he kissed me. He didn’t return for senior year, and even if a small (read: incredibly small) part of me worried about him, I’d been too pissed off to care. No one had ever kissed me before. Not Marcus. Not anyone.
Only Lex.
The night we’d found out about Marcus’s death, we’d held each other through our grief. A few days later? He’d tried to make out with me, tried to turn me into one of those girls he snuck into his room at Mount Oberon. Even if I didn’t have conflicted feelings about his brother, I wouldn’t have stood for that disrespect.
And yet…why did I like it?
I didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Liar. X marks the lie.
My hand went to the burning spot on my neck, and I cursed him again.
The guilt I harbored for Marcus swelled in my chest. I missed him. I missed his texts and his late-night phone calls. I missed his smiling face at our family functions and how he helped me face my fears by telling me to be afraid but to do it anyway.
I didn’t even know he sailed. But then again, how well did I know him? When his girlfriend spoke up at the funeral, I realized I’d been a stupid fool. Marcus was all talk when it came to me. He strung me along, and that hurt worse.
Now he was gone, and Lex was gone, and I raged at both of them for it.
That’s when I met Miri. The granddaughter to the British crown through the king’s second child, Miri had all the fame but none of the responsibility. Like me, she knew what it was to stand in front of hundreds of flashing bulbs, smiling until your cheeks hurt and your retinas burned, even as your toes cramped from the heels you’d shoved your feet in because they were made by some intolerable fashion-forward asshat. The queen had sent her to the States after a car accident killed her parents and left her orphaned.
She strut into my dorm room on that first day, her dark hair pulled into a ponytail and her pink frilly dress poofed around her, with matching luggage in tow. “Hello, darling.”
I’d never met anyone I’d felt more intimidated by. With her perfect grin and soulful chestnut eyes, I didn’t know if I wanted to be her or marry her. Probably both.
“I’m Miriam,” she said. “But you can call me Miri.”
I knew of her. Everyone did. But despite the titles our parents held, I’d never met her before. I smiled and offered, “Ivy.”
“I know.” She walked to the twin bed on the other side of the room and sat, crossing her legs. “We’re to be roommates.”
“There must have been a mix-up at the registrar. I usually have a single.”
“You didn’t want a roommate?” Her brows furrowed, and she tilted her head.
“No. It’s easier to be by myself. Friends are”—I sighed and ran a hand over my neck, covering my X—“hard to come by.”
“Well, how fortuitous,” she said. “I don’t have any friends, either.”
I snorted, amused by her charm and lack of boundaries.
“It’s a bit karmic, yes?” she said. “You and me?”
“Sure,” I agreed, playing along with her.
“We should set some ground rules about the room.”
“Okay,” I said. “What did you have in mind?”
“Well, for starters, if you’re going to bring someone back, do me the courtesy of letting me know. I’ll give you your privacy if you do the same for me.”
I tried not to laugh.
Someone?
I was seventeen, and I’d only been kissed by one person—my archnemesis, Lucifer incarnate. There would be no bringing anyone back to my room.
“That’s not necessary,” I told her. “I don’t date.”
“What? Like never?”
“Never.”
Her eyes widened and she dropped her jaw open, clearly shocked by my admission. “Why the bloody hell not?”
I narrowed my eyes and shifted in my seat. “Kind of hard when the secret service has to do a background check anytime someone gets within five feet.” It was a lie, but if I told her about Marcus, she’d feel bad. Usually, everyone felt bad when I talked about Marcus.
Miri tilted her head again and eyed me from head to toe, her hands on the mattress edge as she leaned her weight forward with her bottom lip tucked under her teeth like she wanted to say something but purposely held back. As for other rules, Miri didn’t have a bedtime or any kind of routine. She got up when she wanted, ignoring silly things like breakfast or first session. More than once, I’d had to get out of bed to turn her alarm off because she slept right through the damn thing.
Despite these personality quirks, we grew close that year. We had similar positions about things like dirty laundry (a pile on the floor) and taking plates back to the kitchen (once a month was fine, right?). For the first time since Marcus died, I’d found someone other than my siblings who understood me.
Miri reminded me of the bite of lingering winter air on a cool spring morning. She wore floral patterns and bright pastel colors, but she had a tempestuous dark side to her, especially when it came to sex. She didn’t see the point in forming lasting attachments, not when her soul and spirit were free.
She wanted to have lovers in every country, all over the world. Men, women, it didn’t matter. She loved people, and she loved to be loved. She wanted to be the gorgeous independent starlet with a hundred children who lounged by the pool in her seventies, not looking a day over forty, amused by the gossip over whether she was a witch because she never aged.
I fell for her instantly.
“What about Quinton Rockefeller?” she asked months later during study hall. We sat in the library, our books spread out on the table in front of us, though studying was the least of what we were doing. She was gossiping, and I was reading the latest addition of The Puck.
“In love with his car,” I said, flipping the page.
“Ivy Washington Eating Her Feelings?” read the headline. “Sources close to her say she’s depressed after the death of Marcus Fairfax, son of Vice President Kellan Fairfax. ‘They were close and his death hit her hard. She’s put on at least forty pounds,’ sources say.”
I ignored the stab in my gut and the hot flash in my cheeks. They’d taken an unflattering shot of me from an awkward angle and slapped right there for everyone to see. My blood pumped through my veins, deafening in my ears. Was I really so out of shape? And even if I was, did my body shape define my mental health? Did it define my worth in the eyes of America?
“Ivy?” Miri said. “Are you listening, darling?”
I blinked back tears and closed the magazine, forcing a smile as I tried to remember the question. She snatched the tabloid out of my hands and read the headline for herself.
“I don’t know why you entertain this rubbish,” she said. “Marcus Fairfax? Oh, that was the vice president’s son, yeah?”
I cleared my throat and dug my fingers into my eyes, hating that I still cried over him, ashamed that I couldn’t shake this hole inside my chest at the thought of his wasted future.
At least, it wasn’t Lex. At least, I still have him.
I tried to shush that voice, to trap it in a dark part of my soul, never to return to the light of day. Shame burned through me, hot and scalding, and I swallowed against a dry throat as I smothered the agony in my chest.
“Didn’t he have a boating accident or something?” She glanced back up at me, watching my reaction carefully.
“It capsized.” My voice shook, and I cleared my throat. “He hit his head underwater.”
“Oh.” She crinkled her nose as she read the headline again. “These fucking bastards.” She flipped to another page. “Oh, look at this. Princess Miriam hates her American life and wishes to return to England, but the king says to stay away. Is she being ostracized?” Miri rolled her eyes and tossed it into the closest trash can. “Do yourself a favor and never open one of those again.”
I pulled my politician mask up around me, shutting down my emotions and pretending like it didn’t sting to know other people made entertainment out of my grief. The public could be so cruel and heartless.
She grabbed my hand and squeezed. “You know, my parents died when I was fourteen.”
“I remember,” I said. “My parents went to the funeral.”
She tightened her fingers around mine. “What they didn’t print in the papers, the true story, is that I was in the car with them when it happened.”
I didn’t know this part. They said she’d been in a different car and her parents were alone.
“I survived because I ducked down to hide from the photographers. When the car crashed, I got knocked out, and when I woke up, I was outside the vehicle, fifty meters away.” She took a deep breath, leaning in closer to me. “The police said I must have crawled out the window after the accident. I was too undamaged to have been thrown. But I would have remembered if I did.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“To this day, I don’t know what happened. Maybe someone pulled me from the wreckage. Maybe I did crawl. But I do know things happen for a reason, Ivy.” She shrugged, her lips pulling into a sympathetic smile. “Some of us live. Some of us die. Who’s to say who will be next? But you and me? We’re still here. And death’s a fickle bitch, so let’s not worry about the opinions of others, yes?” She wiped away the tears on my cheek and brushed my hair behind my ear. “We have more important things to attend to. Like whom you plan to invite into your bed.”
She obviously meant it as a joke, and I choked out a laugh, wiping away the hint of tears at the corners of my eyes.
“We’ve gone through every eligible guy in our age group,” she said. “Let’s discuss the ladies.”
“Miri, part of the reason I don’t date is because of this. Anyone I bring into my life is going to be on the front of some magazine. Our entire relationship will be on display.”
“It doesn’t have to be a big deal, you know.” She narrowed her beautiful brown eyes and gave me a saucy look, curling her lips into an adorable, devilish grin. “Kissing. Touching. Sex. It’s fun. It’s them that makes it a thing.” She gestured to everyone around us, everyone who wasn’t us.
Another, more terrible, thought ricocheted through my mind, one involving Miri and a tangle of sheets and her soft delicate skin pressed so firmly against mine. Maybe I wanted to kiss her. Maybe I wanted her to show me how much of a big deal it could be. My cheeks burned as I zeroed in on her mouth, her full, pouty lips that looked so bitable and soft.
No, I chided myself. She’s your roommate. Stop that.
I clenched my thighs together, trying to soothe down the churning ache between them, and hushed thoughts like that away, determined to find someone else to help me figure things out in that department.
Her phone buzzed and she startled, taking a step away from me so she could grab it and look at the caller ID. She took a deep breath and righted herself before running a hand through her wild curls and bringing the phone to her ear.
“Hello, Gran,” she said.
Gran.
The queen of England. The one Miri had to answer to. The one pulling all of her strings.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she said, grinning softly to herself.
Even if Miri wanted to kiss me (or more) in return, she was my roommate. I couldn’t have thoughts like that about her. I was young and naive. She was…well, she was everything. Miri and I were better as friends. Her Gran would never allow anything else, nor would my mother.
Knowing that did not make it easier to pretend that I hadn’t thought about it or that I didn’t keep thinking about it anytime I masturbated. I’d stood idly by while she went through partner after partner every other day, suggesting I should do the same.
“We’re young,” she said. “Play the field while you can.”
For a late bloomer like me, that talk with Miri reset my expectations and my determination. It was almost like I had something to prove, like I needed to confirm to myself that I wasn’t in love with my best friend and I didn’t pine for her every goddamned day. I threw myself into trying to lose my virginity, and by the end of the month, I had managed to make out with three separate individuals and even gave a blow job to a guy in my theater class. He’d wanted to go down on me afterward, but I still had trouble trusting people I didn’t know, so I declined. Miri berated me about it for the rest of the term. By graduation, I hadn’t made much progress, and Miri had given up on me.
“You’re a lost cause,” she said, “and I won’t be bothered with it anymore.”
“Well, thank God.” I snorted out a laugh. “It was starting to get old.”
We spent the final night of term at a party in a friend’s dorm. In the morning, she’d head back to the UK for a very important dinner with the king and queen, and I’d go home to Mount Vernon. We both planned to attend college at Thomas Washington University in the fall, so it would only be a few months apart, but even that felt like a lifetime.
“You don’t know what you’re missing. But—” She giggled as she leaned in closer to me. “It’s your life. Do who you want.”
We were shit-faced, stumbling our way back to our room. What time was it? I hadn’t checked in ages. Frankly, I was surprised she was still with me. I thought she would have found someone else to mess around with by now.
“I told Quinton I’d meet up with him tomorrow if he gave me a joint tonight. But I’m leaving in the morning, so the joke’s on him.” We laughed as we walked. “Let’s smoke it before we go. For old time’s sake.”
“I have that press thing as soon as I get home.” I fumbled with the lock on our door.
“Even better,” she said. “Everyone will think you’re the coolest Washington. Maybe they’ll finally leave you alone.”
“Har har.” I pushed our door open, and she walked ahead of me, dancing her fingertips down the side of my arm and sending goose pimples over that entire side of my body. Grabbing my hand, she tugged me inside and let the door close on its own behind us.
The soft glow from the lamp next to my bed illuminated the dark space, casting Miri in shadows as she twirled to face me, her rose-colored skirt puffing around her. I leaned against the wall to watch, admiring the way her playful expression made my heart beat a heady staccato.
“Why are you looking at me like that, darling?”
I shook my head and sighed, crossing over to my bed so I could collapse on top of the pillows. “No reason.”
“Lies,” she said. “Now I’m even more intrigued.”
“You could be out with anyone right now. Why are you here with me?”
“Because I love you.” She bounced over and hopped into the bed next to me, turning on her back so we both stared up at the ceiling. “You’re my best friend, Ivy, perhaps my only friend, and it’s our last night together.”
Miri interlaced her fingers with mine next to my thigh and turned her head to face me, and I turned mine to face her. We were so close that her breath coasted across my lips and nose. She smelled like her perfume and wine and whatever it was that made her Miri.
At first, the expression was friendly—a coy smile on her lips, the drunken haze in her eyes. Then she rolled on her side and scooted closer, her features softening. The yearning thing between us blazed to life inside of my chest, aching and pulsing with need for her.
“Will you let me kiss you?” she whispered, so low I barely heard her.
I balked, my jaw falling open. I didn’t know how to answer that.
Yes. Probably. Maybe?No?Maybe yes. Maybe no.
“Do you want to?” I tripped over the words, voice shaking, every part of me unsure and trembling in anticipation of her rejection.
“Yes.”
“Then yes.”
She rolled into me, devouring my lips as if she’d been as starved for me as I was for her. I kissed her back, my head whirling and my heart racing. When she climbed on top of me with her knees on either side of my hips, I pretended like that surge of energy to my cunt had more to do with the alcohol than the beautiful girl. I had convinced myself these bubbling emotions in my chest had been a product of hormones, an influx of oxytocin at the proximity to her. Nothing more.
But now? No, this was different. As I moaned into her mouth and ran my hands over her body, greedily touching whatever I wanted, I let myself admit I was bisexual. I liked kissing boys, but I fucking loved this.
When she broke away to drag her tongue down the side of my neck, all the sexual neurons in my brain fired. I’d let Miri do whatever she wanted to me, and afterward, I’d do whatever I wanted to her.
She cupped my breasts, pushing them up so she could bite the tops, and I arched into the touch, desperate for more of her, desperate for this. My thighs trembled when she ducked down farther, tugging at the fabric of my panties and yanking them over my ankles.
Once they were off, she trailed kisses over my thighs and toward my pelvis. I’d never been this exposed to anyone else before, and when she ran her hands toward my pussy, my legs trembled under her palms.
She giggled and looked up at me, dipping her fingertips between my legs and ghosting over my most sensitive spot. “Are you nervous?”
I nodded, but my mouth was too dry to talk.
“Oh, darling,” she said, pressing a small kiss to the inside of my thigh. “You’re beautiful.” Another kiss closer to my pussy. “And I love you.” A nibble on the skin right there.
She smiled and licked me, and when she circled her lips around my clit, I nearly jerked off the bed from the jolt of hot, fiery electricity that went up my spine. I pressed my palms into my eyes and laughed at myself.
God, I’m a mess.
She echoed my joy and did it again, but this time, I moaned and urged her on. I tunneled my fingers in her hair, praying this feeling never ended.
With Miri, it was effortless. I didn’t have to worry about whether she would run and tell someone about this. I knew she wouldn’t. She would protect me, protect this. And when she pressed two fingers against my entrance, against the place no one had ever touched me before, I nudged her on.
It was right with her. We were friends, roommates…soulmates. It was only as she pushed inside of me and brushed the flat of her tongue over my clit again that absolute happiness filled every inch of my soul. She was here. She was giving this to me, this intimacy, this pleasure.
One finger became two, slowly in, and slowly out. Then she found the spot inside of me that had me arching my back and moaning her name.
“Yes,” I said. “God, yes.”
My climax hit me hard and unexpectedly. I’d heard most women didn’t orgasm their first time, and whether it was because it was Miri or because she knew what she was doing, I sank into it with a fury. I let it pull me under its weight, and when I resurfaced, Miri kissed the insides of my legs and grinned. “How was that, darling?”
“Amazing,” I said, breathing down the intensity of my hormones. My focus caught on the soft shade of chestnut in her hair, the moonlight filtering in through the windows and making it glisten and shimmer. It reflected the same glint in her mahogany eyes.
Was there anyone more beautiful in the world than her? Could there ever be?
She crawled up my body and kissed me, tasting like sex and alcohol and me. I wanted to return the favor. I wanted to taste her. I flipped us so she was under me, and she let out a squeal that made me chuckle and run my hands down the sides of her body. I ducked under the hem of her skirt and inched the fabric higher. When I brushed against skin, she smiled into the kiss and pulled back to look at me.
I lowered my shoulders under her knees and licked her the way she’d done. Obviously, this was the first time I’d ever gone down on a girl, but I listened to her reactions and paid more attention to the spots that made her clench her fists. Turning her on turned me on again.
“Right there,” she murmured when I sucked at her clit, and she said, “Yes, fuck yes,” when I fingered her. When I made her come, she scraped her nails against my scalp and clamped her legs around my head. I’d become the most powerful person who had ever existed because I, a mere mortal girl, could make HRH Princess Miriam fall apart.
I collapsed next to her, giggling and smiling at the levity of the night.
“How could you think I’d be anywhere else tonight?” She shook her head and gave me another delicate wet kiss.
“I love you, Miri.”
“I love you, Ivy.” She kissed me again. Sated and sleepy and drunk on the passion of the night, we fell asleep in each other’s arms.