18. “Ghost” - Halsey
“Ghost” - Halsey
Maisie and I have worked together for nearly three years, and she’s been my private secretary for six months. She is nothing if not reliable, which is why I find myself watching the clock with dread as it creeps closer to nine.
When she arrives for our morning meeting, she looks different.
Her glasses are gone, and while her hair is pinned into its usual chignon, she’s wearing more makeup than she normally does.
I get a whiff of floral perfume as she approaches.
I could sum up this whole transformation in one word: confidence.
“Maisie.” The ice coating my greeting is thin, but it’s there.
“Your Majesty.” She drops into a lower curtsy than usual. “I have your box of papers. And your coffee.” She hands me the cup, and I briefly wonder if she’s poisoned it.
“You look . . . different,” I say.
Her fingers fly up to smooth her hair as she keeps hold of the green box in her arms. “Oh, I got contacts. Life-changing,” she says with a tight smile.
Life-changing enough to steal my fiancé?
“Won’t you sit?” I take a seat at the round dining table on the far side of the room.
She sets the box down on the table but stays standing. “Celia, can we talk first? About . . . personal things?”
I turn around to face her. “What things could we possibly have to talk about?”
“I didn’t want you to find out like that.”
“And yet you didn’t tell me yourself. How long were you planning to keep me in the dark while you snuck around with Beck behind my back?”
“I wanted to tell you. I tried to tell you. There was just never a good time.” She twists her fingers together. “And I wasn’t sure what you’d say.”
My laugh is short and abrupt. “I can’t imagine it was very hard to deduce.”
Maisie’s features tighten. “I’ve never had a connection like this with anyone.”
“I thought we were friends.”
“Of course we are.”
“So you’ll break it off with him?” I say.
She lifts her chin ever so slightly. “I won’t.”
“Friends don’t date each other’s exes. Especially not ex-fiancés.”
“We’re not children, Celia.”
I turn back to the table and lift the lid of the box. “I’m sure you can appreciate how awkward it would be if you were to keep seeing him.”
“You’d rather see me lonely?”
“There are thousands of single men in the city.” I pull out a stack of letters. “Take your pick.”
“I did.”
I shoot her a glare. “Pick again.”
“What if he’s my soulmate?”
“There’s no such thing.” And if there is, Beck was my soulmate until fate intervened.
“Says the woman who can’t have a normal relationship with anyone because she’s still hung up on Henry.”
I slam the lid shut, causing Maisie to jump. “Everything about this conversation is inappropriate.”
“Agreed. I’ll be sure to keep it entirely professional from here on out.” With that, she turns and marches to the door.
My preferred way of coping with finding out my assistant is sleeping with/dating/possibly in love with/probably going to marry my ex-fiancé one day? Cookie dough. But since I can’t afford to gain five pounds, I’m resorting to my second favorite way: organizing.
I’m rifling through Henry’s nightstand wholly without shame (but more than a little embarrassment—there are way more condoms in there than anyone wants to see, especially me) when I spot a box under the bed.
A million possibilities flit through my mind—none of them good—but I pull it out anyway. It’s a keepsake box, meant for storing photos and cards. I don’t even hesitate. If he didn’t want me going through his things, he shouldn’t have locked me in his house.
Lifting the fitted lid, I can see that the box is full but unorganized. I remove the first item, which looks vaguely familiar, but it’s not until I open the card that I realize it’s the one I gave Henry on his seventeenth birthday.
Happy birthday to the best friend a girl could ask for!!!
I lay the card aside and lift out a stack of photos. Henry used to have an old film camera that had been his mum’s, and he carried that thing with him everywhere when we were young.
The first picture is of us at his seventeenth birthday party. It was a small, with just a few friends—friendships are a luxury most royals can’t afford. We spent the night playing games on his PlayStation and eating pizza. It was the last birthday we’d spend together.
The next shot is also of us, earlier that same year.
Our faces are pressed close together in ridiculous poses.
I quickly flip to the next one. I remember the day clearly, although I didn’t realize he’d taken a picture.
It’s of me sitting cross-legged in the Sunken Garden, wearing lipstick for the first time—my mother has rigid beliefs about the appropriateness of makeup before age fifteen—my hair falling forward and partially covering my face.
There’s a book in my lap. It was the day we finished The Catcher in the Rye. I hated it. Henry loved it.
“It’s the perfect dramatization of life,” he said.
“It was perfectly pointless,” I countered.
“Do you regret reading it?”
“No,” I told him, pulling our list from my pocket. “Because it gets us one step closer to one hundred classics.” I drew a neat line through the entry.
“What do you want to read next?”
I scanned the list. We always took turns choosing. “Let’s do Wuthering Heights.”
It would be the last one we read together. Our copy of it is probably still decaying at the bottom of the garden fountain.
The rest of the photos are more of the same. Henry and I, sometimes with others, most times alone. Some are of just me. Little Bea makes an appearance in a few, although she usually didn’t spend time with us at the palace.
It isn’t until I reach the end of the stack that I realize what I’m holding in my lap. It’s a box of mementos of our friendship, not of Henry’s childhood the way I initially assumed. All of the cards are from me, each one cheesier than the last.
There was a period of time when we exchanged letters. The ones I sent him all neatly stacked and held together by a rubber band. I move them aside. I have no desire to read the thoughts of twelve-year-old me.
A plastic zip-top bag holds a dandelion I once gave him, now dried, after he said he’d never been given flowers before.
There are movie ticket stubs from the time the Crown bought out an entire theater so the two of us could see a movie without the media madness.
A handful of puzzle pieces lie scattered across the bottom, each seemingly from a different puzzle.
They click together with sudden clarity when I recall that every time we put a puzzle together, there would be a piece missing. The little bastard.
The box holds other odds and ends, little trinkets that I have no recollection of.
I do remember the woven friendship bracelet stuck in one of the corners.
It’s the same one he’s wearing in that photo in the great room.
I received the kit for my birthday, and we each made one, then exchanged them.
I have no idea what happened to the one Henry gave me.
I slip the bracelet onto my wrist, curious if he’ll notice or recognize it. Then I stuff everything back into the box and shove it under the bed. If I look at these things much longer, I’ll start reading into why he’s kept them.
Which is not something I can afford to do.
It isn’t until I leave the bedroom that I realize how much time has passed. The lights are on in the great room, the sky already dark. Through the glass wall, the city lights twinkle like the stars they’ve replaced. The smell of something delicious reminds me I forgot to eat lunch.
Henry is in the kitchen, stirring something in a pan on the stove.
“You can cook?” I ask, peering over his shoulder.
“Out of necessity. Sorry we don’t have a chef yet. I conducted interviews, and he starts in two days.”
“No worries.” I open the fridge to see what’s available.
“You want some of this? I’ve got plenty.” He arranges lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers over what looks like lamb meat.
“I’ll just eat some crackers and peanut butter.”
“Absolutely not.” He grabs another plate from the cupboard. “You’re going to eat real food.”
We settle in at the bar and scarf down our gyros. It feels both weird and perfectly normal to sit here with him, eating and not feeling the need to say anything. Every time he brushes against my arm, my skin prickles with goosebumps.
“There’s ice cream in the freezer if—” He stops, his eyes focused on my wrist. “You went through my things?”
I spin the bracelet around several times. “You said there wasn’t stuff.”
“I don’t think I said that exactly.”
“Well, a lie by omission is still a lie.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Because it never crossed my mind.” I adjust my feet on the metal bar of my stool. My soles have been hurting all day.
Henry takes both our plates to the sink and opens the freezer. “It’s not exactly the kind of thing you broadcast. Not if you’re a guy, anyway.”
I watch his back as he scoops ice cream from the container, definitely not enjoying the way his shoulders bunch up with the movement. “Why do you have it?”
“Sometimes you need a reminder of happier times.”
I thread the beads through my fingers. “I was your happier time?”
“You sound surprised.”
He sets a bowl of ice cream in front of me. It’s cookie dough, drizzled with the perfect amount of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. I stare at it.
“Shit,” he says. “I wasn’t thinking. You probably have a new favorite by now?”
I shake my head. “It’s been so long since I’ve had it.” Beck only ever had vanilla in the freezer, and Rosalind wouldn’t dream of stocking something with so many calories.”
The first bite is bliss. A little moan escapes my lips, and Henry chuckles. “That sound never gets old.”
My face heats immediately, in spite of the cold ice cream. I mentally scrub away the memory of him coaxing that same noise and many others from me. I clear my throat. “Favorite childhood memory?”
He sucks air between his teeth like he’s wincing. “That’s too hard. I need it narrowed down to an era.”
“An era? What, you’re T Swift now?”
“We had eras. You know we did.”
I stare at him. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“Okay.” He leans his elbows on the countertop. “First was the Make-Believe Era. We had enough imaginary worlds to fill our own Disney Channel.”
“That wasn’t first. We were both in diapers the first time we had a playdate.”
Henry shovels a massive bite of ice cream into his mouth. “Are you going to dissect every single thing I say? Or can you just hear me out?”
“Get it right the first time and I won’t have to.”
Faster than lightning, he smears chocolate syrup on my cheek. I gasp and lunge across the counter, but he’s too quick. He’s still wearing a giant grin when he hands me a wet washcloth.
“Just wait,” I say. “You know what they say about payback.”
“Mmhmm,” he says around his spoon. “But first you’ll have to catch me.”
I narrow my eyes and fight to keep my smile hidden. God, I’ve missed him so much. “What era was next?”
“Next was the Artsy Era.”
“Artsy.”
“You know, that weird spiral thing you had. The black paper you could scratch off. Those things.” He gestures to my wrist.
“Okay. Fair enough. It was kind of artsy.”
“Then came the Adventure Era, which was the best, in my opinion.”
“Why?”
“Because when you’re a kid, what’s better than getting dirty, playing hard, and falling into bed exhausted every night?”
I lick off my spoon. “Might I suggest about a million things?”
“No way. You loved it.”
“I loved aspects of it.”
“Our fort down by the stream? The treehouse that only ever had a floor? Spying on the stable hands?”
I grin. “Okay, spying was a lot of fun.”
He laughs. “See? Told you. Although our Classic Era was also top-notch.”
“Classic? I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to question that one too.”
“I’ll admit it’s a stretch, but hear me out. Remember the summer we worked on the ’67 Mustang? A classic car.”
“You worked on it. I read to you.”
“Yeah, but from what? Classic literature.”
I snort out a laugh. “That’s hardly enough to label an entire era after.”
“You were also obsessed with classical music.”
“Still am.”
“And we spent hours around the piano.”
“I nominate that as the best era.”
“We’ll call it a tie,” he says.
“What era are we in now?”
Henry holds my gaze for several seconds before replying. “I like to think of it as the Fight to the Death Era.”
“Is that what we’re doing? Fighting each other to the death?”
“Not each other. The rest of the world.”
My eyes snag on his again. They’re big and dark and full of a lot of things I don’t dare think about for risk of falling into places I’m not willing or ready to go again, because lord knows they haven’t worked out for me in the past.
“I know I’ve hurt you,” he says softly. “A lot. And I know I don’t deserve your trust. But it doesn’t keep me from wishing I had it.”
I swirl the chocolate soup around in my bowl, not because I have any intention of eating it, but because I can’t look at him any longer. My stomach feels a little like this melted ice cream. “Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“I’m in it for as long as it takes.”
“Here.” I slip the bracelet from my wrist and hand it to him. “A reminder that you were once my favorite human being on the planet.”
He takes it and runs it through his fingers. “I’m still the same person I was.”
“I hope so,” I say. “I really hope so.”