3. Nick
NICK
Grace was lovely. I would be thrilled to work on committees with her. But would I want to, for lack of a better phrase, stick it in her? Unfortunately, no.
I spend the night in a sleepless rustle.
This wasn’t my standard bout of insomnia. This was the full royal spiral variety: staring at the ceiling of a five-star hotel, mentally drafting abdication speeches, and wondering if anyone would notice if I disappeared into the night wearing a borrowed hoodie and someone else’s life.
I’ve known from a young age that I wasn’t like the other boys, and that it was something to keep secret.
Little me really really wanted to be friends with certain boys and would follow the cute ones around the playground.
At boarding school, teenage me would make sure to walk behind athletes on the rugby team in between classes to check out their asses.
Mindful of the crown at all times, I never let it progress past clandestine longing.
But when I lost my mother to cancer at fifteen, I became vulnerable and incredibly lonely.
At university, I had a sexy lab partner named Vincent who rowed crew, played guitar, and was fond of wearing puka shell necklaces.
My urges won out. Sex with men was truly as wonderful as I’d dreamed.
Vincent told me he loved me right before he sold our story to the tabloids. My father had to personally step in and bury the article. The glare of disappointment in his eye made me feel…disgusting. Dirty. I lied and told him I was experimenting. A dumb phase that was now over.
And it was dumb. Dumb to think I could ever enjoy love.
From time to time, I’ll go on a few dates with a woman to keep the press and my father satisfied. When I go on vacation, Agnes will help arrange a sex worker (with an NDA, of course) so I can get off. My sex life has been reduced to a pressure valve that needs to get relieved every so often.
By three in the morning, I’m still sleepless, so I turn on the TV and catch a rerun of Friends, the background noise making me feel less alone in this cavernous space.
No matter where I am in the world, there is guaranteed to be a Friends rerun on some channel.
The gang is relaxing in Monica and Rachel’s apartment.
Joey barges in wearing Chandler’s entire wardrobe.
“Could I be wearing any more clothes?” he says, imitating Chandler’s cadence.
“Could I be wearing any more clothes?” I repeat, in a decent Chandler imitation.
I close my eyes and imagine myself in the Friends apartment. Maybe lounging on the white couch in the arms of my boyfriend, Ross or Phoebe coming through the front door with a funny story. Yet even in my happy place, I can’t fall asleep.
By four, insomnia officially wins out, and I decide to start my day.
I go to the hotel gym for an early-early morning workout, then to the hotel restaurant for breakfast right when they open.
Amazingly, Agnes is there ready for me. Sometimes I wonder if the woman sleeps more than three hours a night.
“Your Highness, if I may say so, you look a little tired,” she tells me over eggs Benedict. She’s one of the only people who can get away with such honesty.
“I had an off night.” I shrug and dig into my food—in a classy manner, of course. I’d been through so much meal etiquette training, I could eat primly and properly on autopilot.
“Is everything alright?” She peers into my eyes in a deeper way, like how my mother used to when I sulked during dinner.
“Yes. I’m fine, Agnes.”
“Seeing Ms. Hobbs today should be fun.”
Simply hearing Millie’s name makes my chest unclench.
“Would you like me to send Ms. Muldoon a bouquet of flowers today?”
And just as quickly, my chest clamps back up. “Sure.”
I shovel a heaping of eggs into my mouth, etiquette be damned.
By nine, I’m in the backseat of a limo headed north out of the city, watching the skyline thin into trees and hills, and feeling—against all logic—lighter with every mile.
Sourwood appears the way quaint towns always did, sneaking up on you in the middle of nothing.
We turn off the highway, drive past a few empty farmstands, and find ourselves on a main street lined with brick buildings, wreaths on lampposts, a bakery advertising Hot Cocoa Inside!
in looping chalk handwriting. Snow clings politely to rooftops, as if it had been instructed not to inconvenience anyone.
The driver pulls up in front of a blue house with white trim and a wide porch with two rocking chairs covered in snow. A plastic sled leans against the railing. A lopsided snowman guards the front yard.
No gates. No guards. No flag.
Alfred walks ahead of me to scope out the surroundings.
“I thought I only needed security for official palace duties.”
“Your Highness, do you know how easily a crazed assassin could jump out of those bushes and stab you to death?”
“Always looking on the bright side, I see.”
Alfred stands at attention on the porch while I ring the doorbell. The door flies open.
“Nicky!”
Millie tackles me in a hug before I can react, nearly knocking the air from my lungs. Her arms wrap around me like the warmth of a favorite blanket. I see Alfred stiffen in a moment of high alert before smartly coming to his senses.
“You look exhausted,” she announces cheerfully, pulling back. After all these years in the States, most of her posh accent has fallen away. “Come in before you freeze. Don’t mind the dinosaurs. Hi Alfred!”
He nods politely.
“Your Highness, I will wait outside if that’s alright with you,” Alfred says to me.
“Very well, Alfred.”
Inside, a small fleet of plastic triceratops lay directly in the entryway as if patrolling the joint.
“Shoes off please,” she says. I obediently comply. The sugary scent of frosting and candy lingers in the air.
“Coffee?” she asks, merely as a formality. She doesn’t wait for my answer. We stroll into her kitchen straight to the coffeemaker. The fridge is crammed with drawings and worksheets. Random toys litter nearly every surface.
I take a seat at the kitchen table and gently move aside a half-finished gingerbread house.
Large windows look out on a peaceful, snowy backyard that backs up against the woods.
It was as if Millie opened a page of the Christmas LL Bean catalogue, and said Yep that’s the one.
I’ll take that life please. Wrap it up to go, will you?
“So what are you doing in New York again? What’s your official palace business?” she asks with mock seriousness.
“This and that. Meetings, dinners, special appearances.” I lack the mental energy to go into further detail. They all blend together.
“Sounds specific,” she deadpans.
Millie brings over two cups of coffee in large, Charlie Brown Christmas-themed mugs.
“Millie.” Relief washes over me. “It’s good to see you.”
I met Millie Hobbs back when she was Millie Kim, a rebellious teenager who’d wanted to hit up every club across Europe and spend her summers rotting on yachts in the Mediterranean.
The daughter of a Korean shipping magnate, she was my closest friend at boarding school.
By a stroke of luck, we found each other early, and she took me under her wing.
She was sharp where I was careful, loud where I was restrained, and completely unimpressed by titles even at fourteen.
Now, instead of hitting up clubs and yachts, she’s making gingerbread houses with her three kids and presiding over a battalion of dinosaur soldiers.
While at university, she’d met a charming American who was studying abroad.
Unlike me, she had no problem telling her parents she was marrying him and moving to the States.
Originally, she and Adam had lived in Manhattan and worked in consulting.
Eight years ago, when their oldest son was born, they ditched the fast city life for Adam’s hometown.
He took over his family’s Christmas tree farm, and Millie became a stay-at-home mom to three boys.
I thought the whole transition would be jarring, but somehow this small-town life fits her like a glove.
I made it a nonnegotiable with my staff that I visit her every time I visited New York.
“How’s the coffee?” she asks. Even while wearing leggings, an oversized sweater, and her hair in a messy bun, she’s still gorgeous and radiates class.
“It’s great. Thank you.”
“Adam’s on a French mocha java kick, and I’m along for the ride.” She practically hums sipping her coffee. “First things first, did you hear Calista McTiernan is getting divorced?”
“Again?”
“I guess third time wasn’t a charm.” Millie smiles as she sips her coffee.
“Are you still mad at her for not returning your jacket?”
“When you borrow a friend’s jacket and leave it in a cab like a drunken idiot, it’s common courtesy that you buy her a new one. How do you lose your friend’s jacket and make zero effort to replace it? That’s pure sociopathy.”
“And how many years ago was that?”
“That jacket was from Topshop! Lily Allen had the same one. You never forget a good jacket.”
There’s no better comfort in this world than sharing a laugh with a good friend. I didn’t realize how badly I needed this.
“How’s Ardenia?”
“Good. Right where I left it.”
“My boys still talk about the children’s museum.”
My mother insisted that the children’s museum in our capital city be as much of a jungle gym as a place of culture. Nearly all the art and displays are interactive, and it’s regarded as one of the best in the world. Her love is sprinkled across Ardenia.
Millie has this ability to peer into my soul when she looks at me. “What’s wrong, Nicky?”
“Oh, I’m fine. Just tired.”
“You don’t have kids. Trust me, you’re not tired. Something else seems up. Gingerbread house?” She breaks off a piece of the roof and gobbles it up.
“I’ve had an exhausting schedule, that’s all.”