American Queen

by Sierra Simone

  She’s jealous of you.

  I shook the thought away. She looked gorgeous in her short shorts and halter-top, hair glossy and red, and her pale shoulders smattered with freckles. That old fight couldn’t reach us here, now, not when we hadn’t seen each other in so long and had an entire week to spend together. I slung my arm around her shoulders, having to reach up as I did so since she was a few inches taller than me, and squeezed her into my side. “I missed you, Abi,” I said. “I wish we were going to the same school.”

  Abilene rolled her eyes but put her arm over my shoulders too. “If you want that, you’re going to have to come to Vanderbilt. There’s no way I can handle another rainy summer in England.”

  “Girls,” Grandpa Leo greeted fondly as we walked into the penthouse suite after a sweltering drive from the airport to the hotel.

  We ran to him and hugged him like we were seven years old instead of twenty, exclaiming over his bald head and bushy beard and thin face.

  “You need to eat more, Grandpa!”

  “You need to shave!”

  He waved us off like we were fussy saleswomen. “I’m fine. And I hear that the beard thing is in for women right now. Is that not true?”

  Abilene and I wrinkled our noses and he laughed. “Well, never mind then. Consider it shaved. I have to head out for lunch with some old friends—do you girls want to tag along?”

  “I’m going to take a nap,” Abilene declared. She flopped dramatically onto the hotel suite’s couch, as if she’d been traveling all day instead of riding on a plane for an hour.

  Grandpa looked over at me. “Well, Greer? You know I always like to have you and your eyes with me at these kinds of things.”

  I was tempted to stay at the hotel too, but I knew Abilene would make good on her threat to nap, and I had no desire to knock around more empty rooms alone. It’s why I came to America for the summer, after all, for conversation and connection, and as much as I wanted to spend time with my cousin, I wanted to escape my thoughts more.

  “Of course I’ll come,” I said.

  Grandpa beamed at me. “I’ll grab my briefcase and then we can go.”

  Abilene pretended to snore, and when I went over to give her a hug goodbye, she kept her eyes closed in fake-sleep. “Don’t get into any trouble without me,” she said. Her long dark eyelashes rested prettily on her freckled cheeks, a ginger Sleeping Beauty.

  I poked at her side. “You are pretty much the only reason I’ve ever been in trouble.”

  She smiled then, a cat’s smile, eyes still closed. “That’s what I’m saying—I want to be there for any trouble you find.”

  “At a lunch with Grandpa? Hardly likely.”

  She yawned for real, settling on her side. “Still, though. Share any cute boys you meet.”

  Lunch was at a well-lit, modern cafe inside the Chicago Art Institute, and it was the usual handful of politicians and businesspeople discussing election cycles and policy. Grandpa Leo, sober for thirty years, automatically slid me the wine the waiter poured for him without asking.

  I listened politely, white wine bright and crisp on my tongue, watching everyone’s faces and gauging their tones, dutifully recording mental notes to report to Grandpa later. Half my mind had already drifted back to Cambridge, back to the classes I’d enrolled in for the next session, back to the beaten, dog-eared books stacked next to my air mattress in my grimy little flat.

  Until I heard Merlin’s name from someone at the table.

  My head snapped up in alarm, and sure enough, Merlin Rhys himself was strolling up to the table, tall and dark-eyed and clean-shaven, his expression open and more amiable than I’d ever seen it. Until his gaze slid over to me, that is, and then the openness faded, leaving something tiredly resigned in the lines of his face. I could see it clear as day: he hadn’t known I’d be here and he didn’t want me here, for whatever reason.

  I ducked my head with embarrassment, even though I’d done nothing wrong.

  Why didn’t I stay at the hotel? I berated myself. If I’d known for one second that Merlin would show up…

  “Sorry we’re late,” came an easy, deep voice from behind Merlin. My heart stopped.

  The world bled away.

  And there was only Maxen Colchester.

  Four years older and painfully more good-looking, post-tour-of-duty scruff highlighting the strong lines of his cheeks and jaw, wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of low-waisted slacks that emphasized how ridiculously trim and lean his body was. He folded his soldier’s frame into a chair next to Merlin, the elegant table setting in front of him doing nothing to diminish the sense of raw power and strength radiating from his body. I’d forgotten, somehow, what that power and strength felt like in person.

  It felt like drowning.

  Tell me, Greer, do you like my lips on your skin?

  Yes.

  I believe you. That’s why you’re so dangerous.

  My fingers curled around the stem of my wineglass, and I forced myself to focus on it, on the way the glass felt on my skin. Smooth and whole, not at all like the jagged shards and splinters I’d cradled in my hands the night I met Ash. All these years, I’d told myself I didn’t care about Ash, wasn’t haunted by our kiss. I’d wanted to be sophisticated, the kind of aloof girl who kissed men like Ash and then forgot all about it. I wanted to be different than Abilene with her fan forums and obsessive fantasizing, I wanted to be wise and worldly and apart from such schoolgirl crushes.

  But I couldn’t pretend that any longer. Not when faced with warm-blooded, green-eyed reality of him.

  Right now, I was the Greer who’d written those embarrassingly honest emails, the Greer who’d melted into his touch, who’d shivered as he licked her blood from her skin. Right now, I was a vessel of pooling want, I was ready to be whatever he wanted me to be, ready to crawl into his veins and make him mine. I was eager and humiliated and yearning and mortified, and I knew the absolute truth in that moment—I was in love with Maxen Colchester. It was foolish and silly and absurd—nothing could be more unworldly and unsophisticated—but somehow, terribly and incredibly, it was true.

  “…and my granddaughter Greer.”

  I lifted my gaze, realizing Grandpa Leo had been talking this whole time, introducing the others at the table to Ash and Merlin. I suddenly wished I was in something less girlish than this pink knee-length dress with its neatly folded bow at the back. I wished I had put my hair up or reapplied my lip-gloss, or anything to feel fresher and prettier and more than I was in that moment. Instead, I felt incredibly naked and young as I met Ash’s stare across the table.

  He’d frozen in place—just for a second—his eyes flaring into a green fire before settling back into their usual emerald. Then he gave me a genuinely happy smile and said in that easy, confident voice, “Greer. So good to see you again.”

  Again.

  He remembers.

  I took a breath and smiled too, a smile that felt too shaky and too excited and too hopeful. “Yes. So nice to see you too.”

  And then I lifted my wineglass to my lips, hoping no one saw the trembling of my hand as I did.

  The lunch went on as normal—Merlin was having a party tonight for his fortieth birthday, and everyone at the table was going—and the conversation turned back to politics, although with Merlin there, the conversation finally drifted away from the minutia of elections and numbers and into slightly more interesting territory. Merlin was asking my grandfather if he’d ever support a third party presidential candidate, and the table stirred with the natural antipathy establishment politicians have to such talk.

  But even that couldn’t hold my attention when Ash was so near. He talked very little, choosing mostly to listen, but when he did speak, it was so concisely elegant and perceptive that even these people, who spent their lives talking over everyone else, had trouble finding a response that matched his insight.

  Every word he said, I stored away, as if his opinions on the viability of a thir
d-party candidate were secret revelations about himself. I watched his every movement from under my eyelashes, the way his hand looked as he twirled the stem of his wineglass between his fingers, the way he held himself perfectly still as he was listening to someone else—perfectly still except for the occasional nod of understanding—a stillness not learned in a courtroom or a legislator’s chamber, but in battle. A stillness that could have been curled over a sniper’s rifle, it was so deliberate and immovable. A stillness that accounted for the movements of wind and the fluttering of leaves and careful intakes of breath. A stillness that was patient.

  Predatory.

  If Ash ever became a politician, he would slice through these people like a stick slices through weeds. They’d be bent and broken before they ever saw it coming.

  I didn’t have that stillness. Perception, yes. Patience, no.

  And so it was agony to be so close to Ash, able to soak up every lift of his shoulders, every flex of those fingers, every rich, deep word, and to know that there was nothing to be done about the tempest inside me. There was no outlet for this restless ache, this almost-pain, this fidgety, giddy feeling twisting inside my chest. At any moment, my control would break, and it would all come spilling out of me.

  Do you really remember me? I would blurt, leaning forward. Do you remember our kiss? I do. I remember how you took care of my cut, I remember how you told me not to move, I remember how you pinned me against the wall. I dreamed of it for years after; I still dream of it. I thought I didn’t care, I tried to shove down that girl, I tried to be someone else, but now that I’m with you, I don’t think I can. I don’t think I can want anyone else and I don’t think I want to be any other version of myself than the girl you boss around.

  I can bleed for you again.

  Let me bleed for you again.

  And then, as if he’d heard me, as if my thoughts had reached out to him, he turned his head and met my stare head-on. His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on the wineglass, and I imagined them tightening in my hair, fisting my white-gold locks and snapping my head backward so he could bite my throat.

  I caught my breath at the thought, tearing my gaze away from his. I had to go. I couldn’t be wet and panting and miserable at this table—not with these people, not with my grandfather, not with the source of my torture so breathtakingly close.

  I leaned into my grandfather. “Do you mind if I go poke around the museum a bit?” I asked quietly.

  “Yes, sweetie. I imagine you must be bored to death. I’ll text you when we’re done.”

  Gratitude flooded through me, and I gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Thanks, Grandpa.”

  I pushed my chair back and excused myself with a hurried murmur, careful not to make eye contact with Ash as I did. Even so, I could feel his eyes on my back as I left, and I wanted to look back so badly, I wanted to see for sure if he was watching me leave, if he was watching my legs or my hips or my hair, but I didn’t. I strode quickly out of the restaurant, only breathing once I was out the doors and on my way to the museum proper. There was something inside my body that kicked and struggled at being separated from Ash, just as there was something that kicked and struggled while in his unbearable presence.

  As I paid for a museum ticket and took a small folded brochure with a gallery map, I ran back through everything I had done and said. Had I humiliated myself in any way? Had I looked too much at him? Spoken too breathlessly? I couldn’t bear anyone at that table thinking I was ridiculous—especially Merlin, who already seemed to dislike me for some unaccountable reason—but I didn’t want Ash in particular to think I was besotted. No doubt he would find it as ridiculous as I found it myself.

  I saw nothing as I walked through the galleries, absorbed nothing, thinking only of Ash. I didn’t even bother glancing at the map in my hand, and so I had no idea where I was when I found myself in an enclosed courtyard surrounded by statues. I was alone and the sunlight on the stone gave the room a holy glow, like a church. The silence was so profound that I could almost hear the statues themselves, marble so lifelike you watched for it to breathe, collecting dust, their creators long dead.

  My mind quieted.

  I stopped in front of one statue, arrested by the delicate stonework—a young woman veiled and dressed in robes—a tambourine hanging limply from one hand. There was something about her face—downcast and a little stunned—or maybe it was the instrument dangling listlessly from her fingertips, that made it look like she’d forgotten how to be inside her own body. Like she’d fall apart if she tried to stand or speak.

  I could empathize.

  “That’s Jephthah’s daughter,” came Ash’s voice from behind me. I’d been so absorbed in the sculpture that I hadn’t heard his footsteps, and I spun around to hide my surprise.

  “What?” I asked, hoping I sounded normal and not the strange version of panic-excited I felt like.

  “Jephthah,” he said, nodding toward the statue as he took a step toward me. The light glinted off the face of the large watch on his wrist as he put his hands in his pockets. “He was a judge in ancient Israel, a war leader who fought against the Ammonites, and he made a vow to God. If he won his fight against his enemies, he would offer the first thing that came out of his house when he returned home…he’d make it a sacrifice, a burnt offering. I’ll give you one guess what he found coming to meet him.”

  “His daughter,” I said, sadness and disgust sticking heavy on my tongue.

  “His daughter,” Ash confirmed. “She came out dancing, ready to make music with her instruments. When he saw her, he despaired and tore his clothes, but when he told her what he had vowed, she refused to let him renege on his word to the Lord. She asked for two months in the mountains with her women so that she could ‘bewail her virginity.’”

  “So she could bewail her virginity,” I repeated. “I know how that feels.”

  His mouth twitched at that, but I couldn’t tell if it was with a smile or a frown. “And then she returned to her father. The Bible only says that he made good on his vow…it doesn’t go into detail—almost as if the priests writing it knew how awful it was even then. And after she was sacrificed, there was a festival of women every year, who gathered together for four days to lament her death.”

  “And that’s it?” I asked incredulously. “He was allowed to murder his own daughter and burn her corpse? Just because of some promise he made about a battle she had no part in?”

  Ash nodded. “Awful, isn’t it? You can see why she seems so shocked. So sad.”

  He stepped closer again, this time standing next to me and looking up into the downturned face of the statue. “Some people say that it was a rash vow, a vow made in haste without much thought, and that may be true. But I think some people haven’t ever been in a war. You don’t know what you’ll promise yourself or God until you’re facing down that moment yourself. Until the lives of countless others rest on your shoulders and yours alone.”

  I turned to look at him, meaning to examine his face, to question him, but it took me a second to regain my train of thought because fuck, he was good-looking. Hot wasn’t the right word, neither really was handsome. They didn’t capture the raw masculinity that barely seemed contained in his wide, lean frame. They didn’t capture the potency of his muscular body, the keen flash of his eyes, the unexpectedly generous lines of his mouth. “So are you saying you approve of him sacrificing his daughter?”

  “Fuck no,” Ash said, and something about seeing a man so in command of himself use a word like fuck was undeniably erotic. “Even taking into account the fact that human sacrifice was a norm in the Levant, it wasn’t supposed to be a norm for the Israelites, certainly not during the period of the Judges. Rabbis from as far back as a thousand years ago have contended that Jephthah never actually murdered his daughter, that he instead ‘sacrificed’ her to a life of religious servitude. Some people think it never happened at all, but it was a story retrofitted to explain the ritual of women gathering
to lament a maiden’s death.”

  “What do you think?”

  Ash’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly at the statue, as if he could persuade her to spill her secrets. After a beat or two, he shrugged and sighed. “I think what actually happened is less important than the story we want it to be. Is this a morality tale, cautioning against impudent vows? A different morality tale, showing the righteousness of upholding a vow even when it’s hard? Is this a narrative showing where a pagan tradition was shoehorned into the well-ordered history of the Levite authors? The first step to understanding anything—whether it’s the Bible or Fifty Shades of Grey—is acknowledging that we come to it with agendas of our own. We want it to mean something, we are biased whether we know it or not, and usually what we walk away with is what we want to walk away with.”

  “What do you want to walk away with from her? What do you want it to mean?”

  For the first time, he looked down at the floor, and for a moment, just for a moment, I could see the weight of every death, every battle, every cold night spent in the fens of Eastern Europe pulling on him. And then he turned to me and it all vanished, leaving only a regretful smile. “I guess I want it to mean that the Lord forgives soldiers for unacceptable sacrifices. For decisions made in the heat of the moment, when there was no good choice, there was only what would save the most people, even if it meant leaving someone to burn.” A deep breath. “Metaphorically, I mean.”

  I pulled him into a hug.

  I don’t know why I did it, how I overcame that twisting, awkward agony that came with being near him, but he sounded so pained, so burdened and haunted, and my heart had known no other way to tell him it’s okay. I’m here and I know and it’s okay.

  So I wrapped my arms around his waist, turned my face against his broad chest, and pulled him close. There was a moment, an exhale that sounded like a breathless groan, and then his arms were around me too. I felt his lips against the crown of my head, lips and then his nose and his cheeks, as if he were rubbing his entire face against my hair. As if he was marking himself on me or I was marking myself on him, as if he wanted to make a life for himself in the tousled waves.