His Royal Highness

by Grey, R. S.

  My face floods with color as he scans it.

  “You scratched out ‘married’ and ‘start a family’. Did you change your mind about those things? If so, you better take that ring off.”

  I clutch my pretend diamond to my chest.

  “No. I just didn’t want you to freak out.”

  Cal sits quietly at the head of the table, wearing a little smirk as he watches us.

  “I’m more concerned with the fact that you don’t know to change a tire,” Derek says. Typical dude.

  I snatch the napkin back out of his hand. “Right, well, I don’t even have a car, so it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, let’s stay on task.”

  Ava lays out a lunch spread of chicken salad sandwiches and fruit then excuses herself even though we all insist she stay. I wanted to use her as a buffer between me and these two Knightley men keen on holding me to my promise of radical change.

  “I told Whitney about Thomas’ promotion to Head of Entertainment,” Cal says. “I think she should replace him.”

  They both look at me. I shake my head.

  “I’ve thought it over and I’m grateful for the opportunity, but I don’t think I want his job. I want to—”

  “There’s an associate manager position open in Food and Beverage,” Derek says, cutting me off.

  “Or what about something in Costuming?” Cal chimes in, and they volley back and forth as if I’m no longer at the table. I eat my chicken salad sandwich, chewing lazily.

  “Guest relations,” Cal suggests.

  “Casting.”

  “Training. We need to overhaul that system anyway. Whitney could help with that.”

  “Ahem.” I clear my throat.

  I go unheard. They continue listing off departments and open positions.

  “We could shift personnel over in the Enchanted Forest. The team over there could use some organization—”

  I stand then, leaning over the table and waving my hands like a referee calling a foul. “Excuse me! Hi! It’s me, Whitney, the person you two are discussing. I just thought you’d both like to know that I already know where I’d like to work.”

  “Well then, speak up,” Cal insists.

  I crumple my five-year-plan napkin and throw it at him.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Whitney

  One month later

  In my new job, I no longer wear a huge ball gown. Instead, I wake up and don the sort of clothes you’d find at a tech startup: smart casual jeans and sweaters from J.Crew, a blazer if I’m feeling fancy. It no longer takes me an hour to do my hair and makeup in the morning. My duties no longer include posing next to toddlers and politely declining the advances of weird uncles.

  I am the Associate Director of Mentorship within the Knightley College Program. I help facilitate and foster mentor relationships for incoming freshmen, which is a pretentious way of saying I bully my friends until they agree to be mentors and then I pair them with freshmen who have similar interests.

  I like my job. I’m good at it. I have my own office on the second floor of a bakery on Castle Drive. There’s a placard outside my door that has my name on it. I didn’t even have to hang it up there myself. My desk is made of some kind of thick wood and I got to pick my chair from a catalog. I’m an adult now.

  I thought I’d miss working as Princess Elena more than I do. Sometimes I walk by Elena’s Castle, peer in, and see Ryan standing next to the new princess. I helped train her and she was a natural fit. In my head, no one was ever going to replace me in that role. In reality, it’s done rather quickly.

  The absolute best perk about my new position is the jump in salary. In Character employees make jack-diddly-squat, a couple dollars over minimum wage, which was part of the reason why I took on the job as the residence hall manager as well.

  Today is my last day of my duties in the dorm. I’ve been clearing my room out all week after work, packing up years of my life. I’m finally finished. The girls are waiting for me at the door, blocking my way out.

  “You can’t leave us!”

  “You’re one of us!

  “We’re only on season four of Friends!”

  I’m worried they’re going to cling to my legs and hold on for dear life. I’ll show up at Derek’s apartment with them in tow.

  Please can we keep them?!

  Fine, but they’re your responsibility.

  “I’ll still see you guys around,” I promise.

  It’s true. They’re all in the mentorship program. As it is, they already come by my office once a day to steal the candy I put out on my desk and to spy on the guests inside the park from my second-story windows. It’s the easiest way to find me considering I haven’t been at the dorm much lately. Something about Derek and his brawny frame has made it impossible to drag myself back here at night. For the last month, since we returned from New York, we’ve been mostly living together. Today, he and I are making it official.

  “But don’t you like living here?” one of the girls asks, grasping at straws.

  “Yes, you guys are wonderful, but I’m ready to shower in a noncommunal bathroom.”

  “And she’s in loOoOve,” another one adds.

  They all join in with the taunt and I laugh like, Ha ha ha, you really got me.

  I am, though. In love, that is. Just like Savage Garden said, truly madly deeply.

  “Are y’all done making fun of me? This box is getting heavy.”

  They disperse with promises to come see me in my office in the morning. Then I turn back to survey the empty dorm room behind me, taking a moment to soak it in one more time. I’ve cursed this shoebox more than I’ve appreciated it. I hated the lack of storage and the cinderblock walls. I hated my hard mattress and the fact that my window was bolted shut. I can’t deny how much I’ve grown in this space, though. This is where I got to know Carrie and first fell for Derek. On that bed is where I would lie, reading the books he’d lent me and daydreaming about the possibility of a real future with him. Turns out, I wasn’t all that delusional.

  I flip the light off and close the door behind me.

  * * *

  The walk to Derek’s apartment is a good one. Winter in Georgia means it’s in the low 60s, sunny even though it’s close to dinner time. I have a spring in my step. Butterflies gather around me. Bunnies hop along at my feet—or so I assume. I’m too busy heading into my future to be bothered to look down.

  The receptionist inside the exec apartments’ lobby smiles at me as I pass. She knows me now. I belong. I take the elevator up to the top floor, and the scent of roasted garlic and herbs hits me before I open the door and find Derek in the kitchen, making dinner. He’s wearing slacks and a button-down, prim and proper except for the fact that he’s pushed the sleeves to his elbows and there’s a splatter of some kind across the front of his shirt.

  He’s leaning down, studying an iPad. Eyes narrowed. Jaw locked.

  “Honey! I’m home!” I shout with an exaggerated 1950s flair. I’m the first person in the history of the world to make this joke upon arriving home to a significant other. Still, Derek looks up and smiles, walking over to take the box from me.

  I tilt my head up and he responds with a kiss hello.

  “Smells really good in here.”

  “Ava sent me this recipe,” he says, returning to the kitchen with me on his heels. “She said it’d be a no-brainer.”

  “Let me guess…it’s a brainer?”

  He throws me a look over his shoulder. “I think she sabotaged me on purpose. There’s something like fifty steps. I already burned the sauce.”

  “Well, it still smells good.”

  “That’s the chicken in the oven. The sauce was stinking up the kitchen so I threw it in the trash and put the bag down the garbage shoot. Now we’ll be eating our chicken with a little secret ingredient I’d like to call ketchup.”

  I laugh.

  Burned sauce aside, he’s gone out of his way to give me a warm welcome. There’s cheese and cra
ckers out on the counter. Beside that, two champagne glasses sit, waiting to be filled.

  “So is this what I can expect to come home to every day?” I ask as he sets my box down on the island and heads back to check on some sautéing vegetables.

  “Barely edible food?” he quips.

  I grin before turning for the fridge. Inside, I find the groceries we purchased over the weekend and smile at the memory. A routine I’ve done once a week for the last one thousand weeks turned into something New! and Exciting! with Derek by my side. Strolling those aisles, I found that each of his selections was like a tiny window into his soul.

  Celery? Huh…a negative-calorie food. Must be how he maintains those abs.

  Sharp cheddar? Interesting choice. I’ve always been more of a mild girl myself.

  Double fudge chip ice cream? You dog.

  We playfully fought over peanut butter selections. He wanted crunchy. I demanded smooth, sweeping two jars into the cart and moving along before he could protest. In the dairy aisle, he pointed to the whole milk. I nudged my head toward skim. We compromised.

  Now, our groceries are arranged in perfect rows. Our yogurt lids kiss, my mild cheese nestled right beside his sharp. In the middle of it all is a brand-new bottle of Dom Perignon. It wasn’t there this morning.

  I hold it up in question.

  “That’s from Cal.”

  I smirk and start to unwrap the foil around the cork. “I told him last week that I was moving in with you officially.”

  “I know. It’s all I heard about today. He thinks we should look for a bigger place, something with more room.”

  My eyes go wide. “More room? This apartment is massive. There are four bedrooms!” I sweep my hand across the sprawling kitchen as if to further prove my point.

  “He thinks we need a big house. He said something like ‘My brood of grandchildren deserve to have a yard where they can run around and get dirty.’”

  “Wow. Brood. That sounds like a lot.” I laugh and turn to set the champagne bottle on the counter. My hands find their way around his middle while he stirs the vegetables. My cheek rests against his sturdy back. I feel his muscles ripple while he moves. I inhale deeply, not quite believing my luck.

  “What do you think ‘brood’ translates to, roughly?” he asks. “Five?”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “Think we should start practicing now?”

  “Definitely. If we’re aiming for five, we really need to have a strategy.”

  With this, he kills the gas to the stove and turns off the oven. I’d assumed we were just playing around. Apparently not. Derek spins, scoops me up so my feet dangle off the ground, and starts walking us over to our bedroom. Yesterday it was his bedroom. Now it’s ours. My bra spills out of the top drawer of the dresser. My book lies flat on the nightstand. He stumbles over some shoes I left out yesterday and we’re headed for an awkward emergency room visit right before we land in a heap on the bed.

  “Derek! Now? What about your chicken?”

  “It was going to suck anyway. I’m not a good cook.”

  He reaches down for my shirt, shimmying it up and over my head while we talk.

  “Oh hell.” I sound distraught. “Neither am I. I’ve lived in a dorm without a kitchen for the last few years. I have no practice. We’re doomed!”

  “No. We have Ava. We’ll eat at Cal’s or we’ll order takeout.”

  His hands are starting to work on my pants. I think if he weren’t worried about hurting me, he’d just tear them off. The zipper gives him a little trouble and he growls.

  “Frozen pizza is good too,” I point out, trying to be a team player. We’ll subsist on DiGiorno and Totino’s.

  “Yes. We’ll survive,” he says, reaching behind his neck and yanking his shirt off in one clean swoop. Why is that so damn sexy? Is it the show of dexterity? The dramatic magic-trick delivery?

  He drops down over me, kissing me while we continue mapping out our future together.

  “I hope our kids like cereal.”

  * * *

  In the morning, Derek wakes up before me.

  “Want to come down to the gym with me?”

  I pat his cheek like he’s adorable and promptly go back to sleep. An hour later, he returns with a freshly minted row of abdominal muscles and drags me out of bed. I let him because I know a shower is in our future. We steam up the glass like we’re trying to compete in a raunchy-morning-sex competition and then we towel off like perfectly civilized adults, private smiles in place. At our respective sinks, we brush our teeth. I go for thirty seconds longer than usual just so he thinks, Wow, that Whitney—she’s got great oral hygiene.

  In the mirror, I can see my chest is still flushed from his lips and hands. The curse of fair skin. He sees it and smirks before turning, dropping his towel, and walking into his closet to get dressed. My eyes bug out before I catch myself and hop to it. Corporate America awaits!

  After slipping into a navy pencil skirt and white blouse, I head into the kitchen and whip up some scrambled eggs for us. They’re plated beside slices of melon and I garnish them with a sprig of some kind of leafy green I found inside one of the refrigerator drawers. Derek raises his brows when he joins me, impressed by my domestic abilities right up until he takes the first bite.

  “That’s mint,” he says, drawing a half-chewed sprig from between his teeth.

  Oops.

  “This is how eggs are served in France,” I assure him before slyly pushing all the mint off my eggs and onto the side of my plate.

  After one more half-attempt at eating the remainder of our breakfast, I say, “Should we just—”

  “Yup,” he says, scooting back his chair so we can grab our things and fly out the door.

  Derek’s new office is close to mine—on the second story of Castle Drive as well—but he sits on the corner and has expansive views of the park. Last week, I stood at the window of Cal’s penthouse and called him.

  “Can you see me waving?”

  “No.”

  I swept my hands over my head, really putting some energy into it. “Now?”

  “No.”

  I jumped up and down. “Now!?”

  He laughed. “I saw you the first time.”

  I hung up on him.

  “What time do you think you’ll be done today?” I ask him as we stroll into the park, hand in hand. The air is brisk. His hand is warm around mine. It’s still an hour before Fairytale Kingdom opens, and Castle Drive is all but empty except for a few employees bustling around. They tip their heads to us or wave as we pass.

  “I have a meeting that might run a little late, but I should be home by 7. Don’t forget we have poker tonight.”

  How could I forget?

  Carrie and I have been preparing ever since Thomas and Derek first invited us. All week, during lunch, we’ve joined online poker games, laughing at our immature screen names. Oddly enough, BuffDude23 and 69Holdem69 blend right in. We only lose most of the time, and though Carrie suggests we give up and just teach ourselves to cheat—Here, try to stuff this ace down your bra—I suggest we just use good ol’ fashioned distraction methods. I already have the perfect shade of lipstick picked out. Derek won’t know what hit him.

  At the door to the coffee shop, Derek ushers me in so we can grab breakfast, and like it always does, my gaze sweeps to our old table, the one Derek used to occupy while he waited for me to arrive for our mentorship meetings. I can almost see him sitting there now, head down, brows furrowed in concentration, attention on his notebook while he waits for me to arrive. My heart falls back on old memories. I feel a pang of residual gut-clenching longing, as if I’m still standing in this spot, eight years younger, desperate for that old version of Derek to look up and notice me.

  Now, he squeezes my shoulder, unaware of my thoughts.

  I look up and he smiles like this is nothing—just another day of us being together—but I don’t take it for granted. Not for a single second.


  Derek ushers me toward the counter to order, his hand still on my shoulder.

  “The usual?” the barista asks us, already in motion to make our drinks.

  “The usual,” we say in tandem.

  Epilogue

  Whitney

  Ten years later

  “MOM. Katherine stole my Sugar Babies!”

  “No I didn’t! We traded!” Katherine protests with conviction. “I gave her Dots!”

  I’m inclined to call Katherine out on this gross act of injustice since Dots are at the bottom of the candy totem pole and we all know it. Instead, I hold up my hands as if this issue is out of my jurisdiction. “Girls, work it out.”

  Mom is off duty. Halloween night is officially over. We’ve returned from trick-or-treating inside the park and the annual candy dump-and-sort has commenced on the floor of the penthouse living room. If I attempt to leave my post at the window, there’s a good chance I’ll step on something gooey and half-melted, so I stay put.

  Annie locks eyes with her sister, shooting her the toughest grimace she can manage while dressed up as a pink woodland fairy—an exact replica of her favorite character from the Enchanted Forest. Her Aunt Carrie made the costume for her and she looks ridiculously cute in it, but I don’t think that’s the effect she’s going for at the moment while she and her sister have this very serious life-and-death standoff.

  “Okay, fine. You can have these Nerds too,” Katherine says, shaking the tiny purple box like a maraca before tossing it onto Annie’s candy pile. Annie considers this new peace offering for a moment with narrowed eyes then nods once, accepting her terms. Crisis averted. All is well.

  They immediately dive back into their candy organizing. Only a year and a half apart, the two of them could be twins with their dark auburn hair and big green eyes. Going off of appearances alone, it’s as if Derek had no hand in their creation, but they have so much of him under the surface, it’s eerie. Most days it feels like I’m dealing with two mini-Dereks.