by J. J. McAvoy
“I’m not doing—”
“Sorry, sweetheart, I have to go. We’re getting to the fundraiser. The car will come back for you later. Bye, love you!” And she hung up.
I stared at the phone in shock.
No way.
There was no way this was really happening! Things like this didn’t happen in real life. There had to be some way...
“May I speak now or—”
“The front desk!” I snapped my fingers at him, grinning as I started to dial. It rang only once before someone answered.
“Good evening, Ms. Wyntor. How may I help you?”
I stood up straighter, calming myself, and put a smile on my face. “Hello, hi. There is something wrong with my front door. I’m unable to get out. I was wondering if someone could please come and fix it for me.”
“Of course, Ms. Wyntor. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. Please hold,” she said, and I smiled, nodding proudly as I walked about the front entrance.
It was only when I turned and found him watching me that I remembered he was there, like a ghost. Spinning back around, I faced the door.
“Ms. Wyntor?”
“Yes, I’m here,” I said politely.
“It seems your mother has already called maintenance, and they said they are currently working on the issue.”
How is this happening! What did she do, bribe them?
“Thank you,” I said through gritted teeth before hanging up. “Bravo, Mom. Bravo.” Breathe. I’ll just talk to him calmly. “So, it seems like...” I trailed off as I turned around only to see he wasn’t there anymore. I stepped forward, but he was just gone. “Where the hell did he go?”
“I’m here.” A hand popped up from behind the couch. “I beg your pardon, but I’m exhausted.”
Walking up to it, I peered over to find him lying on it, his eyes closed. The first things I noticed were how long his eyelashes were and how smooth his face seemed to be, his hair styled, too. He looked...perfectly princely.
Well, that’s what he is. But...ugh, never mind—
“You were saying?” His eyes opened, staring up at me.
I jumped back.
“Relax. I’m not going to murder or rape you.” He frowned, closing his eyes again.
Right, he’d heard that. “Uhh... I was just saying that because my mom is a bit—”
“Crazy?”
“Don’t call her that!” I snapped.
“Didn’t you?”
I frowned. “She’s my mom, so I can, but you’re—”
“Her future son-in-law?” he replied, a smile on his lips.
“As if! How can you even joke about that? Better yet, how can you just come here? Don’t you have prince stuff to do?”
He chuckled, the corner of his lips turning up, but he refused to open his eyes. “Marrying who you are told to marry is prince stuff.”
“What is this, 1808?” I frowned. “You can’t just force people to marry each other.”
“That is what I said. Then they reminded me I’m not a person—I’m a prince. I’m property of the crown, and the crown requires I marry a very rich woman. You are that woman. So, whether I like it or not, I was ordered to come to this...fabulous country where I can be talked down to at the border, dragged shopping by a mother for a costume I did not want to wear for a holiday I dislike, then told to shut up by her daughter before being forced to sleep on a couch,” he stated.
A small twinge of guilt rose inside me.
“Welcome to America. The land of equality...well, sort of,” I replied.
He opened his mouth to say something, but all of a sudden, his stomach growled, and then he shut his mouth again. I tried not to laugh.
“She really didn’t offer you food?”
“If the she you are referring to is your mother, then no, she didn’t. She said we needed to hurry for me to get this ridiculous costume.” He frowned again.
“I’m only getting something for you because you are a victim of this madness, too.” I shook my head.
Cinderella felt more realistic than my own life story right now.
What did princes eat anyway?
I am a cliché.
Despite all my best effort and reasonable thought, I became a cliché within seconds. I didn’t see it coming. It just swept me off my feet. How? Well, there was this moment in movies, books, plays—anything that told a story, really—where the hero meets his heroine, and he’s completely blinded by her beauty.
Romeo said, upon seeing Juliet, “Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”
King Arthur said upon seeing Genevieve, “And this damsel is the most virtuous and fairest that I know living, or yet that ever I could find.”
In A Farewell to Arms, Frederic said about Catherine, “When I saw her, I was in love with her. Everything turned over inside of me.”
It was ridiculous.
Just prose by poets.
The world didn’t work like that, nor would it be possible to ever feel like that in real life. And yet, when I turned around... She stood on the stairs, staring down at me with her blue dress pooled around her, flowing over the steps like water—as if she had arisen from some magical sea. Her long, thick curls framed her sweet and innocent face, and her brown eyes were wide, mesmerizing, and only focused on me.
At that moment, in that brief second before she screamed bloody murder, all I could think was, the poets are right. No one will believe me, and many others will think I am insane. But I want the sun to rise with my name on her lips and my hand on her hips.
Yes, just because she was beautiful—even more so in person than in pictures—I was at a loss for what to do.
Was it love at first sight?
No.
But I would be lying if I said I was not just a little bit happy at how she looked. Yes, it was shallow, but so be it. I could work with this.
“Sorry, I don’t usually stay here, so there isn’t really any other food but leftover pizza,” she explained. “I only ordered it like an hour ago, so...”
I looked down at the pepperoni pizza and the bottle of water she brought over to the coffee table. My brain couldn’t even begin to process the last twenty-four hours of my life. I glanced back up at her, and once again, I was blinded by her brown eyes that held me captive.
“Never mind.” She reached down for the plate. “There will be better food at the fundraiser so—”
“May I get a fork and a knife?” I asked, stopping her from taking the plate.
“A fork and knife? For pizza?” she repeated, tilting her head in confusion but then just nodded, turning to leave again.
At that moment, I drank from the water bottle, trying to knock down whatever was stuck in my throat. Sighing, I snickered to myself, shaking my head. Pizza. I had romantic literature on my mind, and she was worried about the pizza. If that wasn’t a reality check, I wasn’t sure what else was.
“Here.” She handed me silverware and a napkin.
“Thank you,” I said, taking it from her.
“No problem,” she replied, taking a seat right in front of me, on the opposite side of the coffee table. Her dress puffed up and spread around her. I was accustomed to people watching me eat, but for some reason, her gaze was just so...undeterred. She stared at me as if she were trying to analyze a foreign species. I stopped mid-cut and met her gaze.
She blinked a few times before she spoke. “I’m staring.”
“Just a little bit.”
“Sorry, please eat,” she said, quickly getting up to move to the other side of the couch. She pulled out her phone, but she watched me out of the corner of her eye.
“You are not going to take a picture of me while I’m eating, are you?” I asked, slightly annoyed.
“No...why would think that?” she said slowly, confused.
I said nothing, and she kept silent, but I could still see her checking her phone and then looking back at me every few minutes whe
n she thought I wasn’t looking. It was only when I caught her scrolling from the corner of my eye—it was hard to see—that I saw an image of myself. I sighed and turned back to her. “You’re making me anxious.”
“Me?” she said, surprised.
I nodded, wiping the corner of my mouth. “Yes, you. You are hunched over your phone like some stalker—”
“Stalker? You’re in my house.”
“I didn’t stalk you to get in here. You, however, are Googling me—”
“I don’t use Google. I use—”
“Right, you are Etheusing me.”
“I am not...” she lied badly, placing the phone behind her back.
My eyebrow raised.
“Okay, I am,” she admitted. “But...I’m not sure what to do with a prince.”
“I’m not a dog. You don’t have to do anything. Though if there is anything you want to find out, it would be easier just to ask me, seeing as how I am seated right next to you.”
“Would you tell me the truth? Or will you say it’s some royal secret?” She eyed me carefully.
I frowned at that. “It is a bit poor taste to insinuate I am a liar before actually asking me anything.”
“I wasn’t insinuating you would lie. You could simply refuse to tell me. That isn’t a lie. You don’t owe me anything. I wouldn’t tell you anything about me—”
“As of now, I have no questions since I was given a whole profile on you,” I said, lifting the pizza and taking another bite. I enjoyed the stunned and mortified look that grew on her face.
“By profile you mean—”
“Photo, date and location of birth, weight, height, likes, dislikes, hobbies. Even the locations of all the birthmarks you have on your body,” I replied, taking another bite in order to hide my grin.
Her whole face was void of emotions for a brief second before she opened her mouth again, and I recoiled, preparing for another scream. Instead, she said, “You’re lying.”
I thought about just reciting everything, but for some reason, I wanted to see her get all furious again. So, I pointed to my chest right under my heart. “You have a birthmark right here, correct?”
Her gaze went from my chest, then back to her own and then to my face. She grabbed a pillow, and I didn’t see it coming.
“What the hell?” she hollered at me, throwing it at my head. “You freaking stalker!”
“Aye.” I grabbed the pillow, rising from the couch. “You were just searching me, too.”
“I don’t have a whole profile on you.” She got up as well.
“I didn’t ask for one on you!”
“You just read it!”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Give it back and say, ‘I’m not going to invade a stranger’s personal life.’”
“You are being very hypocritical at this moment. Again, you were looking into my—”
“You’re a prince! You are a public figure.”
“You’re an heiress and singer! You’re also a public figure.”
She stopped, and I wished she hadn’t taken that deep breath because I was acutely aware of how the tops of her breast rose from the top of her dress. She sat back down, kicking off her...glass slippers? What? They really made those?
She tucked her legs underneath her and folded her arms under her breasts—again, not helping.
“Fine.” She shot me a glare. “I’m sort of a public figure, too. Still, the fact that they put down such personal details is...a bit much.”
“It’s their job. They’d rather you be angry at them for having invaded your privacy than provide less information that could endanger a royal family member,” I tried to explain, tossing the pillow back onto the couch between us. “Besides, you are not a stranger. You are meant to be my future wife. All details concerning you were of importance.”
“Ugh. Stop saying that like it’s true.” She dropped her face into her hands. However, I guess whatever pins she had used to stabilizes her tiara gave way, and it fell forward. Reaching over her quickly, I grabbed it before it hit the ground.
“Thank God,” I whispered but then wanted to kick myself for my fear.
“Umm...”
Turning to her voice, I found her face very close to mine and my whole body now over hers. Backing up quickly, I held out the tiara to her. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to get so close. However, I could not let it fall.”
“It isn’t real.”
“Whether it is made of diamonds or not, it is a symbol of the monarchy. In Ersovia, if a tiara or crown falls to the ground, it means the end of that noble or that royal house,” I whispered, lifting the headpiece back to her hair, but she stopped me.
“Let’s not risk that again. I’ll just take it off,” she replied, taking it carefully from my hands and moving to put it on the coffee table. She paused and glanced around. She then reached for the pillow between us and placed the tiara on it before setting the pillow on the ground.
I smiled. Technically, it could fall to the floor but just couldn’t fall off the noble who was wearing it, but it was too convoluted and currently unimportant to get into.
“I’m surprised you did not say it was just superstition,” I replied when she sat back up. My body had reacted on impulse even though I didn’t believe in those silly superstitions, but apparently, some part of me listened too much to my mother.
“You dove over me to save it. Superstition or not, it was important to you, so I’ll do my best not to make you freak out.” She smiled warmly back at me.
And like an idiot, I felt myself smiling back at her.
Get a hold of yourself.
“Ugh.” I coughed and reached for my water. “You don’t need to search for anything. You are free to ask me any questions. I shall be honest.”
She eyed me like she didn’t believe me.
“I swear, I shall. So long as you swear you do not speak a word of what I tell you to anyone else.”
“Deal.” She turned her body around and faced me again. Odette raised an eyebrow, and I turned and did the same thing.
“Ask away.”
“Why in the h—why does the royal family of Ersovia want me to marry into it? Are you all lacking women or something?”
“The current population is actually fifty-one point seven percent women—”
“Then, why me? An American. Let alone an African American.” She was just as blunt as her mother. “Don’t give me that look. It’s Europe.”
“Ersovia has gotten very diverse over—”
“You aren’t answering,” she interjected. “Of all the women in the world you could have—”
“You are extremely rich,” I replied, just as blunt.
“Money? That’s the reason.”
I nodded.
She had a right to the truth. Once the public found out, there was going to be no way to ignore it, anyway.
“This world is full of millionaires. But a monarchy prefers more security than that. What are the odds of finding a woman worth billions, who is currently unmarried and young enough to marry? So the truth is that I am here as a gold digger.”
“You wouldn’t be the first one,” she said, not in the least bit surprised or fazed.
“Is there a line of eligible suitors I skipped in front of?”
“Eligible suitors?” She laughed. “You speak as if you came out of a Jane Austen novel.”
“Is my English wrong?”
“No, it’s just very proper. But I guess that’s how they taught it to you so...anyway.” She shook her head, causing her curls to spin out around her. “You’re not the first of your kind, Your Royalness, though you are the first to admit it straight to my face like this, so good for you...I guess.”
“So, what does my honesty get me?” I asked, looking her over. I didn’t know why I was enjoying this, but I was.
“It definitely doesn’t get you marriage.”
“Of course not. But there was something else I wanted for it.”
<
br /> “What?” she asked skeptically.
I stretched out my hand. “An introduction.” I watched her realize neither of us had actually been introduced to each other. However, for some reason, she grinned.
“Hello, I’m Cinderella.”
Cracking my jaw to the side, I nodded. She didn’t want to get that close yet. She wanted us to be strangers still. Fine, I would play along.
“Hello, Cinderella. I am your Prince Charming for the night.”
Chapter 7
I couldn’t help but laugh. His reply was cheesy, even though I was being a bit immature by not properly introducing myself.
“You are laughing at me.” He pouted, and it was wrong how cute he looked. “Meanwhile, I was forced into this costume for your sake.”
“My sake?” I repeated and then remembered who was responsible for the outfit I was currently wearing. “My mom forced you to be my prince charming tonight.”
“Forced is an understatement.” He shook his head. “Your mother is...very queen-like.”
“What?”
“She gives no room for argument or disagreement and possesses the ability to leave you absolutely tongue-tied while maintaining a pleasant demeanor.” He described her so clearly I could automatically see it.
“Please don’t tell her that,” I said, leaning onto the side of the couch. “She’ll only say, ‘of course, because I am a queen.”
“She means her beauty titles?” he questioned.
I nodded. “It doesn’t matter how many years have gone by. She still acts as if she won them yesterday. I used to joke that she was prouder of those titles then she was of me.”
“And what was her reply to that?” he asked like he knew my mother wouldn’t let me win that argument. He was right, but he shouldn’t have picked that up so quickly.
“She said if not for those titles, I wouldn’t be alive, so I should be grateful.” I snickered to myself. Then I paused, sitting up quickly, frowning.
“What is it?”
I was so overwhelmed by him being here that I didn’t have time to process and think over what my mother was doing. “I shouldn’t be talking to you!”