Page 24 of The Impossible Princess
CLARA
Ella leans over my bed, her curly red hair tickling my nose. “Did he make a move?”
Early morning light slants across my eyes, and I shove her back, pulling the covers over my head so I can go back to thinking about last night.
“Not really.” My voice is muffled.
She jerks the entire blanket from my bed like a nosy matador. “I thought this was a binary choice. Yes, he made a move, or no he did not?”
“He kissed me—”
“Yes!”
I shake my head which shuts her up. “—on the cheek. Like, anOh you forgot your umbrella. Here it iskiss.”
“No.” She says it like water circling a drain. Nooooooo.
Ella flops back on the bed, jostling me.
The night was so good, but there is no way I could take his kiss as anything more than a polite salutation. Compared to Americans, Sondish people greet each other with kisses a lot, but compared to other Europeans, we do it very rarely. Perhaps Max comes from a kissing family. Perhaps he fell into the car and tried to make it less awkward. Discovering an answer to his motives feels harder than calculating the average airspeed velocity of a laden swallow.
I shake my head and slip from my bed. It’s good I wasn’t firmly kissed. I probably, almost certainly, very likely don’t want that. I told Max it would be better if we became friends, and that wasn’t a lie. Itwouldbe much better for my mother if Max were only my friend. But it wouldn’t be better for my lips.
Padding over to the chair, I shove my arms through an oversized robe as Ella sits cross-legged, watching me. “When is the next date?”
“Who says there’s going to be a next date?” I ask. It’s an obvious diversionary tactic, but I majored in international relations, not theater performance.
“He didn’t ask you out again?” Ella arches a skeptical brow, enjoying my one-man Liar McFibber Show.
“He asked,” I concede.
“And you told him no?”
“I told him the truth. I told him that dating is a bad idea and that I didn’t need the press attention on my social life right now.”
That sets her back. She can’t sense a lie because I haven’t told one.
“Did he talk about football the whole time? Did he go on and on about his ex? Does he have bad breath?”
A smile steals over my face as I remember the floss hoard and his lips, soft against my cheek. When I arrived at his house, Lieutenant Commander Andersen’s breath was like flying over a field of mint growing through the icy tundra.
“You are killing me, Clara.”
“Friday,” I say, and she shrieks. I do a running tackle, clamping my hand over her mouth. “It’s not a date, and you can’t breathe a word.”
Her eyes are enormous, and she gives me a scowl before she nods her head. I don’t let go until she raises her hand and gives me her pinky.
I return the vow.
“Friday isn’t even a week away,” she says, dropping her voice into an intense, high-pitched whisper. “He likes you.”
I let her words settle against my intentions, absorbing them, wondering which of them is strong enough to dissolve the other. And then I stop wondering and repeat his words. “It’s only dinner. We agreed that we’re just going to be friends, and he said he needs company.” Ella rolls her eyes and I whack her. “What? It was nice to go someplace the press doesn’t follow, and it’s not like I’m going to marry him or anything.”
Ella laughs at the bare mention of the idea, and I cannot help the feeling in my heart—like a splinter being brushed the wrong way.
“Oh my gosh,” she gasps, “can you imagine what Mama would say? I’ll tell you what she’d say. She’d say, ‘Is this why your great-uncle abdicated the throne? So the royal family could drag home every no account commoner who crosses its path?’”
The specter of my great-uncle hangs over the family, reminding us of our fate if we don’t fall in line. Horst married a twice-divorced—and common—socialite and paid the price with his crown.
