Page 16 of American Prince (New Camelot Trilogy 2)
“You can’t hum shit.”
And then he’d try to hum something, the theme song from Friends or the chorus to Usher’s “Yeah!” which had been playing non-stop from the rec room for weeks, and I’d start throwing my balled up socks at him to get him to stop. And then he’d say again, quieter, “I still want to learn how to dance.”
“Sounds like an excellent chapter title for your memoir.”
Colchester had wrinkled up that sweet forehead. “Why would I write a memoir?”
“For when you run for President. You can’t be a President without a book first.”
And those wrinkles would get deeper, and he’d look so puzzled and handsome at my joke that my ribs would fracture from the pressure of it. And then to make that fracturing stop, I’d change the subject and say, “Bet you miss those nights in Prague.”
And his look would grow thoughtful and soft. “Yes,” he’d say. “There are things I miss about Prague for sure.”
All this is to say, I was certain that Colchester enjoyed every moment he spent with Morgan, but I didn’t want to tell Morgan that. It was petty of me, especially because she looked so downcast after I said it, and then I felt a resurgence of the guilt that chewed at me every night, the guilt that said, you’re selfish, you’re evil, you shoot guns at people and you don’t care if they live or die. And now it said, you can’t have Colchester, he doesn’t want you. Are you really going to deny Morgan and him a chance to be happy?
“I don’t know why I said that,” I said quickly. “I’m sure he does. If I see him before you do, I’ll make sure that he knows you’re here.”
“Good.” She breathed out a long breath and looked at me with an uncharacteristically vulnerable look. “I just need to talk to him is all. Not even long, if he doesn’t have long. But I just…” She looked down at her lap and twisted the belt of her trench coat around her fingers. “Please, Embry. I know it was just a week, but I can’t stop thinking about him. About us—how I want there to be an us. And he needs to know…”
How could life get any worse in the middle of a war?
Why, having to match-make for Colchester and Morgan again, that’s how.
“Okay,” I said, scrubbing at my face. “I’ll take care of it.”
But it ended up being harder to take care of than I thought. Colchester was on patrol in the next valley over, and I couldn’t exactly radio in to tell him my sister was here and wanted to fuck him. I finally managed to convey it, awkwardly enough, by radioing him and telling him he had a visitor from Prague.
“A visitor from Prague?” Even through the static, he sounded doubtful.
Sigh. “You know, man. An old friend from Prague. She’s here on base to see you. She misses you.”
“Oh.” Even though the response was short, I could hear Colchester’s men laughing at him over the radio. “Tell her I’ll see her soon.”
But soon took a while, and after two days, Morgan was downright fretful, pacing in my room as I packed up my bag for my own patrol in a few days.
“Why won’t he come back? What are they doing out there?”
I had folded the same blanket five or six times, just so I didn’t have to look at her flushed face and be reminded of how powerful her feelings were, which only reminded me of how conflicted I was about all this. “Morgan, please. He has a job to do. I
have a job to do. You, on the other hand, are only pretending to work. Why don’t you go to Kiev for a few days? Go to a museum, see some old Soviet shit.”
She sat on my bed, chewing on her lip, seeming to turn over this idea. There had been a time when she’d been an architectural studies major, before the redoubtable Vivienne had pressured her to switch to poli-sci. Deep inside this baby lobbyist was still a girl who dragged me to every museum in every place we ever visited.
“The guidebook in my hotel room says there’s a medieval church in Glein. Maybe I’ll go see that tomorrow.” She sighed, closing her eyes. “I just need to talk to him. Is that so much for the universe to give me?”
I grew up in Seattle. Whenever white girls in their twenties started talking about “the universe,” I knew the conversation had reached the end of reason.
“Go to the church, Morgan. Take some pictures for Mom and your dad. I bet by the time you get back Colchester will be done with his patrol and you can talk to him, and sneak him back to your hotel for more spanking sessions.”
She glanced up at me with a sharp look, but she didn’t respond.
And when I kissed her goodbye, I had no idea that the next time I saw her she’d be bleeding from a Carpathian bullet and surrounded by flames.
7
Embry
after
