He gets through the review in a haze of half-distracted shorthand and books it back toward the Residence. He’s pissed, honestly. Pissed at everything; a crawling, directionless bad mood that’s carrying him up the stairs toward the East and West Bedrooms.

He throws his bag down at the door of his room and kicks his shoes into the hallway, watching them bounce crookedly across the ugly antique rug.

“Well, good afternoon to you too, honey biscuit,” June’s voice says. When Alex glances up, she’s in her room across the hall, perched on a pastel-pink wingback chair. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks, asshole.”

He recognizes the stack of magazines in her lap as her weekly tabloid roundup, and he’s just decided he doesn’t want to know when she chucks one at him.

“New People for you,” she says. “You’re on page fifteen. Oh, and your BFF’s on page thirty-one.”

He casually extends her the finger over his shoulder and retreats into his room, slumping down onto the couch by the door with the magazine. Since he has it, he might as well.

Page fifteen is a picture of him the press team took two weeks ago, a nice, neat little package on him helping the Smithsonian with an exhibit about his mom’s historic presidential campaign. He’s explaining the story behind a CLAREMONT FOR CONGRESS ’04 yard sign, and there’s a brief write-up alongside it about how dedicated he is to the family legacy, blah blah blah.

He turns to page thirty-one and almost swears out loud.

The headline: WHO IS PRINCE HENRY’S MYSTERY BLONDE?

Three photos: the first, Henry out at a cafe in London, smiling over coffees at some anonymously pretty blond woman; the second, Henry, slightly out of focus, holding her hand as they duck behind the cafe; the third, Henry, halfway obscured by a shrub, kissing the corner of her mouth.

“What the fuck?”

There’s a short article accompanying the photos that gives the girl’s name, Emily something, an actress, and Alex was generally pissed before, but now he’s very singularly pissed, his entire shitty mood funneled down to the point on the page where Henry’s lips touch somebody’s skin that’s not his.

Who the fuck does Henry think he is? How fucking—how entitled, how aloof, how selfish do you have to be, to spend months becoming someone’s friend, let them show you all their weird gross weak parts, kiss them, make them question everything, ignore them for weeks, and go out with someone else and put it in the press? Everyone who’s ever had a publicist knows the only way anything gets into People is if you want the world to know.

He throws the magazine down and lunges to his feet, pacing. Fuck Henry. He should never have trusted the silver-spoon little shit. He should have listened to his gut.

He inhales, exhales.

The thing is. The thing. Is. He doesn’t know if, beyond the initial rush of anger, he actually believes Henry would do this. If he takes the Henry he saw in a teen magazine when he was twelve, the Henry who was so cold to him at the Olympics, the Henry who slowly came unraveled to him over months, and the Henry who kissed him in the shadow of the White House, and he adds them up, he doesn’t get this.

Alex has a tactical brain. A politician’s brain. It works fast, and it works in many, many directions at once. And right now, he’s thinking through a puzzle. He’s not always good at thinking: What if you were him? How would your life be? What would you have to do? Instead, he’s thinking: How do these pieces slot together?

He thinks about what Nora said: “Why do you think they’re always photographed?”

And he thinks about Henry’s guardedness, the way he carries himself with a careful separation from the world around him, the tension at the corner of his mouth. Then he thinks: If there was a prince, and he was gay, and he kissed someone, and maybe it mattered, that prince might have to run a little bit of interference.

And in one great mercurial swing, Alex is not just angry anymore. He’s sad too.

He paces back over to the door and slides his phone out of his messenger bag, thumbs open his messages. He doesn’t know which impulse to follow and wrestle into words that he can say to someone and make something, anything, happen.

Faintly, under it all, it occurs to him: This is all a very not-straight way to react to seeing your male frenemy kissing someone else in a magazine.

A little laugh startles out of him, and he walks over to his bed and sits on the edge of it, considering. He considers texting Nora, asking her if he can come over to finally have some big epiphany. He considers calling Rafael Luna and meeting him for beers and asking to hear all about his first gay sexual exploits as an REI-wearing teenage antifascist. And he considers going downstairs and asking Amy about her transition and her wife and how she knew she was different.

But in the moment, it feels right to go back to the source, to ask someone who’s seen whatever is in his eyes when a boy touches him.

Henry’s out of the question. Which leaves one person.

“Hello?” says the voice over the phone. It’s been at least a year since they last talked, but Liam’s Texas drawl is unmistakable and warm in Alex’s eardrum.

He clears his throat. “Uh, hey, Liam. It’s Alex.”

“I know,” Liam says, desert-dry.

“How, um, how have you been?”

A pause. The sound of quiet talking in the background, dishes. “You wanna tell me why you’re really calling, Alex?”

“Oh,” he starts and stops, tries again. “This might sound weird. But, um. Back in high school, did we have, like, a thing? Did I miss that?”

There’s a clattering sound on the other side of the phone, like a fork being dropped on a plate. “Are you seriously calling me right now to talk about this? I’m at lunch with my boyfriend.”

“Oh.” He didn’t know Liam had a boyfriend. “Sorry.”

The sound goes muffled, and when Liam speaks again, it’s to someone else. “It’s Alex. Yeah, him. I don’t know, babe.” His voice comes back clear again. “What exactly are you asking me?”

“I mean, like, we messed around, but did it, like, mean something?”

“I don’t think I can answer that question for you,” Liam tells him. If he’s still anything like Alex remembers, he’s rubbing one hand on the underside of his jaw, raking through the stubble. He wonders faintly if, perhaps, his clear-as-day memory of Liam’s stubble has just answered his own question for him.

“Right,” he says. “You’re right.”

“Look, man,” Liam says. “I don’t know what kind of sexual crisis you’re having right now, like, four years after it would have been useful, but, well. I’m not saying what we did in high school makes you gay or bi or whatever, but I can tell you I’m gay, and that even though I acted like what we were doing wasn’t gay back then, it super was.” He sighs. “Does that help, Alex? My Bloody Mary is here and I need to talk to it about this phone call.”

“Um, yeah,” Alex says. “I think so. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Liam sounds so long-suffering and tired that Alex thinks about all those times back in high school, the way Liam used to look at him, the silence between them since, and feels obligated to add, “And, um. I’m sorry?”

“Jesus Christ,” Liam groans, and hangs up.

SIX

Henry can’t avoid him forever.

There’s one part of the post-royal wedding arrangement left to fulfill: Henry’s presence at a state dinner at the end of January. England has a relatively new prime minister, and Ellen wants to meet him. Henry’s coming too, staying in the Residence as a courtesy.

Alex smooths out the lapels on his tux and hovers close to June and Nora as the guests roll in, waiting at the north entrance near the photo line. He’s aware that he’s rocking anxiously on his heels but can’t seem to stop. Nora smirks but says nothing. She’s keeping it quiet. He’s still not ready to tell June. Telling his sister is irreversible, and he can’t do that until he’s figured out what exactly this is.

Henry enters stage right.

His suit is black, smooth, elegant. Perfect. Alex wants to rip it off.

His face is reserved, then downright ashen when he sees Alex in the entrance hall. His footsteps stutter, as if he’s thinking of making a run for it. Alex is not above a flying tackle.

Instead, he keeps walking up the steps, and—

“All right, photos,” Zahra hisses over Alex’s shoulder.

“Oh,” Henry says, like an idiot. Alex hates how much he likes the way that one stupid vowel curls in his accent. He’s not even into British accents. He’s into Henry’s British accent.

“Hey,” Alex says under his breath. Fake smile, handshake, cameras flashing. “Cool to see you’re not dead or anything.”

“Er,” Henry says, adding to the list of vowel sounds he has to show for himself. It is, unfortunately, also sexy. After all these weeks, the bar is low.