There’s a diamond ring on Zahra’s finger when she shows up with her coffee thermos and a thick stack of files. They’re in June’s room, scarfing down breakfast before Zahra and June leave for a rally in Pittsburgh, and June drops her waffle on the bedspread.

“Oh my God, Z, what is that? Did you get engaged?”

Zahra looks down at the ring and shrugs. “I had the weekend off.”

June gapes at her.

“When are you going to tell us who you’re dating?” Alex asks. “Also, how?”

“Uh-uh, nope,” she says. “You don’t get to say shit to me about secret relationships in and around this campaign, princess.”

“Point,” Alex concedes.

She brushes past the topic as June starts wiping syrup off the bed with her pajama pants. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover this morning, so focus up, little Claremonts.”

She’s got detailed agendas for each of them, bullet-pointed and double-sided, and she dives right in. They’re already on Thursday’s voter registration drive in Cedar Rapids (Alex is pointedly not invited) when her phone pings with a notification. She picks it up, scrolling through the screen offhandedly.

“So I need both of you to be dressed and ready … by…” She’s looking more closely at the screen, distracted. “By, uh…” Her face is taken over with a horrified gasp. “Oh, fuck my ass.”

“What—?” Alex starts, but his own phone buzzes in his lap, and he looks down to find a push notification from CNN: LEAKED SURVEILLANCE FOOTAGE SHOWS PRINCE HENRY AT DNC HOTEL.

“Oh, shit,” Alex says.

June reads over his shoulder; somehow, some “anonymous source” got the security camera footage from the lobby of the Beekman that night of the DNC.

It’s not … explicitly damning, but it very clearly does show the two of them walking out of the bar together, shoulder to shoulder, flanked by Cash, and it cuts to footage from the elevator, Henry’s arm around Alex’s waist while they talk with Cash. It ends with the three of them getting off together at the top floor.

Zahra looks up at him, practically murderous. “Can you explain to me why this one day of our lives will not stop haunting me?”

“I don’t know,” Alex says miserably. “I can’t believe this is the one that’s—I mean, we’ve done riskier things than this—”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better how?”

“I just mean, like, who is leaking fucking elevator tapes? Who’s checking for that? It’s not like Solange was in there—”

A chirp from June’s phone interrupts him, and she swears when she looks at it. “Jesus, that Post reporter just texted to ask for a comment on the speculation surrounding your relationship with Henry and whether it—whether it has to do with you leaving the campaign after the DNC.” She looks between Alex and Zahra, eyes wide. “This is really bad, isn’t it?”

“It ain’t great,” Zahra says. She’s got her nose buried in her phone, furiously typing out what are probably very strongly worded emails to the press team. “What we need is a fucking diversion. We have to—to send you on a date or something.”

“What if we—” June attempts.

“Or, fuck, send him on a date,” Zahra says. “Send you both on dates.”

“I could—” June tries again.

“Who the fuck do I call? What girl is gonna want to wade into this shitstorm to fake date either of you at this point?” Zahra grinds the heels of both hands against her eyes. “Jesus, be a gay beard.”

“I have an idea!” June finally half shouts. When they both look at her, she’s biting her lip, looking at Alex. “But I don’t know if you’re gonna like it.”

She turns her phone around to show them the screen. It’s a photo he recognizes as one of the ones they took for Pez in Texas, June and Henry lounging on the dock together. She’s cropped Nora out so it’s just the two of them, Henry sporting a wide, teasing grin under his sunglasses and June planting a kiss on his cheek.

“I was on that floor too,” she says. “We don’t have to, like, confirm or deny anything. But we can imply something. Just to take the heat off.”

Alex swallows.

He’s always known June was one inch from taking a bullet for him, but this? He would never ask her to do this.

But the thing is … it would work. Their social media friendship is well documented, even if half of it is GIFs of Colin Firth. Out of context, the photo looks as couple-y as anything, like a nice, gorgeous, heterosexual couple on vacation together. He looks over to Zahra.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Zahra says. “We’d have to get Henry on board. Can you do that?”

Alex releases a breath. He absolutely doesn’t want this, but he’s also not sure what other choice he has. “Um. Yeah, I. Yeah, I think so.”

* * *

“This is kind of exactly what we said we didn’t want to do,” Alex says into his phone.

“I know,” Henry tells him across the line. His voice is shaky. Philip is waiting on Henry’s other line. “But.”

“Yeah,” Alex says. “But.”

June posts the picture from Texas, and it immediately burns through her stats to become her new most-liked post.

Within hours, it’s everywhere. BuzzFeed puts up a comprehensive guide to Henry and June’s relationship, leading off with that goddamn photo of them dancing at the royal wedding. They dig up photos from the night in LA, analyze Twitter interactions. “Just when you thought June Claremont-Diaz couldn’t get any more #goals,” one article writes, “has she secretly had her own Prince Charming all along?” Another one speculates, “Did HRH’s best friend Alex introduce them?”

June’s relieved, only because she managed to find a way to protect him, even though it means the world is digging through her life for answers and evidence, which makes Alex want to murder everyone. He also wants to grab people by the shoulders and shake them and tell them Henry is his, you idiots, even though the whole point of this was for it to be believable. He shouldn’t feel wronged deep in his gut. But that everyone seems enamored, when the only difference between the lie and the truth that would burn up Fox News is the gender involved … well, it fucking stings.

Henry is quiet. He says enough for Alex to glean that Philip is apoplectic and Her Majesty is annoyed but pleased Henry has finally found himself a girlfriend. Alex feels horrible about it. The stifling orders, pretending to be someone he’s not—Alex has always tried to be a refuge for Henry from it all. It was never supposed to come from his side too.

It’s bad. It’s stomach-cramps, walls-closing-in, no-plan-B-if-this-fails bad. He was in London barely two weeks ago, kissing Henry in front of a Giambologna. Now, this.

There’s another piece in their back pocket that’ll sell it. The only relationship in his life that can get more mileage than any of this. Nora comes to him at the Residence wearing bright red lipstick and presses cool, patient fingers against his temples and says, “Take me on a date.”

They choose a college neighborhood full of people who’ll sneak shots on their phones and post them everywhere. Nora slides her hand into his back pocket, and he tries to focus on the comfort of her physical presence against his side, the familiar frizz of her curls against his cheek.

For half a second, he allows a small part of him to think about how much easier things would be if this were the truth: sliding back into comfortable, easy harmony with his best friend, leaving greasy fingerprints along her waistline outside Jumbo Slice, laughing at her crass jokes. If he could love her like people wanted him to, and she loved him, and there wasn’t any more to it than that.

But she doesn’t, and he can’t, and his heart is on a plane over the Atlantic right now, coming to DC to seal the deal over a well-photographed lunch with June the next day. Zahra sends him an email full of Twitter threads about him and Nora that night when he’s in bed, and he feels sick.

Henry lands in the middle of the night and isn’t even allowed to come near the Residence, instead sequestered in a hotel across town. He sounds exhausted when he calls in the morning, and Alex holds the phone close and promises he’ll try to find a way to see him before he flies back out.

“Please,” Henry says, paper-thin.

His mother, the rest of the administration, and half of the press at this point are caught up for the day dealing with news of a North Korean missile test; nobody notices when June lets him climb into her SUV with her that morning. June holds onto his elbow and makes half-hearted jokes, and when they pull up a block from the cafe, she offers him an apologetic smile.

“I’ll tell him you’re here,” she says. “If nothing else, maybe that’ll make it a little easier for him.”

“Thanks,” he says. Before she opens the door to leave, he catches her by the wrist and says, “Seriously. Thank you.”