Page 62 of The Last Days of Lilah Goodluck

His tongue sweeps into my mouth and toys with mine. Teasing and inviting and turning me on. It is all so hot and good. He tastes faintly of beer and mostly of warmth. Not a flavor I would have recognized before, but here we are. I can’t explain it, but he’s everything. He’s just everything. I don’t know when my hands went rogue. They are, however, pawing at him like there’s no tomorrow. How shameful. The thrill of running my fingertips over his warm skin. Over his stomach and around his sides and up the strong lines of his back. I want to mark him with my nails just a little. Just enough to leave a reminder that I was there.

A sound of pure need comes from deep in his throat and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. My skin is electric and alive. Everything low in me squeezes tight in want. My vagina is a total traitor. Catching my breath seems to take forever.

“You lied, Ali. That was not a simple kiss on the cheek. Not even a little.”

He rests his forehead against mine and says, “We could still fuck tonight. Now. Right now.”

“No. I want to do this right. It matters to me.” My heart is galloping inside my chest. Just running right out of control. I push him back and pull myself together. “I’m leaving. I’m going home. I mean it this time.”

“Just to check I have made myself absolutely clear. I don’t want you to have sex with someone else. Let me give you what you want. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You’re really leaving?”

I nod.

His face is now a careful blank. As if he’s reined in his hunger. But his lips are swollen and damp from me. Then he says these words like a promise: “Stay near the light by the gate where I can see you. We’ll continue this tomorrow.”

14

Friday

My grandma Inge rests in a cemetery half an hour from my parents’ house. Mom visits regularly to share the tea. I was young when Grandma passed, and I don’t really have many memories of her. Just of the scent of lavender from her perfume. But she and Mom were close. Mom still likes to talk to her as if she were here.

“You explain the photos of you with the prince,” says Mom, arranging the bouquet of wildflowers I bought in the stone vase attached to the headstone. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

I sit on the grass beneath another clear blue California sky. Last night with Alistair shook me. I can’t even think about what comes next on my wish list. There are bruises from lack of sleep beneath my eyes. If lying awake making up imaginary conversations that will most likely never happen were an Olympic sport, I would be representing the country in no time. My state of mind is also evident from my outfit—safe and comfortable old clothes. Like the oversize hoodie from senior year. It’s seen me through it all: relationship breakups, series binges, and everything in between. But beneath my homely clothing, my legs and pits are freshly shaved, and every inch of me has been lotioned. “He’s not a prince. Though I don’t see that it’s anybody’s business what his parents’ relationship was exactly.”

“She’s talking about Alistair Lennox,” Mom explains to Grandma’s grave. “You remember the scandal. That poor boy. He was so young.” Then she turns to me. “Inge was a royalist. But she preferred the Danish royal family over the English, of course. She threw such a party for Margrethe’s coronation.”

“What about you?” I ask. “Do you have any interest in royalty?”

“I don’t mind the occasional funeral or wedding. All the pomp and pageantry, the pretty dresses and hats.”

“Yeah, but the king always seems like such a miserable ass.”

Mom clicks her tongue. “And yet he’s still your friend’s father. Though, to be honest, I never liked the man either. I detested him for his behavior. For not publicly claiming Alistair as his son or acknowledging him in some way. It was obvious the boy was his. His affair with Lady Helena was common enough knowledge. They were pictured together in the gossip magazines all the time. Inge used to buy them. She lived and breathed all that nonsense. Said she bought them for the crosswords, but we all knew better. Of course, I told her they were trash and then read them when she wasn’t looking.”

I laugh.

“They caught him coming and going from her apartment at all hours of the day and night. And Alistair looked exactly like him when he was little. Though he grew out of that and started to take more after his mother’s side as he got older. But I don’t know how you could have a soul and treat a child that way. I can’t imagine what it does. To be rejected by your father and then hounded by the press.”

“I think it’d cause a whole heaping lot of trauma with a side order of trust issues,” I say. “Why didn’t the king acknowledge him, do you think?”

“The focus was supposed to be on him and his shiny new fiancée. How expensive and over-the-top their wedding would be. Their entire existence is about clinging to outdated traditions. I think they’re fighting a losing battle with the modern world, and that poor little boy got caught in the cross fire,” she says. “It always struck me as curious timing, though. How news of your friend’s existence was leaked at just that moment.”

“Yeah. I agree. They never did find out who did it. Or they never said publicly who did it.”

“But the king reaped what he sowed. It’s not like he and his missus look particularly happy when they’re together these days, do they?” she asks. “I don’t even think they share the same castle.”

“No, they don’t. Not according to the gossip sites, at least.”

Cemeteries are kind of cool. I can’t say that I’ve spent much time in one before. But in full daylight, they’re not so spooky. There are lots of trees, and apart from the occasional person visiting a loved one’s grave, it’s peaceful and quiet. I could get used to this. Guess we all do in the end.

“I hope you’ll come and visit me and tell me all the news when I’m dead,” I say without thinking.

Mom laughs. “I’ll be gone long before you and buried just over there.”

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