Page 18 of Rivals
It was weird, picking up the thread of their friendship as ifthe events of the past year hadn’t happened—weird, but not impossible. Nina had mentioned it to Sam the last time they’d talked, and Sam had nearly shrieked over the phone. “Thank god,” she’d exclaimed. “Now we can quit being awkward and all hang out together, just like old times!”
Nina smiled at the memory, holding out her student ID to buzz herself into the Chalet. As she started inside, her phone rang. She felt a cautious glow of surprise when she saw the prince’s name on her screen.
“Jeff. Hey,” she said uncertainly.
“Nina!” he exclaimed, as if it wasn’t unusual to be calling her. “I was wondering, do you know how to get to Clyburn Hall?”
“The dining hall?” She paused in the hallway, propping her phone against her shoulder. Had Jeff not eaten on campusyet?
“Yes, exactly. Want to grab dinner?”
Someone who didn’t know Jeff might have assumed he was just being friendly and outgoing, but Nina heard the hesitancy beneath his casual tone. Prince Jefferson, the most famous and beloved young man in America, wasnervous.He didn’t want to show up at the dining hall and have to sit alone.
“Meet me in half an hour,” she told him.
Jeff’s eyes widened as Nina led him into the massive dining hall. His protection officer Matt—who was only a few years older, and dressed in a King’s College sweatshirt and jeans—lingered unobtrusively in the corner, watching the prince’s movements. Nina smiled at him in greeting, then did her best to ignore him.
“You have lots of options,” she began, feeling like one of the campus tour guides waving a cheerful blue flag. “Thegrill always has burgers and sandwiches, and there’s a salad bar, and the hot-food line has tonight’s special.” She gestured to one of the food stations, where industrial-sized pots held steaming green curry and saag paneer.
Jeff clutched his plastic tray with both hands, as if he wasn’t quite sure how to hold it. “And I can get whatever I want?”
“Have you seriously never been in a cafeteria before? Not everything is a full-restaurant buyout, Jeff.” Nina was thinking of the first date he’d taken her on, when he’d rented out Matsuhara so that they could have a Michelin-starred sushi dinner alone. “You’ve got to face your subjects sometime,” she added, only half teasing.
Jeff met her gaze. “First of all, these aren’t my subjects; they’re Beatrice’s. And I don’t do restaurant buyouts because I’m scared of seeing people.”
You do it because your girlfriend is a snob,Nina thought.
“When I rent out an entire restaurant, it’s only because it seems unfair to all the other guests when I show up,” he went on. “They’ve gone out to celebrate something—a birthday, a friend moving to town, maybe just the fact that it’s Friday—and then I appear, and the spotlight shifts from them to me. It feels selfish to steal everyone’s night like that.”
“Oh,” Nina breathed, a little chastened.
There were some whispered comments and curious glances as they headed from one food station to another, but Jeff seemed oblivious, or perhaps he didn’t care. He was probably numb to it by now.
They hesitated at the entrance to the seating area, and then Nina saw a table of her friends. She beelined toward it, relieved.
“Hey, everyone. This is Jeff,” she announced, though he needed no introduction. “Jeff, this is Logan, Jayne, and—”
“Rachel,” Jeff remembered, scooting next to Rachel on thewooden bench. They had met last spring, when Jeff and Nina were dating. “Good to see you again.”
Rachel beamed at him. Nina eyed his plate, which was heaped with foods that didn’t seem to belong together: a burger and Indian food and mashed sweet potato. “Jeff. I know they have a lot of options, but it doesn’t mean you’re obligated to try everything.”
“You’re just jealous you didn’t think of this first.” He placed a hamburger patty between two slices of garlic naan and took an enormous bite.
“That’s genius,” declared Rachel’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Logan, with something like awe.
“So…Jeff.” Rachel clearly loved using his first name. “Where are you living?”
“I’m actually at home for now, since my sister is at the League of Kings conference. Maybe in the spring I’ll get to transfer to the dorms,” he said hopefully. “I don’t know. It was such a hassle when Beatrice lived at Harvard.”
Apparently no other students had been able to live on Beatrice’s hall. The school had installed biosecurity outside her door, posted video cameras in the hallways, and replaced her windows with bulletproof glass. None of it had been very popular with the other students.
On the bright side, Nina thought, there was no risk of running into Jeff on her way to the showers, wearing a towel.
The prince looked around the table and grinned. “I don’t want to miss out on anything, though. You’ll give me a heads-up when there’s a party, right?”
The table dissolved into easy conversation as everyone discussed classes, the school football game this weekend, the perennial rumor that the university would start breaking up on-campus parties, which were usually ignored. Nina sat back, content to listen as Jeff charmed her friends. It was funny—attimes like this he seemed almost like another ordinary student hanging out at dinner.
Eventually they headed toward the ice cream bar at the back of the dining hall, Nina joking about how many scoops Jeff would get. “At least three, depending on whether they have mint chocolate chip today,” she teased.
