Page 23 of Rivals
“Oh my god, Your Royal Majesty! It’s such an honor!” She sank into the lowest curtsy Sam had ever seen, so deep that it was practically a yoga move. Sam tried not to laugh at how terribly the girl had bungled her title. These Hollywood types were so over-the-top.
“Hi, it’s nice to meet you…” Sam trailed off expectantly, and the girl jumped to provide her name.
“Ashley,” she chirped. “Sorry, I know you two are, like, having a moment”—she nodded at the plate of half-eaten pizza, and Sam felt Marshall chuckling quietly next to her—“but I wanted to introduce myself, since I’ll be playing you.”
Sam stared, bewildered, as Ashley gestured toward a young man who’d come to stand next to her. He was unquestionablygorgeous, with deep brown skin and the hint of a beard. “R.J. will be playing you, of course, Your Grace,” Ashley added, turning to Marshall. “Isn’t he well cast?”
That was when Sam realized that Ashley looked a lot likeher—just thinner and prettier, her hair a little longer and glossier, her arms a little more toned.
Ashley and R.J. were the Hollywood versions of Sam and Marshall.
Sam exchanged a glance with Marshall, who looked equally perplexed. “What’s the movie?”
“A made-for-TV romance about you two, calledQueen of Hearts.”
“I’m not the queen. My sister is,” Sam said automatically.
“Oh my god, right? I told the producer it was a cheesy title, but she ignored me!” Ashley beamed as if she and Sam had suddenly become best friends. “You are, like, even more awesome than I imagined. Both of you!” she added, glancing from Sam to Marshall and back again. “You should know that I’vetotallybeen shipping you two. Like, since the very beginning.”
Marshall smiled, but there was a shadow behind his eyes. “It was nice to meet you both. Good luck with the movie.”
The actors clearly picked up on the note of finality in Marshall’s tone, because they murmured their goodbyes and drifted off to rejoin the party. Sam looked from the pizza, which had gone soggy and cold on its paper plate, to Marshall’s face.
“I’m sorry about the movie. Unfortunately, I know from experience that we can’t get this kind of thing shut down.” The royal family’s lives were in the public domain, which made them fair game for adaptation by directors, artists, even fan-fiction writers. “I can try to find out more about it if you want,” she added. “Maybe it’ll be a good thing, get more people on our side?”
“I wish we didn’t have to be asideat all,” Marshall said, frustrated.
Sam knew he wasn’t comfortable with how public their relationship had become. Marshall had been notorious for years: aside from dating starlets and models, he was a Black future duke, and there weren’t many of those. But now that he was dating Samantha, his fame had skyrocketed. He wasn’t just famous enough to appearinsidea tabloid; now he was on its cover. His name was a joke on late-night talk shows, bandied about in conversations and debates all over the globe. Now an actor was playing him in a movie, reciting dialogue that some screenwriter had written, and half the people who saw it would think that those were things Marshall had actually said, that he actually believed.
Sam had grown up with that stratospheric level of fame; she’d long since gotten used to it. But it was new to Marshall.
“Hey. Talk to me.” She nudged him with her hip. When he didn’t answer, Sam let out a breath. “That’s it. I’m going after this stupid movie.”
“It’s not just the movie, Sam.” Marshall opened his mouth—then let out a defeated breath, as if he’d been about to tell her something, only to change his mind. “Just forget about it, okay?”
No,she wanted to say,it’s clearlynotokay!She felt so helpless at moments like this, knowing that there were whole pieces of her relationship that existed outside her control. That it wasn’t about just her and Marshall, but the entire world.
Yet Sam didn’t dare press the issue. She felt suddenly terrified that if she pushed on this sensitive spot, she and Marshall would never come back from it.
So she turned and smiled, trying to ignore the tension that had grown between them like a thin layer of scar tissue. “Should we get going?” she asked.
On their way out of the party, Sam noticed Ashley and R.J. sneaking into an empty room, giggling like a pair of misbehaving schoolchildren.
Well, at least fake Marshall and fake Samantha would have chemistry on-screen.
For a piercing moment, Sam felt jealous of them—that they could slip into a room at a party and make out, simply because they couldn’t bear to keep their hands off each other. That their relationship was uncomplicated and straightforward, free from public scrutiny, without duchies and monarchies and successions at stake.
Sam wondered what she and Marshall would be like in a world where they only had to worry about each other, where their relationship belonged to them alone.
The second she walked onto the tailgate field, Nina had the sinking feeling that she shouldn’t have come.
This was nothing like the tailgates she and her friends had thrown last year, when they’d popped open the trunk of someone’s car and shared a platter of bagels or a bag of potato chips. This was another side of King’s College entirely, populated by students who apparently had unlimited party-planning budgets. This was what the wealthy, titled kids had all been doing while Nina’s crew put on face paint and cheered from the nosebleed section of the stadium.
This was the version of King’s College that Jeff belonged in. Or at least, where everyone assumed he belonged.
Near the duck pond across from the stadium stood a row of white tents: the professional kind with enormous metal supports, enclosing a space bigger than the Gonzalezes’ living room. Nina passed tents labeled things likeclass of2008alumni,friends of varsity athletics,tfi,anducc, until she found the one labeledaaain gold letters. Snacks had been arranged with painstaking precision on the tables: iced cookies and a cheese platter and mason jars filled with blue and white M&M’s. A table in one corner held bottles of champagne and carafes of orange juice in sweating ice buckets. Outside the tent, a boy in a polka-dotted bow tie was flippinghamburgers.
Everyone here looked like they’d dressed for a garden party rather than a college tailgate. The sorority girls were in dresses and designer sunglasses, the boys in button-downs and khakis and, in some cases, blazers. Nina shifted, feeling self-conscious in her wide-leg jeans with their ratty, frayed hem. She could still leave; Jeff hadn’t even seen her yet.
