Her Royal Highness (Royals #2)(38)

“Cool, be a jerk. Again. Some more.”

To my surprise, that makes Flora laugh, and when I glance back at her, she’s leaning on her hands, watching me. “God, you really believe all that, don’t you?” she asks. “All that ‘you can just be you.’ How extraordinary.”

“I feel like by ‘extraordinary,’ you mean ‘stupid,’ so I’m just going to ignore you now and try to go to sleep.”

There’s no way that’s going to happen up here with rocks and moors all around us, my body temperature dipping way below normal, but if I sleep, I can disappear for a little bit, can pretend I’m not living in this nightmare where a snotty princess has stranded me in the middle of nowhere all as some elaborate act of rebellion against her parents. Who are a queen and a prince, for god’s sake.

I lie there on that stupid, rocky ground, my pullover wrapped around me, and feel the anger bubble up in my chest again. I don’t know much about Flora’s parents, but she has two of them, right? Both alive, both rich, both who make sure she has the best of everything, no matter what she does. She doesn’t even want to be here at Gregorstoun, whereas I spent months reading about it and researching it, then applying for every scholarship that exists. I think of those nights sitting up at my computer, working on essay after essay, and suddenly, sleep is the last thing on my mind.

“You’re the worst, you know that?” I sit bolt upright, still clutching my jacket.

Flora had been sitting at the edge of the jacket, her arms wrapped around her knees, but now she looks over at me. “Pardon?”

God, that just makes me madder, that paaaahdon?

“You. Are. The. Worst,” I enunciate, pointing at her. “What’s so hard about your life? Oh, boo-hoo, you’re missing a fashion show. Oh no, your parents want you to have a good and interesting education. What a shame, you have two of them, and they both care about you.”

Flora turns more fully toward me, a weird look on her face.

“You . . . don’t have two parents?”

Well, this is not a conversation I wanted to have tonight.

“No,” I say, rolling back over.

It’s quiet, the only sound the wind continuing its whole Wuthering Thing, and then Flora asks, “Which one?”

I don’t know if she’s asking which parent I have or which parent I lost. I don’t actually care. I just say, “My mom died when I was little.”

More silence.

Then: “How little?”

Sighing, I roll over onto my back, wincing as a rock digs into my spine. “Two.”

Flora’s voice sounds different when she says, “That’s really quite little.”

“It was.”

I don’t tell her anything else. How much it sucks to have a mom I can’t even remember. How I love my dad more than I can say, how Anna is a great stepmom, but she came into our lives when I was already a teenager. How I think my relationship with Dad might be easier if he hadn’t had to be All the Things to me for so long. Those are the kinds of things I haven’t even been able to talk to my friends about, and Flora is very much not a friend. Maybe she’s not totally an enemy, either, but still, these are the kinds of things she doesn’t get from me. Private things, important things.

“I’m sorry,” she finally says, and when I look over at her, she’s lying down, too, facing me. And she does look sorry. Or I think she does. She looks different at least, and maybe that’s enough with Flora.

“Thanks,” I say, then awkwardly squirm around on the ground to face her. “I mean. I don’t remember her or anything.”

“Is that better or worse?”

It’s a totally unexpected question, and for a second, I don’t know how to answer her, since that’s a question I’ve asked myself a million times, ever since I was old enough to get what not having a mom meant.

“I don’t know,” I finally tell her. “It’s like . . . trying to miss something you never really had. Like if you’d never eaten ice cream, never could eat it, but everyone was like, ‘Don’t you miss ice cream?’ Only. You know. Bigger.”

“Because the ice cream is your mum,” she says with such solemnity that I actually laugh.

“I guess?”

Flora smiles, too, then, but it’s such a different smile. Usually, her smiles are all slowly curving lips, very cat that ate the canary, like she learned smiling from watching soap operas or something. This is the real deal, and it’s surprisingly goofy. It lights up her whole face, and I wonder why she doesn’t smile like that more often.

It’s a good look on her.

And then she props her head on her hand and says, “At the pub, before the whole unpleasantness, you mentioned liking girls and boys.”

Oh, wow, apparently we’re going to unpack everything personal about me tonight. Joy.

Clearing my throat, I roll over to study the sky overhead. It’s not all the way dark yet, but it’s getting there, and I know that when the sun is completely down, it’s going to be darker than I can possibly imagine.

“Yeah,” I say at last. “Equal opportunity dater.”

“Bisexual,” she replies, and my face flushes even as I laugh.

“To get technical, yes, bi. Anything else you want to know about me? Social security number? Embarrassing scars?”