Red, White & Royal Blue(2)
Following their tabloid coverage is something of an idle hobby of hers, one that in turns amuses and annoys their mother, and Alex is narcissistic enough to let June read him the highlights. They’re usually either complete fabrications or lines fed from their press team, but sometimes it’s just funny. Given the choice, he’d rather read one of the hundreds of glowing pieces of fan fiction about him on the internet, the up-to-eleven version of himself with devastating charm and unbelievable physical stamina, but June flat-out refuses to read those aloud to him, no matter how much he tries to bribe her.
“Do Us Weekly,” Alex says.
“Hmm…” June digs it out of the stack. “Oh, look, we made the cover this week.”
She flashes the glossy cover at him, which has a photo of the two of them inlaid in one corner, June’s hair pinned on top of her head and Alex looking slightly over-served but still handsome, all jawline and dark curls. Below it in bold yellow letters, the headline reads: FIRST SIBLINGS’ WILD NYC NIGHT.
“Oh yeah, that was a wild night,” Alex says, reclining back against the tall leather headboard and pushing his glasses up his nose. “Two whole keynote speakers. Nothing sexier than shrimp cocktails and an hour and a half of speeches on carbon emissions.”
“It says here you had some kind of tryst with a ‘mystery brunette,’” June reads. “‘Though the First Daughter was whisked off by limousine to a star-studded party shortly after the gala, twenty-one-year-old heartthrob Alex was snapped sneaking into the W Hotel to meet a mystery brunette in the presidential suite and leaving around four a.m. Sources inside the hotel reported hearing amorous noises from the room all night, and rumors are swirling the brunette was none other than … Nora Holleran, the twenty-two-year-old granddaughter of Vice President Mike Holleran and third member of the White House Trio. Could it be the two are rekindling their romance?’”
“Yes!” Alex crows, and June groans. “That’s less than a month! You owe me fifty dollars, baby.”
“Hold on. Was it Nora?”
Alex thinks back to the week before, showing up at Nora’s room with a bottle of champagne. Their thing on the campaign trail a million years ago was brief, mostly to get the inevitable over with. They were seventeen and eighteen and doomed from the start, both convinced they were the smartest person in any room. Alex has since conceded Nora is 100 percent smarter than him and definitely too smart to have ever dated him.
It’s not his fault the press won’t let it go, though; that they love the idea of them together as if they’re modern-day Kennedys. So, if he and Nora occasionally get drunk in hotel rooms together watching The West Wing and making loud moaning noises at the wall for the benefit of nosy tabloids, he can’t be blamed, really. They’re simply turning an undesirable situation into their own personal entertainment.
Scamming his sister is also a perk.
“Maybe,” he says, dragging out the vowels.
June swats him with the magazine like he’s an especially obnoxious cockroach. “That’s cheating, you dick!”
“Bet’s a bet,” Alex tells her. “We said if there was a new rumor in a month, you’d owe me fifty bucks. I take Venmo.”
“I’m not paying,” June huffs. “I’m gonna kill her when we see her tomorrow. What are you wearing, by the way?”
“For what?”
“The wedding.”
“Whose wedding?”
“Uh, the royal wedding,” June says. “Of England. It’s literally on every cover I just showed you.”
She holds Us Weekly up again, and this time Alex notices the main story in giant letters: PRINCE PHILIP SAYS I DO! Along with a photograph of an extremely nondescript British heir and his equally nondescript blond fiancée smiling blandly.
He drops his donut in a show of devastation. “That’s this weekend?”
“Alex, we leave in the morning,” June tells him. “We’ve got two appearances before we even go to the ceremony. I can’t believe Zahra hasn’t climbed up your ass about this already.”
“Shit,” he groans. “I know I had that written down. I got sidetracked.”
“What, by conspiring with my best friend against me in the tabloids for fifty dollars?”
“No, with my research paper, smart-ass,” Alex says, gesturing dramatically at his piles of notes. “I’ve been working on it for Roman Political Thought all week. And I thought we agreed Nora is our best friend.”
“That can’t possibly be a real class you’re taking,” June says. “Is it possible you willfully forgot about the biggest international event of the year because you don’t want to see your archnemesis?”
“June, I’m the son of the President of the United States. Prince Henry is a figurehead of the British Empire. You can’t just call him my ‘archnemesis,’” Alex says. He returns to his donut, chewing thoughtfully, and adds, “‘Archnemesis’ implies he’s actually a rival to me on any level and not, you know, a stuck-up product of inbreeding who probably jerks off to photos of himself.”
“Woof.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Well, you don’t have to like him, you just have to put on a happy face and not cause an international incident at his brother’s wedding.”