Red, White & Royal Blue(28)

“You don’t think I was out of line?”

“Nah. Though … I kind of agree with what Dad was saying. Mom can be … you know … Mom.”

“Well, that’s what got her where she is now.”

“You don’t think it’s ever a problem?”

Alex shrugs. “I think she’s a good mom.”

“Yeah, to you,” June says. There’s no accusation behind it, just observation. “The effectiveness of her nurturing kind of depends on what you need from her. Or what you can do for her.”

“I mean, I get what she’s saying, though,” Alex hedges. “Sometimes it still sucks that Dad decided to pack up and move just to run for the seat in California.”

“Yeah, but, I mean, how is that different from the stuff Mom’s done? It’s all politics. I’m just saying, he has a point about how Mom pushes us without always giving us the other Mom stuff.”

Alex is opening his mouth to answer when June’s phone buzzes from her robe pocket. “Oh. Hmm,” she says when she slides it out to eye the screen.

“What?”

“Nothing, uh.” She thumbs open the message. “Merry Christmas text. From Evan.”

“Evan … as in ex-boyfriend Evan, in California? Y’all still text?”

June’s biting her lip now, her expression a little distant as she types out a response. “Yeah, sometimes.”

“Cool,” Alex says. “I always liked him.”

“Yeah. Me too,” June says softly. She locks her phone and drops it on the bed, blinking a couple times as if to reset. “Anyway, what’d Nora say when you told her?”

“Hmm?”

“On the phone?” she asks him. “I figured it was her, you never talk to anyone else about this crap.”

“Oh,” Alex says. He feels inexplicable, traitorous warmth flash up the back of his neck. “Oh, um, no. Actually, this is gonna sound weird, but I was talking to Henry?”

June’s eyebrows shoot up, and Alex instinctively scans the room for cover. “Really.”

“Listen, I know, but we kind of weirdly have stuff in common and, I guess, similar weird emotional baggage and neuroses, and for some reason I felt like he would get it.”

“Oh my God, Alex,” she says, lunging at him to yank him into a rough hug, “you made a friend!”

“I have friends! Get off me!”

“You made a friend!” She is literally giving him a noogie. “I’m so proud of you!”

“I’m gonna murder you, stop it,” he says, alligator-rolling out of her clutches. He lands on the floor. “He’s not my friend. He’s someone I like to antagonize all the time, and one time I talked to him about something real.”

“That’s a friend, Alex.”

Alex’s mouth starts and stops several silent sentences before he points to the door. “You can leave, June! Go to bed!”

“Nope. Tell me everything about your new best friend, who is a royal. That is so bougie of you. Who would have guessed it?” she says, peering over the edge of the bed at him. “Oh my God, this is like all those romantic comedies where the girl hires a male escort to pretend to be her wedding date and then falls in love with him for real.”

“That is not at all what this is like.”



* * *



The staff has barely finished packing up the Christmas trees when it starts.

There’s the dance floor to set up, menu to finalize, Snapchat filter to approve. Alex spends the entire 26th holed up in the Social Secretary’s office with June, going over the waivers they’ve gotten for everyone to sign after a daughter of a Real Housewife fell down the rotunda stairs last year; Alex remains impressed that she didn’t spill her margarita.

It’s time once more for the Legendary Balls-Out Bananas White House Trio New Year’s Eve Party.

Technically, the title is the Young America New Year’s Eve Gala, or as at least one late-night host calls it, the Millennial Correspondents’ Dinner. Every year, Alex, June, and Nora fill up the East Room on the first floor with three hundred or so of their friends, vague celebrity acquaintances, former hookups, potential political connections, and otherwise notable twenty-somethings. The party is, officially, a fund-raiser, and it generates so much money for charity and so much good PR for the First Family that even his mom approves of it.

“Um, excuse me,” Alex is saying from a first-floor conference table, one hand full of confetti samples—do they want a metallic color palette or a more subdued navy and gold?—while staring at a copy of the finalized guest list. June and Nora are stuffing their faces with cake samples. “Who put Henry on here?”

Nora says through a mouthful of chocolate cake, “Wasn’t me.”

“June?”

“Look, you should have invited him yourself!” June says, by way of admission. “It’s really nice you’re making friends who aren’t us. Sometimes when you get too isolated, you start to go a little crazy. Remember last year when Nora and I were both out of the country for a week, and you almost got a tattoo?”

“I still think we should have let him get a tramp stamp.”

“It wasn’t going to be a tramp stamp,” Alex says hotly. “You were in on this, weren’t you?”