Red, White & Royal Blue(7)

“‘Sources inside the royal reception report the two were seen arguing minutes before the … cake-tastrophe,’” Ellen reads out loud with utter disdain from her own copy of The Sun. Alex doesn’t even try to guess how she got her hands on today’s edition of a British tabloid. President Mom works in mysterious ways. “‘But royal family insiders claim the First Son’s feud with Henry has raged for years. A source tells The Sun that Henry and the First Son have been at odds ever since their first meeting at the Rio Olympics, and the animosity has only grown—these days, they can’t even be in the same room with each other. It seems it was only a matter of time before Alex took the American approach: a violent altercation.’”

“I really don’t think you can call tripping over a table a ‘violent’—”

“Alexander,” Ellen says, her tone eerily calm. “Shut up.”

He does.

“‘One can’t help but wonder,’” Ellen reads on, “‘if the bitterness between these two powerful sons has contributed to what many have called an icy and distant relationship between President Ellen Claremont’s administration and the monarchy in recent years.’”

She tosses the magazine aside, folding her arms on the table.

“Please, tell me another joke,” Ellen says. “I want so badly for you to explain to me how this is funny.”

Alex opens his mouth and closes it a couple of times.

“He started it,” he says finally. “I barely touched him—he’s the one who pushed me, and I only grabbed him to try and catch my balance, and—”

“Sugar, I cannot express to you how much the press does not give a fuck about who started what,” Ellen says. “As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn’t your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term.”

Alex clenches his jaw. He’s used to doing things that piss his mother’s staff off—in his teens, he had a penchant for confronting his mother’s colleagues with their voting discrepancies at friendly DC fund-raisers—and he’s been in the tabloids for things more embarrassing than this. But never in quite such a cataclysmically, internationally terrible way.

“I don’t have time to deal with this right now, so here’s what we’re gonna do,” Ellen says, pulling a folder out of her padfolio. It’s filled with some official-looking documents punctuated with different colors of sticky tabs, and the first one says: AGREEMENT OF TERMS.

“Um,” Alex says.

“You,” she says, “are going to make nice with Henry. You’re leaving Saturday and spending Sunday in England.”

Alex blinks. “Is it too late to take the faking-my-death option?”

“Zahra can brief you on the rest,” Ellen goes on, ignoring him. “I have about five hundred meetings right now.” She gets up and heads for the door, stopping to kiss her hand and press it to the top of his head. “You’re a dumbass. Love you.”

Then she’s gone, heels clicking behind her down the hallway, and Zahra settles into her vacated chair with a look on her face like she’d prefer arranging his death for real. She’s not technically the most powerful or important player in his mother’s White House, but she’s been working by Ellen’s side since Alex was five and Zahra was fresh out of Howard. She’s the only one trusted to wrangle the First Family.

“All right, here’s the deal,” she says. “I was up all night conferencing with a bunch of uptight royal handlers and PR pricks and the prince’s fucking equerry to make this happen, so you are going to follow this plan to the letter and not fuck it up, got it?”

Alex still privately thinks this whole thing is completely ridiculous, but he nods. Zahra looks deeply unconvinced but presses on.

“First, the White House and the monarchy are going to release a joint statement saying what happened at the royal wedding was a complete accident and a misunderstanding—”

“Which it was.”

“—and that, despite rarely having time to see each other, you and Prince Henry have been close personal friends for the past several years.”

“We’re what?”

“Look,” Zahra says, taking a drag from her massive stainless steel thermos of coffee. “Both sides need to come out of this looking good, and the only way to do that is to make it look like your little slap-fight at the wedding was some homoerotic frat bro mishap, okay? So, you can hate the heir to the throne all you want, write mean poems about him in your diary, but the minute you see a camera, you act like the sun shines out of his dick, and you make it convincing.”

“Have you met Henry?” Alex says. “How am I supposed to do that? He has the personality of a cabbage.”

“Are you really not understanding how much I don’t care at all how you feel about this?” Zahra says. “This is what’s happening so your stupid ass doesn’t distract the entire country from your mother’s reelection campaign. Do you want her to have to get up on the debate stage next year and explain to the world why her son is trying to destabilize America’s European relationships?”

Well, no, he doesn’t. And he knows, in the back of his mind, that he’s a better strategist than he’s been about this, and that without this stupid grudge, he probably could have come up with this plan on his own.