Majesty (American Royals, #2)(32)

They reached the entrance to Nina’s dorm. This was the very spot where Jeff had kissed her, the night they were spotted and the photo ended up in the tabloids.

Pushing those memories aside, Nina fumbled in her purse, just as Ethan’s stomach emitted a loud growl.

“You hungry?” she asked, laughing.

He gave an unselfconscious shrug. “I could eat.”

“Thanks for walking me home.” She pushed open the door to her entryway, and to her surprise, Ethan followed her inside, heading up the stairs in her wake.

“What kind of pizza do you like?” he asked, tapping at his phone. His eyes sparkled with mischief, in a way that almost reminded Nina of Sam.

“It’s okay, I don’t want any,” she said unconvincingly.

“Pizza isn’t a want; it’s a need.” Ethan paused, his gaze searching hers. “Unless you want me to go.”

Well…friends were allowed to late-night eat together, weren’t they?

“Pizza sounds delicious,” she amended. “Mushroom, please.”

He let out an indignant breath. “It’s a pizza, not a salad. I’ll get pepperoni.”

“If you weren’t going to listen, why did you bother asking?”

“Because I assumed you had better taste than to want vegetables. Fine,” he compromised, “we’ll do half and half.”

Nina unlocked her door. Ethan immediately went to sit in her desk chair, tipping it back onto its hind legs. He glanced around her room, his eyes resting on each detail in turn—the collage of photos above the bed, the lip balms and pens scattered over her desk—as if he was trying to figure her out. Nina suddenly longed to know what conclusions he’d drawn.

“It’s funny,” Ethan mused. “Of all the people we knew, you were the last one I expected to come to school here.”

Nina climbed onto her bed, pulling a blanket over her lap. “Really?”

“I guess I always thought you’d go to school far away. Out of the country, even.” Ethan sighed. “Sometimes I wish I had.”

“It’s not too late. You can do a semester abroad somewhere,” she pointed out.

“But in the meantime, I’m still here, still…” He gave a shrug, as if to say, Still tied up in the lives of the royal family.

“Where would you go? London?”

“Why do you assume that? Because I wouldn’t need a foreign language?” At Nina’s guilty look, Ethan chuckled. “I’ll have you know, I do speak Spanish.”

“So, Salamanca?”

Ethan’s eyes slanted away, as if he wasn’t quite certain he wanted to share this. “Actually,” he mumbled, “if I studied abroad, I always secretly wanted it to be in Venice.”

“Venice?” Nina blinked, startled. “That’s where I’ve always wanted to go.”

“Because it’s the city of romance?”

“You’re thinking of Paris.” She leaned onto one hand, tracing the waffle pattern of her blanket. “I’ve always been fascinated by Venice. The whole city is sinking, settling down into the water one centimeter at a time. There’s nothing anyone can do to stop it, so they just keep going about their business as normal. As a tourist you feel lost in it all, but it doesn’t really matter because every road in the city leads back to the piazza. And eventually you’ll find your way back there, to sit at a café and watch the sun set over the water…”

“I didn’t realize you’ve been to Venice,” Ethan said slowly, and Nina felt her face grow hot.

“I haven’t. I’ve just read about it.”

A knock sounded on the door: their pizza delivery. Nina answered it, then turned back to Ethan, the box in one hand. “You might as well sit over here,” she surprised herself by offering.

“Sure.” Ethan flopped easily onto the bed, then shifted so that he sat facing her, the pizza box balanced picnic-style between them. Nina almost groaned aloud as she bit into her slice.

“I told you that you wanted pizza.” Ethan sounded inordinately pleased with himself. He’d already inhaled his first slice and was grabbing a second.

Nina tried, and failed, to conceal her amusement. “I hate to contribute to your oversized sense of self-importance, but yes, you were right.”

She hadn’t expected it to feel so natural, sitting here with Ethan, on her bed.

“So,” he asked, “why didn’t you go to school in Venice, if you’ve read so many books about it that it sounds like you have been there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe…” This was hard to admit, but Nina forced herself to say it. “Maybe I was being cowardly. I’ve never traveled that far from home before.” She folded her pizza over on itself so she could take another bite. “It’s okay. Venice isn’t sinking all that fast; it won’t have changed much by the time I get to see it.”

“But that’s not the point of studying abroad,” Ethan argued. “You don’t go to Venice because it’s changing; you go because you would change, living there. When you came home you would see everything in a new light. You would notice things—and people—that you hadn’t paid attention to before.”

There was a significance to his words that made Nina wonder if he was talking about the two of them. If he noticed her, now, even though he hadn’t before.