“Of course, Ms. Wyntor. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. Please hold,” she said, and I smiled, nodding proudly as I walked about the front entrance.
It was only when I turned and found him watching me that I remembered he was there, like a ghost. Spinning back around, I faced the door.
“Ms. Wyntor?”
“Yes, I’m here,” I said politely.
“It seems your mother has already called maintenance, and they said they are currently working on the issue.”
How is this happening! What did she do, bribe them?
“Thank you,” I said through gritted teeth before hanging up. “Bravo, Mom. Bravo.” Breathe. I’ll just talk to him calmly. “So, it seems like...” I trailed off as I turned around only to see he wasn’t there anymore. I stepped forward, but he was just gone. “Where the hell did he go?”
“I’m here.” A hand popped up from behind the couch. “I beg your pardon, but I’m exhausted.”
Walking up to it, I peered over to find him lying on it, his eyes closed. The first things I noticed were how long his eyelashes were and how smooth his face seemed to be, his hair styled, too. He looked...perfectly princely.
Well, that’s what he is. But...ugh, never mind—
“You were saying?” His eyes opened, staring up at me.
I jumped back.
“Relax. I’m not going to murder or rape you.” He frowned, closing his eyes again.
Right, he’d heard that. “Uhh... I was just saying that because my mom is a bit—”
“Crazy?”
“Don’t call her that!” I snapped.
“Didn’t you?”
I frowned. “She’s my mom, so I can, but you’re—”
“Her future son-in-law?” he replied, a smile on his lips.
“As if! How can you even joke about that? Better yet, how can you just come here? Don’t you have prince stuff to do?”
He chuckled, the corner of his lips turning up, but he refused to open his eyes. “Marrying who you are told to marry is prince stuff.”
“What is this, 1808?” I frowned. “You can’t just force people to marry each other.”
“That is what I said. Then they reminded me I’m not a person—I’m a prince. I’m property of the crown, and the crown requires I marry a very rich woman. You are that woman. So, whether I like it or not, I was ordered to come to this...fabulous country where I can be talked down to at the border, dragged shopping by a mother for a costume I did not want to wear for a holiday I dislike, then told to shut up by her daughter before being forced to sleep on a couch,” he stated.
A small twinge of guilt rose inside me.
“Welcome to America. The land of equality...well, sort of,” I replied.
He opened his mouth to say something, but all of a sudden, his stomach growled, and then he shut his mouth again. I tried not to laugh.
“She really didn’t offer you food?”
“If the she you are referring to is your mother, then no, she didn’t. She said we needed to hurry for me to get this ridiculous costume.” He frowned again.
“I’m only getting something for you because you are a victim of this madness, too.” I shook my head.
Cinderella felt more realistic than my own life story right now.
What did princes eat anyway?
I am a cliché.
Despite all my best effort and reasonable thought, I became a cliché within seconds. I didn’t see it coming. It just swept me off my feet. How? Well, there was this moment in movies, books, plays—anything that told a story, really—where the hero meets his heroine, and he’s completely blinded by her beauty.
Romeo said, upon seeing Juliet, “Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”
King Arthur said upon seeing Genevieve, “And this damsel is the most virtuous and fairest that I know living, or yet that ever I could find.”
In A Farewell to Arms, Frederic said about Catherine, “When I saw her, I was in love with her. Everything turned over inside of me.”
It was ridiculous.
Just prose by poets.
The world didn’t work like that, nor would it be possible to ever feel like that in real life. And yet, when I turned around... She stood on the stairs, staring down at me with her blue dress pooled around her, flowing over the steps like water—as if she had arisen from some magical sea. Her long, thick curls framed her sweet and innocent face, and her brown eyes were wide, mesmerizing, and only focused on me.
At that moment, in that brief second before she screamed bloody murder, all I could think was, the poets are right. No one will believe me, and many others will think I am insane. But I want the sun to rise with my name on her lips and my hand on her hips.
Yes, just because she was beautiful—even more so in person than in pictures—I was at a loss for what to do.
Was it love at first sight?
No.
But I would be lying if I said I was not just a little bit happy at how she looked. Yes, it was shallow, but so be it. I could work with this.
“Sorry, I don’t usually stay here, so there isn’t really any other food but leftover pizza,” she explained. “I only ordered it like an hour ago, so...”
I looked down at the pepperoni pizza and the bottle of water she brought over to the coffee table. My brain couldn’t even begin to process the last twenty-four hours of my life. I glanced back up at her, and once again, I was blinded by her brown eyes that held me captive.
“Never mind.” She reached down for the plate. “There will be better food at the fundraiser so—”
“May I get a fork and a knife?” I asked, stopping her from taking the plate.
“A fork and knife? For pizza?” she repeated, tilting her head in confusion but then just nodded, turning to leave again.
At that moment, I drank from the water bottle, trying to knock down whatever was stuck in my throat. Sighing, I snickered to myself, shaking my head. Pizza. I had romantic literature on my mind, and she was worried about the pizza. If that wasn’t a reality check, I wasn’t sure what else was.
“Here.” She handed me silverware and a napkin.
“Thank you,” I said, taking it from her.
“No problem,” she replied, taking a seat right in front of me, on the opposite side of the coffee table. Her dress puffed up and spread around her. I was accustomed to people watching me eat, but for some reason, her gaze was just so...undeterred. She stared at me as if she were trying to analyze a foreign species. I stopped mid-cut and met her gaze.
She blinked a few times before she spoke. “I’m staring.”
“Just a little bit.”
“Sorry, please eat,” she said, quickly getting up to move to the other side of the couch. She pulled out her phone, but she watched me out of the corner of her eye.
“You are not going to take a picture of me while I’m eating, are you?” I asked, slightly annoyed.
“No...why would think that?” she said slowly, confused.
I said nothing, and she kept silent, but I could still see her checking her phone and then looking back at me every few minutes when she thought I wasn’t looking. It was only when I caught her scrolling from the corner of my eye—it was hard to see—that I saw an image of myself. I sighed and turned back to her. “You’re making me anxious.”