“Stop trying to Jane Austen my life!” he yells back.
“Listen, it’s not my fault he’s a mysterious and retiring young royal and you’re the tempestuous ingénue that caught his eye, okay?”
He laughs and tries to crawl away, even as she claws at his ankle and wallops another pillow at his head. He still feels guilty for blowing her off, but he thinks they’re okay now. He’ll do better. They fight for a spot on her big canopy bed, and she makes him spill what it’s like to be secretly hooking up with a real-life prince. And so June knows; she knows about him and she hugs him and doesn’t care. He didn’t realize how terrified he was of her knowing until the fear is gone.
She puts Parks back on and has the kitchen send up ice cream, and Alex thinks about how she said, “You don’t have to be our parents”—she’s never mentioned their dad in the same context as their mom like that before. He’s always known part of her resents their mom for the position they occupy in the world, for not having a normal life, for taking herself away from them. But he never really realized she felt the same sense of loss he does deep down about their dad, that it’s something she dealt with and moved past. That the stuff with their mom is something she’s still going through.
He thinks she’s wrong about him, mostly—he doesn’t necessarily believe he has to choose between politics and this thing with Henry yet, or that he’s moving too fast in his career. But … there’s the Texas Binder, and the knowledge of other states like Texas and millions of other people who need someone to fight for them, and the feeling at the base of his spine, like there’s a lot of fight in him that could be honed down to a more productive point.
There’s law school.
Every time he looks at the Texas Binder, he knows it’s a big fat case for him to go take the damn LSAT like he knows both his parents wish he would instead of diving headfirst into politics. He’s always, always said no. He doesn’t wait for things. Doesn’t put in the time like that, do what he’s told.
He’s never given much thought to options other than a crow’s path ahead of him. Maybe he should.
“Is now a good time to point out Henry’s very hot, very rich best friend is basically in love with you?” Alex says to June. “He’s like some kind of billionaire, genius, manic-pixie-dream philanthropist. I feel like you would be into that.”
“Please shut up,” she says, and she steals the ice cream back.
* * *
Once June knows, their circle of “knowing” is up to a tight seven.
Before Henry, most of his romantic entanglements as FSOTUS were one-off incidents that involved Cash or Amy confiscating phones before the act and pointing at the dotted line on the NDA on the way out—Amy with mechanical professionalism, Cash with the air of a cruise ship director. It was inevitable they be looped in.
And there’s Shaan, the only member of the royal staff who knows Henry is gay, excluding his therapist. Shaan ultimately doesn’t care about Henry’s sexual preferences as long as they’re not getting him into trouble. He’s a consummate professional parceled in immaculately tailored Tom Ford, ruffled by absolutely nothing, whose affection for his charge shows in the way he tends to him like a favorite houseplant. Shaan knows for the same reason Amy and Cash know: absolute necessity.
Then Nora, who still looks smug every time the subject arises. And Bea, who found out when she walked in on one of their after-dark FaceTime sessions, leaving Henry capable of nothing but flustered British stammering and thousand-yard stares for the next day and a half.
Pez seems to have been in on the secret all along. Alex imagines he demanded an explanation when Henry literally made them flee the country under the cover of night after putting his tongue in Alex’s mouth in the Kennedy Garden.
It’s Pez who answers when Alex FaceTimes Henry at four a.m. DC time, expecting to catch Henry over his morning tea. Henry is holidaying in one of the family’s country homes while Alex suffocates under his last week of college. He doesn’t reflect on why his migraine demands soothing images of Henry looking cozy and picturesque, sipping tea by a lush green hillside. He just hits the buttons on the phone.
“Alexander, babes,” Pez says when he picks up. “How lovely for you to give your auntie Pezza a ring on this magnificent Sunday morning.” He’s smiling from what looks like the passenger seat of a luxury car, wearing a cartoonishly large sunhat and a striped pashmina.
“Hi, Pez,” Alex says, grinning back. “Where are y’all?”
“We are out for a drive, taking in the scenery of Carmarthenshire,” Pez tells him. He tilts the phone over toward the driver’s seat. “Say good morning to your strumpet, Henry.”
“Good morning, strumpet,” Henry says, glancing away from the road to wink at the camera. He’s looking fresh-faced and relaxed, all rolled-up sleeves and soft gray linen, and Alex feels calmer knowing somewhere in Wales, Henry got a decent night’s sleep. “What’s got you up at four in the morning this time?”
“My fucking economics final,” Alex says, rolling over onto his side to squint at the screen. “My brain isn’t working anymore.”
“Can’t you get one of those Secret Service earpieces with Nora on the other end?”
“I can take it for you,” Pez interjects, turning the camera back to himself. “I’m aces with money.”
“Yes, yes, Pez, we know there’s nothing you can’t do,” says Henry’s voice off-camera. “No need to rub it in.”
Alex laughs under his breath. From the angle Pez is holding the phone, he can see Wales rolling by though the car window, dramatic and plunging. “Hey, Henry, say the name of the house you’re staying at again.”
Pez turns the camera to catch Henry in a half smile. “Llwynywermod.”
“One more time.”
“Llwynywermod.”
Alex groans. “Jesus.”
“I was hoping you two would start talking dirty,” Pez says. “Please, do go on.”
“I don’t think you could keep up, Pez,” Alex tells him.
“Oh really?” The picture returns to Pez. “What if I put my co—”
“Pez,” comes the sound of Henry’s voice, and a hand with a signet ring on the smallest finger covers Pez’s mouth. “I beg of you. Alex, what part of ‘nothing he cannot do’ did you think was worth testing? Honestly, you are going to get us all killed.”
“That’s the goal,” Alex says happily. “So what are y’all gonna do today?”
Pez frees himself by licking Henry’s palm and continues talking. “Frolic naked in the hills, frighten the sheep, return to the house for the usual: tea, biscuits, casting ourselves upon the Thighmaster of love to moan about Claremont-Diaz siblings, which has become tragically one-sided since Henry took up with you. It used to be all bottles of cognac and shared malaise and ‘When will they notice us’—”
“Don’t tell him that!”
“—and now I just ask Henry, ‘What is your secret?’ And he says, ‘I insult Alex all the time and that seems to work.’”