But when he turns and walks back up the stairs, never looking back, the sudden pain in my heart feels pretty freaking real.
Chapter 35
It’s so hot back in Florida.
There’s a part of me that loves it, that wants to soak in the sun, the vaguely salty air, the bright colors. And for the first couple of days, I do. I shake off my jet lag lying on a blanket in our backyard, watching tiny lizards run over the palm fronds. I slather myself in sunblock and let the smell of coconut remind me that I’m home now, and that everything that happened in Scotland is in the past.
Of course, it can’t really stay in the past—the wedding is still very much on and will be in Scotland in December. Then I’ll have to go back and face everything I left behind. Ellie and I are fine, so at least that’s good, but I’ll still have to deal with Alex’s family. With Seb.
With Miles.
That’s the one that still hurts. I hadn’t talked to him before I left, and even though I have his email—thanks to Sherbet—I don’t want to risk it. The whole thing had been such a mess, and it seems like it’s better to leave it alone. Maybe now that I’m gone, Miles can repair his relationship with “the palace,” and by the time I come back in the winter, it won’t be a big deal anymore.
That’s probably wishful thinking.
Isa told me that it was all over the blogs, and I haven’t ventured out of my house since I got back, afraid to suddenly see my face on all those magazines.
I guess it’s impressive, how the palace spun the story of what happened at the polo match, and from everything Isa told me, the stories had Glynnis’s fingerprints all over them. There was no mention of Seb’s declaration of love to Ellie, and now Alex had punched him because he’d besmirched my honor or something. A total misunderstanding was turned into me being some kind of scarlet woman, breaking up the Royal Wreckers, and while Miles and Seb had definitely not been fighting over me—well, not really—I guess the end result is the same anyway.
For those first few days I’m back, I mostly just sit either in the backyard or in my room, checking in with Isa (and, yes, asking her to check the blogs for me), too afraid to go out. The paparazzi have never bothered us here in Perdido, but that was before I became a story, and every time I lie out in the backyard, I tense for the clicking of shutters. I won’t even wear a bathing suit when I lie out, just in case.
It’s on day four of my self-imposed hermitdom that Dad comes into my room wearing one of his loud shirts and a pair of long cutoffs. His gray hair is a mess, and he’s got his sunglasses perched on top of his head with his regular glasses balancing on the end of his nose.
In other words, typical Dad.
“C’mon,” he says, and I look up from my laptop, frowning.
“What?”
“No more of this,” he replies, gesturing around my room. “Baptism by fire, here we go.”
He wants me to go out.
I scoot up the bed, pulling my knees to my chest. “Nope. No baptisms, no fire, no outside.”
But when Dad is in one of these moods, he can’t be talked out of it. “You can’t live in this room forever, Daisy Mae,” he reminds me. “Eventually you’re going to have to go to school, or maybe get another job so that you can pull your weight around here. Can’t raise a moocher, you know.”
“Mrs. Miller said I could have my job back at the Sur-N-Sav,” I say in a low voice. “But I don’t . . .”
“You don’t want to see yourself on magazines, I suspect,” Dad finishes, then quirks an eyebrow at me. “Or perhaps you don’t want to go back to your former life of unglamorous servitude now that you’ve tasted the finer things.”
That irks me as, I guess, Dad had thought it would. “That’s not it,” I tell him, and he shrugs.
“Prove it, then. Let’s go to the Sur-N-Sav right now and tell Mrs. Miller in person that you will be donning the smock this week, shall we?”
Which is how I find myself back in the land of linoleum and cheap bread just fifteen minutes later, wincing as we pass the rows of magazines by the registers. Isa isn’t working today, but Bradley, one of the kids from my school, is, and when he sees me, he gives me a wave. Nothing else, no look or weirdness, just a wave.
I’m beginning to think things might actually be normal after all when I see the first cover.
“CRAZY FOR DAISY!”
Seriously, why is that their favorite headline?
It’s me at the polo match, before everything went wrong, standing with Miles, and there’s a little inset picture of Alex punching Seb.
My stomach drops, and my knees are weak, everything inside me suddenly feeling liquidy and queasy, and I nearly turn and bolt out of the store.
But Dad stops me. “Now wait just a tick,” he says, and ambles up to the stand.
“Dad,” I say, trying to keep my voice low, but there’s a clear edge of desperation to it.
Dad either doesn’t hear it or chooses to ignore it. “Now then,” he says, flipping through the pages, “is any of this true?”
It’s not what I’d been expecting, so I only stare at him, confused, and shake my head.
“None of this happened, then? Prince Sebastian was not desperately in love with you, only to lose you to his best friend?”
Now my face is turning red, and I’m glad the store is fairly empty. “No,” I say in a whisper. “You know that.”
“I do,” Dad agrees. “Well, most of it. Not sure how much I really want to know about all this if I’m being honest. Your mum knows the truth. Ellie does. Isabel does, I’m sure.”
I tug at the hem of my T-shirt. “Still not sure where you’re going with this, Dad.”
He puts the magazine back on the rack, then places both his hands on my shoulders, looking into my eyes. “Is there anyone at all, anyone who matters to you, who thinks any of these stories are true?”
The Sur-N-Sav is fairly quiet except for “Lost in Love” playing over the speakers and the occasional beeping of the scan belt and the squeaking of wheels on the carts. And the answer to Dad’s question suddenly seems so easy.
“No,” I say. “There isn’t.”
Dad shrugs his bony shoulders. “Then there you have it.” Jerking his head back toward the magazines, he adds, “This is a bonkers world your sister has entered, and you can’t stay out of it because she’s family. Even when you’re here, even when things seem normal, they never really will be. But you”—he squeezes my arms slightly—“you can stay as normal as you want, my Daisy Mae. So long as you remember that all that matters is the truth as you know it, and as the ones who love you know it.”