“Have you thought about where you’re going for college?” he asks.
“Actually, my first choice is Stanford,” I tell him, feeling shy.
He raises his glass. “Good girl. We’d be lucky to have you.” He reaches in his pocket and hands me his card. “If you have any questions about the school, let me know. Happy to answer them.”
I’m so giddy, I almost stutter my goodbye, and when he leaves, Suzanne tells me he was her professor, and one of the youngest deans at Stanford. “He’s brilliant—he could have made millions in Silicon Valley, but he’d rather teach and mentor students,” she says. “Not enough of those kind of people out there.”
I think deeply on what she says. For the longest time, I’ve thought of success as something that means financial wealth and social status. Something that I needed to earn for myself, and for my family. But here was someone who had chosen another path. Albeit, a prestigious one, but far less lucrative. Suzanne introduces me to a few more people, then the party begins to die down, and people head out of the ballroom.
“There’s usually an after-party for honorees somewhere,” Suzanne says. “It’s practically tradition. One of the local kids always hosts it. I’m sure you can ask around.”
“Thanks. I’m meeting someone in the lobby. Maybe we’ll end up there.”
“Great! Have fun—see you tomorrow,” she says with a cheerful wave.
I follow the crowd to the lobby, keeping an eye out for Royce.
Gorgeous oversize paintings of bright flowers hang on the shiny, deep red wood walls. A huge chandelier hangs over a mahogany baby grand piano being played by an older gentleman wearing a navy suit. He plays with so much passion and tenderness, it’s like he’s the only one in the room. He deserves to be playing in a concert hall, not a hotel lobby where everyone is treating his music like background noise.
I check my texts while I wait, then realize I’m just like everyone else who’s taking the music for granted.
Kayla still hasn’t responded. I call her. She doesn’t pick up, so I leave a voice mail. I really hope she’s okay. She can’t quit the team, I won’t let her.
Mom has texted a few times. I know she wants me to call, but I text her instead and say that the other girls in my room are going to sleep and I don’t want to bother them. I tell her I’ll call her tomorrow.
I don’t want to think of anyone but Royce right now. It’s hard to breathe again, just thinking of him. I’ve never been affected by someone’s presence so much, although he’s not even here and he’s making me feel this way. What is it about him?
Okay, so I have kissed boys. On the cheek. I played “I never” in sixth grade a couple of times, and I “went out” with Jarred Agovino for a month in junior high. We held hands. But ever since high school, I haven’t had time for boys and I’ve never had a real boyfriend. My parents used to say I couldn’t date until I was sixteen, but there wasn’t even a reason to forbid me to date. Nevertheless, Mom doesn’t need to know about Royce right now. No one needs to know about him. There’s nothing to know anyway. We’re just friends. Let’s see where this goes, I tell myself, trying for deep, calming breaths.
Royce finally arrives, and there’s a group of boys trailing him. They’re rambunctious, slapping each other on the back and laughing a little too loudly. The pianist gives them a sideways glance, then returns to caressing the keys.
When Royce sees me he walks right over and I swear his eyes light up. I can feel my heart pounding so hard in my chest. I get it now, I think. I get it. What all those sappy love songs and romantic movies are trying to say about love, trying to capture this kind of moment, this kind of feeling. I didn’t really understand before. No one’s ever made me feel this way. It’s like lightning, like everything is suddenly wonderful, like the world is actually the great place that Louis Armstrong sings about and life isn’t just a drudge of chores and routine.
Life can be magical.
When he’s standing in front of me, I have to crane my neck a little to look at him directly. I hadn’t realized how tall he was. I barely come up to his shoulders.
“Hey,” he says, shyly.
“Hey.” I smile. “Are these your friends?” I say, turning to look at the group.
“Nope,” he says tersely, his expression changing. He tries to move us away from them. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Somehow, the magic of the moment is gone, and everything goes back to black-and-white after being in Technicolor. Because one of the boys with the group, the one with his bow tie untied and his collar open, giving him a bit of a rakish air, the one who looks a little like Royce, except he’s handsome in a too-pretty kind of way, like his lips are too full and his hair is too bouncy—you feel me?—isn’t happy that Royce is trying to leave. He laughs and slaps Royce on the back. “This is the girl? You surprise me, Roycey. She’s not your usual type.”
My cheeks start to burn. What does that mean, I’m not his usual type? I’m not Caucasian? Blonde? Rich?
“Shut up, Mason. She’s one of the honorees. You’re probably not half as smart as her—and we all know you’re definitely not as good-looking,” says Royce, in a teasing voice, although his eyes are stormy.
The other boys clap and hiss at Mason, mussing up his hair and pushing him around. “He told you,” one of them says, letting out a low whistle.
I stand there awkwardly, annoyed and humiliated. Maybe I should just excuse myself and go upstairs to my room. It’s going to be a busy weekend anyway. I don’t want to miss the tour of the Capitol in the morning. I have more self-respect than to spend one of the most important nights of my life being insulted by some spoiled rich kids. This is exactly why I didn’t want to meet up with Royce in LA. I didn’t want to see how truly different he was from me, and I didn’t want to meet his friends in case they were like this.
“Don’t you guys have an after-party to crash?” Royce asks, looking bored.
“All right, all right. I get the picture. You want us to leave you alone. Although you still haven’t introduced us,” the rude boy says.
Royce’s voice is steely. “Jasmine, this is my brother, Mason. Mason, this is Jasmine.”
His brother! Great, just great. But I hold out my hand to Mason. I’ll be the bigger person. “Nice to meet you.”
Mason takes my hand, and his palm is sweaty. Ick. “My little brother doesn’t usually go after the smart girls. Hey, if you get bored of him, give me a call, will you?” he says, winking at Royce and patting him on the shoulder again. “I’ll see you in the morning, dude. Breakfast with Mom and Dad. That is, if you don’t have too late a night, huh?” He leers.
The guys follow Mason, laughing and joking boisterously as they leave the hotel. Royce looks down at his shoes. “I’m sorry about that.”
I shrug. “Like you said, they’re not your friends.”
He looks up at me and smiles. It’s like we understand each other. “I thought about taking you to dinner, but then I realized I met you at dinner and we both ate all of our chicken. So...”
I smile. “What do you have in mind?”
Royce seems nervous all of a sudden. He shakes out the sleeves on his jacket so they cover his wrists. “It probably doesn’t sound very fun, especially since it’s your first night in Washington, but I thought maybe we could just hang out on the roof. There’s a great view up there.”
I hesitate, feeling shy again. Then I think about what Kayla would do, how confident she is with boys. I try to emulate it. “Sure. That sounds cool.” Really, he could ask me to watch boring old C-SPAN and I would gladly leap at the chance.
“Yeah?”
I look over at the pianist. He’s playing a slow, meandering song—a moonlight song. “Yeah,” I say. “I can come up for a little while.”
“Great,” Royce says, clapping his hands together
, a big grin on his face, like a little kid excited to show off a new toy.
I wonder what’s so cool about the roof. Also, what are the five hundred different ways my mother would kill me if she knew what I was doing right now—going somewhere alone with a boy?
Royce takes us up to the roof. There’s a heated, glassed-in terrace where we can see the whole city. We sit on a bench and look out at this amazing view. Everything is sparkling and pretty—the monuments are lit up, and it feels like the world is at our feet, like we can do anything, be anything. It’s corny, but precious all the same. I’m glad he took me up here. It’s so quiet, I can hear us both breathing.
“Nice, right?” he asks. “Not everyone knows about the terrace. It’s my favorite place in D.C., because no one is ever around. I come here all the time when we’re in town, to get away from my family. My dad prefers to stay in a hotel rather than rent a house when congress is in session. He’s a little spoiled that way.”
“It’s beautiful up here.” We both stare at the lights and the view for a long time, just enjoying the silence. “I can’t remember the last time I felt this relaxed,” I tell him.
“You award kids are all type A, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I say. “There are only twenty-four hours in a day and I already feel like I’m using twenty-seven.”
Royce loosens his tie so that the ends hang down, and he undoes the top button of his shirt. I can see a hint of his throat and Adam’s apple. It feels so intimate somehow, it makes me blush again. Thankfully, he doesn’t notice.
“I guess girls like you always need to be in control, huh,” he says, leaning back in a languid pose.
“What do you mean? Isn’t that a good thing?”
“It’s not what you’re thinking. I like those kinds of girls. Except they always have so much going on it’s hard to get them to make time to see you.” He gives me a sly side-eye.
Ha. “So you like girls like me, do you?” I tease.
“Maybe,” he allows. He’s the one blushing now, and I feel my cheeks growing hot as well.
“Can I be honest with you?” I ask, changing the subject. For some reason I feel comfortable with him—he’s easy to talk to.
“Sure,” Royce says.
“This is the most downtime I’ve had since I can remember,” I say. “I’ve always judged myself by how much I can achieve. How good I am at things. It’s what I do. I never have any time just to appreciate things.”
Royce sits up a little, adjusting his pants so they cover his ankles. “It’s good to be busy. At least it means you’re good at something, unlike me.”
“That can’t be true,” I say. “Why would you say that?” He looks so crushed for a moment that I know he’s not being falsely modest like some people can be.
He shrugs. “I guess it doesn’t matter either way, really. I’m the son of a congressman and my family has money. My life is all set up for me.” He turns to look at me directly. “Look—I know how bad that sounds. Like I’m complaining about my privilege. I get it. People like you and all the other honorees have worked so hard to get here. But I’m just here because of my dad.”
I’m about to say something, then decide to listen instead.
His shoulders slump. “I guess sometimes I just want to know that what I do matters. That people aren’t judging me by who my parents are, but by who I am.”
I nod sympathetically. “Who are you, then? Who do you want to be?” I ask him, thinking I’m asking the same questions about myself.
Royce knits his brows and looks out at the view. I’ve caught him off guard.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” I say.
“No, no, it’s not that,” he says, leaning back again, and when he shifts, his knee brushes against mine, and the heat inside me builds. “It’s just that no one has ever asked me that before. I don’t know how to answer.”
I turn to him and look him right in his dark eyes. “What are you interested in? Sometimes it’s easier to figure out what you want to do when you figure out what you like.”
He stares at me. “I never thought of it that way. You’re so wise—you’re sure you’re only seventeen?” he teases.
“Well?”
He runs his fingers through his hair again, messing it up. “I like to read. I didn’t learn how to for a long time. I’m dyslexic, and for the longest time everyone just thought I was just slow. So when I finally learned how to read, I couldn’t stop. I felt like I had to catch up.”
“Who’s your favorite writer?”
“Ah, it’s hard to choose,” he says. “Saul Bellow maybe. Or Norman Mailer. Did you ever read Armies of the Night?”
I shake my head. “I’ve heard of it though. It’s about the sixties, right? The protests against the Vietnam War?”
“Yeah. There’s a line from it that’s never left me. ‘There is no greater importance in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.’” Royce looks out at the view, pensive and still. The space between us is so tight and close it feels as if I can hear his heart beating under his shirt. Can he hear mine?
“I always liked it, about how it’s so hard to be brave and stand for what’s right when everything’s against you, you know?” he asks.
I do know. I take my phone out of my bag and start typing.
“What are you doing?”
I flush. “I, um...it’s silly...but I collect quotes. I write them down and I post them in my room on my corkboard.”
“Not to Pinterest or Instagram?” he teases.
“No, because they’re just for me,” I say.
“Are you going to put my quote on it?”
“Your quote?” I tease. “You own it?”
“Well, yeah, I mean, I had to read the whole book.” He smiles back. “But I’ll let you borrow it.”
“Okay, so you like to read. Does that mean you want to be a writer, then?”
“Yeah, like a journalist, I think,” he says with a flash of a smile. “Like Mailer was. And you know, like those guys who bust cover-ups and that sort of thing.”
“You’re not just a writer, you’re a crusader. An activist.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “But whatever I do, it’s definitely not going to be politics.” Whenever he says politics, his mouth makes a hard line, like it’s distasteful. “What about you?”
“Law or medicine,” I say automatically. “I want to make a difference, but I don’t know exactly in what arena yet.”
“Cool,” he says. “You’ve got time, you’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah, isn’t it funny? You already know what you want to do, and I don’t, and I was the one who gave you advice.”
He laughs. “I guess I do know what I want. I just don’t know if I can do it.”
“Why not?” I ask, concerned at the look on his face.
“I don’t think my dad would be too impressed, honestly.”
“Oh.” I feel bad about that. My parents will be happy with whatever I choose. Royce looks uncomfortable so I try to change the subject, sort of. “Your dad seems busy,” I say.
“Yeah, it’s a crazy time for him, especially with a vote on this immigration bill coming up soon.”
“Right.” Wrong subject. I really wish we could talk about something else right now.
“The leadership of the party wants him to move up the ranks. I think they want to test whether he could be a real presidential candidate someday,” he says proudly.
Yeah, ride that anti-immigration platform all the way to the top, I think but don’t say.
Just my luck, that the first boy I’ve ever been really interested in is related to someone who has dim views of people like me. “That must be exciting for you
. About your father being groomed for president, I mean.” But I move away from him, stand up from the bench, and walk out of the enclosed area. I need a little cold air right now.
Royce follows me outside to the edge of the rail. “Not really. The busier Dad gets, the more I feel like a prop in his perfect political life. He carts Mom and I out to his parties. His speeches. Mason usually refuses to go, and my sister’s too young.”
“Do you agree with him about the immigration bill? That undocumented immigrants shouldn’t have a path to citizenship?” I ask, staring out at the view and too nervous to look directly at him. I have to know, before we get any closer, before anything happens between us. Do I want something to happen?
I sneak a peek at his face. Yes. I want something to happen. He’s not just handsome, he’s sweet and smart too. Please say you don’t agree with your dad. How can you agree with your dad when you love that quote from Armies of the Night?
Royce turns around and leans back against the railing, the city lights illuminating his chestnut hair and high cheekbones. “I’m not sure. To be honest, I don’t really care about politics that much,” he says.
It’s not the answer I want, but at least he didn’t say he agreed with it, and maybe he can’t be disloyal to his father.
“Hey,” I say, wanting to change the subject and suddenly realizing something. “Are you related to that family on TV?” He has the same name as them, sort of. Maybe there’s a connection.
“Royce Rolls you mean? Only the most famous reality show family in Hollywood?” he says drily.
I try not to squeal, but the show is my guilty pleasure. I’m obsessed with the Royces. “Bentley Royce is my favorite,” I say, meaning the hellion wild child with the smart mouth and the vulnerable streak.
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, unfortunately we’re distant cousins. Royce is a family name.”