Mags pops her lips together, blotting at her lipstick as she nods. “It’s true,” she says. “Everyone will be at Carnegie’s.”
My stomach does a barrel roll. I shut my eyes and listen to my friends gossip as Amelia does my lashes. Declan Carnegie—a pro baseball player who’s a little older than us—is supposed to be a closet drug addict (“Out of control,” Charley says); Kendall Jenner and some model she’s cat-fighting will both be there tonight (gasp!); Taylor Swift’s house help told someone who works for us that she’ll be jetting in tomorrow.
Everyone. Will. Be. There.
I dig my nails into my palm and wonder why the hell I left seclusion. It’s been months since I’ve been photographed. I don’t need to draw attention now. And why the Hamptons?
Because you’re fucking brave, I try to tell myself.
Amelia notices my face and gives me a quick peck on the forehead. “Not everyone will be there tonight, Luce. Only the good guys.”
I bite my lip, thankful Mags and Charley are focused on the finer points of party slut evening-ware.
“So you don’t want Prince Liam for yourself?” Amelia teases me as she pastes a line of lashes above mine.
“Um, hell no. No offense,” I tell her with my eyes shut.
“You think he’s an asshole, don’t you?”
I peek one eye open. “Do you really want to know?”
“I already know. I know you, woman.”
My stomach tightens as I remember that searing hot picture of the prince’s package.
Prince Liam might be the first guy my vagina has taken a liking to in two years, but I do think he’s an asshole. My interest in him—my very secret interest—is purely as a slab of man meat and inspiration for my poor, neglected vag.
“He seems like the world’s biggest dick, but remember, I think all guys are dicks these days,” I tell Amelia.
Her fingers are gentle on my face as she pastes on more lashes. In the silence before she speaks, I can feel her sympathy. “I know. So someone’s going to have to prove you wrong.”
I let my breath out slowly as she rubs her fingertip along my eyelid. “Well, I can tell you now, it’s not going to be some royal prick draped with coked-up models, wearing spandex.”
Amelia’s body stills. “Spandex? What do you mean?”
“That’s what he had on, isn’t it?”
“Lucille… My dear Lucille…” Through my extra-long lashes, I can see Amelia’s face scrunch as she starts laughing. “You guys,” she squeals, her eyes crinkling as she beams at me. “Our girl here is a dirty little liar!”
“I don’t know what that even means.” I give her the stink eye.
“You said he was wearing spandex. That Instagram shot, the package shot, you know: the one TMZ called Crown Jewels in the headline. It did look like a speedo. But it was boxer-briefs, all melded around his jewels from where he climbed out of the ocean. Which you didn’t know, but you totally saw it. She looked for long enough to think it was spandex.” Amelia beams at Maggie and Char. “She was reading TMZ. Out in bumfuck Colorado. Our girl here was reading TMZ.”
I snort, biting the tip of my tongue to try to keep my cheeks from going guilt-red. “You know my opinion on that bullshit rag.”
But it’s no use. My friends are hooting like a bunch of over-active chimps.
“She wants dem jewels!”
“Someone needs a royal rumble!”
“Damn, I hope he’s there!”
“Everybody wants him,” Amelia cuts in, smiling. “It’s not that weird, Lucy Su.”
I blow my breath out, feeling like an eighth-grade boy caught with my hand inside my boxers.
“I think he’s disgusting. There is nothing impressive about royalty in the age of presidents and prime ministers. Especially not Liam the manwhore. He probably has genital warts.”
I keep my tirade flowing as Amelia perfects my fake lashes.
He is an asshole. I can tell. A rich, beautiful playboy with the morals of a jackass and the conscience of a fly. If that picture of him with two models on his lap and a rolled-up dollar bill behind his ear didn’t prove it, the one with Liam getting a back-rub from that French girl sitting naked on his broad back did. I remember the look on her face as she sunk her hands into those thick shoulders: as if she’d won a prize. Crown Jewels my ass. I bet he’s not even a grower. It might look big flaccid, but it’s probably four inches hard. Royals are inbred. Everyone knows that.
It’s that smile of his that gets me—secretly, of course. It’s just so…cocky. And crooked. And charming. And real. His face is stunning—all regal cheekbones and princely lips—but when he smiles, he just looks mostly nice. Good ole average, nice-guy nice.
I tell myself, as Maggie does my lips, that that’s the only reason I stalk his Instagram account. Because I’m processing. That’s what my therapist, Paul, would call it. Trying to decide if there are any nice guys left. So I guess it does make sense I pick the prince who fan-mailed me that one time, back when I was a college freshman. Paul would say this is a sign I’m moving closer to dating again.
He would—if he knew.
He doesn’t need to, though.
Prince Liam might be hot as hell, but he’s just eye candy. I’m sure the fan mail was a bid to get inside my pants, back when the show was new and na?ve Lucy Rhodes was the hottest thing on TV.
I think of my cat Grey and make a mental note to check on him before we head out to the Carnegie mansion, site of tonight’s “it” party. If life goes according to my plans, I’ll have nine or ten more feline friends before I get my first gray hair.
And no man.
Never, ever again.
*
I used to love this house. I was thirteen when we bought it—and thirteen was young enough, I guess, for me to feel like I grew up here.
Some of the homes on Meadow Lane are weird: all fortress-looking, with big, gray stones and spiky iron fences; or covered with those wooden shingles—not just on the roof, but on the exterior walls, too. Some aren’t anywhere near the ocean, so you have to walk, if the owners even go down to the ocean. Other mansions are surrounded by huge mazes with those boxy bushes. In other words—not beach houses at all.
Our house in Southampton is perfect. White-washed clapboard walls, a wood-shingle roof, acres of lawn. Just lush, green grass, dotted by the occasional weeping willow. There’s a garden on the home’s south side that only grows white roses. Right behind the house, a huge pool with a waterfall in the middle, and a diving board Mom and Dad added when Tripp busted his head open diving off the pool’s side.