Eight: Prince Cadoc
800 Words
Chapter Eight
Prince Cadoc
She was going to date him. It didn’t matter what I said, or what I did. For three years, I would have to watch her be with someone else. My best friend. Knowing the promise we’d made to each other, and hating every minute that she wasn’t with me. After she left the astronomy tower, I went to Gwyneth’s room.
When she opened the door, it was with a look of knowing. It was not the first time or the last time I’d pined over some other girl while I’d been with her. Gwyneth had been through the mill, but because we both knew where the other stood, she stuck with it.
She always looked as if she’d stepped out of Vogue, regardless of how early it was in the morning. Her brunette hair was slightly mused, as she’d just gotten out of bed and the velvet blue sleep mask she wore was pushed up over her face.
“Give me one good reason not to kill you for waking me up this f*****g early,” she said.
I gave her my most miserable look. “Penelope Peters.”
Her face softened, then she shouted out over her shoulder, “Vickie, get out!”
Victoria Ambrose was Gwyneths roommate. She was slightly obsessed with me, but I’d seen the shrine and her “notebooks” and knew her for what she was: a husband hunter. She was there because her mother, Lady Ambrose, wanted to try to ensnare me as her daughter’s future husband. Gwyneth hated her, as did I.
“Gwyneth, its 7 a.m. and it’s my room.”
“That’s a royal f*****g command Ambrose,” I barked.
That got her attention, and she rushed out of the room, nearly tripping to leave. I walked inside, and Gwyneth shut the door. I took a seat in the bean bag chair Gwyneth had gotten as she had a habit of crashing on her floor drunk.
“She says I’m a commitment,” I told her.
Gwyneth took a packet of cigarettes out from the blue nightgown she wore, hidden somewhere in her bra. “Well, she’s not wrong,” she opened the pack, and took one out. Then she dug around for her lighter, and lit one up, puffing away casually. “you know that’s the same reason I won’t let us be anything but casual.”
“But I don’t understand. I should be a f*****g fairy tale for her! She should be smitten I’m even interested. That’s usually how this story goes, even if they aren’t interested. She told me to wait three years to get to know her. That she’s going to date, and that I should too!”
Gwyneth smirked. “You’ll be fine.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“If she wasn’t interested, she wouldn’t have told you to take it slow,” said Gwyneth, “it’s smart, actually. What she is doing is giving you time to get to know each other without pressure. Without commitment. That way, if you really do care about each other, people won’t be able to write you off. She’s a scholarship girl. They’ll paint her as every rude word in the book, Cadoc. But if the public knows her, if they like her, if they want her as much as you do, you two have got a fighting chance.”
“I made her promise to spend New Years with me,” I admitted, “I want her to know my world. All of it.”
“That was smart too,” she said, “you want me there, I assume?”
“Yes, please,” I begged.
“Good,” she said, “fret not, Little Prince, ‘It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important’.”
“She’s the rose, I take it?”
“No,” she replied, “you are.”
I left her room, feeling slightly better, and slightly confused. Which is usually the way it is when I leave Gwyneth’s room. She has been the mystery I haven’t been able to solve since we were children, and I suspect, one I will never fully understand.
But the one that consumes me now is Penelope Peters. And hers is one that I need to solve, so I can make her mine, forever.
- Writer
