The Runaway Bride

CHAPTER 2: Your Highness

Classes the very next morning was full of stares and whispers — but mostly stares. What was even more annoying about this was the fact that not only were the girls leering at him and staring dreamily, but the guys were also looking at him, smiling and chuckling to themselves.

A rumor had sprung out during the end of the start-of-the-term orientation yesterday that André and Noah were not in good terms.

They weren’t, but they weren’t fighting either.

“‘Ey, man! You, newbie!” a tall, dark-skinned guy with rasta dreads called out to him and smiled. “You’re Hargreaves, aren’t you? I’m Tyron, captain of the school’s football team. Me boy Carmichael over there said you play ball. You might be interested in joining the White Tigers.”

Noah glanced at André, his eyes narrowing, and his forehead creased.

It’s too early to judge, but you can never really be certain with André. He’s just way too unpredictable that it’s hard to read through him. One moment he’d be pissing you off with his antics, then the next thing you know he’s trying to reconciliate by asking you to play against him on a game.

He’s like a volatile chemical — and a really destructive one at that.

“Forget it,” Noah just said and walked past Ty, making several of the guys that were with him scoff at his chic attitude.

“You coulda just said ‘no, thanks’, bruh,” Ty called after him, but he didn’t bother looking back.

André laughed, more mirthless than anything else, and sneered at Noah’s retreating back.

“Avoiding me?” André called out to him and to everyone’s surprise, Noah paused midstep and turned around to give him a look of displeasure.

“And why would I want to skip the unpleasantness that is you?”

“Ooh, cheeky.” He chuckled and stood up from his place on the bench, his hands on his pockets.

“f**k you.”

André c****d his head to the side. “Is that an invitation?”

Noah scoffed at his words like it just stung him, his face contorted in frustration, and he walked closer to him — dangerously closer. “Not everything has to be an argument between the two of us, you know?”

“Yes, but I can tell you that you’re an asshole in nine different languages, which gives me the advantage,” André sniped and flashed him a cocky smile, not even flinching as his face grew closer to his.

Noah didn’t say anything for a while and just stood there, his eyes pinned on him. Everyone who had seen them was now anticipating a fight, but the growing excitement immediately burned out when the Student Council president suddenly emerged, followed by the blue-haired guy who was speaking on the podium the day before.

“What’s the meaning of this?”

“I don’t know. Look it up in a dictionary or something,” André retorted, his eyes hot on Noah.

“That obnoxious attitude of yours won’t save you when I send you to the Headmaster’s office.”

André’s piercing gaze now transferred to the Student Council president, making the blue-haired guy behind him take a sudden step backwards.

“For what? I didn’t know there was a rule against staring in the middle of a hallway.”

The guys who were with André laughed at his sarcastic remark and the Student Council president glared at them.

“I’m warning you, Carmichael. If you take a single foot out of line, I’d make sure myself that you’d be out of this school before you can even say the word ‘football’.”

André smirked as a response. “Well, good luck with that” — he furrowed his eyebrows — “what was your name again?”

“David.”

“Yeah, whatever. And good luck, too, with Dance Dance Revolution over there.”

After a few more stares, whispers, and several introductions, the first day of class was finally concluded by the loud ringing of the school bell. Relieved to have escaped the stuffy main building filled with people who doesn’t know the definition of being covert, he headed straight for his dorm.

But to his surprise — well, not really — the floor was once again covered with his roommate’s dirty laundry.

He had seen him playing basketball at lunch today and he had concluded that this would be the state of the room somehow, but he at least had a tiny bit of hope that it wouldn’t turn out to be this way.

He sighed and kicked André’s shoes out of the way. “f*****g slob.”

°°°

Driving past the Vegas-y part of the city, a man in his late fifties with his greying hair slicked back away from his face rested his tanned arm on the rim of the window, listening to music that was blasting on his car’s speakers.

He had a hard look on his face and with the way he sat, his feet evenly spaced apart and his back straight, he almost seemed like he meant business — which, for someone like him, he probably did.

He signalled as he pulled up in front of a small café lined with chairs under beach umbrellas up front, his dark-tinted sunglasses reflecting the image of the rustic coffee shop in front of him.

“Hello, welcome to the Coffee Central,” the barista waiting over by the counter greeted and motioned for one of the other crews to entertain their customer.

The man ignored him. Instead, he ran his gaze along the length of the place and decided to sit on the farthest corner, one hand holding his phone, typing rapidly.

“Would you like to order something, sir?”

He glanced up at the waiter and ordered a drink so long and with so many specifications that the crew nearly lost track somewhere between ‘skim’ and ‘nonfat’. He then proceeded to type things on his phone, casually glancing back outside the glass wall that looked out into the moderately busy street that surrounded the place.

Several minutes later, the bell hanging on top of the glass door rang and he looked up, meeting the gaze of a young boy with tousled inky black hair and an even darker eyes.

“Your Highness,” the man said and stood up, sliding his phone back into the inner pocket of his coat. “How was your school?”

Noah dismissed him with a wave and plopped heavily on the seat opposite the man, his facial expression very un-princelike.

“Let’s not talk about school,” Noah said and frowned when he remembered André’s dirty laundry sprawled all over the floor.

He wrinkled his nose as though the stench had followed him and made a mental note to set fire to his clothes the moment he comes back. That would teach him a lesson.

“Well, then, shall we talk about … you know who?”

“Harrold, why would I want to talk about Voldemort?”

Harrold’s right eyebrow subconsciously rose and he pushed his glasses further into his hair. “I’m talking about Miss Romanov, Your Highness. She is, well … still lost.”

“Yes, I’m aware. It’s been years.”

“And?”

Noah snapped his head back, sighing, and gave the waiter who had arrived with Harrold’s order an irritated look. “And nothing, alright? Make your peace with God.”

“You have not found her yet?”

Noah rolled his eyes and tapped his feet furiously against the hardwood floors, the sound of his tapping in sync with the music that permeated the air.

“No,” he answered, almost begrudgingly, and leaned back on his chair, crossing his legs so as to stop the continuous tapping. “All I found were a bunch of assholes that infested the damn school.”

“Now, now, that is not how a prince should present himself, sir. I—”

“Just cut me some slack for now, will you? You don’t have to worry. None of those morons would know who they’re talking to.”

Harrold just nodded, pushing the drink he had ordered towards the young prince, and smiled — the kind of smile he gives Noah when he gets in trouble with the queen.

“I suppose you have made some interesting friends?”

“No,” he snapped. “In case you weren’t listening, everyone was a bunch of asshole.”

“But was there anything that had at least caught your attention?”

He was about to reply with the exact same tone he used but stopped, thinking back to the first time he had arrived at the school.

He cleared his throat. “Well … there was … there was something a little bit interesting.”

“Yes?”

“I have a roommate.” He bit his lip, something he usually does when he’s embarrassed. “He’s the biggest prick I have ever met.”

“What was so interesting about him?”

“Nothing in particular. Just that … well,” he trailed, his throat suddenly feeling dry, “he has the same eyes as Asa. The same tropical island eyes.”

“And he’s a man?”

Noah nodded, almost absentmindedly as his thoughts flew back to when he first caught sight of his eyes.

“Do you think he could be related? What is this young lad’s name?” Harrold inquired, fishing out a pen from his pocket and scribbling on a table napkin.

“André Carmichael.”

“What was that, Nola— Noam? Nora?” someone said from behind him, and he whirled around, making eye contact once more with those ocean blue eyes.

Noah quickly hid his surprise and frowned. “It’s Noah, dumbass. Remember that next time.”

André just flashed him one of his signature smirks and turned to the man across from him. “Who’s this? Your father?”

The man stood up and extended his arm out for a shake to which André received without a second’s hesitation.

“I am Harrold, Sir Noah’s equerry.”

“Equerry?” André repeated, his eyes now on his two other friends who were still by the counter, chatting up one of the female baristas. “You handle his stables?”

“Not quite, sir. I am his … personal attendant.”

“Is that just another way to say butler, or am I missing something here and he’s actually a royal?”

Harrold smiled meaningfully at him, but he was now squinting at the menu on the far side of the room to even remotely notice. “You could say I’m sort of a … butler, as you have said.”

André nodded and left, ignoring Noah’s once again irritated looks.

Once André was out of earshot, Harrold sat back on his chair and smiled at the prince across him. “I suppose you were right. He is kind of interesting.”