Page 43 of His Royal Highness

“I’ll email legal.”

He nods and that’s that.

The rest of the day is an outright sprint. We barely stop for lunch, and even that’s work as we sample the new fall tasting menu at València.

At 8 PM, when I make it back to my apartment, I’m dog tired. I kick off my shoes and walk straight to the fridge for a beer. It doesn’t surprise me that my father walked away from the business at my age, cashing out his shares of the company and leaving this world behind. If you get into this line of work expecting it to be a job, you’ll crumble.

It’s a way of life. A passion. Your creative values either align with Cal’s or they don’t.

Whitney accused me of lacking passion at Cal’s dinner party. I find that pretty funny considering ex-girlfriends have accused me of being too passionate. Not about them—about the Knightley Company.

I’d resigned myself to a life in which I was married to the company, just like Cal. Sure, spouses and lovers might come and go like the tide, but my real love would be always be my work.

Now, as I think of Whitney, I wonder for the first time in a long time if I might be wrong about that.Chapter TwelveWhitneyI think I need to sage my dorm room. This is embarrassing to admit, but I’ve never brought a guy back here. It’s not that I’m a never-been-kissed virgin. Far from it. I’ve had a whopping two sexual partners. The first was a year after Derek moved away to London.

Carrie and I went to a party at a friend of a friend’s apartment. It wasn’t exactly a stereotypical college rager. There were wine coolers and people playing Scrabble. Still, I met a boy.

Winston, so named for Winston Churchill, was cute with jet black hair and pale blue eyes. Originally from England, he seemed like the least threatening person I’d ever met. We got to chatting in a corner and, probably owing to his baby-bird-like demeanor and the one and a half Smirnoff Ices I’d consumed, I felt comfortable enough to admit to him that I’d never had sex before.

He hadn’t either.

Our eyes lit up with possibilities.

“Do you—”

“We could—”

The endings to our sentences weren’t necessary. He took my half-finished drink, set it down, and led me to his dorm room. That night was sweet and awkward. A lot of “Are you sure?” and “Is that the right spot?” mixed with “I don’t think we’re doing it right.”

Needless to say, I left having yet to experience an orgasm but with the confidence of a non-virgin sexpot.

I hung my sexual experience over Carrie’s head as any good friend should, saying cliché things like “Once you have sex, you’ll understand” so many times that she eventually tried to smother me with a pillow.

My second sexual partner was a guy I was actually dating at the time. It was a few years after Winston. I was more than ready to tackle sex for a second time.

Grant was very good-looking and a few years older. He was an associate in the engineering department and Carrie had tried to warn me away from him. According to her, he was unhealthily obsessed with his own reflection. He played acoustic guitar and described himself as an up-and-coming singer-songwriter, and that’s exactly what he was in the bedroom—up-and-coming. A real one-hit wonder with a two-minute single titled “She’s Not Satisfied”.

I gave him a second date, on the off chance he’d had performance anxiety. He insisted on playing his guitar for me before we got down to business. I sat on one side of the couch, he sat on the other, eyes shut, crooning in high falsetto. I was unsure of what to do with my hands after he politely asked me to stop snapping along.

We didn’t make it back to the bedroom. I lied about a family emergency and got the hell out of his apartment.

He still works here. We rarely cross paths, but when we do, he always asks how my grandma’s doing.

Needless to say, my sexual history is sparse and therefore my brain has latched onto the small exchange I had with Derek in my dorm room the other day and run with it.

It wasn’t even a kiss—his lips barely touched mine—and yet I dream about him that night and the next. On Monday, I wake up warm. Tingling. Turned on.

I kick off my covers and stand. Angry.

I refuse to do anything about my current state. I will not have a self-induced orgasm while thinking about Derek. Those brown eyes of his would know what I’d done. He’d smile smugly and ask me about my morning, making me blush and relive every wave of pleasure generated just from his hint of a kiss.

No.

I decide to exert this pent-up energy in other, more healthy ways.

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