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“I did too, Livy.”
He’s never called me that before. I could barely handle ‘O’. I don’t know what to do with ‘Livy’.
“Listen,” he says, his voice going all low and serious, “I regret all the damage the Rotten Royals posts did. I cannot tell you how much I regret it. I wanted to use the whole thing as a weapon. Originally, it was meant to stop the war, you know. Naïve, right? Well, I had heard about it, and I wanted to do my part to protect you, as much as I could. But I was way too late. By a few years, actually. My plan would have needed at least two years to unfold. It was… I’ll tell you later, if you care enough to listen. If you forgive me enough.”
He waits. It sounds like he’s holding his breath.
“I forgive you,” I tell him and he exhales.
“Thank you, O,” he says. “Thank you. I just… I just wanted to do something to help. As your brother.”
We both freeze. That word he said hangs between us in the air, and we don’t know what to do with it. We stay like that, silent, embarrassed, afraid, excited for a few minutes.
“What… What are we going to do now, Angel?” I whisper into the phone. Marco hasn’t lifted his eyes from mine, the one constant in the middle of my hurricane.
Angel hesitates.
“What are we going to be?” I ask, when it’s obvious he doesn’t know how to answer. We’ve been friends, we’ve been enemies and everything in-between. But now, it’s different than everything we have ever been to each other.
“Well,” he says slowly, “if you are my sister, then what does that make me?”
“My brother,” I reply immediately. I know this. I’ve done this once before, with Hector. I got this. “Do you want to be brother and sister from now on? Or… crazier idea, we could try being friends.”
“Let’s not push it,” he says, but I can hear him smiling. “I watched you on the TV, you know. You are so brave. I couldn’t… I was such a coward for so many years. But you… You just went up there, in front of everyone, and shared your truth. Your heart. And everything that came out of it was beautiful.”
“Th-thank you,” I say, shakily.
“Well, it must be crazy at the airport right now, so I’ll let you go,” Angel says, and his voice has taken on this calm, quiet tone that I’ve never heard before. He sounds at peace with himself for the first time in ages. At peace with the world. “I’m here, in Asteria. I can be at the palace within a few minutes, if you want me to.”
“Please,” I tell him. “Please be at the palace when I get there.”
“Done,” he says immediately. “I’m calling my driver right now. Ok, talk to you later, Livy. I’m so…”
“Glad,” I finish for him. “I’m so glad I found you too.”
There’s silence for a moment, and I think he’s hung up, but then he says in this low, guttural voice:
“I almost lost you.”
“I didn’talmostloseyou,” I reply. “I did lose you. For years and years. It was horrible.”
“I know, I know,” he says. “It was horrible for me too.”
For some reason, that makes me smile even more widely.
“Good,” I tell him. “It should have been.”
/we the rotten royals/
Angel: Welcome to our new chat room, Rottens.
Olivia: If you keep calling us that, you’ll get punched in your delicate place.
Hector: Nice going, sis.
Angel: Ha! Bring it. It won’t be the first time, O.
Olivia: I’m no longer six years old, you know. I play basketball now.
