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Before Henry, most of his romantic entanglements as FSOTUS were one-off incidents that involved Cash or Amy confiscating phones before the act and pointing at the dotted line on the NDA on the way out—Amy with mechanical professionalism, Cash with the air of a cruise ship director. It was inevitable they be looped in.
And there’s Shaan, the only member of the royal staff who knows Henry is gay, excluding his therapist. Shaan ultimately doesn’t care about Henry’s sexual preferences as long as they’re not getting him into trouble. He’s a consummate professional parceled in immaculately tailored Tom Ford, ruffled by absolutely nothing, whose affection for his charge shows in the way he tends to him like a favorite houseplant. Shaan knows for the same reason Amy and Cash know: absolute necessity.
Then Nora, who still looks smug every time the subject arises. And Bea, who found out when she walked in on one of their after-dark FaceTime sessions, leaving Henry capable ofnothing but flustered British stammering and thousand-yard stares for the next day and a half.
Pez seems to have been in on the secret all along. Alex imagines he demanded an explanation when Henry literally made them flee the country under the cover of night after putting his tongue in Alex’s mouth in the Kennedy Garden.
It’s Pez who answers when Alex FaceTimes Henry at four a.m. DC time, expecting to catch Henry over his morning tea. Henry is holidaying in one of the family’s country homes while Alex suffocates under his last week of college. He doesn’t reflect on why his migraine demands soothing images of Henry looking cozy and picturesque, sipping tea by a lush green hillside. He just hits the buttons on the phone.
“Alexander, babes,” Pez says when he picks up. “How lovely for you to give your auntie Pezza a ring on this magnificent Sunday morning.” He’s smiling from what looks like the passenger seat of a luxury car, wearing a cartoonishly large sunhat and a striped pashmina.
“Hi, Pez,” Alex says, grinning back. “Where are y’all?”
“We are out for a drive, taking in the scenery of Carmarthenshire,” Pez tells him. He tilts the phone over toward the driver’s seat. “Say good morning to your strumpet, Henry.”
“Good morning, strumpet,” Henry says, glancing away from the road to wink at the camera. He’s looking fresh-faced and relaxed, all rolled-up sleeves and soft gray linen, and Alex feels calmer knowing somewhere in Wales, Henry got a decent night’s sleep. “What’s got you up at four in the morning this time?”
“My fucking economics final,” Alex says, rolling over onto his side to squint at the screen. “My brain isn’t working anymore.”
“Can’t you get one of those Secret Service earpieces with Nora on the other end?”
“I can take it for you,” Pez interjects, turning the camera back to himself. “I’m aces with money.”
“Yes, yes, Pez, we know there’s nothing you can’t do,” says Henry’s voice off-camera. “No need to rub it in.”
Alex laughs under his breath. From the angle Pez is holding the phone, he can see Wales rolling by though the car window, dramatic and plunging. “Hey, Henry, say the name of the house you’re staying at again.”
Pez turns the camera to catch Henry in a half smile. “Llwynywermod.”
“One more time.”
“Llwynywermod.”
Alex groans. “Jesus.”
“I washopingyou two would start talking dirty,” Pez says. “Please, do go on.”
“I don’t think you could keep up, Pez,” Alex tells him.
“Ohreally?” The picture returns to Pez. “What if I put my co—”
“Pez,”comes the sound of Henry’s voice, and a hand with a signet ring on the smallest finger covers Pez’s mouth. “I beg of you. Alex, what part of ‘nothing he cannot do’ did you think was worth testing? Honestly, you are going to get us all killed.”
“That’s the goal,” Alex says happily. “So what are y’all gonna do today?”
Pez frees himself by licking Henry’s palm and continues talking. “Frolic naked in the hills, frighten the sheep, return to the house for the usual: tea, biscuits, casting ourselves upon the Thighmaster of love to moan about Claremont-Diaz siblings, which has become tragically one-sided since Henrytook up with you. It used to be all bottles of cognac and shared malaise and ‘When will they notice us’—”
“Don’t tell him that!”
“—and now I just ask Henry, ‘What is your secret?’ And he says, ‘I insult Alex all the time and that seems to work.’”
“I willturn this car around.”
“That won’t work on June,” Alex says.
“Let me get a pen—”
It turns out they’re spending their holiday workshopping philanthropy projects. Henry’s been telling Alex for months about their plans to go international, and now they’re talking three refugee programs around Western Europe, HIV clinics in Nairobi and Los Angeles, LGBT youth shelters in four different countries. It’s ambitious, but since Henry still staunchly covers all his own expenses with his inheritance from his father, his royal accounts are untouched. He’s determined to use them for nothing but this.
