Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I let out a sigh. “I don’t have any friends, to be honest.”
“I guess you have been gone from town for a long while now.”
I nodded. “And even when I did live here, Sebastian was really my one best friend.”
She watched me close when I said his name. I felt like it was so obvious that I was full of feelings when I even mentioned him, like suddenly I was transparent, and everyone could tell how much he meant to me.
Even though I didn’t want him to.
I changed the subject fast.
“I had friends on the mountain, believe it or not.”
“Human friends?” she asked, the grin returning. “Or hummingbirds and bears?”
I puffed out a laugh. “See? You are my true friend. Because you roast me like that.”
The waiter showed up with my burger and Tracy’s broccoli cheddar soup, and I took a few bites. It had been three days since I’d last seen Sebastian and his mini crew, back at the fairgrounds, and I could still only go about twenty seconds without thinking of him.
Without remembering the defeated look in his eyes when I’d told him I wouldn’t spend the night in his castle. I had been aching for him ever since, but I knew I had done the right thing.
I knew I couldn’t step foot in that castle ever again.
“I had friends on the mountain,” I continued finally. “We’d occasionally get together for makeshift dinner parties. There was even a man.”
“You had a mountain boyfriend?”
“I did, for a while,” I said. “It was… simple. We didn’t talk all that much. We hiked a lot.”
“And kept each other warm?”
“Sometimes,” I said, looking down at my plate. “Until a few months in, when the guy’s wife showed up to take him home.”
Tracy grimaced. “Ouch.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Apparently his year in the mountains had just been an experiment for him. And I was part of that big gay experiment. He’d been avoiding his family responsibility by fleeing to the mountains. You should have seen how red his face was the morning I showed up to his cabin and his wife was at the sink making coffee.”
“She didn’t know about you two?”
“God, no,” I said. “I… was a secret. He didn’t even say goodbye to me before leaving the mountain that week.”
“I’m so sorry, Henry,” Tracy said.
I shrugged, swallowing another bite of burger. “It was for the better, in the end. I knew I’d never be with him long term.”
“Still sucks, though.”
“It sucked a lot.”
The cheap old TV above the diner bar started showing footage of Queen Charlotte, and then before long, Sebastian. I tried to look away but found myself staring back at it within another moment. It was footage of Sebastian and Emma walking around the Frostmonte Castle grounds. It looked so idyllic, so inevitable.
Of course Sebastian would end up with a princess like Emma. They looked picture perfect together.
“Why didn’t you want to be with your mountain man long term?” Tracy asked. “I mean, before you found out about Mrs. Mountain Man.”
I shrugged. I said nothing. I picked up my burger and then put it down again, feeling far too full suddenly. Uncomfortably full, as I looked back up at the TV screen again.
Tracy turned around briefly. “Ah. There he is,” she said. “That’s why you didn’t think things were going to work long term with mountain dude.”
“What?”
“Because you were still in love with him,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder toward the TV.
“That is not why,” I said grimly. “I hated him.”
“Hated him enough to come all the way back to Berrydale and fix up that old tiny, crappy house?”
“I had to fix up the house. There was no one else.”
She clicked her tongue. “You know you had the option to sell as-is. I gave it to you, darlin’.”
I was silent. I felt like the walls were slowly closing in around me, even though the diner was even emptier now. I drained my coffee mug, and then when the waiter came to fill it back up, I drained it again.
“You’ve been dead-set on being alone for so long,” Tracy said to me as we were leaving. “But maybe it isn’t serving you. Y’know?”
“It’s serving me just fine,” I said.
Two hours later, I was home, completely alone, and sitting in the dark.
I hadn’t bothered to turn any lights on after the sun had gone down because I was sitting on the couch, a laptop in front of me, being sucked into a deep and relentless Google rabbit hole.
My mom had an old laptop that had taken a good seven minutes to boot up. But it was able to browse the internet just fine, and before long, I found myself hunched over it, looking up years and years worth of information that I’d so pointedly avoided until now.
I’d just been meaning to Google “Prince Sebastian Ambrose” so that I could find out if a wedding date had been set yet for him and Emma.