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Alex Claremont-Diaz is a bloody sorcerer. That’s the only explanation for wanting to go this New Year’s Eve Party. God help him, after months of texting and phone calls, Henry wants to go to this infernal party to see Alex in person, again. He slips the navy and gold invitation in the middle of the stack of papers he and Pez need to go over for the new shelter they’re planning in Brooklyn.
“What’s this?” Pez says, pulling the thick card stock from the documents.
“Oh, that,” Henry replies, “it’s an invitation to the White House New Year’s Eve party. I thought I’d save you the money sky-writing a message to June and let you be my plus-one.”
Pez tilts his head, his dark curls flopping, as he squints at Henry, “Nice try mate. This is so you can moon over Alex in the flesh, instead of confining all the horn to phone flirting.”
Henry’s cheeks heat as he snatches the invitation out of Pez’s hands. “If it’s a burden, I can always ask Bea,”
“Now Henry,” Pez says, holding out his open palm, “you know your Auntie Pezza is shipping you and the American.”
Henry frowns, then places the invitation back on Pez’s open hand. “Yes, well, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think we both know I do,” Pez says, unfolding the invitation and looking over the details. “This man is a revelation. Who else would get you begging me to go to a party? I think I’ll dye my hair in celebration. June wore that divinely pink dress made of lace at the wedding, perhaps pink hair will please her. And I’m going to need to approve your outfit.”
Henry sighs. “Of course you are,”
**
As they ride from the airport to the White House, Henry adjusts and readjusts the copper tie Pez helped him pick out.
“Would it be over-the-top if I bought all the flowers in that shop as a gift for June?” Pez asks. His hair is newly dyed pastel pink.
“Best to actually meet her first, before giving her the entire Percy Okonjo treatment, mate.”
“Fair,” Pez replies.
**
As they walk into the party, Alex comes right up to Henry and says, “Nice tie. Rockin’ the orange,”
Henry is overcome with just how attractive Alex is and thinks he says, “Orange? You must be color blind, this is clearly copper.”
But Alex in person is a little overwhelming, so it’s possible Henry said any number of other random words.
He’s always noticed Alex’s thick, wavy curls, bronze cheeks bones and fit body, but now they’re infused with the vulnerable details Henry knows about him— like how turkeys spook him or how much he cares about his parents fighting, — and Henry feels overwhelmed with the desire to know this person inside and out, in a way he hasn’t felt about anyone else. It makes his skin feel alive and exposed, all at the same time.
Henry’s thankful that he can count on Pez for distraction. When Henry introduces his best mate to June, Pez captures her attention with lavish conversation. But within minutes June has gone twirling off with Pez, leaving Alex and Henry alone.
Henry stares at Alex’s curls and wonders what it would be like to run his fingers through them.
Alex puts his arm around Henry’s shoulder and says, “I’ve already had two shots of whiskey. You need to catch up.”
Then he guides Henry towards the bar, where Henry is more than happy to down a shot, in hopes that his skin stops tingling where Alex’s arm touched his back. He downs a second shot straight away, because the first one didn’t work at all. That erases Alex’s touch, but now Henry wants Alex to put his arm around him again. So he takes a swig of champagne from the bottle Alex hands him.
Alex is continually pulled away by the crowd to dance. Sometimes by Nora and sometimes by other women. While standing at the bar, Henry watches 300 of Washington’s best and brightest under thirty dance, and marvels at how care-free and confident Alex is compared to all of them. It’s such a fucking turn on that Henry distracts himself by searching for Pez and June among the crowd. He finally spots them, pulling Nora towards them.
“You don’t dance?” Henry hears behind him.
When he turns around, Alex’s eyelashes are inches away.
“Somehow ballroom dancing doesn’t seem useful,” Henry manages to get out.
“It’s all in the hips.” Alex puts his hands on Henry’s hips and Henry might die right there.
Instead his body compromises by merely acting out a rigor mortis in hopes Alex thinks his hips are dead, and therefore don’t need to be touched. Henry has dreamed of Alex touching his hips many times, of course, just not in front of hundreds of other people.
When the DJ starts the count down for the new year, Henry fidgets with the champagne bottle while staring at Alex’s lips. At the stroke of midnight, Alex reaches out to Nora and kisses her while Henry stares numbly, his hand barely keeping hold of the champagne bottle. He slips over to the bar before the bottle shatters to the floor, sets it down, and flees the party.
Outside in the garden, Henry can finally breathe. He didn’t know that Alex and Nora were dating, but that makes sense. They’re together a lot. It’s just Henry had been assuming Alex’s texts were flirting. But that was wishful thinking. Alex is charismatic and friendly with everyone. Henry knows all about people misunderstanding innocent exchanges as flirting; women have been misunderstanding him all of his life. He just never thought he’d be the one who misunderstood.
God, it’s torturous.
Suddenly he feels like he should write apology notes to any woman he gave the wrong impression to, until he realizes that Alex writing that kind of letter to Henry would only make it worse.
He stares at the midnight sky and wills himself to forget about Alex. Forget about the daily texts, the jokes, the telephone calls, the feeling like he had a connection with this ghastly, attractive person. It was just a friendship and Henry isn’t sure he has it in him to be just friends with Alex. Not tonight, under layers of alcohol. He needs to sober up before he goes inside to fetch Pez and say goodbye.
Yes, that’s a solid plan. Henry will just stare at the sky, through the tree branches, and keep breathing in and out until he doesn’t remember Alex’s hands on his hips, or the freeze-frame photo in his mind of Alex’s lips on Nora’s.
He’s concentrating so hard on his icy breath he doesn’t hear anything around him until Alex’s voice shatters the quiet. “What are you doing out here?”
Shit. Henry is not sober enough to have this conversation.
“Getting some air,” he manages to say. That sounded fine. Right? Completely normal.
“Did I do something wrong?” Alex asks.
Henry cringes. He can’t very well say, You touched me and then you kissed Nora. He doesn’t trust himself to say anything, but he has to answer.
God, he wishes he were just some anonymous boy at a party, who was free to say whatever he wanted, and so out of his alcohol-fueled brain slips out, “Do you ever wish you were just some anonymous person?”
“I was some anonymous working class kid, and then my mom became president, why who would you be?” Alex says from behind him, and it’s like they’re on the phone again and Henry is once again convinced Alex genuinely wants to know him, the real Henry, not the glossy-magazine cover version.
Who would Henry be if he weren’t a prince? “I’d be a writer and live in Paris,” he answers out loud, then under the layers of shots and champagne, Henry hears himself blurting out,”I’d certainly date more.”
“Yeah, because it’s so hard for a prince to get a date,” Alex says.
Henry can hear Alex’s inhales and exhales, and knows that Alex is listening to him, hanging on every word he says, actually taking it in. He can still feel the echo of Alex’s long fingers on his outer thighs so he blurts out, “The people I date don’t interest me and the people that interest me I can’t date.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Alex says.
“Christ, you’re as thick as it gets!” Henry blurts out as he marches over and grabs Alex’s face without even thinking. He mashes his lips to Alex’s, finally kissing him after months of fantasies.
And it is everything.
Henry grabs those thick curls, pulling them through his fingers. before it registers, through the layers of booze, what he’s doing.
Oh my god! Henry is accosting the president’s son in the White House garden.
How in the world did he let that happen?
He tears himself away, muttering apologies, then rushes in the opposite direction, hoping that he can find the inside of the White House. It’s on pure adrenaline and panic that Henry manages to get back to the party, grab Pez by the arm, and drag him out of the room.
Pez is about the object, when he takes one look at Henry’s face and says, “Right mate. I’ve got this.”
Pez texts something on his phone, and their security is there with their coats and whisking them into a car.
Henry watches the streetlights of Washington blur past and wonders what the hell he was thinking. He is not in his right mind around Alex Claremont-Diaz. At least this time there is no embarrassing evidence — layers of sponge cake and buttercream captured in dozens of tabloid photos —of Henry being under the spell of the president’s ghastly, attractive son.