“For your information, I’ve been sick,” I lied.
“If it helps, Knickers was in a complete glump before he went back down to the base,” Freddie said. “I couldn’t jolly him out of it. He didn’t tease me about my new girlfriend Persimmon. I faxed a photocopy of my bum to Marj, and put her on speaker when she called to scream at me about pornography, and then I prank-called Barnes, pretending to be the Royal College of Taxidermy inquiring about his new hairpiece. Nothing.”
That got a laugh out of me, at least. “Aren’t you supposed to be on Team Nick?”
“He knows I am,” Freddie said. “But he’s also not in London, so get your arse back home and let me help with the healing process. I am unofficially a PhD in Medicinal Misbehavior.”
In fact, other than one Beatrix Larchmont-Kent-Smythe—whose investment in me did not seem to extend past her sense of aristocratic duty—my English friends all tried to jolt my flatlining spirits. Cilla and Gaz gave raucous, amusingly divergent accounts of his attempts to give her cooking lessons; Joss shared that Tom Huntington-Jones wanted to bankroll an entire Soj store after the paps identified me wearing one of her shirts (I’d forgotten to button my peacoat when I ran out for cheese puffs). Clive gossiped that Prince Edwin ran over an endangered gopher on a golf outing, and Penelope Six-Names now hosted a children’s TV show called Morning Zoo that involved her dressing up as animals and visiting them in their habitats to promote better interspecies relations. Apparently, a certain group of hens hadn’t liked the cut of her jib at all. It was heartening to be included even though I’d decamped to American soil, but all I wanted was to laugh at those dishy stories with Nick. After all, he had been my best friend out of all of them.
Three days before Christmas, with no end to my sloth in sight, my parents decided it was their turn to intervene. I was digging around in the Coucherator for a Diet Coke when the two of them descended, Dad parking on the coffee table, and Mom to my right.
“Bex,” Mom began. “Honey, this has gotten—”
“You are a disaster, Bex,” Dad interrupted, patting my knee.
“Earl!” Mom hissed. “We rehearsed this.”
“Well, rehearsal was sort of boring,” Dad admitted. “Let’s just give it to her straight.”
“Give what to me?” I asked.
“It’s in the script,” Mom said huffily. “You’d know by now if he’d just stuck to it.”
“There is a script?” I was confused. “Wait. Is this an intervention?”
“No,” Mom said.
“Yes,” Dad said.
“Don’t take offense, but it’s not a very good one,” I said, folding my legs up under me.
“You’re loafing, Bex,” Dad said, smacking his lap. “All day, all night, you loaf. You loaf so much you’ve become a loaf. I could slice you up and use you for sandwiches.”
“What your father is trying to say is that we’re worried,” Mom translated, shooting him a dirty look.
“What I’m really trying to say is that you need to go back to England,” he said.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Mom said. “That boy ran roughshod all over her feelings, Earl.”
I put up my hand and wiggled it around. “Do I get a vote?”
“Yes,” Mom said.
“No,” Dad said. “You get to listen. Look, hon, I’m very sorry your relationship ended. But I don’t care if he was the Prince of England or the Prince of Persian Rugs down on the interstate. You can’t hide out here forever.”
I pulled a face. “That carpet guy is sort of cute, and in the commercials he does those one-armed push-ups. Maybe I should introduce myself.”
“He uses a body double. Costs them a fortune,” Dad said.
“What?” Mom and I were both unnaturally shocked.
Dad shrugged. “We all use the same camera-people. The things I know about Hardware Pete from Pete’s Hardware would make your toes curl.” He shook his head. “Don’t change the subject, Rebecca. You don’t get to become a mole-person. Pull yourself together and go back to London with your head held high.”
“I can’t,” I argued, faint with rising panic. “Everyone will be watching me, waiting to see if I’ll crack. I’m not making that up, Dad. The headline on In Touch this week was WILL SHE CRACK?”
“Honey, you said yourself that half the problem was Nick being afraid of the press,” Mom said gently, placing her hand over mine. “Don’t you make that same mistake.”
“Just go be, Bex,” Dad said. “And, go be Bex. Go find your life again. It’s not here anymore, and you know it.”
“But what if it’s not there, either?” I could barely do more than whisper. “Imagine what it’s like, living in the country he’s going to rule one day. He’s everywhere, Dad. And I don’t know if I’m strong enough.” A tear slid down my cheek. “It’s one thing to crack over here, but if I do it over there, everyone sees. He sees.”
Dad slid off the table and knelt down in front of me, putting his hands on my face. “The Bex who dumped her prom date into the garbage is strong enough,” he said. “The Bex who climbed over a barbwire fence is strong enough.”
“That report is still unconfirmed,” I muttered.
He kissed my forehead. “Sweetie, it all makes you who you are, which is someone real special, and also maybe a little crazy,” he said.
“But—”
My mother stopped me. “I have never worried about you,” she said. “Not really. We used to joke you could stand in the middle of a tornado and find a way to enjoy the breeze.”
I cracked a tiny smile.
“That’s a good thing, Bex,” she said. “But it doesn’t give you license to sit here and wait for life to find you. It just means you can survive whatever is out there.”
This is one of my favorite memories of my parents, because in their faces I saw the most naked love and concern and support—and faith. They believed that I was brave. They believed I was tough. They believed in me, period. The original Bex Brigade.
“You win,” I said. “I’ll go back.”
Dad stood with a groan. “Thank goodness. My knees couldn’t take much more.”
I scooted over so he could sit on my other side. “I just hope I don’t do anything stupid while I’m trying to reconnect with my inner awesomeness.”
“You won’t,” Mom said.
“You will,” Dad said.
“Earl, really.” That one was me.
“What? Everyone does stupid stuff,” Dad said. “The Cubs have a rich history of it. But they never stop playing, and I love them anyway.”