Natalie Vs. Prince

She pauses.

Bingo.

Maybe I got something.

"I really am sorry, Natalie."

But whatever it was, it wasn't good enough for her.

She zips up her duffel bag with the last of her clothes and turns to me.

"I'm really sorry too, Connor," she says.

I watch her, still puzzled and a bit concerned as she grabs her iHome and the other bag, and walks out the door.

Jesus.

Maybe I should've told her I love her a lot earlier instead of waiting.

17

Connor

"I swear to all that is fucking holy I have no fucking idea what you're talking about," I say, not without a little fucking exasperation to Christine.

Fuck, I don't even know if Christine is the best person to contact. All I know is that after last night, this morning I went to the first of Natalie's friends that I could find. All I know is that I remember her from some party at the United Nations and over the last month or so she's been out with us half a dozen times.

Always seemed pretty solid. Maybe a bit immature, but then again this is coming from the man who calls himself Prince Pleasure, right, love?

"You have to have known something, Your Highness," Christine says to me, leaning back on her bench.

Christine is a young graduate student at NYU and when I came looking for her she was sitting on an outside picnic table reading something for class.

"Christine!" I yell out, and at first after she got done being startled, she didn't want to have anything to do to me.

"I'm not trying to do anything more than simply figure out what I did that pissed Natalie the fuck off!" I yell at her. This may or may not have calmed her down and got her to look at me curiously.

"You don't know?" she asks me.

I shake my head.

"All Natalie told me was that if I was going to drop Gage Price, I could've at least had the decency to let her know so she could've tried to fix whatever was wrong," I say to Christine. "The problem is I never dropped Gage Price."

Christine shrugs at me. "Well, she's out of a job most likely because they all think you dropped them because of her," Christine says. Then she narrows her eyes at me. "It's 12 noon right now. Do you know where your press officer is?"

At first I'm about to snort and laugh at this question. What a fucking joke.

But then I start to think.

Christine looks at me and raises her eyebrow.

"Think about it," she says to me. "If you didn't do anything, but Natalie thinks you did, then who else would be the one to know enough about your involvement to remove you from Gage Price?"

Fucking hell.

I tell Christine that I have to go and I start walking to my motorcycle.

I c