Forever Princess (The Princess Diaries 10)

I didn’t know what to do or say. Grandmère had prepared me for tons of situations—from dealing with thieving maids to escaping from embassies during coups d’etat.

But honestly, nothing could have prepared me for this.

Was my ex-boyfriend really intimating that he wanted to get back together?

Or was I reading too much into things? (It wouldn’t be the first time.)

Fortunately just then our main courses came, and Michael steered the conversation back to normal ground like nothing had happened. Maybe nothing had happened. Suddenly we were talking about whether or not Joss Whedon will ever make a Buffy the Vampire Slayer feature film and how much Karen Allen rocks and Boris’s concert and Michael’s company and Dad’s campaign. For two people with relatively nothing in common (because, let’s face it, he’s a robotic-surgical-arm designer. I’m a romance writer…and a princess. I love musicals and he hates them. Oh, and we have totally dissimilar DNA) we have never, ever run out of things to say to each other.

Which is completely weird.

Then, without my knowing quite how, we got to Lilly.

“Has your dad seen the commercial she made for him?” Michael asked.

“Oh,” I said, smiling. “Yes! It was wonderful. I couldn’t believe it. Was that…did you have something to do with that?”

“Well,” Michael said, smiling too. “She wanted to do it. But…I might have encouraged her a little. I can’t believe you two still aren’t friends again, after all this time.”

“We aren’t not friends,” I said, remembering what Lilly had told me about how he’d said she had to be nice to me. “We just…I don’t know what happened, really. She never would tell me.”

“She’d never tell me, either,” Michael said. “You really have no idea?”

I flashed back to an image of Lilly’s face as we sat in G&T that day she told me J.P. had broken up with her. I’d always wondered if that had been it. Could this whole thing have been over a boy? Is that what I was being so dense about?

But that would be so stupid. Lilly wasn’t the type of person to let something as dumb as a boy get in the way of a friendship. Not with her best friend.

“I really,” I said, “have no idea.”

The dessert menus came, and Michael insisted on ordering one of each dessert, so we could try them all (because this was a celebration), while he told me stories about the cultural differences in Japan—how one takeout restaurant delivered meals in actual china bowls that he’d place outside his door when he was finished eating, and the restaurant would come back to pick them up, which takes recycling to another level—and some of the embarrassments he’d suffered because of them (karaoke ballad singing, which his Japanese coworkers had taken very seriously, high among them).

And as he talked, it became clear that he and Micromini Midori? Not a couple. He mentioned her boyfriend, who is apparently a karaoke champion in Tsukuba, several times.

Then I started giggling in a different way when, after all the desserts came, I noticed two girls in a boat in the center of the lake, arguing fiercely with each other, and rowing in circles, not getting anywhere. Lana’s plan of spying on me completely and utterly failed.

It was later, after the check came—and Michael paid, even though I said I wanted to take him out, to thank him for the donation to the hospital—that things really started to fall apart.

Well, maybe they’d been falling apart all afternoon—steadily crumbling—and I just hadn’t been paying attention. Things have a tendency to do that in my life, I’ve noticed. It was when we were standing outside the Boathouse, and Michael asked what I had to do for the rest of the day, and I admitted that—for once—I had nothing to do (until my therapy appointment, but I didn’t mention that. I’ll tell him about therapy someday. But not today), that everything disintegrated like one of the madeleines we’d been nibbling on.

“Nothing to do until four? Good,” Michael said, taking my arm. “Then we can keep on celebrating.”

“Celebrating how?” I asked stupidly. I was trying to concentrate on not smelling him. I wasn’t really paying attention to anything else. Like where we were going.

“Have you ever been in one of these?” he asked.

That’s when I saw that he had led me over to one of those cheesy horse carriages that are all over Central Park.

Well, okay, maybe they’re not cheesy. Maybe they’re romantic and Tina and I talk about secretly wanting to ride in them all the time. But that’s not the point.

“Of course I’ve never been in one of these,” I cried, acting horrified. “They’re so touristy! And PETA is trying to get them banned. And they’re for people who are on dates.”

“Perfect,” Michael said. He handed the carriage driver, who was wearing a ridiculous (by which I mean, fantastic) old-timey outfit with a top hat, some money. “We’ll go around the park. Lars, get up front. And don’t turn around.”

“No!” I practically screamed. But I was laughing. I couldn’t help it. Because it was so ludicrous. And so something I’ve always wanted to do, but never told anyone (except Tina, of course), for fear of being ridiculed. “I am not getting in there! These things are cruel to horses!”

The carriage driver looked offended.

“I take excellent care of my horse,” she said. “Probably better than you take care of your pets, young lady.”