EXPLORING YOUR SEXUALITY: HEALTHY, BUT DOES IT HAVE TO BE WITH THE PRINCE OF ENGLAND?

“I was hoping you two would start talking dirty,” Pez says. “Please, do go on.” “I don’t think you could keep up, Pez,” Alex tells him.

“Sometimes you just jump and hope it’s not a cliff.”

And through it all, Alex realizes with a start: He has friends now.

Then, without warning, it changes again, turbulent chords circling back into something familiar—the Elton John songbook. Henry closes his eyes, playing from memory. It’s “Your Song.” Oh.

“So my full name is . . . Henry George Edward James Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor.” Alex gapes up at the ceiling. “Oh . . . my God.” “Truly.” “I thought Alexander Gabriel Claremont-Diaz was bad.”

He rolls onto his side and listens, trails the back of his hand across the pillow next to him and imagines Henry lying opposite in his own bed, two parentheses enclosing 3,700 miles.

An ancient issue of J14, opened to a center page. The photograph of Henry, age thirteen. He glances up. “You knew?”

SEXUAL EXPERIMENTATION WITH FOREIGN MONARCHS: A GRAY AREA.

“Well, you don’t have to like him, you just have to put on a happy face and not cause an international incident at his brother’s wedding.” “Bug, when do I ever not put on a happy face?” Alex says. He pulls a painfully fake grin, and June looks satisfyingly repulsed.

She flings one arm out emphatically enough to upset an entire potted cactus on her dresser and says, “Because until now you weren’t fucking the Prince of England!”

This is it. October 2, 2020, and the whole world watched, and history remembered.

“Ugh! Men!” she groans. “No emotional vocabulary. I can’t believe our ancestors survived centuries of wars and plagues and genocide just to wind up with your sorry ass.”

“Are you psychoanalyzing me?” Henry asks. “I don’t think royal guests are allowed to do that.”

“American politics,” Henry says. “Truly fascinating.”

“I’m really going to have you offed,” Henry tells him. “You’ll never see it coming. Our assassins are trained in discretion. They will come in the night, and it will look like a humiliating accident.” “Autoerotic asphyxiation?” “Toilet heart attack.” “Jesus.”

“American politics,” Henry says. “Truly fascinating.”

“I don’t know. Doing what we do is fucking hard. But it’s harder for me. I’m the son of the first female president.”

Alex pushes them. June steadies them. Nora keeps them honest.

A source tells The Sun that Henry and the First Son have been at odds ever since their first meeting at the Rio Olympics, and the animosity has only grown—these days, they can’t even be in the same room with each other.