Lucas snorted. “Thanks, but no.” He groaned. “Clarissa turning me down and breaking up with me isn’t even the worst bit.”
“It’s not?” I couldn’t imagine what was worse than his girlfriend breaking up with him when he was trying to propose to her.
“No,” he groaned. “Now I can’t go to Kalopsia.”
“Pardon?”
He sat up then and reached for the water, taking another drink before trying to focus on me. “That’s right,” he said. “I haven’t told you that bit of news yet.”
“What news?”
“The king wants me to go to Kalopsia and be part of his newly formed royal court. He wants my father to pass his title to me.”
“O-kay,” I said slowly.
I knew about Kalopsia, but only in really general terms. I knew a bit of the history and that they had a new king and that Lucas’ family were once part of the court.
“So what does Clarissa turning you down have to do with that?”
“Father won’t let me go unless I’m at least engaged,” he mumbled, dropping his head again.
“What? Why?”
Lucas sighed. “They think the island is overrun with desperate gold-digging women who will take one look at my title and my trust fund and seduce me into marrying them.”
I snorted. “Your parents do realize we’re living in the twenty-first century, right?”
“You’ve met my parents,” he said. “Is it so hard to believe they would say something like that?”
I sighed. “No, you’re right, but Lucas, you’re twenty-seven years old and if the king is summoning you, I don’t think your father has a say in it.”
“You’d think that,” he sighed. “But you know my father. He made a ruling, and that’s that. Clarissa turned me down and now I can’t go.”
“Did you want to go?” I asked, curious.
I would have thought Lucas would be relieved to not be forced so far out of his comfort zone.
He sat up again and focused on me. “That’s the thing,” he said, reaching for the water again. “I didn’t think I wanted to go but then Mother and Father said I couldn’t go unless I was married and going to Kalopsia suddenly became a lot more attractive.”
“Don’t tell me you actually stood up to them?” I said, impressed.
“No,” he sighed. “I didn’t say anything to them. At that point I thought Clarissa would say yes and it would be a moot point.”
“And now?”
“Now I want to go and I can’t.”
“Of course you can. I don’t think your father can overrule a king.”
“But can you imagine the fallout? I just can’t deal with that.”
“Even if it means not going to Kalopsia?”
Lucas sighed. “Even then,” he replied.
I felt bad for him—not about the Clarissa thing; I was positively doing a happy dance over that—I felt bad because for the first time, Lucas wanted to do something for himself and he was being denied. I wanted to go to his father and tell him to step off and let Lucas go, but it wasn’t my battle to fight.
“Couldn’t you just…go for a couple of weeks and check it out?” I asked.
“I wish I could,” he replied, fiddling with the water bottle.
“What do you remember about it?” I asked. He never really spoke about the island nation that was his home.
“I remember the water,” he said, smiling. “The water is this amazing blue, and it sparkles in the sunlight. I remember all the colored buildings built along the coast.”
“Like in Santorini?” I asked, leaning my elbows on the bar and resting my chin on my fists.
He nodded and smiled. “Yeah.” His smile dropped. “But it was getting dangerous just before we left. I remember growing up with this carefree feeling and then suddenly my parents were hustling us off the island and into the U.S.” He blinked up at me. “You’d love it there,” he said.
“It sounds amazing,” I replied. “Maybe we could go over summer? Not to do the king thing, but, you know, just to get away and do some exploring. Just the two of us.”
Lucas nodded, his eyes not leaving mine. “Yeah,” he mumbled.
Lucas
Maybe it was the alcohol muddling my brain, but I was getting an idea. It was a crazy idea and something I would never have even considered if my inhibitions weren’t compromised, but…
I shook my head and sighed. Nah. It would never work.
“What were you just thinking?” Frankie asked, straightening up and narrowing her eyes at me.
“It’s nothing,” I said, reaching for the water again.
“No, you can’t give me a look like that and then withhold,” she said, cocking her hip and crossing her arms. “You have to tell me now. I’m invoking the BFF code of conduct, rule twelve.”
“The BFF code of conduct?” I asked with a wry grin.
Frankie nodded. “Specifically rule twelve which states clearly that a BFF cannot start saying something and then stop abruptly.”
“But it’s stupid,” I said, taking a sip. “Does the rule still apply when I’m drunk and coming up with really idiotic ideas?”
“That’s specifically why the rule was created,” Frankie said. “You know I always want to know any and all of your ideas, especially the idiotic ones you come up with when you’re drunk.”
“Do I do that often?” I asked.
“Stop avoiding the matter at hand and just spill it. What were you thinking just now that you think you can’t tell me?”
“You’d never agree to it.”
She quirked an eyebrow at me and I couldn’t help but grin. Frankie had a way of making everything okay. My life had crashed and burned tonight, but here I was smiling, because of Frankie.
“Just tell me,” she said. “You never know what I might say. I could surprise you, you know. You don’t know everything about me.”
I was pretty sure Frankie and I knew each other better than we knew ourselves, but I shrugged.
“This might be too crazy, even for you.”
It was like waving a red flag at a bull. I had her hooked now, as I knew I would by throwing that comment out. Frankie was my opposite in every way and yet I enjoyed living vicariously through her. Where I was timid and shy, she was confident and loud. Where I was cautious and patient, she was spontaneous and carefree. She was always dragging me out of my comfort zone but doing it in such a way so I always felt safe. I wished I was more like her, and maybe that was why I was even contemplating this brash and out-of-left-field idea.
“Tell me, Lucas,” she said, mock-frowning at me. She was cute when she did that, like a furious kitten. “Let me decide what is too crazy.”
“Well,” I said, hedging. “I was just thinking…it really is crazy, more like a joke actually—”
“Spit it out, Andino,” she growled.
“Well, what if you came with me to Kalopsia?”
“I just suggested that,” she replied with an eye roll.