Firstborn {British Royals}

Chapter 2

The hotel was just as she'd wanted it: dark, quiet, and cold with the air conditioning turned onto high. Heat always bothered Vic's headaches, and right now her headache had gone nuclear. She moaned as she lay on her stomach, pressing her face into the pillow. She hadn't even changed out of her burgundy dress which she had bought especially for Becca's wedding, and whose spaghetti straps now bit painfully into her shoulders. She was too sick to get up to change into her tank top and comfortable shorts.

Vic wanted to sleep. Oh, Lord, she wanted to sleep, to tumble into oblivion and wake up hours later, the pain gone. But the greater the headache, the harder it was to sleep. She knew that from longer, bitter experience. So instead, she directed her thoughts back to the wedding. It was really terrible that she'd had to leave early. For the first half, she had had such a good time. Ironic, since she hadn't even wanted to go to this wedding in the first place.

Well, she had wanted to go in theory. Back in March when she had gotten the Save the Date for Becca's wedding - September 1st, Labor Day weekend - she had been so excited that she booked her plane tickets immediately. She had shared a house with Becca their senior year in college - way too many years ago now. Vic wasn't comfortable around many people, but with Becca she could babble on for hours about their life histories, classes, books, dreams for life. But after graduation, they'd lost touch. Vic was horrible at keeping in touch with people. If they weren't right there before her, face to face, she just couldn't do it. She was bad at small talk on Facebook, bad at responding to emails because she let them sit in her inbox for months while she tried to think of the perfect thing to say. She was especially bad at the phone and Skype: even with a trusted friend, those just made her too anxious to even attempt them.

So back to the plane tickets. Buying them so early was a mistake. After she clicked "confirm" on the website, she was immediately filled with doubt. Would her head be able to handle this? Would it be awkward being around her old friends? They had moved on with their lives, become successful adults. Meanwhile, Vic felt like a child. She lived at home with her parents while the years melted away, all her dreams of being a history professor melting away. The thing about becoming disabled is not just that you lose your old life; you lose your old sense of self. Gone were Vic's bravery, idealism, and love for adventure. Hence her anxiety about traveling to the wedding. She had made herself sick worrying about it all that summer, wishing she hadn't bought the ticket, wishing she didn't have to go.

But it was wonderful! Dancing in her beautiful new dress, seeing her old friends (she had friends! she'd almost forgotten), whirling around as the guests danced the Horah while the bride and groom were hoisted into chairs above the crowd. Jewish weddings were absolutely joyful. Some of that joy had leached into even Vic's brittle and guarded heart.

And Matt Feldman had been there. Back in college, Vic had thought he was kind of cute and kind of nice, but now that she got reacquainted with him after so many years, she thought that he was really cute and really nice. He was a lawyer, smart, kind, quiet until you cracked his shell. Why couldn't I have stayed just a little longer? Vic asked herself. She could have talked with him for hours, maybe gone for a drink after and promising to stay in touch. Maybe they even could have done a long distance thing - her coming to Philadelphia, him coming to Montana.

But no. Her chance was lost. She needed to shut off her mind to it. So she reached for her phone, even though the brightness of the screen hurt her eyes and made her headache even worked. Peering at the display, she saw that she had a text from her mother. "Prince Charles and Camilla are in Philly! They're visiting an Anglican church tomorrow. You could go see them before your flight leaves!"

As sick as Vic felt, she smiled. What were the chances? She'd never seen a British royal in person - and she was kind of obsessed with them. Well, not stalker-ish obsessed, but she loved reading all the royal news online, whether it was speculation or not. She was just a little older than Prince William, and she'd always felt a strange bond between her and William and Harry. They were her generation of royals, going through school and university at the same time as she did, albeit on different continents. She remembered seeing the first pictures of Kate MIddleton at St Andrews University so long ago, before her relationship with William was even confirmed. Now Vic always opened the links to articles showing pictures of their children.

Her mom never understood why Vic was a royal watcher. In fact, she often actively tried to steer Vic away from it. "How can you read that stuff?" she'd say. "They're just ordinary people, born into extraordinary privilege. You wouldn't care about them at all if they didn't have 'Your Royal Highness' in front of their names." It was just a harmless diversion, Vic countered. Some women her age watched The Bachelor; she read about the royals. It was a nice way to shut out her pain and worry that she would always be like this, that she'd always have disabling headaches and never be able to work, never be able to have a family, which was what she craved more than anything in this world.

Vic looked up a Philadelphia news article that listed the time Charles and Camilla would make their appearance, then typed a reply to her mom. "I think I'll go see him! Maybe I can get some good pictures :)"

Strange, though, Vic thought as she stuffed her head back into her pillow. Her mom always scoffed at her royal obsession. So why was she encouraging her to go see Prince Charles now?