Courting Royal

Chapter Thirteen

The next few weeks only sees my life looking even less like the life I'm used to.

First of all, my dress from the ballet gala and I ended up featured in many, many New York society pages, and I was even named best dressed on a fashion website that I frequent, much to the joy of my HuffPo editor. Luckily, any rumors that might have swirled about me and Thad were quickly nipped in the bud, thanks to help from Thad and his fantastic PR person, who explained in very simple, but firm language when any reporters called asking about us that Thad and I were just friends and that there was no romantic future between us.

Speaking of Thad, he's ended up being an amazing ally in all this. Where I had been worrying about his reaction to hearing that I was secretly dating Liam, he took the whole thing in stride and spent all of our post-gala dinner together telling me all about London, the best pubs, the best bookstores, the chippers to avoid and the ones to always hit up, lesser-known museums that I should frequent, and he even regaled me with stories of how Ben and Emilia used to fend off the paparazzi when they were in college – including a few I hadn't caught wind of before, like how Ben spent nearly three months going out wearing a shaggy black wig. Apparently Ems was the one to convince him to stop before the photographers all figured it out and then made the wig a running joke of his life.

With Thad's help, I feel much more prepared for my (maybe temporary, but maybe not) move to London. Not that Emilia and Liam haven't been helpful, but, well, they are extremely busy and giving helpful tips to an anxious American isn't necessarily their forte. Not that Liam hasn't tried – it's just that his recommendations are all for lingerie shops that are very out of my price range.

The second major change to occur over the past couple weeks is that I've found someone to sublet my apartment. It was this that made the fact that I'm moving to London seem very, very real to me. Not buying the open-ended round-trip ticket, splurging on a much-needed luggage upgrade, or the happy dance I did when I found a Burberry trench in perfect condition in a consignment shop, but finding the person who would be living in my beloved studio in Queens while I'm gone.

Unsurprisingly, Oliver helped me find him.

Once he returned from Provincetown, he came by my place unannounced, apologized for ditching me, and then once I let him inside, told me everything about his trip and then patiently waited for me to get over myself and spill all of my weekend info about the gala to him. Soon enough, we were chatting about my trip prep, and when I mentioned the ad I put up to sublet my place, he said he'd send it to his paper's pool of interns for this summer.

At first, I was dubious about this plan. I really didn't want someone either straight out of or still in college living in my place. I remember what it was like to move here at that age—everything about life and this city is exciting and insane, but once you realize you don't have the money to go out every night of the week, you want to have friends over to drink and watch movies and play video games, but mostly drink at all times. While that's all well and good, it's possible that drunken early 20 somethings will do some damage to your place.

I do not want my place to be damaged.

The other reservation I had about this was that I deeply do not want a member of the press living in my space if and when news about me and Liam breaks. They would have unlimited access to my things. They would have my personal email address and phone number. I'm sure you can imagine just how much ammunition an enterprising young journalist would have to hurl at me in order to ignite their career.

But Oliver reminded me that he is in charge of the intern program this year and would be personally supervising all of their assignments, and was the first line of editorial defense for when they all decided to pitch stories, as well as submit copy. He would have control over the information getting out.