Royalty

Twenty One

"What up, twinkle toes?"

I stopped walking and looked at Xander who was staring at the television screen. He was eating some popcorn and sitting on the couch, too focused on the tv.

"Why're you calling me twinkle toes?" I asked, sitting down next to him.

"You're soft on your feet. I didn't even hear you in here until your shower turned on. When did you get back?"

I shrugged, grabbing some of his popcorn, "I don't know. Half an hour ago?"

"How was kitchen duty? And whatever else you were doing."

"Fine, I guess. Nothing unusual."

"Have you talked to Isabella? She called me earlier about you being gone or something."

"Oh, yeah I did. She's coming over with food, so we might want to stop eating this."

"Eh whatever."

He and I sat together on the couch just watching tv. We kept flipping through the channels during commercials because neither of us could pick one thing to watch. It was between some movie on FX and a couple of daytime shows that were really stupid. Nothing else was on, so we had to resort to whatever crap was playing. We would've started Netflix, but if Isabella showed up in the middle of whatever we were watching, we'd never hear the end of it. She's kind of bossy, but nothing terrible. I think I've grown used to it, and I can predict her reactions to things.

It might've been around an hour later that she showed up, letting herself into the apartment. She was carrying her large purse as well as a big bag full of what I assumed was the food. I got up to help her in the kitchen, grabbing some forks and spoons and dishes. Any time we ordered Thai food, we could never decide on one item for ourselves, so we always just ordered a bunch of things and split them.

As she went to Xander's room to change out of her hostess clothes, I dished out all of the food into three bowls for us. Of course Xander did nothing but watch the television, and I had to bribe him to actually get up and grab his own food. Sometimes, he is just so fucking lazy.

Izzy walked out into the hallway with a magazine in her hand, staring at the cover before looking up at me. She stood on the other side of the kitchen island before placing the magazine on the counter.

"Thought you might be interested," she slid the magazine over to me as she grabbed her bowl of food.

It was something called Seventeen, and on the cover was Summer, wearing the exact clothes she had at the photoshoot. But what caught my attention the most was the little blurb underneath her name: "Who's New In Her Love Life?" Fuck. You have got to be kidding me. 

Xander and Isabella sat on the couch picking a movie as I stood in the kitchen with that fucking magazine. I flipped through the pages until I finally got to the section that Summer was in. There was this huge spread on her, for whatever reason that I didn't care to look. As I flipped through to the second page, I saw a picture of my face. Actually, I saw several. The biggest picture of me was one where I had been kissing her, and the other pictures were just ones of us laughing or talking or something.

To be honest, Summer looked really pretty in the pictures, and I guess I didn't look that bad either. But it didn't soften my mood. I didn't know they were going to put me in this magazine. Really, what the fuck? I thought those pictures were just for fun or something, but obviously not. Why am I so stupid sometimes? 

I started skimming the article, looking for anything that mentioned my name. There was this tiny section on me, and it looked like it had all those answers I had given that one lady who had come up to me. I just stood there and stared at all the pictures on the page, reading and rereading that small bit of me they had under a title of my name.