Chapter One-Parr
God, I hate being last.
All throughout my life, I've been last. The final wife. The sixth wife. The surviving wife. Aka the most boring wife. Yeah, I lived. In the eyes of the public, the worst thing you can be is boring. If you're awful or amazing, you'll at least be seen. If you're boring, no one cares about you. And surviving is the most boring thing you can do. People have always thought of me as the basic wife, who did nothing but be married to Henry when he died. As if I didn't write book after book so females could educate themselves. As if I didn't fight for years for girls to be educated. No one cares about that. They just care about what happened while you were married to the king. So when I discovered the other queens, it gave me an opportunity to tell my story how I wanted to. Not as the survivor, but a survivor. Someone who has a real story to tell, who has a real life. I poured my soul into writing I Don't Need Your Love, and guess what? No one cared. It was still a skippable song, just like my story is a skippable part of history. People only loved the popular queens, like usual. Queens like Howard and Cleves and especially Boleyn. God, Boleyn. The polar opposite of me. The one who everyone loves, and she milks the hell out of it. She loves the spotlight, loves popularity, loves always being on everyone's minds. Which I guess is good for her, because I can't get her out of my mind either. She's just so... it's impossible to describe. So sure of herself, so confident. She knows exactly who she is, and doesn't care if anyone is bothered by it. I don't even know how to describe how I feel about her, but it's strong enough to be love. Maybe just lust. I've never been the lusty type, but Boleyn is special. In so many ways. I was interrupted in the middle of my thoughts by Jane Seymour waving her hand in front of my face. "Cathy! We have a Q&A in 30 minutes!" I sighed, leaning back in my chair where I'd been sitting "reading a book" (code for fantasizing about Boleyn) for the last hour. "Catherine, Kathy, and Anna are downstairs already. Anne's still getting ready, as usual, and I'm heading down now. Meet us down there asap!" Jane smiled at me and left, heading down the stairs. I put my book down and hurried upstairs, heading into my dressing room and changing into my classic blue outfit. My phone dinged with a text from Jane. "Once you're done, tell Anne to hurry up! :)" Crap. I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and headed down the hall to Anne's dressing room. I knocked on the door, and heard Anne call from inside "Who is it? If it's Jane I'm sorry for leaving my dishes in the sink!" I rolled my eyes. "No, it's Cathy." Anne paused for a second, then pulled the door open, and my god she looked amazing. Just like usual. "I- uh- I'm almost ready. I just need to do one more thing. Can you help me?" "Yeah, for sure," I managed to force out. Anne opened the door wider, letting me in, and shut it behind me. She turned to face me, smiling prettily. "So, Cathy," she said, stepping in closer to me, "there's one thing I need from you." "What-what is it?" I asked, smiling a little. She took another step, closing the distance between us. She was so close to me, my god. My heart was racing as she took one final step, leaving us less than an inch apart. "This," she whispered. And she kissed me. My heart, my body, everything was on fire right now. I kissed her right back, her lips tasting of strawberries. Anne loved to eat strawberries and get them all over her mouth to freak Jane out and make her think she was bleeding. God, why did I think of that right now? Right in this moment, when everything was perfect? When she pulled away, I could still feel her on my lips as she added a final spritz of hairspray to her buns and reapplied her classic red lipstick. "Let's go downstairs, Cathy," she said, smiling shyly at me. Anne Boleyn was a lot of things, but I had never seen her shy before. It looked good on her, like everything did. "Okay," I whispered huskily, taking her hand and walking with her downstairs, where the other queens and paparazzi awaited us.
