Page 47 of With You

“Whatever is good for you, is good for me. I don’t mind if the whole world knows. But you wanted to take this slow, and keep me your dirty little secret⁠—”

I knock my head against his chest and he feigns hurt before he continues.

“I’m fine with whatever you choose to do, Amelie,” he reassures me.

“This is going to be such an awkward conversation,” I groan, burying my face in his shirt as if I can hide away in there forever and avoid this. “We can tell the others later, but just let me talk to Zena first.”

“We can do it together if you want,” he suggests but I shake my head.

“No, it’s fine. I’ll go find her now and tell her.”

River nods as I unwrap myself from him. He gives me one last quick kiss before hanging back and letting me go ahead to find Zena.

I don’t know how I can explain to her what I’m doing with River, when I don’t even know myself. This was never meant to happen. I was only supposed to dance with him in the showcase, tolerate him until we performed and I got a spot at the summer intensive. I was never meant to crave being by his side, being held by him, kissing him. I was never meant to start falling for him.

I speed-walk toward Zena and Layth’s table. They’re surrounded by people with vaguely familiar faces, likely connected to the royal family in some way, but I’m not entirely sure who they are. Layth sees me first and nudges Zena to look in my direction. She lights up when she sees me, and I smile as best as I can even though I’m crumbling inside.

“Can I borrow you for a second?” I ask her, skipping all formalities and greetings.

“Of course. Is everything okay?” Zena stands, taking my hand in hers. “I’ll be right back.” She tells Layth as she leads us away from the table.

We walk toward the bathroom, the safest space for a private conversation, and once we get inside, we both check the cubicles to make sure no one else is in here with us.

“What’s going on?” She asks, eyes scanning my face and body to check if anything is wrong. “Did River do something to you?”

“No, he hasn’t done anything.” I shake my head, not wanting her to get the wrong idea. “It is about him, though.”

I take my hand away from hers as I step back, turning to face the mirror instead of looking at her. I press my hands to the countertop, staring down at them as my nails drag against it and I clench my fingers into a fist. Zena rubs a hand across my back, gently urging me to get the words out.

“I think we’re dating,” I confess, blurting the words out before I can properly think about what I’m saying. “Or seeing each other, or just kissing, or I don’t know what we’re doing actually and that’s the worst part of it.”

Her hand keeps moving across my back in slow, steady circles that soothe my racing heart. It all feels too real all of a sudden. Saying what River and I have been doing out loud, to someone else, is making reality hit and it’s as if the room starts to spin around me.

“Breathe, Amelie,” Zena says, her voice calm, as she dips her head closer to mine. “Breathe.”

“This is so dramatic for no reason,” I splutter out, a laugh catching in my throat before it turns into a sob. “I don’t know what’s happening, Zena. I don’t know what we are, or if I want more from him. And what about the showcase? What if we get so caught up in whatever’s happening that we get distracted, and it all goes terribly wrong?”

“First, you are correct, this is very dramatic,” she says, as she uses her other hand to turn my head to face her. “Second, I can’t do this alone, let me call Evie.”

She pulls her phone out of a hidden pocket in her dress.

“Wow, it has pockets,” I state the obvious, and she pulls out the lining on both sides to show me said pockets.

“Isn’t it great?” She tucks them back in before video calling Evie, her face popping up on the screen just a few seconds later.

We position ourselves so the two of us are in frame as Zena explains to her what I’ve just said but in a more succinct and less dramatic way. Evie’s response is a loud, “I knew it!”

“We can talk about you being all-knowing later,” Zena says, dragging Evie’s attention back to the actual matter at hand—my relationship that’s not quite a relationship. “What are we going to do with our girl?”

“Well, how does River feel about all of this?” Evie asks.

“About what?”

“Does he think it’ll be a problem for the showcase? Or that you’ll get too distracted, or lose sight of what you truly want at the end of all this?”

“No,” I say quietly. “I told him all of that, and he said we can do whatever I’m comfortable with. But that’s what’s confusing me. I’ve never done anything like this before. He was my first kiss.”

“That’s so cute,” the two squeal at the same time, and Zena wraps her arms around me in a half-hug, half-headlock position. “What was it like?” She asks, glee in her voice.