know how you and Gabby are doing, okay?”
“You got it. And if you’re in the neighborhood visiting your parents, stop by and say hi if you have time.”
“I will. And I’m not just saying that.”
Leo felt like a weight had lifted when they hung up. Giada was a good person. But, Marie aside, he and Giada, who had been hooking up as exes for way longer than they’d been together, had been on autopilot for too long. Hell, most of his life was on autopilot. That was how it had to be. He had to make money and put food on the table. But still, it was nice to feel like he was moving on from something.
Chapter Twelve
King Emil was a real ass.
A real, royal ass.
He was insufferable and snobbish and generally a dick.
Which was one thing. But as dinner that night went on—and on and on and on—Leo started to understand that he was doing it on purpose. Emil’s snobbery wasn’t a defense mechanism like Marie’s occasional bouts of prissiness were. He wasn’t trying to cover social awkwardness or lack of confidence with a stiff upper lip.
Marie seemed to think it was grief driving him, but Leo was pretty sure it was just pure, unfiltered arrogance. Spite as sport.
He would have been able to handle it were it not for the way he treated Gabby. Yes, Gabby talked a lot. And perhaps ladylike wasn’t a word you could apply to her. But she was a child.
Every time she got rolling on one of her monologues—and since they were four courses into dinner and counting, there had been a few of them—the king did this thing where he looked away and up. Like he was rolling his eyes but not quite. As soon as he could, he would interrupt and ask some question expressly designed to highlight the economic and social gulf between them. “And what exactly,” he had drawled, “is a . . . Hatchimal?” when Gabby was in the middle of talking about how she’d grown out of liking some of the toys she used to be mad for. This, of course, had led to her enthusiastically explaining, with accompanying gestures, that Hatchimals were big eggs out of which animatronic stuffed animals hatched. “And after they hatch they go through all these different stages—baby, toddler, kid. You can tell which stage they’re in by rubbing their tummies and seeing what color their eyes are.”
“How . . . delightful.” There went the king’s eyes again. If you called him out, he would probably say he was noticing a cobweb on the ornate chandelier that hung above their heads, but they all knew what was happening here.
Well, the adults knew. Gabby wasn’t sophisticated enough to understand that when the king stressed the word delightful, he intended to convey the opposite concept. But, judging by her furrowed brow, she could tell something was off.
Leo formed his hands into fists under the table. The only thing stopping him from pounding them on the table was Marie, who was clearly mortified, and whose repeated attempts to rein in her father were going ignored.
“They’re really expensive,” Gabby said. Leo didn’t know if she was just doing her usual talking-to-fill-space thing or if, bless her, she somehow knew she was being talked down to and was trying to hit back without really understanding the context.
“Are they indeed?” Emil held his glass—a crystal goblet of red wine—up so that the light of the chandelier above glinted off it.
“Yeah, they’re like sixty-five dollars at Walmart. But if you get the twins, they’re even more expensive.”
“My heavens.”
“Father.” Marie’s horrified whisper twisted something in Leo’s chest.
But not enough for him to keep his mouth shut—it was hard to imagine any amount of twisting doing that when someone was insulting Gabby. “Yeah,” Leo said, “I had to drive a lot of extra shifts—in my cab that I drive, for my job—to earn enough for that thing.”
It was all he could think to do, to double down on his identity as the working-class guy from the Bronx. If the king was going to cast him in that role, Leo was going to play the hell out of it. He wasn’t ashamed of who he was or where he’d come from. He stared defiantly at the king while he spoke, and eventually the fucker looked away.
“Oh, I forgot,” Marie said suddenly, with an air of excitement. “I had an email from the UN High Commission on Refugees today!”
That got her father’s attention.