Red, White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston Page 0,125
to give you a Washington analysis podcast, so I’m gonna attempt to do that here, even though what has happened to Alex Claremont-Diaz—and Prince Henry too—over the past few days has been obscene, and it feels cheap and gross to even talk about it like this. But in my opinion, here are the three big things to take away from the news we’ve gotten today.
First, the First Son of the United States didn’t actually do anything wrong.
Second, Jeffrey Richards committed a hostile act of conspiracy against a sitting president, and I am eagerly awaiting the federal investigation that is coming to him once he loses this election.
Third, Rafael Luna is perhaps the unlikeliest hero of the 2020 presidential race.
* * *
A speech has to be made.
Not just a statement. A speech.
“You wrote this?” their mother says, holding the folded-up page June had handed Alex on the balcony. “Alex told you to scrap the statement our press secretary drafted and write this whole thing?” June bites her lip and nods. “This is—this is good, June. Why the hell aren’t you writing all our speeches?”
The press briefing room in the West Wing is ruled too impersonal, so they’ve called the press pool to the Diplomatic Reception Room on the ground floor. It’s the room where FDR once recorded his fireside chats, and Alex is going to walk in there and make a speech and hope the country doesn’t hate him for the truth.
They’ve flown Henry in from London for the telecast. He’ll be positioned right at Alex’s shoulder, steady and sure, the emblematic politician’s spouse. Alex’s brain can’t stop sprinting laps around it. He keeps picturing it: an hour from now, millions and millions of TVs across America simulcasting his face, his voice, June’s words, Henry at his side. Everyone will know. Everyone already knows now, but they don’t know, not the right way.
In an hour, every person in America will be able to look at a screen and see their First Son and his boyfriend.
And, across the Atlantic, almost as many will look up over a beer at a pub or dinner with their family or a quiet night in and see their youngest prince, the most beautiful one, Prince Charming.
This is it. October 2, 2020, and the whole world watched, and history remembered.
Alex waits on the South Lawn, within view of the linden trees of the Kennedy Garden, where they first kissed. Marine One touches down in a cacophony of noise and wind and rotors, and Henry emerges in head-to-toe Burberry looking dramatic and windswept, like a dashing hero here to rip bodices and mend war-torn countries, and Alex has to laugh.
“What?” Henry shouts over the noise when he sees the look on Alex’s face.
“My life is cosmic joke and you’re not a real person,” Alex says, wheezing.
“What?” Henry yells again.
“I said, you look great, baby!”
They sneak off to make out in a stairwell until Zahra finds them and drags Henry off to get camera-ready, and soon they’re being shuffled to the Diplomatic Reception Room, and it’s time.
It’s time.
It’s been one long, long year of learning Henry inside and out, learning himself, learning how much he still had to learn, and just like that, it’s time to walk out there and stand at a podium and confidently declare it all as fact.
He’s not afraid of anything he feels. He’s not afraid of saying it. He’s only afraid of what happens when he does.
Henry touches his hand, gently, two fingertips against his palm.
“Five minutes for the rest of our lives,” he says, laughing a grim little laugh.
Alex reaches for him in return, presses one thumb into the hollow of his collarbone, slipping right under the knot of his tie. The tie is purple silk, and Alex is counting his breaths.
“You are,” he says, “the absolute worst idea I’ve ever had.”
Henry’s mouth spreads into a slow smile, and Alex kisses it.
FIRST SON ALEXANDER CLAREMONT-DIAZ’S ADDRESS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, OCTOBER 2, 2020
Good morning.
I am, and have been—first, last, and always—a child of America.
You raised me. I grew up in the pastures and hills of Texas, but I had been to thirty-four states before I learned how to drive. When I caught the stomach flu in the fifth grade, my mother sent a note to school written on the back of a holiday memo from Vice President Biden. Sorry, sir—we were in a rush, and it was the only paper she had on hand.