“First off, please ignore whatever nonsense James has told you. And secondly, I’m so sorry it took me such an inexcusable amount of time to locate you, but I was attending a refugee summit in Dubrovnik and then visiting an agricultural school in Somalia, and then an Australian scientist was gracious enough to demonstrate a new economically feasible desalinization system, which turned out to be quite promising but required three days in Melbourne.”

“Same,” I said and Edgar smiled, not his full-on heartbreaker, but a satisfying preview.

“But James worked his magic and now here we are. And don’t you look handsome.”

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sit across from this great-looking, well-mannered prince, this person in total command of his role in the world, and hold a conversation as if we were two guys who’d liked each other’s decently accurate photos, had texted a bit, and decided to risk it, with roommates and Netflix as a backup. This wasn’t normal. I felt like there was a whole other person squirming around inside my skin, so after opening and closing my mouth three times like a guppy I finally let loose:

“How? How does this work? How do I talk to you as if you’re a person? Like, a person person?”

Edgar smiled, at almost full wattage but not quite, although even at, say, 8.2 on the Regal Smile Continuum, his slightly crooked grin made me levitate—I’m not kidding, I could swear that I was floating an inch or so off my chair.

“I understand. And I find that in these situations, it’s best for both of us to wipe the slate clean, to eliminate any and all preconceptions and to behave simply as two human beings getting to know one another.”

“Thank you. Totally.” Totally? Did I have an armload of scrunchies and a troll doll sticker on my phone?

“So,” Edgar began.

“So,” I said. “What do you do?”

“I work for my family and we rule England.”

“Okay, this isn’t fair, because like everyone else in the world, I already know way too much about you. I mean, America is obsessed. And even though I was a kid, and so were you, when your parents passed away . . .”

Edgar’s smile vanished, and I knew I’d destroyed everything. He spoke in a cordial but icy tone, very this-is-my-polite-way-of-saying-fuck-off.

“It was heartbreaking and awful and yes, even though James tried to hide them, I did see the photos of the plane crash, and equally terrible and far worse things have happened to many other people, but thank you very much for your concern.”

Why? Why did I do that? Why did I bring up the greatest tragedy of Edgar’s life within the first five minutes? All of my paranoia had been completely justified—I wasn’t just an interloper and a commoner and a douchebag, I was light-years out of my league.