The Thrill Is Gone

The lights were turned off in the hotel room, a precaution she took in order to keep herself from accidentally seeing her reflection in the mirrors. Her puffy bloodshot eyes and tear stained cheeks were things she wished to avoid seeing at all cost. They were reminders of the pain she was going through, and if she was to see herself, she would surely see the same broken girl that had stared back at her after she’d found out about Harry’s kiss with Chelsy in Africa. And she didn’t want to see herself like that. She didn’t want to see the pain in her eyes or the distraught expression on her face. It was better that she cried and cursed and drank, under the cover of darkness, because that way she didn’t have to see what her misery had done to her appearance, that way she wouldn’t have to see that broken girl staring back at her. That would’ve made things more difficult. That would’ve only served to add to her distress. She wouldn’t have just been crying over Harry anymore. She would’ve been crying over herself, over the wreck she’d become during the course of the last seven and a half minutes.

In a short period of time, she went from being the confident and beautiful young woman who had shared a table with one of the most illustrious Senators in America, to being a disenchanted figure who sat on the edge of the bed and cried. She had gone from having the attention of everyone in the restaurant, to wanting to hide from herself, and retreat from the world. And she hated it. She hated how helpless and alone she felt in that hotel room. She just wanted to make sense of the situation, but try as she did, she couldn’t figure out how things had gotten as bad as they had.

Everything had been fine in March. No. More than fine. Everything had been perfect. They’d spent a beautiful week in London; meeting with his family, going out with friends, and spending endless hours together. Their relationship had been in a good place. They’d spoken of the future with great certainty. There wasn’t any second guessing or hesitating on either part. They planned what they were going to do with their summer, where they were going to go. He wanted to take her on a mini tour through some of his favorite places in Europe. He planned to take her to visit Italy and Switzerland, perhaps Monaco and Paris, if time permitted. They spoke like a married couple would talk about their upcoming plans. They spoke as if they were certain that they’d be together those few months down the line. They spoke as if they were certain that they’d always be together, but now, now she wasn’t too sure about that.

Not with how things were going for them. She’d call him three times, left a voicemail, but he hadn’t gotten back to her yet, and she couldn’t help but think that he wouldn’t be getting back to her a while longer. He was probably out with Jake and the lads, getting hammered at some exclusive nightclub where socialites and beautiful woman would try to capture his attention. He was probably in the midst of the decadence that came with being a young royal. And in the middle of all that, of the glamour and sheer luxury, he wasn’t going to remember his girlfriend across the pond. She’d surely be nothing more than a distant memory that the hypnotic hips of some leggy blonde would be able to cast from his mind.

The mere thought of him with those women was enough to send her over the edge. She couldn’t even sit upright anymore, she collapsed onto the bed, burying her face into the comforter as her body shook from the intensity of her sobs. Things weren’t supposed to be so hard. She hadn’t expected them to be fairytale easy, that would’ve been naïve of her, but Harry wasn’t supposed to be making things as difficult as he was. She knew she messed up when she picked Harvard over Oxford, but she was the one that was flying out every month to England, she was the one that was scheduling her life around that one weekend a month when he didn’t have to tend to his royal duties or training commitments, she was putting everything she had into the relationship, but she didn’t know if it was worth it anymore.

Did she love him? More than anything. She loved him so much that over the course of the last two years, her dreams had gone from being dead set on becoming a US Senator from California, to spending the rest of her life with him and forming a family at his side. Her plans for the future revolved around him. Sure, she was going to find self-fulfillment by working hard in the Washington political scene, but when the time came, she would retired from it, relocate to England, renounce her citizenry and convert to the Church of England if she had to. She would gladly to it all just to be with him. She was willing to fully emerge herself in a completely different life if it meant that at the end of the day, they would be able to raise a family of their own, because to her, that meant everything.

It was a huge deal for her. She was the young woman that had broken up with a responsible, handsome, hardworking, adoring man because he wanted her to be his stay at home wife, and she couldn’t bring herself to agree to that, she couldn’t give up her future career for that. But for Harry she could do that. For Harry, she would gladly look after their children, be his pillar of strength, and help him and the crown in whatever they needed, for him she would do what only a few years earlier, had been unfathomable. She would’ve gladly done it, but now . . . now, she didn’t know if she would.

Now, she doubted his love. He used to tell her all the time that he loved her. His lips would curl up into a cheeky little smile and he’d say it unashamedly, not giving a damn if the men he was training with mocked him. But it had been three days since he last told her that. Although he didn’t say it, Paulina did. Whenever they talked on the phone or Skype, she’d tell him that she loved him and that she missed him, but to that, he would only nod along and say, me too. He was distant, and she didn’t know if it was because he was stressed out about whether or not he’d ever be deployed again, if his royal duties were overwhelming him, or if he just didn’t love her anymore and didn’t know how to end it.

If the latter was the case, she wished that he would just end it, because she couldn’t keep things up anymore, not if he didn’t really love her. For love, she would endure the photographers that followed her around, she would endure the constant criticism that the tabloids and bloggers unleashed upon her. For love, she would follow Harry to the ends of the earth, but for that, she needed to know that he loved her, she needed to feel it, but she didn’t. She hadn’t in weeks, and that worried her. That scared her, because she was so willing to leave everything behind when the time came, she was so willing to embark on a new dream with him, but she was frightened that he didn’t want the same.

And deep down, she was scared that maybe he’d grown bored of her. Now that she wasn’t in England, he had more time to go out with his friends. He didn’t have to think about spending time with his girlfriend. He was able to go out, get hammered and flirt with beautiful women in bars. He was able to go back to the life he’d led before he met her, and maybe he preferred that. Maybe he didn’t want to be monogamous anymore. Maybe he wasn’t ready for things to be as serious as they were.

She pondered that as she cried into the comforter, and the more she thought it over, the more it made sense. Why else would he be getting himself into compromising positions with beautiful women? He knew that she would end up seeing those pictures. One way or another, she’d see them on television or in some tabloid, but she’d eventually see them. So why else would he putting himself in that position? Why else would he be partying in London like a singleton? Maybe he was trying to upset her so much that she broke up with him. That way he wouldn’t feel like an asshole for breaking up with her after having put her through so much with the press. If that was case, she . . . well, her pride would want to break it off, just to end things, but her heart, oh that fucking heart of hers, wouldn’t be able to do it. It was an optimist that would argue the situation was salvageable. It wasn’t that bad. He hadn’t cheated. He hadn’t been disrespectful or badmouthed her. Things weren’t great, but they could be worse, and they could be fixed if she just put in a little more effort. That was what her heart would say, and her brain would eventually cave and agree with it, because at the end of the day, both her brain and her heart wanted him. They wanted him even though he hadn’t called her back, even though he’d had a topless woman sitting on his lap.

In time, her sobbing eventually subsided into nothing more than gentle weeping. She couldn’t completely compose herself, but at least her body wasn’t trembling anymore. At the rate she was going, she’d end up falling asleep soon enough. Her gentle weeping would eventually give way, and her emotional exhaustion would get the best of her. That was what was going to happen if no one interrupted her, but unfortunately for her, her night wasn’t going to be that uneventful. She wasn’t just going to cry and fall asleep, there was so much more left to do, and she became aware of that when her phone began to ring.

At first, she thought it was a figment of her imagination, some crying induced hallucination, but after the third ring, she realized that someone was actually calling her. And when she was able to process that it was Harry’s special ringtone, her eyes snapped wide open. He was calling her. He was actually calling her. She hadn’t expected him to call back that night. She’d wanted him to, but hadn’t thought he actually would. Not with how late it was over there, not since he was probably drunk from another night out with his friends

For a moment, she contemplated not taking his call. If he was drunk, she didn’t want to talk to him. He could call her back the next day when he was sober and capable of carrying a conversation, but eventually, her desire to speak to him, to tell him off for having that topless woman on his lap, got the best of her. And she leapt from her place on the bed, sprinting across the room to the outlet where her phone was charging.
Before she could even compose herself, she clicked the green button to answer his call, and then, clear as day, his voice came through.

“Hello love, it’s me . . .” he paused, unsure as to how to continue, praying that she would say something – anything at all, but she remained silent, only the sound of her breathing audible. “Are you there? You must be, I reckon I can hear you breathing. It sounds a bit off though, a bit ragged to be honest.” He thought that would elicit a response from her. It didn’t. “Come on, love. Don’t be like this. This won’t work if ya don’t talk to me. Ya always talk to me! Even when you’re furious. So go now, let me have it.”

“And what good would that do?” she croaked, her voice hoarse from all the crying she’d been doing. “What good would it do us, Harry?”

He cringed. She only ever called him that when she couldn’t stand the sight of him, when she couldn’t bring herself to affectionately refer to him as Henry or güerito.

“Please don’t call me that.” He found himself whispering. “Please . . .”

“What good would that do us, Harry?” she repeated out of spite. “Because you don’t even humor me enough to pretend to listen. You don’t even give me that.”

“What are ya goin’ on about? I always listen.”

“Do you really?” she questioned as she paced about the room, her eyes narrowed as she moved under the cover of darkness.”

“Yes.” He replied. “I bloody do.”

“Then why the hell are you still running around London with Chelsy?”

“Don’t bring her into this.” Harry said, curtly. “This isn’t about her, this is about –”

“This is about her!” shrieked Paulina. “It’s about her and about those fucking tits that were in your damn face and about the fact that you’re going around London acting like you don’t have a girlfriend waiting for you across the pond! That’s what this is all about, Harry. So don’t you dare think that I’m just upset over the pictures of you with that girl, because you better than anyone should know why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling,” she declared. “We’ve been fighting long enough for you to know why.”

He gritted his teeth, knowing very well that she was referring to the entire month of April. They’d been at each other’s throats throughout most of it. Every day brought along with it something new to fight about, and although they fought, they never resolved anything and for the life of him, he didn’t want to have to deal with all that, the tits were going to be bad enough without adding the rest of it.

“Why are you so set on fighting over Chelsy when she doesn’t mean a damn thing to me? Why do you keep bringing her up? She’d nothing! Alright? Do you bloody get that? She’s nothing to me!”

“Then why are you always hanging out with her?” snapped Paulina. “It seems like every weekend, you’re out with her, dancing and drinking and fucking grinding all up on her! If she doesn’t mean anything to you then why is she always there? Why?”

“Because she pops by with Jake, that’s why.” Harry couldn’t believe she was still going on about Chelsy. He understood her being upset over the tits, but not Chelsy, that was just absurd. “Honestly, you’re acting like I’m the one that goes out of my way to make sure she goes out with me and my mates. But guess what? I don’t fucking do that. I don’t even talk to her outside those nights out. If she pops by with Jake, then yeah, I have a laugh with her, a few drinks and maybe some dances, but it’s not like I’ve got my hand down her top or anything like that.”

“You’re right. It’s not like you have your hand down her top. You’re just grabbing onto her hips for dear life and grinding on her. So yeah, that’s fine. That’s completely fine. Nothing wrong with that at all.”

“I don’t care for your sarcasm.”

“And I don’t care for you being out with Chelsy.” She stopped pacing about. “I am sick and tired of hearing about how you were spotted somewhere with her! “

“Then don’t bloody read the tabloids! It’s that easy.” Harry was beginning to lose his temper. “And anyways, you’re not upset over Chelsy, you’re upset over the tits!”

“Have you not been listening to me? I’m upset over Chelsy! I’m furious over the tits!”

“Then let’s talk about the tits.” Harry’s words echoed down the corridor, waking William from his sleep. “Let’s talk about how much of a massive twat I was last night, because I was, I was the king of the fucking twats. And I’m sorry, love, believe me, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, I’m sure of it! You’re so sorry about it that you ignored my calls all day. That’s how sorry you are.”

“I was busy.”

“Doing what? Because you made it perfectly clear to me that you didn’t have any royal duties this weekend, that this was your lazy weekend. So what were you so busy doing? Hmm? Better yet, why didn’t you call to give me a heads up about what was going on? That way I wouldn’t have felt like such a fucking idiot when I found out at the grocery store. That way I would’ve been ready for the fucking photographers that were following me around all day!”

“There’s only a couple of photographers that follow you in America.”

“There were dozens,” she said through gritted teeth. “And they were . . . they were . . .”

“They were what?” pressed Harry. “What were they following you around and asking questions? That’s what they always do, Paulina! That’s what they’ve always done so don’t act like it’s anything new or so unsettling. You knew what you were getting into when you became my girlfriend.”

“You’re right,” she said in a soft voice. “I did know what I was getting myself into. The moment I became your girlfriend was the moment that I willingly gave up my life as a private citizen. And you know what? I’ve borne it well. I have put up with the press stalking me whenever I go out. I have stood at your side and been amiable and engaging at countless events. I have done right by you and your family, Harry. I’ve done everything in my power to make it so that I would never be an embarrassment to you, but you haven’t done the same for me.”

“What did you just say?” he was going to lose his temper. Whenever someone told him that he was an embarrassment, he lost his temper. It brought out his sense of inferiority. It made him remember the countless times his grandmother and father had told him off using that very same line.

“You heard me.” She said, not backing down.

“Say it again.” He nearly growled.

“I said that I’ve gone out of my way to not embarrass you. I took extra lessons with Lady Fellowes to ensure that I would be a good companion to you whenever I went with you to royal engagements. I have done my absolute best to never embarrass you or cause you unnecessary heartache. But you? You’re spending your weekends partying with strange women and being photographed in compromising positions! I’ve lost track of how many of those pictures I’ve seen. Pictures of different women sitting on your lap, of you grinding on them, of you flirting shamelessly. I’ve seen those pictures and so has the rest of the world.” She couldn’t keep it in anymore, she started crying again. “And I can’t take it anymore, Harry. I can’t. I’m tired of having everyone look at me like I’m this fucking pathetic person for still being with you.”

“You’re not pathetic.” He argued.

“But I am!” she cried. “God, I am pathetic.” She closed her eyes, the tears streaming down her cheeks. “Two years ago, I would’ve never put up with the things you do. I would’ve never been alright with my boyfriend dry humping other girls on the face floor. I would’ve never been comfortable with some bitch sitting on his lap. That would’ve been enough for me to leave them. But now?” she took in a deep breath, attempting to rally herself. “Now, I was fine with that for an entire month. Not once did I complain about those women or the pictures. Did I get angry about Chelsy? Yes, I fucking did. I did it because I can’t fucking stand her. And I know it’s not right, because I’ve never even met her, but I don’t like her and I don’t want her around you, because whenever I see you two together, I think that you two are gonna get it on.” She choked back a sob. “For seven months, I turned the eye on everything. For seven months, I was fine. But those tits were the last straw, Harry. I’ve had enough. I’m done with having to convince myself that I don’t have a reason to be upset, I’m done with feeling pathetic. And if you . . . if you want to keep being my boyfriend, then please be my boyfriend. But if for some reason . . . if f-for some reason, you don’t want to be with me anymore, then let me know. Please just let me know, because I can’t keep doing this if you don’t love me. I can’t.”

“I do love you.”

“Then why don’t you act like it?” she cried.

“I could ask you the same thing.” He wasn’t the only one at fault. If she hadn’t gone away to America, then they wouldn’t have been in that mess to begin with. “If you love me so much then why the fuck did you have to run off to Harvard? Ya don’t do that to people ya love. You don’t fucking run off to the other side of the Atlantic.”

“I . . . I . . .”

“You don’t even know what to say!” he bellowed, tears beginning to fall from his own eyes.

“I do!”

“Then why? Why the fuck did you leave me if you love me so much? Why couldn’t you just stay here?”

“Because I couldn’t,” she whispered. “I spent twelve years of my life working towards getting into Harvard. Harvard was my dream. And I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t pass it up to stay in Oxford, even though I love you.”

“If you love someone you make sacrifices.”

“Is that what you told Chelsy?” Paulina asked him, gruffly. “Is that what you told her when you convinced her to go to law school in England? Did you tell her that she had to make even more sacrifices than she already head? I have a feeling you said that. And from the looks of things, she was more than glad to make the necessary sacrifices. She went over to England thinking everything was gonna be alright. She accommodated her entire life to make things easier for you. And how did that work out for her?” she questioned. “How’d that go for Chelsy?”

“How the fuck do you even know all this? Have you been searching us on the internet?”

“No.” Paulina answered honestly. “I never wasted my time on that, but Olivia – well, she was a fan of you and Chelsy. And when the papers printed that picture of you two kissing in Africa, she took the liberty of clueing Alfred and me in on every aspect of your relationship. Apparently, Chelsy had three good months with you before you broke things off. She had completely rearranged her life to make yours easier, and you broke up with her after three months. And you know what? When I was freaking out, worrying about where to go, there was a part of me that remembered that. There was a part of me that was afraid that if I stayed at Oxford, you would break up with me in a few months and then I’d be stuck there with no hope of Harvard. That’s what I was afraid of. That’s what terrified me. So there you go. Now you know. I was afraid.”

“It wouldn’t have been like that with you.” Harry insisted. “Things would’ve been better for us. If only you’d made the sacrifice, we would’ve –”

“Don’t you dare make it seem like I’m some bitch that’s never made any sacrifices for this relationship. I have sacrificed my privacy, my sanity. So don’t you dare make me out to be the bad guy, we’re both to blame here.”

“I’ll take the blame for the tits. That was my stupidity, and I’m sorry, so fucking sorry about that, but that’s the extent of it.” He boldly declared. “Everything else has been done by you. If you hadn’t left, then I wouldn’t be running around London with my mates, would I? If you hadn’t left, we’d be spending our weekends together and I wouldn’t be dancing on other birds. All that is on you. If you’d just stayed – if you were just a bit more like Kate, then we’d be alright.”

“Well, I’m not.” Paulina said, curtly. “I love Kate, really, I do, but I’m nothing like her. I’m not comfortable with wasting a degree by waiting around for someone to decide whether or not they want to marry me. That’s not rad. Not by me. I’ll work. I’ll put my degree to use, and if . . . if there comes a time when things get more serious, then so be it, I’ll follow my heart, but until then, I’m not going to just be waiting around, looking pretty. I’ve got things of my own I want to do. And I had hoped that you would support me the way I support you with your training, because let me remind you that there’s gonna came a day when you get deployed. There’s gonna come a day when your decision to enlist is going to send you thousands of miles away, into a warzone where we really won’t be able to keep in regular contact. And when that time comes, I’m not going to spend my weekends grinding on me and having their dicks in my face. When that time comes, I’ll show you the basic respect that I wanted you to show me!”

“Oi!” exclaimed Harry. “That’s enough of that!”

“Why?” she yelled. “Are you upset because I’m telling the truth?”

“That’s not the truth!”

“But it is,” she argued. “You’re gonna put me in the exact same position that I’ve put you in. We’re gonna have be thousands of miles apart. But you know what? At least with my being at Harvard, I can fly out to visit you, but once you get deployed, those are gonna be six months when we’ll rarely get to see each other over the computer. Six fucking months. So tell me, how would you feel if I got drunk and grinded on guys? How would you feel if I had them sitting on my lap with their shirts off? Would you like that? Or would that drive you fucking crazy?”

“It’s not the same!” Harry protested. “Birds aren’t meant to do those sort of things. That’s what blokes do. Birds . . . well, birds don’t act like that. It’s one thing for a bloke to have a bird on their lap, but entirely fucking different for a bird to have a bloke on hers. That’s what slags do.”

“If that’s what slags do, then you must be a slag.” She shot back. “Every single weekend this month, you have had strange women in little clothing on your lap, you’ve had their asses backed into yours, and you’ve had their tits in your face. You know what? I take that back. For the last eight months, you’ve been doing that. And I’m fucking tired of it. I’m tired of you being a fucking slag over there. And if you don’t stop, then when you get deployed, you better believe that I’m gonna hit up the clubs in Boston, and I’m gonna let every single attractive man I meet, sit on my lap. Then again, why wait? I might as well start already! I’ll go out tomorrow night and act the part of a slag!”

“Like hell you are!” Harry cried. “Your arse is going to fucking stay in that hotel with that old woman! You hear me?”

“Why are you getting so worked up? What you don’t like the thought of me just partying? There’s nothing wrong with partying. You tell me all the time that there’s nothing wrong with partying so why can’t I go out and have fun like you have fun? Why can’t I get ready so that I’m an expert partier for when you get deployed?”

“For the thousandth fucking time, it’s not the same thing!” bellowed Harry. “I’ll be serving my bloody country, not sitting somewhere with my nose in a book! You could’ve learned at Oxford just as well as you are at Harvard, but you’re being a massive fucking cunt about it all!”

He immediately regretted saying that. Never before had he called her a cunt. He’d called her an asshole before, a wanker, a twat, a fucking prat, and an insufferable git, but never a cunt.

“Fine then,” she said in a deathly low voice. “You’re right, absolutely right. Everything’s my fault. It’s my fault you had those tits in your face. It’s my fault you grind on those women. It’s my fault you hang out with Chelsy. I’m sorry that I am such a massive fucking cunt that couldn’t accommodate her life to meet your needs, because you’re right, I can have my nose stuck in a book anywhere. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time I go contemplate why it is that I am such a fucking cunt.”

“Oh, come on now. Don’t be like that! Ya know I didn’t mean it. I got caught up in it all. My temper ran off with me. Just don’t –” Before he could finish, she hung up. Infuriated, he grabbed his phone and called her again, hell ben on having her listen, hell bent on stopping her from being such a massive prat. “You better fucking pick up . . .” he muttered as he pressed her speed dial number and click the send button, but when he did that, his call when straight to voicemail. She’d had enough of him. “Oi!” he bellowed into his phone, his temper flaring so much that he didn’t think twice about leaving a heated voicemail. “Where in the bloody hell do you get off turning off your fucking phone? You’re the one that’s always going on about how we ought to talk about things, so let’s do that then – let’s fucking talk! Put on your big girl pants and call me back so we can have a proper fight over this. Because I know we’ve more fights to go, but I’m not losing you, you insufferable woman, I am not losing you. So go ahead, sulk, be fucking angry and drink and hate me, but don’t ya wander off, because you know who’s you are. We both do. And I swear if I see any bloke near you, I will beat the shit out of them. Because ya might drive me mad sometimes, but you’re mine, and nothing’s changing that. So there ya have it. When you’re done being such a twat, phone me.” He angrily turned off his phone, and turned to get back to his bed, but when he turned, he was surprised to find William standing in the doorway, looking at him as if he were observing some exotic animal. “The fuck are you doing there?” he asked him, roughly. “Are ya enjoying this? Seeing me be such a twat? No. No. I’m not a twat, I’m fucking bastard, and she’s a right cunt. That’s what we are. That’s why everything’s gone to shit!”

“Harry, why don’t ya try to calm down? Maybe talking about it will –”

“I’ve nothing to say to you. I’ve nothing to say to anyone that’s not her. And she won’t fucking talk to me because we’re both massive idiots. So please Wills, just fuck off. Just leave me the fuck alone.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll be going then, but you know that if you need me, if you want me here, I’m right down the hall.”

“I don’t want you here.” Harry whispered, the tears finally spilling from his eyes. “I want her.”