The Royal We by Heather Cocks, Jessica Morgan Read Free Book Online Page B

Penelope Six-Names by twenty seconds.
    “Suck it, BeatNicks!” I whooped, as Cilla let out a howl of glee. We then performed a triumphant chest bump that ended with me belching involuntarily as we yelped in pain. The Bexicon nailed it again: There was no more delicate paragon of womanhood at Oxford that year than I.
    “That was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Gaz announced, as Clive and Nick about fell over laughing.
    “Which part?” Cilla wheezed. “The bumping, the burping, or the mashed boobs?”
    “Yes,” Gaz replied serenely.
    Nick and I attempted a high five. I swung wildly and missed.
    “A classic case of Pimm’s Blindness,” he laughed. “So tragic in one so young.”
    “I think it’s more that some of my brain cells just exploded.”
    “Try again,” he said, raising up my arm. “If you watch the other person’s elbow at the last second, you’ll never miss.”
    We high-fived with a satisfying smack.
    “Genius!” I said. “Lacey will love that.”
    “No, sorry, it’s a state secret. Very sensitive government information,” he said.
    I felt arms wrap around me from behind. Clive lifted me up and whirled me around before setting me back on my feet.
    “Clive!” Cilla shouted as I struggled to regain my balance. “Never spin a Glugger until half an hour after The Glug.”
    “Now you’ve done it,” Gaz said. “She’ll be too Brahms’d to stand up at the trophy ceremony.”
    “Sorry,” Clive said, steadying me. “But that was ace. That record is going down today.”
    Unfortunately, Clive had barely gone up when he got penalized for breaking the lip-lock rule. Cilla and Gaz more than made up for it, though, and after the BeatNicks’ best player fell twice during The Reckoning, we’d built an impenetrable lead of more than a minute.
    “Go on, Nicky boy,” Gaz said, rubbing together his hands. “Stick it to ’em.”
    A terrified-looking guy called Terrance, lean as a toothpick and just as pointy, approached the table. He was an alternate—his older brother had partied too hard the night before—and though Nick’s turn was a formality at this point, Terrance’s team clearly expected its last Glugger to make a massive fool of himself, and the poor kid knew it. He offered Nick a wobbly handshake, and somewhere, Popeye and Twiggy doubtless took deep, meditative breaths as Nick was hoisted upside down…and drank for a pathetic seven seconds.
    “Must not have eaten enough,” he said once he was upright again.
    “After all your training?” moaned Gaz. “We could’ve made history! I bet thirty quid on you to crack a minute!”
    I could swear Nick winked at me, but it was so slight, I may have imagined it. Terrance turned purple when he realized what happened, and when he was righted fifteen seconds later, he was roundly cheered by the entire crowd for this small individual victory against both Glug royalty and the real thing.
    “Well done! You thumped me,” Nick said, clapping Terrance on the back.
    Terrance just nodded, looking as though he was trying very hard to keep an avalanche of Pimm’s from decorating Nick’s shoes.
    “Bloody sportsmanship,” Gaz grumbled, even as the Lemonhead declared us the winners.
    Gaz was mollified by the fact that, as the Glugger with the best time, we gave him the Glug Mug trophy—a giant bottle entirely papered over with old Pimm’s labels—to keep in his window facing the quad. By the time we folded our arms around each other for the team photo that would hang in the JCR, everyone’s spirits and blood-alcohol levels were equally high. I remember Clive wriggling in and giving me a firm, overlong kiss on the cheek, and as the camera flashed, I had the distinct feeling that I’d been marked.
    So when a knock came at my door much later that night, I was surprised that it was not Clive but Nick, holding the Glug Mug in one hand and a large carryall in the other. He still wore the traditional Glug uniform of microscopic shorts and a