The Prince of Princeton

Her heart reeled with anxiety. Part of her wanted to put off seeing him, fearing she’d gained weight over the course of four days spent in the Deep South, where everything was battered, deep-fried, and came with a non-optional side of bacon. However, he was insistent, and rationality got the better of her, so she boarded the train from New York Pennsylvania Station to Princeton Junction.?

Clark said he’d pick her up and missed her terribly. They had been separated for more than a week for the first time since they had met, and despite herself, she couldn’t help texting him from her perch at the end of a honky tonk bar in Tennessee.?

For the first time, she felt a new desire. Alexa wished he was standing beside her, poking fun at the ludicrous tourist attraction.?

After a few hours of hesitation, she agreed to meet Clark on his proposed day. She chose her favorite ecru lace dress and delicate sandals. Alexa felt as beautiful as a bride in that dress but would later have her matrimonial wishes stabbed each time Clark would point out a bartender’s chest or a world-ranked tennis player’s wife.?

Alexa didn’t open her mouth but shrank when Clark rather callously point out the beauty or virtues of any other woman but the one at his side. At these times, Alexa would drift off, look down the entire length of the bar and divorce her spirit from the scene and ruminate into nothingness until Clark noticed.?

It never hurt any less. And these moments, these painful seconds of reality, contradicted everything she wanted to believe, and the hardest part of writing him off was his kindness.

But as Alexa learned, kindness alone didn’t constitute love, rather it was a paltry blueprint to building a foundation and in no way represented the cement, the bricks, the stucco, the glass, or any of the other elements required to build a temple, a sanctuary that would be devoted to each other's worship til death did them part.?

Next, Alexa added a silk scarf, channeling Grace Kelly. She finished the look with cherry-red sunglasses, a pale sweep of shimmery peach shadow, a coat of mascara, and toasted praline lips. She felt pretty—not quite beautiful.?

Alexa was going to visit the place where Clark, Beau, and “something or another” had grown up. What little she knew about him intrigued her to no end, and her curiosity entangled her in this mess. A quality her late grandmother had warned her about ever since she had plunged her fingers into a beehive.?

Alexa hoped Clark would like her ensemble. It was hard to tell because, so often, he stayed quiet. She thought he would have made an excellent poker player because, at times, Clark was unreadable. His murky blue eyes were as dense as glaciers; they didn’t flinch or wince—they simply observed without betraying any emotion.

Around Clark, Alexa had learned to cool her temper, yet she unabashedly expressed her views on everything from table service to Middle Eastern Politics. She arrived early and smoked a cigarette, knowing she wouldn’t have the opportunity around him. He texted asking where she was, letting her know he was waiting in the black car.?

The license plate of the car contained the letters ‘DAD.’ It irked her and made her wonder about the secrets he kept. So much of the man was a mystery. So much of him reminded her of her father, who had abandoned Alexa and her younger sister over a decade ago. He chose to communicate every few months or so through two-line, cryptic emails, notifying her of such things as her cousin’s marriage or the reading difficulties of her half-brother.?

And, her advisers were many, who offered outmoded etiquette form dusty Victorian tomes. And at times like these, she wished her great aunt was still around to make her laugh, read the grinds of her Turkish coffee cup or fan out her tarot cards and interpret Alexa's fate.

Since her death, Alexa felt even more hopeless and lost. Despite the improving relations with her mother and sister, Alexa knew these two, who loved her unconditionally, had a hard time understanding her.

She didn’t take her glasses off when she entered his Mercedes and gave an overly animated, “How are you?” He told her they would be staying at the Hyatt but proceeded to give her a tour of the town. Alexa’s heart was racing; she was awestruck by the lush green trees, the weathered masonry, the stained glass details, and the intricate moldings of Princeton University.?

As Clark drove, he unraveled the history of one of the quaintest towns she had ever seen. Princeton reminded her of the school she had attended in Massachusetts, and she was flooded with memories, her crushed dreams, and aspirations. She looked at herself in the passenger's mirror and choked, thinking how grossly out of place she looked.

Alexa was a princess of the gutters, the daughter of immigrants, a mother who had grown up with hand servants only to be exiled to Lebanon and eventually the Bronx after her father had launched a failed coup d’etat in Aleppo, Syria, and her father, who was an Istanbul playboy, and summered on carefree islands, but that was there. In this country, Alexa lived week-to-week, and her only thoughts were completing a book she doubted she could even write.

Some days, she entertained Grad School, and while she knew Clark couldn’t save her, he was a welcomed distraction, a tease, a taste of the life she always wanted, of the titles and the legacies she could never achieve here.