Four Million Views

By seven a.m., the line is around the block.

By seven-fifteen, you've run out of croissants.

By seven-thirty, Pip has taped a sign to the door in her loopiest handwriting: NO, HE IS NOT HERE. YES, WE STILL SELL COFFEE.

"They're not here for coffee," you hiss, slamming a portafilter into the grinder. "They're here for him."

"They're here for you," Pip says. She's got her pink-streaked hair in two space buns and her phone propped against the sugar jar, scrolling with one finger while she foams milk with the other hand like a woman born for this. "Listen. 'The Café Girl just did what no Aubervalois woman has ever done: told Prince Alexander no.' Eight hundred thousand likes. 'I would also steam milk for her.' That one's from a man named Anselme who has a horse as his profile picture."

"I didn't tell him no. I told him under the surface."

"Same energy." Pip turns the phone around.

And there it is. Thirty-one seconds, filmed from table four. The rain-dark window. The radiator. You, reaching up with a dishcloth. Him, standing completely still while you wipe the foam off his nose. The moment where you both freeze. The moment where he laughs.

Someone has set it to a slow love song. Someone else has slowed it down to show the exact second his eyes drop to your mouth.

They do not drop to your mouth.

You watch it again.

They drop a little.

"Oh no," you say.

"Oh yes, Ava," says Pip.

The café is louder than it has been in years. Every table is full. People are standing at the counter, drinking cappuccinos they don't want, staring at the steam wand like it's a holy relic. A woman asks if she can buy the apron. A teenager asks if she can take a picture of the exact tile where he stood. You say no to both and then sell them each two pastries, because you're not an idiot and Belcourt Holdings wants its rent.

Through the window, the press is three deep. Long lenses. Umbrellas. A man in a leather jacket has been leaning on the lamppost across the street for an hour, camera hanging off his neck, drinking something from a paper cup that is not from your café.

At ten, he finally walks in.

"One flat white," he says, sliding onto the stool at the end of the counter. "And a quote."

Up close he's annoyingly good-looking: messy dark hair, a three-day shadow, a lazy smile that's clearly gotten him into a lot of places he wasn't invited. His press badge says Castelmere Courier and R. Faucher.

"The flat white is four crowns," you say. "The quote is 'get out.'"

"That's two words. I can work with two words." He grins. "Remy. Courier. Come on. Just tell me how you met him. Was it planned? Did the palace send him? Is he as tall in person as he looks in photos?"

"I don't know what he looks like in photos. I didn't know who he was."

Remy's eyebrows go up. "You really didn't?"

"I've lived here eleven months. I know where the bakery is. I don't know what your prince looks like."

"Everybody knows what he looks like." He leans an elbow on your counter. "Six-three. Navy. Never smiles. They call him the Marble Prince. He hasn't been photographed laughing since he was twenty-five, and yesterday he laughed in your café." He tilts his head. "That's the story, sweetheart. Not the milk. The laugh."

You set down his flat white harder than necessary. "Four crowns. And don't call me sweetheart."

He pays with a ten and doesn't take the change. "Keep it. For when you're famous." He winks and strolls out, and Pip watches him go with her mouth slightly open.

"Don't," you say.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were thinking it."

"I was thinking we have a lot of very attractive men in this story suddenly, and I'm just a humble barista."

At eleven-forty, the street goes quiet.

You don't notice it at first. You're elbow-deep in the dishwasher. Then you realize the shouting has stopped, and the flash-pops have stopped, and Pip is standing in front of the window going, "Um. Um. Um."

A long black car has pulled up outside. Not a limousine. Something lower and sleeker, with tinted windows and a tiny silver crest on the door. Two men in dark suits get out first and stand on the pavement, and the photographers part around them like water around rocks.

Then a third man gets out. Slim, mid-thirties, rimless glasses, a tablet tucked under his arm like a shield. He walks into your café, looks at the tiles, the radiator, the ancient espresso machine, and the line of staring customers, and then he looks at you.

"Good morning," he says. "My name is Matthias Brandauer. I'm private secretary to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince." He says it without blinking. "His Royal Highness would like to apologize to you in person. He wondered whether you might be free for lunch."

Every person in the café turns to look at you at the exact same time.

"I have a café," you say. "I'm working."

"I'm aware." Matthias glances at Pip. "Is your colleague capable of managing for two hours?"

"Yes," Pip says. "Absolutely. Go. Go."

You untie your apron very slowly. Your hands are shaking a little. You look down at yourself: jeans, a flour handprint on your hip, sneakers that have seen things.

"I'm not exactly dressed for a palace."

Matthias's mouth does something that might, in a less disciplined man, be a smile.

"Neither was he," he says. "Yesterday."

The Palais Belcourt sits on the far side of Lake Serein, pale stone and green copper roofs, so big it looks like a painting someone forgot to finish. The car takes you through iron gates, past fountains, past gardeners who pretend not to stare, and into a courtyard where your sneakers squeak on gravel that has probably been raked by hand.

Matthias leads you up a staircase, down a gallery lined with portraits of men who all have the same jaw, and into a sitting room full of autumn light.

He's standing by the window.

He turns around, and your brain quietly leaves your body.

Yesterday he was a drowned stranger in a hoodie. Today he's wearing a charcoal suit cut so precisely it looks poured on, a white shirt open at the collar, no tie. His hair is dry and pushed back, dark gold in the sunlight. He's clean-shaven. He looks like the photo they put on stamps, if the stamp had been designed by someone who was in love with him.

The Crown Prince of Aubervale looks at you, at the flour handprint on your jeans, and something in his face softens.

"You came," he says.

"Your secretary didn't give me a lot of options."

"He never does. It's his only flaw." He crosses the room and stops a careful distance away. "I owe you an apology, Ava. I walked into your life to hide from my own, and I didn't think about what it would cost you. The video. The press. I'm sorry."

It's a good apology. Direct, no excuses. It throws you more than the suit.

"Your apology," you say, "brought me a line around the block. I sold forty croissants in an hour. I'm not exactly suffering."

That twitch at the corner of his mouth again. "Good. Then you might hear the rest without throwing anything."

"What's the rest?"

He glances at Matthias. Matthias looks at the ceiling as if he's praying for strength.

The Prince takes a breath, the kind you take before jumping into cold water.

"I need you to marry me," he says. "Well. Pretend to."