“Why?” he whispered. “What status? Who cares about anything besides you and me?” He tried to pull me up to him, and I could feel our bodies fitting into their natural groove. I had to will myself to pull away.

“I care.”

“Nat,” Mike sighed. He sat back up and combed his fingers through my hair. “I know you’ve been fantasizing about the two of us getting crowned at the Ball for, like, our entire relationship, but you do know there is life after Palmetto Court, right?”

Mike was smirking at me the way that he did when I started to get carried away. His deep-brown eyes got all crinkled up, and his dark wavy hair flopped over his forehead. I’d have to remind Binky, his housekeeper, that his hair was about three, no, more than four days away from needing a trim — though it looked pretty cute for now.

Still, cute wasn’t going to win us anything at this stage in our lives. Why was I the only one in the room who seemed to be aware of it? It was times like these when I realized Mike had no concept of what it meant to work for something. It was almost like, if he didn’t already own it, or couldn’t buy it with his charm, he had no use for it. Sometimes I wondered whether he was even capable of wanting something that was hard to get.

Now he leaned in for a kiss, but I held him back, pushing on his chest with two fingers. He was inches away from my mouth.

“I will die if Justin Balmer walks away with your crown,” I said.

Mike sighed, collapsing back on the bed.

“I’m not getting into J.B. with you again,” he said. He stared up at the glow of the solar-system stickers we’d stuck on his ceiling back when we’d first gotten together, back when Palmetto Court dreams seemed as far away as the stars outside.

“I can’t believe how little you care about how much I care about this.” I banged my fist down on the bed, making more waves. Then I quickly shoved it into my other hand to keep myself still. “Have you even ordered my Jessamine yet?”