Free Royally Jacked (Romantic Comedies, The) by Niki Burnham

to judge by the looks of the guys who carried our luggage up to our rooms, I’m not expecting Schwerinborg to be Hottie Heaven. But I’ll let you know if anything develops.
    Val
    After firing off my e-mail to Christie, I send slightly blander e-mails to Jules and Natalie, just so they won’t feel unloved. I’m exhausted, but I just know that if Christie gets an e-mail tonight and Jules and Natalie don’t get any until tomorrow, they’ll get all whiny and overanalyze the whole thing, decide I’ve turned into a total bitch, and then they’ll refuse to e-mail me back out of spite.
    Of course, it won’t even occur to them that they’ve ignored me for, like, the last
week
.
    Sometimes girls suck. Guys would never be this way.
    I probably should have told Christieabout Georg, but—since, even though I adore her, Christie is a typical girly-girl too and overanalyzes everything—I’m afraid it’ll make her think ’m not interested in David. And I still want to hear how, or
if,
David says anything to Jeremy about me being gone, before I say anything about Georg.
    Plus, I figure I should wait and see if my first impression of Georg holds up before I announce that I’ve found a potential friend—maybe even a boyfriend—over here. Telling anyone would be making my expectations official, and I’m not there yet.
    I curl up in bed, hug my pillow (a rather flat and hard thing—I may have to add
fluffy pillow
to
hair dryer
on the shopping list), and try to go to sleep. You’d think, given the fact that I’ve been up for a bazillion hours trying to regulate my body to European time, that I’d crash hard. But I can’t. I’m obsessing over David.
    I pull my pillow closer and wonder what it’d be like if it was David cuddling with me instead. Would his blond hair feel as soft as it looks when I’m sitting behind him at a football game? Would he hold metight, with his body fitting right against mine, and tell me that he s loved me from afar for years and been too scared to say so?
    I know it’s impossible, but late at night, when I’m alone in bed, I can’t help but pretend.
    As my mind drifts, I find myself wondering what might have happened if I could have gone to David’s Christmas party, and if my mom was her old self and I didn’t have to give a rat’s ass about David’s dad and his beliefs. Would David and I have ended up making out in some bedroom or on the back porch, like Jeremy and Christie always do?
    Of course, I’ve never seen south-ofthe-border action, like I suspect Christie and Jeremy might have if they got enough privacy after the party ended last night. I haven’t even seen
north
-of-the-border action. Christie suspects this, but I haven’t told her for sure. Even though the A-listers know I’ve never had a serious boyfriend, I’ve tried to be real mysterious about what happens on family vacations or who I might’ve met when I had to go to summer camp during junior high. Idon’t want them to think I’m a total loser.
    And besides, they’re not going to tell me about
their
action if they think I won’t get what they’re talking about. But how can I get it—or get any, really—if they won’t tell me anything? How else am I going to figure it all out so I don’t make a complete and total fool of myself when a guy really does get interested?
    I fold my pillow in half so it’s almost like my pillow at home and close my eyes. But the second I get comfortable, there’s a light knock on my door and I hear Dad whisper, “Val? You still awake?”
    I take a deep breath and debate turning up the Avril Levigne playing on my clock radio. Finally I just click it off and answer, “Yeah. What’s up, Dad?”
    He opens the door, and enough light comes in from the living room to make me squint when I look in his direction. I think he’s holding my notebook, but it’s hard to tell. “Valerie, I’m sorry to wake you up. I hope you don’t think this is an invasion of your privacy, but I needed a