Page 36 of Primary Season
Kathryn sat down on a bench in the bus and tossed her handbag onto the floor next to her. “Good, because I’m done, too. I can’t take it anymore.”
Like I said, in politics, no one wants to be around the loser; everyone wants to hitch themselves to the winner. In some ways, that meant that winding down the campaign wasn’t as hard as I expected. The staff understood; this was how politics worked. People had jobs one day and lost them the next. It happened. No fuss.
The only thing that bothered me was Alex.
When she resigned, she did it fast. We couldn’t stop her; she’d made up her mind. She wanted to leave, even though I wasn’t asking her. She wouldn’t have it any other way.
But I kept thinking about her. All the way back to DC, on that lonely overnight bus ride where Doug and I sat in the back while Kathryn fumed in the front, I thought about Alex. When I dreamed, I dreamed about Alex.
The truth was, Ineededher.
And that’s how I found myself on her doorstep three weeks later. I’d driven by it a half dozen times, but I hadn’t worked up the courage to stop, get out of my car, and confess to her what I’d been thinking. It took a while to gather that kind of strength.
But then I did. I knocked three times on the front door of apartment 4C, and she answered a half-second after the third knock. She wore a pair of grey sweatpants, a red tank top, and her hair pulled back in a low ponytail.
“What do you want?” She sneered, and her eyebrows lifted. “Why are you here, Patrick?”
I regarded her for a beat, marveling at how gorgeous she looked, even though she appeared to have not slept in six months.
“May I come in?”
“No.”
“Fine,” I said. “I deserve that.”
“If this is about the news coverage—”
“It’s not.” I winced. It had died down right along with my failed campaign. No one cared about the love life of a failed presidential candidate once he’d dropped out of the race.
“Like I told you in my resignation letter, I’m going to lay low,” Alex said. “I’ll probably go back to Omaha, or maybe the West Coast. You won’t have to hear from me ever again, and I won’t sell my story. You can trust me.” She braced her arm on the doorframe. “So I don’t know why you’re here, because we have nothing to say to each other.”
“But I need you. That’s why I’m here.”
She recoiled. “What?”
“You heard me,” I said. “I need you. I haven’t ever needed anyone, butI need you. And I—” I stepped closer to her. “I want you to understand something. I know I screwed up. I know I’m not perfect. But I know—”
“Stop,” she said, but a small smile pulled at her lips. “I know where we stand. You don’t have to say anything.”
“Yes, I do.” I placed a hesitant hand on her arm. “Let me explain.”
She answered me with a small nod.
“Kathryn and I are over. She’s—” I glanced away and grinned at the memory of the last time I’d seen Kathryn, and the disgust that decorated her face. “I’m not useful to her anymore, so she walked away.”
“What about the pictures? The cocaine?”
I shrugged. “She might leak them, but trust me, the junior senator from Ohio isn’t exactly someone she cares about. She and her father want bigger fish than me. I don’t think she’ll use them. And if she does—”
“People in DC have long memories.”
I sized her up. She still had it. She still turned on something inside of me that no one else ever had. “So do campaign staffers.”
“Why should I trust you?” she said. “What makes you think that you deserve it?”
“I don’t. After all that I’ve done to you, I don’t. I don’t deserve it at all, and if you want me to leave right now, just say the words. I’ll leave. You’ll never hear from me again.”
We stared at each other for a beat.
