Page 1 of The Bodyguard Affair
Chapter 1
Andi
Three Years Ago
There’s something liberating about sitting in a crowded bar, elbow to elbow with drunken strangers, casually writing a piping hot love scene.
Until tonight, I’ve avoided writing in public, mainly because I’m an easily distracted individual, an unintentional eavesdropper. When the women next to you are having a “serious sit-down” with a third friend who is “almost certainly” being catfished by a bald man in a trailer park in Manitoba, one can’t just tune it out. Then there’s Taylor Swift’s newest single about her big breakup with Joe blaring over the speakers, her poetic, lyrical genius filling me with life and withering imposter syndrome simultaneously. Or the man in a toque joking that I’m “hard at work on the next bestseller,” a well-meaning quip that’s both depressing and as likely as a short, mild Ottawa winter(hint: highly improbable, practically statistically negligible). Even the piece of lint on the sleeve of my sweater can induce a brain fart.
Then there’s the ever-present risk of someone glancing at my tablet, seeing my latest penis euphemism, and being so scandalized, they choke to death on a mouthful of bar nuts. A touch dramatic? Maybe. But one has to consider these things. Ottawa is a reserved, buttoned-up city.
To be fair, the patrons at this bar are too busy drinking and socializing to care about the stone-faced woman sitting in the corner, wrapped in her emotional support cardigan, lost in her quest to make fictional people fall in love. That, or they can’t decipher my tiny size 8 font.
Distractions aside, being in public offers a wealth of inspiration, like the women secretly playing footsie under the table next to mine while on dates with unsuspecting men. The petite lady who can barely keep her hands off her man as he twirls her around on the strobe-lit dance floor.
I’m not sure why I haven’t done this sooner. With the intensity of my new day job, getting words down in the privacy of my apartment is becoming a rarity. That’s why I’m taking advantage of the time until my best friend, Laine, shows up.
The crowd melts around me as my fingers dance across the keyboard, barely keeping pace with my brain. With each keystroke, I slip deeper into my starry daydream of a fictional world. It’s an enchanting place where men aren’t trash and there are gentle, sugary forehead kisses aplenty. Where every touch is laced with a tenderness that makes you feel weightless. In my little world, love doesn’t fizzle, it endures. It scoops you up and holds you tight in its warm embrace, making good on itspromise to never let go. It makes you feel like everything will be okay, even if it won’t. I’m so lost in my own head, I barely register when someone tugs my hand.
“I should have known I’d find you hiding in the corner,” Laine shouts over the pulse of the music, eyeing my tablet screen with her heavily lined hawk eyes before I can slam it shut. “What are you doing?”
“My to-do list for work,” I say quickly, cheeks aflame with the heat of my blatant lie as she hands me a gin and tonic. Here’s the straight-up truth: I haven’t told anyone about my writing since I started a couple months ago. Not even my best friend, who knows everything about me, down to my monthly cycle. Maybe it’s superstitious and silly, but if I tell people, it’s no longer mine. It’s no longer a magical, sacred project I can escape into, tend to in my quiet moments. It feels too new, too raw. Sharing it with people, particularly Laine, who will demand to read it, opens it up to scrutiny and critique that I don’t have the mental fortitude for—yet. In fact, I’d rather hurl myself into the rapids of the Ottawa River than live with the knowledge that, somewhere out there, a human being has read my words and may havethoughts(good or bad).
While I love Laine, I already know she would judge me. Hard. Anytime I pick up a romance novel around her, she rolls her eyes and suggests something with a gold Pulitzer Prize stamp on the cover. If you looked on her bookshelves, you’d only find classics, war and terror academia books, and poetry.
So, for now, I write for me.
“Come dance!” Laine barely waits for me to shove my tablet in my bag before dragging me onto the congested dance floor. “Love the one-piece. Very Audrey Hepburn meets Catwoman,”she decides, twirling me around. It’s a far cry from skintight, high-gloss pleather, but Laine has a tendency to give aggressively ego-boosting compliments. The jumpsuit in question is black chiffon with a flirty keyhole back, not that it’s visible under my cardigan. But for a woman working in politics, nothing feels better than abandoning the tyranny of tummy-control pantyhose.
I close my eyes, drink, and let the lights blur around me in a red haze. For the first time since my breakup three months ago, I’m feeling playful, rebellious, and, dare I say, a smidge sexy—until I have to use the bathroom. In a one-piece.
Comfort aside, I hadn’t considered the logistics of peeing in a one-piece. So here I am, vulnerable, outfit around my ankles, boobs out, praying whoever just walked in can’t see me in all my nude glory through the alarmingly wide crack in the stall door.
And then the worst happens. Because of course it does.
While I’m mid-pee, the door flings open to a pair of startlingly blue eyes. I’ve never seen eyes this striking—like the artificially colored blue raspberry Kool-Aid my little sister and I used to chug straight from the plastic jug on those swelteringly humid summer days in our top-floor apartment with no AC. The kind that stains your tongue and teeth for a week.
The eyes in question belong to a very startled man.
At least, I’m pretty sure it’s a dude. The bathrooms in this bar are unisex, individual stalls.
We let out simultaneous screams, though mine is more like a piercing wail. I flail about on the toilet like an injured flamingo, endeavoring to cover my ugliest bra—thick straps, “not-tonight” beige, probably three years too old to deserve any place in my drawer. It’s so bad, I forget to hide my lower half, whichis covered by sweet nothing. This exact moment is why I don’t often leave my house.
“Shit!” He slaps a palm over both eyes and stumbles backward into the sinks in a blind frazzle. “I am so sorry. The door wasn’t locked, I—” I can’t hear the rest, because he quite literally dashes out of the bathroom, leaving the stall door swinging wide open.
With a groan, I hobble off the toilet to close the door. The lock was broken all along. Go figure.
Before someone else walks in on me, I wash up and beeline it back to the dance floor in search of Laine. No sign of her freshly permed curls anywhere. A quick scan tells me she’s migrated to a booth along the back wall. She’s cross-legged, in what appears to be deep conversation with my ex-boyfriend, Hunter, who’s come straight from the office, based on his sweater-vest—a staple in his office wardrobe. Tonight’s vest is mustard yellow.
I’d nearly forgotten that Hunter was coming tonight. Then again, why wouldn’t he? He’s Laine’s friend, too, and when we split, we made an agreement that we wouldn’t let it affect our group dynamic.
The three of us met over a year ago as sun-starved baby interns working for Eric Nichols, the leader of the Democratic People’s Party (DPP)—the third party that no one ever expected to win. I used to consider it the best day of my life. The day I started my dream job and met my best friend and my boyfriend.
The three of us got closer when our contracts were extended for the election, and again when the DPP won and transitioned into power. We did everything together. Morning coffee runs, lunches at the office, eyes bloodshot, poring over spreadsheets,take-out containers sprinkled over our desks. Weekends exploring museums, doing Parliament tours, dominating at trivia pub nights, consuming ill-advised late-night poutines with too many toppings. The usual things poli-sci geeks do for fun in the nation’s capital. Laine used to joke about being the third wheel, but these days, it feels likeI’mthe third wheel.
But I don’t let myself think about that. Not right now. Tonight is a happy night. We’re celebrating Laine’s official promotion to permanent staffer with health and dental benefits. She signed the offer letter today after dreaming of being one of the few East Asian women on the Hill since being elected class president in grade five. Give her thirty years and she’ll be the next prime minister of Canada. I’m calling it now.
Whatever Laine said must have been funny, because Hunter is dangerously close to falling face-first into her ample cleavage. I catch the subtle way he squeezes her shoulder affectionately, his thumb tracing a smooth circle down her arm—a move he used to do with me. Our eyes meet as I approach, and he flashes her one last frat-boy-president smile before slinking out of the booth to give me my spot back.
