The next morning, I stretched myself from bed, unsure if I should go back into work. I could remember the scorn from the president’s lips so well in my ears, and I didn’t want to return to that mockery. I didn’t want to go see those eyes—those eyes that had provided such comfort, such humor in the previous days—and know that they ultimately hated me now. It was too much to face.
However, the White House had become my home, in many ways. As I tapped from the guest bedroom in Rachel’s house, I noted the cold slickness of the floor; I wrapped my sweater around my shoulders. I didn’t feel like myself, as I did in the White House. Instead, I felt like a foreigner. I could hear Rachel getting ready for work in her larger bathroom, and I knew that I needed to head out the door as well. What was I going to do at home all day—in Rachel’s home? Read romance novels? Watch talk television? Dream ever about reaching the heights of my career, without really pursuing it in a realistic sense?
No.
I tugged myself into the shower and allowed the hot water to course down my back, down my sides. I scrubbed at my armpits and tried to rid my body of Xavier’s scent. I didn’t want to remember him as I pulled off my dress later this evening. I wanted every speck of evidence to falter away from me, for good.
I dried my hair, thinking about my apartment. I imagined the cameras lurking like sharks in the depths. I wondered if I’d ever return back there or if it was ultimately lost to me for good. I’d never allowed myself to lose so many things at once before. I’d lost Xavier. I’d lost my home. All I really had, in this moment, was Rachel. And perhaps a drive to succeed, still riveted somewhere in my head.
I tugged my dress over my head and heard Rachel as she shuffled from the door. Both of us were late for work (and both of us were absolutely battling hangovers from the previous evening, I knew). I calmly trounced toward the door, taking every precaution from shaking my tender head too much. I spun back around, noting the comfortable shell of the room around me, before exiting into the revving world. Soon, I’d have to see Xavier. I tried to turn off the anxiety of my mind.
Finally, I arrived at the White House, pushing myself from the taxi in another long line of almost-late government employees. I nodded to them as we passed each other. They naturally allowed me to enter the White House first, to go through security first. After all, I was their leader. I was the campaign director. I was 20, 30 years their junior, in some cases. And yet, there I was.
The Secret Service men looked at me stoically, without a speck of recognition. I wondered what this meant. I wondered if they knew about what had happened between the president and I—if they understood that it was over between us, that because of me, they had a serious security breakage on their end. I wanted to take them to the side and shake them, telling them it wasn’t my fault. But their eyes were so cold.
Dimitri, my old friend from the old campaign days, was especially cold. He pressed his lips together and allowed me to pass by. I imagined a day in which he would hold out his hand and shake his head dismally. “Not today, Miss Martin,” he’d say. The White House mouth would be closed to me. My dreams would rush through the cracks.
That morning, I sat at my desk and sipped my coffee, watching the campaign team roll around my evenly. The speed was ramping up, as it naturally did during the year before the election. The next few months would be hard and fast, and then in the summer, we’d ramp up even more. It was going to be a hard road, but it was a road that I’d imagined so many, many times before. It seemed impossible to imagine myself not involved.
Jason, on the other side of the office, seemed in a tizzy. He continually placed his hand on his forehead, scraping the sweat away from his brow. He shook his head into the phone he held at his ear, opening his mouth to bicker in a menacing manner. I raised my eyebrow toward him. Nothing ever went according to plan, I wanted to tell him. Not even the best-laid of them all.
That afternoon, I ate my lunch at my desk, working through the last mechanisms of my late afternoon briefing. I munched through cucumbers and some almonds, knowing that this would just barely push me through the rest of the day. But I didn’t have the time to go into the world to find anything. Before me, many of the desks were empty, revealing that these people had wants, had needs, had desires.
Above the desks, peering toward me in the darkness of the hallway, I saw a thin, muscled figure. I turned my neck toward him, alarmed at his secrecy. Of course, the man was Xavier. He’d pushed from his Oval Office to come spy on me—perhaps to fire me in decency, when no one but that little guy with the southern accent in the corner would know.
But as soon as he caught my eye, shivers coursed through both of us. I swallowed slowly. He spun around, giving me the darkness of his back, his black hair. I turned back toward my work, readying myself for the briefing. Sometimes, Xavier didn’t go to them. Perhaps I could push through. Perhaps this stress that pulsed in me could go unnoticed.
However, when the briefing finally came, I felt the shivers coursing through my body. I stood before the great crowd of fully-fed campaign workers, feeling
Jason’s burly presence beside me. He leaned toward me and whispered, “You seem awful quaky today. You sure you don’t want me to cover it?”
I peered up at the back of the room, where I noted that Xavier had just entered, his dark eyes peering toward me. It felt like a challenge, like he wanted to make sure I was up to snuff. The anger grew in me, obliterating the love I had for him, even just for a moment.
I grabbed the baton, not giving Jason a decent response to his malicious question. I tapped it against the board before me, where I’d drawn a decent outline of our education bill plan—the one we were shuffling through Congress in the following few months to really get a lead over the Republican candidate. “LISTEN UP, PEOPLE,” I announced, lending them a sense for my passion, my drive. “Get the fuck out of your heads and listen to me.” I furrowed my eyebrows. They were going to pay attention to me—their campaign leader—for as long as I held this chair. Xavier was going to know that a little phrase like the one he used—the one initiating his regret for even hiring a “29-year-old girl” like me—held no validity. I was strong, empowered.
And I would make him win.
Chapter Three
As I pushed through the meeting, I grew stronger and truer to the feelings of triumph inside me. I no longer looked toward Xavier. Rather, I turned my attention toward the people before me, the people who turned toward me with a sense of passion and drive for this cause. I didn’t have time for people like Jason and Xavier—people with such apparent cruelty in their hearts. Did they believe that you could only make it in this business if you were cruel, if you obliterated everything and everyone in your path?
I tapped the baton back before the table, bringing everyone’s heads back up from their notes. It was nearly 5:30, which meant that I had overworked everyone well beyond their 5 o’clock end time. I thanked them, nodding my head succinctly. “Good work today. I think if we follow this plan to a T—if everyone does his or her job appropriately—we can win this thing.” My eyes were drawn to Xavier once more in this moment. He still looked so dark beneath the fluorescent lights of the great conference room. I tapped my papers on the table. “You can all head out,” I announced. “Thank you.”
The conference room erupted. People began their long-held conversations that had surely been bursting in their hearts. They turned toward each other and discussed dinner plans, first dates. They allowed their thoughts to stem away from the campaign. I wondered what that was like. Everything about my life, from the cameras positioned in my apartment to the very real love I held for Xavier was rooted in the campaign. Thusly, I couldn’t very well rip myself away from it. I couldn’t find another topic in my head!
The people ran into the hallway to grab their coats and head into the fall day. I stayed behind, toward the whiteboard, taking final notes for the day. Even Jason nodded toward me with a sense of near decency, telling me to enjoy my afternoon. I wanted to kick him in the shin, but I held back. “Have a good evening,” I told him. My voice was brimming with constricted hatred.
As everyone left, I was still very much aware of the final, dark figure lurking at the top of the conference room. I turned to the left and turned off one of the central lights, leaving my area in grey. I walked up the steps, clinging to my folders. I swallowed. “Hello,” I nodded coolly to the president. “How are you today?”
But Xavier stepped forward with such an anxious ferocity, I nearly stepped back—a step that would have forced me to fall down the steps. “Amanda. I need to talk to you. Immediately.”
I raised my eyebrows, my heart quickening in my chest. I didn’t allow my eyes to meet his. I knew this eye contact would churn me into a sense of sadness, of remorse. The last time I had looked at him, really looked at him, he’d told me that I wasn’t worthy of his campaign. He’d told me to leave. He’d essentially taken back every expounding of love he’d ever given me. It was over. It had to be.
“I actually can’t talk right now,” I stated, looking down at my folder as if to check something. “I’m on my way to meet with a member from Congress.”
His head reared back. “Which one?”
I raised my eyebrow, still peering somewhere over his left shoulder. “Jimmy Everett.”