I laugh, remembering our past joke. “Nope, nope, nope.” I set two steaming mugs down on my coffee table, curling up on my couch next to Jared, whose laptop is open and perched on his lap.
“Well, just like Whitewater and the Swiftboats came back to bite candidates in the ass, who you were matters. It matters a lot, and that’s what I’ve got to get to the heart of.”
“Or I’m out.”
“Or you’re too much of a liability. At Senator Conover’s age, this is a one-shot deal. Either he wins the nomination or he doesn’t, and he starts planning for retirement when his senate term ends in 2018.”
“What do you need to know?”
Jared drills me with questions: sharp, specific, intricate words that cut away the gray. “Have you ever…” seem to be his favorite three words, and he asks probing follow-ups about my position papers in the law school journal, my official activities as a corporate lawyer, and virtually every nook and cranny of my private life.
Have I ever had an abortion?
Have I ever traveled to the following countries…?
The clock creeps toward noon and Jared patiently works through his list. He asks if I’ve ever plagiarized material for a school project or in publication (no) and whether I attended political rallies before I became a public figure (yes, on a school-funding measure).
But turnabout is fair play. Every time Jared zings me with a question that hits too close to home, I volley questions back, making Jared answer as if he were a candidate.
He’s my candidate. He’s in contention for a piece of my heart that grows at a breathtaking pace.
“Have you ever used any illegal substances of any kind, including prescription drugs?”
“That’s a pretty broad category, Jared.” I raise my brow. “Have you?”
“Let me clarify: Have you ever used prescription drugs that were not intended for you?”
“No. I barely take Advil as it is.”
“Have you ever used federally banned substances?”
“Again, that’s a broad category. A bunch of states have legalized marijuana, including Oregon.”
“Stop being so obtuse. Have you ever smoked pot?”
The word obtuse gets my hackles up. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Then no.”
“No, you’ve never smoked pot?”
“No, I’m not going to answer your question. If it didn’t matter when Clinton was in the White House a generation ago, it’s not going to matter now.”
“God, Grace, don’t you get it? This is not me trying to tally your sins, or worse, show them to the world. This is me trying to protect you. I’m trying to get ahead of some pimply asshole who’s going to claim he was your dealer in high school.”
“I never had a dealer. I tried it a few times, but pot makes me weird, OK? Super paranoid. Not a happy high.”
“OK.” Jared looks somewhat placated and goes to his notes. “Have you ever been arrested in connection with a drug- or alcohol-related offense, including suspicion of driving under the influence?”
“No.” My lips quirk. “Have you?”
“Arrested? I’m not a criminal, Grace.” Jared’s eyes tighten, the strain from last night showing through.
I reach across the back of the couch for Jared and pull him into me, giving him a second to slide the laptop to the coffee table before I wrap myself around him in an embrace.
This is so strange. So foreign in its domesticity—just us, coffee and papers strewn around, the quiet of my apartment only occasionally interrupted by the honk of D.C. traffic in the streets below.
“What’s next for you today?” I ask.
“I’m flying out in a couple of hours.”
“Already?” I pull away to search his face, and I realize this question is more from my place of wanting and needing to be near him than genuine curiosity about his job.
I want to be near him. Truth.
“I was never supposed to come to D.C.,” Jared says. “But when you said I had to show you I was sorry, I figured I’d better. I just didn’t expect to be waiting outside your building for hours. And when you didn’t answer your text, I thought…”
He doesn’t have to finish. I know what he was thinking: was I on a date? But I can’t fill in answers to his unspoken question. I can’t tell him about Darrow.
“What do you mean, your text?” I jump up from the couch to distract us from that other question, fish my phone out of my purse and find no new texts.
“I sent you a text yesterday, while you were onstage. I told you I was hopping on a plane and to be ready for me—”