OHHH, I’M SORRY, IS THIS A WORK FUNCTION?
Cady got the last seat on the Acela. It had been impulsive, but she couldn’t just sit around, waiting to hear something, and she had exhausted all of her sources. According to Reagan, Ted had been in the private office meeting with Arnold, and Jay said Sky had been with press in back. Jackson apparently would have been in the front with staffers. Jay had even asked Sky to look for him, but they had to remain seated and he hadn’t gotten a good enough view. So she had cabbed straight to Union Station.
Her mind had taken her down so many dark paths while waiting to hear from him. She had instantly felt sick about every argument they’d ever had—of which there had been many lately—every time she could have just let things go.
To halt the steady flow of bad thoughts, she forced herself to focus on the good: the day they met, the start of it all. So much electricity and promise. After an interview about preparations for Times Square festivities on New Year’s Eve in New York, the mayor had invited Cady to watch with his staff, front row seats without having to wait outside all day either. She had ended up next to Jackson, and after talking all evening, he had kissed her at midnight, completely unexpectedly, his lips warm against the freezing cold. She couldn’t feel her hands or feet, but she didn’t care.
The train ride felt impossibly slow, torturous, until finally, a full hour and a half after the news, when she was nearly to Wilmington, Jackson’s name at last popped up on her phone. This sweet comfort coming via text: All good here, just frightening moments. OK now. Official: Carter going to be announced as VP pick!!! Still going to convention tonight.
He was okay. She read it over and over, hand to her heart in relief, as the train rumbled on, the lights of Wilmington shining outside her window. This, a text, still wasn’t enough though. She still needed to spend the night wrapped in his arms to know he was all right.
She arrived just after nine, catching a cab to Jackson’s hotel. The front desk gave her a key to the room, no problem, when she told them she was his fiancée. It probably shouldn’t be that easy, she thought, but for her purposes tonight, she was glad. She had texted that she had a surprise for him but hadn’t heard anything since. He had probably gone to bed early after the whole ordeal.
She smoothed her hair and her dress outside the door, then knocked a spirited bonkbonk bonk-bonk bonk, putting her ear to the door for any sign of movement. She heard nothing, so she inserted the key and crept in very slowly.
“Helloooo,” she whispered, stepping into the pitch-black room. She heard only a moan in response, someone waking up. “It’s me! Surprise! I thought a near-death experience warranted—” She turned the corner into the room and someone screamed, followed by the thump thump-THUMP of someone falling out of bed, the crash of a lamp knocked over, another light flipped on.
Jackson stood there, naked, his perfect abs taunting her. “CADY! What the—!” he called out at her, tripping, trying to grab something to cover himself as though she hadn’t seen it all before.
“Ohmagod!” Cady blurted. In the fluffy bed, sheets just the right kind of disorderly as though art directed for a photo shoot, a blonde stared back at her, plump pout agape. She looked like she could have been a lingerie model except she wasn’t actually wearing any lingerie at the moment. Cady’s hands flew up to cover her eyes. She felt as she had when he had proposed, like she was watching the scene from above.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, like she was the one who had done something wrong.
“I was freaked out after your flight. And not hearing from you... So I got... I wanted to see...” She was having trouble putting sentences together.
“It’s not what it looks like,” he said, barely trying.
Her mind now having fully processed the scene, Cady’s anger set in. “It took way too long for you to say that.” She opened her eyes, but looked away. Picked up the satchel she just realized she’d dropped. “This looks like a cliché. I can’t believe you’re really this...typical. Who is this anyway?”
“Willa,” the girl said, meekly.
“It’s just, it’s not, it’s, I mean, I don’t know, it’s, she’s from Capitol Report and—we’ve sort of been working together and—” he stammered.
“Ohhh, I’m sorry, is this a work function?” She smacked her palm to her forehead, mocking.
“No, I just mean, we almost died today, or we could’ve died today, I could’ve maybe almost died,” he tried, half-heartedly, for sympathy.
“Congratulations,” her voice cracked.
“No, I mean, we drank too much, after we didn’t die—”
“After you didn’t die.”
“From that flask—the one that YOU gave me.”
“So this is my fault, for giving you a fucking engagement gift. My bad. I can’t even...” She had to get out before any tears came. He didn’t deserve them. She tripped on her way to the door but didn’t fall, thank God. She threw the door open with such strength it hit the wall, and trembled as she ran down the hallway, ungracefully, in her heels.
“Wait! Cady!” he called after her.
She heard a crash and glanced back: the door had swung shut, closing behind him. He was in the hallway, completely nude, his hands rushing to cover the part that had gotten him into this trouble in the first place. She kept running and flung her key card over the ledge, letting it flutter down to the lobby below.
He caught up with her just as the glass elevator doors closed. Their eyes locked, and she whipped around, turning her back before the first tear dropped.
* * *
On the train back home, she couldn’t stop that scene from playing and replaying and replaying in her head on an endless loop. The bed. The girl. The parade of nudity. The inner battle to not cry. And then her mind ticked off their many recent tiffs and offenses: him missing the majority of their engagement party, him being absent the day she moved in, with nowhere to put any of her stuff. But then some of the good stuff trickled back in: that night they met, the Hay-Adams, the proposal, him whisking her around their engagement party as a team, as a unit. She was a mess.
She tried to figure out how things had changed so drastically. How had they gone from that to this? Should their beautiful history outweigh it all? She sure as hell didn’t know. She felt sick, her stomach knotted, her eyes sore from holding back tears as best she could. She didn’t want to be that person sitting alone on a train in the middle of the night having a breakdown. She didn’t want to be alone at all.
It felt like her life had exploded, and now she had to sort through and determine which parts were still viable. She didn’t want to think about him or see him ever again. And she really didn’t want to go home to that apartment that looked like him, smelled of his cologne, had the TV tuned to whatever channel he had left it on. She made a call.