Winging high above the craggy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, practically bare of snow, Jake leaned toward Tami and said, “He might make it, you know.”
She turned from the window she’d been staring through. “You mean Tomlinson?”
“Who else?”
“And then what?”
Jake shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think it would be fair for me to leave him at that point.”
Looking as if she’d just watched a puppy die, Tami said, “Jake, I’ve got to take the KSEE job. It’s the break I’ve been searching for.”
“Your father’s right, we can’t have a marriage with three thousand miles between us.”
“No, I guess not.”
“When do you have to give your answer to KSEE?” he asked.
“I should have told them while I was in Fresno. I asked them to give me another week.”
“Another week,” Jake echoed.
“Jake, I’ve got to say yes to them! I can’t turn them down!”
“I know,” he said, hating the necessity, the finality of his wife’s decision.
Tami forced a grin. “Maybe Frank will lose to Sebastian, after all. That would mean we’d only be separated for a couple of months.”
Jake nodded and tried to smile back at her. He failed.
Maybe Frank will win, he thought, and I’ll stay in DC while Tami goes to Fresno. Shit!
* * *
For a week the two of them lived like strangers in their condo, neither of them daring to bring up the subject of Tami’s parting. Jake fumed to himself. We ought to be shouting at each other, he told himself, yelling and throwing things. I ought to demand that she stay with me. I can get her a job somewhere in DC. It might not be what she wants, not be as good as the Fresno offer, but at least she’d be with me, we’d be together.
And she’d hate me. I’d have ruined her career. That’s not fair. It wouldn’t be right.
Jake realized he didn’t care what was right and wrong. He loved Tami and he wanted her to stay with him. He talked with Earl Reynolds about finding Tami a job in the DC area.
“Not easy, Jake,” Reynolds said, his handsome face pulling into a frown. “She’s overqualified for most of the available spots, underqualified for the big ones. She doesn’t have the chops to knock off one of the local anchors.”
Jake nodded; Reynolds’s assessment had been just about what he’d expected.
“I could keep her on here, on my staff,” the PR man suggested.
Jake forced a smile. “That’s not what she wants, Earl. This job out in Fresno is what she’s looking for.”
Reynolds grimaced. “The Walter Cronkite syndrome.”
“Yeah. Guess so.”
* * *
Jake drove Tami to Reagan National, pulling up in the special lot reserved for congressmen and their aides.
“You could’ve dropped me off at the curb,” Tami said as Jake tugged her oversized roll-along bag out of the convertible’s trunk.
“No,” he said, slamming the trunk lid with unnecessary violence. “I’ll go to the ticket counter with you.”
“They have curbside check-in,” Tami pointed out.
“Big deal.”
They checked Tami’s bag at the curb and Jake walked into the terminal building with her. At the entrance to the security check area, they stopped, both of them suddenly feeling awkward.
“Uh … call me when you arrive,” Jake said.
“Sure.”
“Have a good flight.”
“Sure,” she repeated.
Jake fidgeted for a miserable moment, then grabbed her in both his arms. “Tami, don’t go! Please don’t go!”
Looking up into his eyes, she said, “If you don’t want me to, I won’t go.”
There it was. The moment of truth. She’s willing to throw away her chance of a lifetime—for me. If I’m a big-enough scumbag to tell her I want her to stay here with me, she’ll do it. And end up hating me for it.
Jake had to swallow hard before he could say, “Go on. Call me when you land.”
Without another word Tami turned and started up the aisle toward the TSA officers, the roll-along behind her. Jake stood rooted to the spot, watching her leave him.
Suddenly Tami turned back toward him and shouted, “I hope he loses big! I hope he gets trounced!”
Then she turned again and hurried along her way.