Chapter Twenty-Eight Maddie
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Maddie
It feels a little risky and a little wrong—okay, a lot wrong—but I wake up in the morning in Bram’s bed and burrow into his chest. I should run upstairs before the girls wake up.
I definitely shouldn’t enjoy the fact that his sweet, unconcerned face with his lips just slightly parted is the first thing I see when I open my eyes.
I fell asleep with him holding me tightly to him and it was soothing enough that I fully understood the magic of Temple Grandin’s hug machine. I fell asleep wishing that I could feel this safe and looked after every night.
Last night, as I brushed my teeth, I watched Bram from the corner of my admittedly fuzzy vision. The panic I expected to feel while standing alongside someone who I was also sleeping with as we brushed our teeth never materialized.
That’s probably due to the fact that I haven’t been that drunk since my last year as an undergrad, during Model UN, when we used the bathtub in our room to make trash can punch. Luckily, the alcohol likely killed any bacteria lurking in the bathtub of that particular Holiday Inn Express.
Along Bram’s forehead are the beginning of very faint worry lines, and I can’t stop myself from tracing each crease.
Bram’s eyes open slowly, blinking until I come into focus. “There you are,” he says.
“I’m sorry about last night. I was definitely a drunk brat,” I tell him.
Most everything after Junie panicking and running is a little blurry, but I’m sure I did or said things to embarrass myself.
I’m certain I puked on Leo. So I don’t know in entirety what I’m apologizing for, but I do know I was a handful.
“I like when you’re a brat,” he says through a yawn.
“And you are a very adorable drunk, but I was worried for your safety. I know I’m too overprotective.
I just . . .” His gaze wanders down to where my palm is pressed against his bare chest and he covers my hand with his, like my touch alone is enough to regulate his beating heart.
We kiss. It’s slow and soft. We’re quiet. I sling my leg over his hip so that he can slip inside me as we lie on our sides.
When we come, I bite down on his shoulder to stop myself from making a sound.
I allow myself to stay like that with him for a few more moments before I sit up and scoot off the edge of the bed.
He stretches his arm out across the span of mattress between us. “You could stay,” he says. “You could just sleep in here at night. We go to bed after the kids and wake up before them.”
I turn my head to the side to catch a glimpse of him.
“Bram . . .” I can’t give him what he’s asking for.
I can’t give myself what he’s asking for.
Because I feel something happening. As much as I want to ignore it, I have this sense of unraveling, and if I give in to a simple request like sharing a bed, my heart won’t be able to unlearn the feeling of waking up next to Bram Loe.
Even if him and his stability and his perfectly structured and full life is the last thing I need right now.
“It wouldn’t have to mean anything,” he says, but his voice is flimsy and unconvincing. “But I like being around you, Maddie. There’s nothing wrong with that. People who just have sex can enjoy each other’s company.”
“I like being around you too. But I think it’s better if we don’t. I don’t want to confuse the girls.” Or either of us, I nearly add.
“Right,” he says, his tone returning to logic. “Of course.”
JUNIE CALLS THAT afternoon in near tears and fumbles over her words.
She apologizes to an excessive extent and explains that she and Leo have a history of sorts.
She’s vague, but says she lurked in the shadows like a real-ass Mothman to keep an eye on me until Leo left, but he never did leave and then Bram showed up and .
. . well, since Junie knew I was safe, she called a car and went home to her genetically analyzed cats.
I plan on digging deeper to find out what the hell it is about Leo that is severe enough for her to literally hide from him, but those are buttons to push a different time, when she is far less tearful.
The next week is good. I’ve found my sea legs in the classroom and among my department.
Word very quietly spreads that I pushed back against Wallace, and other professors from my department give me encouraging nods and knowing smiles.
I’m even invited out to lunch with a group of tenured professors (who are much younger than Wallace) one afternoon and they fold me into their conversation and banter like I’ve been there all along.
I know that teaching isn’t my endgame, but it feels good to be more certain of myself and to know that I can do this. I can do this and I can enjoy it too.
I’m capable. I am entirely capable.
“AT LEAST I don’t have to worry about adding a stylist into your campaign budget. At least not while you run for local or state offices.” Veronica Balentine hovers beside me, eating olives out of her martini and then swirling her glass before throwing back the remainder of her drink in one shot.
I sip from my lime club soda. After last weekend, it’s going to be a few more weeks at least before I can stomach an adult beverage. “Thank you, but you are welcome to divert that budget to keratin hair treatments and a shopping allowance.”
Veronica texted me on Thursday and told me to meet her at the Astra Hotel on Friday night, where the Democratic party was hosting a dinner honoring U.S.
Representative Gretchen Bailey and the bill she successfully introduced and passed during the last congressional session, Caden’s Law, which limits an insurance company’s ability to deny coverage to children seeking somewhat experimental treatment for life-threatening illnesses.
It also just so happens that Representative Bailey is the state party leader and the woman who they are currently seeking a replacement for when she retires in four years, so when I was told to dress like I was the most charismatic person in the room who you would also trust with your grandmother’s notebook full of passwords, I knew exactly what to wear: the forest-green skirt suit I wore to the Pepperdine alumni luncheon last fall, where Gentry was invited to accept a philanthropic award on behalf of his family when all they actually did was donate a heap of money after one of his cousins got caught masturbating in a computer lab.
Veronica navigates me around the room, making introductions, and when I realize that I’m the only potential candidate on her arm, I turn to her in a moment between new faces.
“Don’t you have other ponies to parade?” I ask.
“Not at the moment,” she says.
“Am I to take that to mean that I’m the last one standing?”
“There are always—and I can’t stress this highly enough, Maddie—always other options in the wings, but yes, at the moment, you are my primary focus.”
I take a sip of my drink to hide my smile.
“Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” she tells me. “You still have plenty of chances to fuck this—” She strides forward and discards her drink on a tray of canapés. “Representative Bailey!”
I follow close behind as she and the congresswoman take hands and give each other fake little cheek kisses. Apparently, Veronica Balentine can schmooze, which is incredibly unsettling.
“Representative,” she says, “I’d like to introduce you to Madelyn Kowalczk. This little firecracker is young, but I think it’s safe to say that she’s got quite the future ahead of her.”
Congresswoman Gretchen Bailey is the kind of woman who sets you at ease. She doesn’t look like she’s had work done, which means the work she has had is incredibly well-done. She is calm and serious but smiles and laughs just enough to remind you that she is not a law-passing robot.
“Representative,” I say, “congratulations on the bill, and I have to say I truly enjoyed watching you put Matthew Flowers in his place during the judiciary hearings you presided over while his pharmaceutical company’s privacy terms were being investigated.”
“Ah, yes,” she says, “I believe he called me a—”
“Prehistoric battle-axe,” I finish for her. “I can only hope that one day a slippery pharmaceutical exec accuses me of being the same.” I lean in like we’re just girls sharing secrets and give her a wink. “It’ll mean I’ve done my job well.”
And at that Representative Bailey lets out a genuine, barking laugh. “Oh,” she says through a giggle, “this one is as cheeky as you said she’d be.”
I allow myself a moment to preen before the congresswoman loops her arm through mine.
“You know,” she tells me, “I just pretend that the term battle-axe refers to Kansas’s own Carrie Nation.”*
Representative Bailey regales me with historical facts as she begins to introduce me to her inner circle.
Our heads huddle together as she gives me the CliffsNotes on every guest, and for the first time in my semiprofessional life (if you can even call being Gentry’s arm candy that), I feel like I’ve been invited into the back room and that I am not just aware of the secrets, but I’m in on them.
All around the room, people begin to watch me and speculate, because it turns out that I might be someone worth watching. I might just be the party’s next shiny, new star and a formidable one at that.
Every once in a while, I search for Veronica in the crowd, but she’s slipped into the shadows like a mother who knows that the most important lessons a child will master are meant to be gained on their own.
I am delighted by the thought that the people I am meeting tonight might be future chess pieces to accomplish the sort of change I’ve always dreamed of.
Big changes that would rewrite the future of health care and resources for financially insecure families and protections for women and the queer community.
Things that would have made a monumental difference for little Maddie.
But there’s also this quiet curiosity in the corner of my mind as I watch Veronica slip through the room, whispering in ears and shaking hands.
She’s a puppet master, and while that might sound sinister to most, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t fascinated by the very necessary—if at times morally gray—work that she does.
At the end of the night, I wait for my car at the valet stand as I chat up a young state senator who talks to me like I’m his peer.
It’s a small moment that most people might be unfazed by, but I wish I could document it and send it to Gentry.
Look at me now. You thought you’d used me.
That I’d served my purpose and needed to be discarded because there was nothing of value that I had left to give.
But Gentry Cooper Wade the Third, you were wrong about me and one day that will hurt. It will hurt so goddamn bad.
When I make it back home, the house is dark. All three girls are spending the weekend with their grandmother, and Bram is already in bed.
The floorboards creak as I take the first step to my room, but then I pause.
Tonight was perfect. So perfect that for a moment, I think I could just have it all.
I could have the job and the power—the kind of power that women are called dirty for even wanting.
I could have a family. I could have a man like Bram who is far too good for me.
A man who feels things like right and wrong in his bones.
A man who I thought would be horrified if he knew just how willing I am to do a little bad for the sake of good.
But then he told me about the man he used to be, once upon a time.
My heels echo across the hardwood floor as I walk to his room.
Bram is lying in bed, glasses on, his shirt neatly folded in his armchair, and one leg propped up. He holds a thick, heavy book from the spine with just one hand, his chin resting on his chest.
“Hi,” I whisper as I kick off my heels and shed my suit jacket so that I’m only wearing my pencil skirt, stockings, and silk camisole.
He places his book flat against his abdomen and pulls back the covers.
Without letting myself think too much about what exactly this means, I climb in next to him, curling on my side in the narrow space between his body and the edge of the bed.
I lay my head across his chest and I feel far too comfortable. Far too at home under this roof. In this bed. Alongside this man. In his fully formed life.