Chapter Fifteen
NINE YEARS AGO
GEORGETOWN GRAND HOTEL
Mandy hid from her prom date and the rest of her high school senior class in the last bathroom stall of the farthest bathroom she could find.
She hadn’t run far enough. The muffled voice of the deejay echoed through the walls.
Thumping bass and a muddled cheer answered him.
Even with her hands over her face and eyes pinched closed, Mandy couldn’t escape the hell of senior prom.
She sat on the toilet. Her knees pinched together, and the thigh-high slit in her black dress mocked her, a pathetic reminder of her foolishness. Mandy sniffled. As if she could act like one of her classmates.
A loud knock pounded on the door, and she knew it was Dylan before he announced, “I’m coming in, Sparkler.”
He didn’t wait for her response. He never did, and his dress shoes echoed on the bathroom tile before she could yell, “Go away.”
Dylan knocked knuckles along the stalls as he strode toward her hiding place. “Do you want to talk?”
“No.” She dragged her fingers down her cheeks, rolling her eyes. “I’m not here. Go away.”
The stall next to her opened, then slapped shut. Mandy groaned. He hated when she ran away, and he never let her pout.
“You should leave. I’m really not here.” She stood up and retreated to the far wall. Below the stall partition, she saw his shoes and pants as he leaned the same way, opposite her.
“You’re not here?” Dylan whistled, low and long. “That’s going to frustrate the shit out of McNally. She’s been posted outside this bathroom and hasn’t let a soul in to pee.”
Mandy rolled her eyes. “No one’s coming into this bathroom to pee.”
“Then, she’s cockblocking the bathroom where girls drink from the flasks hidden in their dresses.”
“That’s more like it.” She snorted. “But, whatever, I don’t care. It’s not like I was going to win a prize as everyone’s favorite friend.” She smoothed her hands down her dress, then bunched the fabric between her fingers when tears streamed again. “Maybe for biggest fool.”
Dylan stepped to their dividing wall, lightly thumping his fists against it.
She could picture the pensive way he searched for the right words, never treating her like a kid or sugarcoating his thoughts.
Sometimes, though, he’d take forever to figure out what he wanted to say.
“Spit it out, please. Then you can leave.” She swiped at her tears. “I really want to be alone.”
“That guy’s a first-class dickhead.”
She almost laughed. Dylan had absolutely chosen the right word. “I should’ve known better.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.” He sighed. “No one should expect to have their privacy invaded like that.”
“Yeah.” She snorted. “I think I should expect it.” Her cheeks flamed, and she’d never forget the moment she realized her prom date had set her up.
His cell phone was already recording before he’d convinced her to slip from the ballroom and into his arms. “What kind of stunt will I have to pull tomorrow to change the headlines?” Surely, they’d run the gamut from The First Daughter’s First Kiss to The First Daughter Bares All.
“Fitzgerald got the kid's phone. You don't have to worry about the video going anywhere.”
“Great.” She still ached though. Mandy wallowed, crushed because she’d thought he’d really been into her like she’d been into him. “I hate boys.”
“You don’t hate me,” he pointed out. “I’m a guy.”
“You’re an adult.”
“Trust me,” Dylan promised. “There’ll always be someone you could hate.”
“Then I’ll wrap myself in a bubble and never come out.”
He laughed. “You’d suffocate.”
Mandy shook her head. “The more I think about it, the better I like the idea.”
“Nah.” He leaned back against the stall wall again. “If you think life will get easier when you turn eighteen, go to college, get a job—”
“It will get better when no one cares about the Hearst family anymore.” No journalists. No political pundits. No classmates hellbent on ruining her life. “It’ll be amazing.”
Dylan whistled long and low. “Wrong. Life never gets easier. You just get stronger.”
She wrapped her arms over her stomach. “I don’t feel any stronger than I did an hour ago.”
“You’ll see, one day. Anyway,” he said, changing the subject, “what’s your plan? Are we going to hang out all night in here?”
“Probably.”
“Damn, I was hoping you’d let your dad send over an Apache to pick you up.” He chuckled. “That’d send one hell of a message to the dickhead.”
“No helicopters! I’d rather sleep in this stall.”
He chuckled. “I’m going to radio McNally and ask her if she can grab me a plate from the buffet bar—” Dylan snorted, then responded to the agents on their communication line, “Hey, kidding, kidding. Ease up, McNally. Unless, for real, you wouldn’t mind—” He laughed again. “Just kidding.”
Talk of food broke through Mandy’s pity party, and on cue, her stomach growled. “If someone’s bringing you a plate, ask them for a fruit kebab for me.”
“You got it,” he said. “Sparkler wants a fruit kebab. Somebody figure out what the fuck that is and grab me a plate of chips and dip, too.”
They waited quietly. Her thoughts drifted, continually coming back to her stupid date. “I thought he really liked me.”
The stall partition shifted when he leaned his weight against it again. “If I had had any idea…” He thumped a fist against the divider. “I would’ve told you and had a conversation with the little prick.”
Dylan was sworn to keep her safe from physical threats, but she trusted him like a big brother. “I know.”
“McNally says the fruit kebabs are gone and that she's not bringing me my chips.”
“Sucks to be you.” Mandy laughed quietly.
He bantered with the other agents for another moment, then knocked on the divider as if he didn’t already have her attention. “What do you say we get out of here?”
“Not yet.”
“We can go do something that’ll drive the press crazy?”
Mandy smiled, not because he would let her run around Georgetown with half-cocked ideas to arouse the suspicion of gossip journalists and politicos alike, but because she appreciated that he’d always be there to help.
She moved toward their separating stall partition.
“Tell me another story about your boring, normal family.”
“Then we can swing by McDonald’s?” he suggested.
“Oh, good idea.” She could already taste the French fries and nuggets. “But first, tell me a story.”
Dylan hummed. “My mom hit up the grocery store last night and couldn’t find her favorite brand of tater tots. It caused a family riot—”
“I’m serious, tell me something that’ll make me forget about prom.
” The trouble hadn’t only started tonight with her date.
When she’d picked her prom dress from Target, political talk shows had volleyed talking points about the true meaning of the purchase.
Was her father trying to reach out to middle-class Americans?
Did her mother want to soften Mandy’s image and make her more relatable?
Had anyone considered that she’d simply liked a dress she’d seen online? That maybe she had clicked on an ad and decided to one-click the black gown for overnight delivery? Not a single, so-called expert considered her purchase to be as benign and boring as it was. “You're not talking yet.”
“Give me a minute.” He laughed. “I’m sifting through an enormous amount of generic, boring chit chat that might enthrall you.” After a minute, he cleared his throat. “All right, here’s a little small-town drama for you.”
Mandy grinned. Small-town was their inside joke.
His family lived in Louisville, a large city in Kentucky, but he promised they acted more like a small town than most small towns.
Neighborhoods had names. Bakeries had been passed down through families.
High school sports were the focus of the family. College sports were like a religion.
She’d never visited much of the state, and never Louisville, but she envisioned shotgun houses with manicured postage stamp lawns along a parkway, blocks of Victorian mansions turned into college housing, a vibrant and diverse waterfront, and a sprawling suburbia with shopping centers and restaurants that wrapped around the city limits like a familiar hug.
“Last fall, my little bro thought he’d be captain of the football team.”
“Of course he did.” The best stories were about Dylan’s younger brother and sister, so Mandy didn’t feel like the only person on Earth referred to by a code name.
Saber, his brother, was her age, and Starbright was his sister.
They lived a life she could only dream about.
One where no one documented life’s ups and downs.
Where predictions weren’t partisan but grounded in hopes and dreams as simple as the captain of a football team.
“When he wasn’t captain, he carried the decision around like a chip on his shoulder throughout the season—which probably made him a worse player, proving that he shouldn’t have been captain to begin with, if you ask me.”
She laughed. “Bet Saber appreciated your two cents.”
“You’d think.” Dylan chuckled.
“So what happened?” Mandy asked.
“Nothing. This is a boring-ass story about people you think are normal. Nothing happened. Except,” He dropped his voice, “there was a plot twist.”
Mandy clasped her hands together. “Tell me.”
“Stay with me now,” he said. “Starbright’s best friend works at the Steak 'n Shake with the guy who was the football captain.”
She closed her eyes and pictured their life like a movie.
“Turns out,” Dylan continued, “the dude hates football.”
“What?” She didn’t see that coming. “The football captain?”
“Yup. The poor kid busts his butt because his parents bust his.”
“Friday night fever,” she whispered.
“They had it bad. Now here’s the kicker. The kid gets two scholarships for college: a football one and an academic one.”
“Wow.”
“Guess which one he plans to take?”
Mandy arched her brows. “Not the football one?”
“Not the football one,” he agreed. “Full ride, in-state tuition, so long as he picks a major within the Humanities Department.”
“Scandalous.” Happiness bubbled in her heart for the guy. It was as if she were only a few connections away from Starbright’s best friend’s co-worker.
Dylan unlatched his stall, walked out, and rapped on hers. “You ready to get out of here?”
She was. Mandy opened the door as Dylan slipped off his jacket and laid it over her shoulders. “Thanks for the story. And for the coat.” She pulled it around her. “That's a nice touch, Agent Carter.”
“Yeah, some small-town habits are hard to break.”