Chapter 26 Aubrey
AUbrEY
“Phineas, have you met my son, Senator Taylor?”
Dad slaps me on the shoulder. His heavy hand landing with a dull thwack that agitates an old baseball injury.
He knows about my torn rotator cuff. He was there, screaming at me about accuracy and control, when the tendons pulled away from the bone in the fourth inning.
You would think that knowledge would stop him from pounding on it with those clubs he calls hands or squeezing it when he needs my attention, but it doesn’t.
In fact, I’m half convinced he does it on purpose, using the pain to direct my focus to whatever person or thing he wants it on at the moment.
And right now he wants on this man.
Or rather, he wants this man’s attention on me.
Phineas? I think that’s what his name is, squints in my direction. Disdain curling his upper lip and suggesting that he isn’t as familiar with my father as my father is with him.
“And you are?” His voice is as smooth as the whiskey in cup, but his eyes are cutting. Shattered jade with sharp, jagged edges that snag on your skin as they rip through.
Dad’s grip on my shoulder loosens, and I slip out of his hold, extending a hand to the only man I’ve ever seen humble my father. “I’m Aubrey Taylor.”
“Senator Aubrey Taylor,” he replies, flicking his gaze to my father as he mocks him. Then he looks back at me, disgust dripping off his tongue when he says, “I do not shake hands.”
Immediately, I drop my hand, shoving it into my pocket to hide the evidence of my blunder and then cursing myself for being so fucking nervous. One glance over my shoulder reveals that my father has abandoned me. My jaw clenches as I turn back to the stranger who’s still staring at me.
“I apologize for my father’s interruption.”
He dragged me over to the private corner at the edge of the balcony overlooking the D.C.
’s skyline, telling me Phineas was the only person at this party I needed to meet.
The way he spoke, I thought they were acquainted, but now I know this was just another one of his ham-handed approaches to networking.
He’s always complaining about how people pussy foot around each other, waiting for a friend of a friend of a friend to come along and give them a way in when what they should be doing is making it happen for themselves.
I’ve told him repeatedly how embarrassing that approach is, but he never listens.
“You are still standing here, so it is now your interruption, is it not?”
“Right, well I guess I’ll just—”
I hook a thumb over my shoulder, indicating my intention to leave him alone, and he turns his back, moving toward a door I failed to notice when I was making an ass of myself. He grips the handle and glances at me, boredom floating in those freaky green eyes.
“Are you coming, Senator Taylor?”
Shock and intrigue move me forward, and soon I’m following Phineas up a flight of stairs that leads to the roof. We were already up pretty damn high when we were on the balcony, but the air is different up here. Dense with possibility, but light enough to make you feel like you’re floating.
Phineas strides right up the edge and takes a seat, feet dangling over the city streets from thirty stories up.
“Must I invite you to engage in every interaction we have tonight?”
The impatient lilt to his otherwise docile tone pushes me into action. Soon, my feet are dangling over the edge too, and Phineas is handing me a cigar he produced out of thin air then cut and lit while I was thinking about what it might feel like to jump.
I take a long pull, relishing the flavor of singed earth and sweet wood on my tongue. “My wife would kill me if she knew I was up here.”
“Strict, is she?”
“Doesn’t even begin to describe it,” I admit, huffing circles of smoke that linger in the air, tangling with the ones Phineas makes.
Selene has always been…particular, but the last few years have exacerbated things.
“She’s worse since the kid was born. He’s four God-damn years old, and she still acts like he needs her for everything.
I don’t think I even saw my mother until I was ten. ”
“Nannies?”
“Nannies.”
“I do not have the desire to procreate,” he announces, holding his cigar off to the side and rolling it between his fingers gently to dislodge the ash. “But if I did, I would enlist the help of caregivers. Is your wife opposed?”
“Strongly. She grew up poor, so she doesn’t understand how much easier parenting is when you have money. It’s like she’s determined to struggle the same way her parents did, make the same kind of sacrifices they did even though we don’t have to.”
Truthfully, I can’t tell if Phineas is interested in this conversation or simply entertaining the ramblings of madman, but I don’t think it really matters.
It’s nice to get this shit off my chest. I can’t say any of it to my mom because she’ll just bring it up to Selene, and if I mention it to my dad, he’ll go off on a tangent about letting a woman control my life.
He pushes a stream of billowing smoke out between his clenched teeth. “What kind of sacrifices?”
“Sleep, time, sex, our careers. I’m serving my first term in the fucking Senate, and she’s making me promise not to even think about a run for the Oval until 2028.
” I brush ash from my cigar off my lap and try to squash the anger rolling through me.
I’m not successful. “Can you believe that shit? That’s twenty fucking years from now. ”
“I am aware of how math works, Senator.”
For the first time since we met, I look at him. I mean, really look at him, trying to make sense of his whole…vibe, but instead getting stuck at the gray hairs overtaking the dark brown strands at his temples.
“How old are you?”
A vein pulses in the center of his forehead as he stares at me, giving me the sense that he gets this question for this reason all the time. “Thirty-five.”
“Do you know why my father wanted me to meet you?”
He runs his tongue across his teeth, breaking eye contact to look back out at the sky.
“Perhaps because it is my birthday, and you are a guest at my party.”
My jaw drops. “Holy shit. I’m sorry, Mr.—”
“Gambit,” he supplies, turning his head slowly and offering me his hand, which I take with my mouth agape.
“I thought you didn’t shake hands, Mr. Gambit.”
“With strangers,” he clarifies. “I do not shake hands with strangers, but you and I are not strangers, Senator Taylor. We are very good friends.”
June 3, 2015
The goddamn air in this office is broken again.
Beads of sweat roll down my back, soaking into my shirt and making my skin crawl. The fan in the corner spins uselessly, blowing hot air in my direction that causes the edges of the papers I’m reading through to flutter.
I slam my hand down on the stack, trying to stop them from being picked up and carried away but it’s no use.
The pages on the top lift up and take off, floating around the room while I watch with resentment simmering in my bones.
Not just for the papers, but for the fucked up air conditioning unit connected to the offices at this end of the hall that never seems to function the way it’s supposed to, leaving me and the other junior members of the Senate to freeze in the winter and sweat through multiple sets of clothes in the summer while the bastards with more seniority and notoriety live in the lap of luxury.
Most of all, the resentment is for the woman and child smiling at me from the frame on my desk.
Their happy faces mock my suffering, which is ironic considering they’re the cause of it.
Their demands for my time and attention devour every morsel of my energy, keeping me from committee assignments that would raise my profile and help me ascend from the hellish ranks of the Cannon House.
A low whistle pierces the silence of my reverie, and I jolt, brows shooting toward my hairline when I see Phineas Gambit standing in my doorway. I’m on my feet in an instant, rushing around the desk to pick up the pages of the prospectus now scattered all over the floor.
He looks down his nose at me, eerie verdant orbs refusing to hide judgment.
“Sorry,” I mutter, hating that this is his first impression of me after six years. “Please, come in.” I wave him through the door, but he stays put. His hesitation puts the men behind him on high alert. They’re clearly his security. One steps forward, glaring at me over Gambit’s shoulder.
“Is everything alright, sir?”
“Everything is fine, Garrison. I am simply trying to discern if the Senator is well or not.”
His eyes ghost over my brow, and I lift my hand, wiping the sweat away. “I’m not sick. The air condition is just out.”
“Mmm.” When he steps inside, Garrison and the other man try to move with him. He holds up a hand, and they pause. “The room is not big enough for all of us. Garrison, at the door. Woodard, in the hall.”
He snaps his fingers, and they do exactly as he asks.
“Are you waiting for me to give you an order as well, Senator?”
“No.”
“Good. Then please have a seat. I do not want to be inside this dreadful office any longer than I have to.”
Since I feel the same way about the space, I can’t bring myself to be offended. I take a seat behind my desk. “How can I help you, Mr. Gambit?”
“Straight to the point. I like that,” he muses.
“Yes, well, I have a meeting in fifteen minutes.”
“For the Environment and Public Works committee, correct? You all are voting on the leasing prospectuses for veteran outpatient clinics throughout Virginia.”
The certainty with which he speaks gives me pause. I glance at the papers on my desk, wondering if he managed to read them while they were scattered on the floor or if he gleaned that information from where he’s sitting.
“I already know I am correct, Senator. And I will spare you the stress of wondering if I had that information before I walked into your office.” He pauses for dramatic effect then says, “I did.”