Prologue #3
“Yes,” I say. “I do. But you also know how much I wanted this. There was a time when we shared all the same visions for the future, and you were willing to dispel all of that in favor of beating me.” I think to his platform, the way it cedes power to the wealthier, to the least burdened members of our—my district—instead of supporting those most vulnerable to the perils of a harsh world.
The small margin that separated our views wasn’t enough for him to pull ahead in the polls, so that’s when he turned to attacking me personally.
First it was Red Carpet Rhodes, an allusion to the fame that found me when I was elected even though I didn’t specifically seek it out, and now it’s the texts.
It doesn’t matter that it’s a clear violation of privacy, that they were likely “obtained” illegally—now everyone will see me as the one thing they always feared I was in the back of their head—a woman.
A woman who, in spite of her ability to circumvent the conventional curse of housewifery and motherhood, is in fact a human being with bones and blood and, most unpalatably, a desire for sex.
Levi loosens his tie slightly, enough for me to see the beads of sweat forming on his neck. Good. This should be hard for him. “It’s not personal,” he tries again.
I look at the article on his phone again, the gray bubbles of my shame staring back at me with the soon-to-be-infamous screenshots of my late-night texts.
Sometimes I think of your body on mine and I want to quit Washington and just run away with you; it’s been too long since I’ve touched you; I need you.
Horniness has brought down political leaders before; I just never thought late-night martini-fueled messages sent to my bicoastal situationship would be the death of my dream.
I keep scrolling. I can’t wait until things are less chaotic here and we can just be.
I love you so much. I hold back a sudden, strong desire to vomit, cringing at my delusional past self.
“This is personal,” I say. “This is using what we had against me.”
“And what did we have, Isabella?” Levi asks. “Because from what I remember, we couldn’t have this”—he points between the two of us—“because of all of this,” he says, gesturing around my office.
I stare at him. No, glare. I glare at him.
He knows how badly I wanted us. We’d danced around each other for years.
It wasn’t until the night I told him I was running for Congress that he tearfully told me how proud he was of me, that he was waiting for me, that he knew it would be a bad time for us to start something, but that he loved me and as soon as it was right for me, we could be together.
We then spent our first night together working out years of tension and the subsequent time since has been reduced to late-night sexting.
I knew the repercussions if I was using my time between congressional sessions for secret trysts with my specifically not-boyfriend and the world found out and besides, he was waiting for me.
For him to twist our past to convenience whatever narrative he’s pushing in his head isn’t just a gut-punch, it’s offensive. It’s enraging.
My stomach tightens as I realize the reason we couldn’t be together wasn’t self-sacrifice on his part, it was that he couldn’t be with someone who was doing better than he was.
We’d always had the same dream, the only difference between us now was that mine had come true—and he is willing to do whatever it takes for our circumstances to flip.
He weighed his own desires against whatever regard he held for me and ultimately decided his own dream was worth destroying mine.
He didn’t love me, that much was clear, but he also didn’t think I was worthy of the office I’d worked so hard to get, and that is the real knife in the back.
“Brutus,” I mumble under my breath. “Fucking Brutus,” I say louder, because fuck it, I want him to hear me.
“There were better ways to tell me you didn’t want to be with me.
” My phone dings with a news alert—I glance at it and see my name in the headline.
By morning, my leaked texts will be at the top of everyone’s feeds.
Tweeters, Threaders, Instagrammers, TikTokers, and everyone with news outlet push notifications will know that Congresswoman Isabella Rhodes was sending thirsty texts to her opposition mere days before he decided to run against her.
They won’t explicitly outline that it was a cause-and-effect situation, but the timeline will heavily imply that he came to the conclusion I was using time that should be spent thinking about my constituents to text my crush.
Levi Cross had no choice but to step in and save them. It doesn’t help that his messages back to me were so banal. Keep focused on the good fight, Isabella, he’d replied to my drunken desperation. From the bubbles on the screen, it looks like he cared more about my job than I did.
By tomorrow, my supporters will be embarrassed for me, and my enemies will be vindicated.
Levi will use his campaign event at the local IATSE chapter to denounce the leak publicly.
He will say his campaign is taking all steps possible to find the source and a few days later, some mid-level staffer will come forward.
The sacrificial lamb will assure everyone he acted alone and leave Levi looking like the hero of the story, the victim of all the unpleasantness of running a campaign.
And then the focus will be back on me. As long as the texts are out there, they’re fair game.
Levi will say we were good friends, but he rejected my romantic advances—as is clear in the texts—and he thinks Congresswoman Rhodes is focused on all the wrong things, I mean, clearly, he’ll joke.
I’ve always kept it civil toward him because people in our community knew we had been friendly.
I didn’t want to sound petty or at all emotionally affected by my bestie running against me, so I have always insisted we have a mutual respect for one another, and that our goals were the same.
It’s almost too perfect, really, how easily my words can be twisted into an endorsement now.
If any of my supporters have trepidation about jumping ship from Team Rhodes to Team Cross, they have my own glowing recommendation of Levi to turn to.
In other words, I am toast. I am done. My dream has been murdered right in front of me, and I did nothing to stop it from happening.
My carefully curated image, down the drain.
No one will see the hours upon hours I dedicated to the job every day, they’ll see the three minutes I spent texting.
It won’t matter that I spent every waking hour of my 20s working toward this goal while my friends were starting relationships, marriages, families.
I’ll look like a fool in love who cared more about getting a boyfriend than getting the job done.
I’ll look like a giggly teenage girl gunning for prom queen, not a competent elected official. I will look weak.
“For what it’s worth, Isabella,” Levi says, lowering his voice so it’s all sultry and ragged—the last remnants of rasp from his cigarette-smoking days making him sound gravelly and Clooney-esque.
It really, really, deeply annoys me how my heart swells in response.
Levi presses a hand to the side of my head and despite my better judgment, I lean into it.
“I thought you made a great congressperson.” I let my eyes land on his and he smiles haphazardly, testing the waters for some kind of truce.
I push his hand away. “But you think you can be a better one.”
Three weeks later Levi Cross defeats me in the general election.
My campaign hosts a victory party at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and I throw up in a bathroom allegedly haunted by the ghost of Marilyn Monroe.
The poetry of that is not lost on me even as I vomit up the last of the spicy tuna crispy rice I stress-ate over the last four hours since the polls closed.
I make a speech conceding the race 45 minutes later.
“All I know is that the best person to represent this district is the person its people chose,” I say, but it’s bullshit.
I’m better for this job than Levi Cross.
I care more. I have stronger policy. In the two years since I was first elected, I’ve accomplished a lot of what I promised, but now all anyone was going to remember me for is this.
The media has a field day with my loss. The pundits parse over what went wrong in excruciating detail.
The keyboard warriors on social media twist the knife by making jokes that turn into viral memes.
Every corner of the internet is plastered with my failure.
None of my colleagues want to meet with me, so despite my desire to drown myself in work for whatever time I have left, I mostly spend my last days in DC binge-watching Real Housewives alone.
I finish my term in a daze, and by January, my dream is officially dead.