Chapter Twenty
I wake a few hours later to my mother lightly shaking me.
“Izzy,” she says. “Get up. There’s someone here to see you.
” My mind flashes to Benito. Did he follow me here?
I get up and brush my hair, changing out of my casual clothes and into a floral dress that’s hanging in my closet and is one of the few articles of clothing I own not hastily balled up in my suitcase.
I anxiously head down the stairs, stopping when I see a male figure through the screen door.
I look to my mother, who’s pretending to read on the couch in the living room. I take a deep breath and open the door.
He’s smiling at me, which is annoying because he does not deserve to feel any semblance of happiness in my presence.
And it’s not really a kind smile but more of a supportive grin you give someone who you know is in crisis and you don’t want to add to their grief.
I do my best to keep my face from showing any emotion, least of all shock that he’s standing on my parents’ doorstep.
“Hello, Levi,” I say. I open the screen door and he reaches out to hug me, but I pull the door back in, blocking him. “What are you doing here?”
He nods toward the front porch, but I don’t move. “I need to talk to you, Isabella, and you haven’t responded to any of my emails, my texts, my calls,” he says. “It’s important.”
“Unless it’s a matter of national security, I don’t think it is,” I say. “And if I recall, even then you’d be the one more equipped to handle it.” I’m surprised how quickly I’m able to summon my anger toward him, considering I was sleeping not five minutes ago.
Levi laughs lightly and tilts his head back. “I deserve that. But I’m serious. I really do need to talk to you.”
I look back to my mom, who’s fully watching us now, and she shrugs.
I walk outside and lead him around to the side of the house.
It’s where I used to take calls with Priya in high school about our crushes and all the drama, out of earshot of my parents, which also came in handy during congressional recess.
“How did you know that I’m back?” I ask, proud that I’ve barely noticed how good he looks in tailored, expensive blue jeans and a gray shacket, his blue eyes popping out against the dreary backdrop of the June Gloom morning.
Levi rubs his hands together. “LA’s a big city but it’s a small town,” he says, adding an Old Hollywood transatlantic inflection which he does when he thinks he’s being cute.
Like he can win me over by summoning the spirit of Jimmy Stewart.
I debate telling him now that I always found it cringe but was willing to overlook it.
“Someone spotted you at LAX,” he admits. “It was on Deuxmoi.”
“Great, so everyone knows I’m back,” I say, but I’m surprised to find it doesn’t really upset me. Maybe after everything I’ve been through, I’m finally realizing that if other people know I’m struggling, it doesn’t matter. I get to feel what I feel, and they’ll just have to deal.
“Isabella, I’ve made a huge mistake,” he says, taking a step closer to me. I instinctively take a step backward, my back flush with the exterior wall of the house. “I never should’ve turned away from you,” he says.
“That’s an interesting way to frame it,” I say.
Levi reaches out toward me, and with nowhere else to go, I let his hand land on my shoulder. “Now that I stand where you stood, I get it,” he says. “I get how lonely the job is, how hard it is to go through it without anyone who gets it.” He lightly caresses my arm and I feel absolutely nothing.
I glare at him. “That’s not why I was texting you, dumbass,” I say. “I wasn’t lonely. I had friends. I was on top of the freaking world. I was texting you because I thought I was in love with you.”
Levi’s eyes widen like this is some kind of surprise. “Whatever the reason,” he says. “It was wrong of me to suggest that they sent any kind of negative message about where your priorities were.”
“I know that,” I fire back. “I know you never actually believed any of that. It was all a strategy to win the election.” Does he think I’m that dense? I believed he loved me too, so maybe I am.
“Anyway.” Levi puts his other hand on my shoulder so he’s bracing me like I’m about to sub onto the field with five minutes left in the second half. “We can finally let all of that be in the past and look toward the future.” His expression goes blank and his gaze shifts to my lips.
I raise my eyebrows. Is this motherfucker about to kiss me? He leans in, but I put my hand up, his nose crashing into my palm. “No way,” I say. “Definitely not.”
Levi takes a step back, putting his hands up. “Not the vibe, got it.” He crosses his arms and stands up straight. “That wasn’t what I came here to do,” he says.
Now I’m officially confused. “Then what did you come here to do?”
“I need you, Isabella,” he says.
I consider hitting the side of his head, not as an act of violence but because he sounds like a computer that’s glitching. “Do not try to kiss me again,” I say.
“Not like that,” Levi says. He looks around like he called for backup but when no one comes, he turns back to me. “I need you to come work for me.”
My jaw unhinges and my mouth drops open so quickly, I wonder if it’s broken. “What?”
“Come work with me, Isabella,” he says, putting his hands into his jeans pockets and shrugging his shoulders as if to make himself smaller. “I think we’d be great together—professionally.”
I force myself to close my mouth and take a long breath inward. “You. . . what?”
Levi rubs his right temple. “My approval numbers haven’t gotten anywhere near your first-year high,” he says, and the hairs on my arms stand up. “I don’t get it. I made all the right PR moves. Went on the late-night shows, started dating an actress, I thought we followed your plan perfectly.”
“My. . . plan?” I ask, because he’s yet to mention anything about policy.
“You did the whole fame thing,” Levi says. “And it worked brilliantly. You were everywhere. How did you do that without looking like a slimeball?”
“Well, for starters, I wasn’t a slimeball,” I toss back.
Levi drops his head down. “Levi, there was no strategy. The virality, the fame, that all happened organically, and then it was about capitalizing, about using it to maximize my effectiveness in Congress. To get good bills passed and bad bills struck down. At the end of the day, it was about always putting the job first.” My breath catches in my lungs.
Even though I always knew that to be true, the world tried to convince me I had my priorities elsewhere.
It feels good to say it out loud. Maybe I liked the attention, maybe I even loved it, but it wasn’t why I did what I did.
It was part of the ultimate job I wanted.
The thing about dreaming of being a public figure is that you have to be able to handle it when your entire life is public—and know how to deal with it when the most shameful parts of your life are exposed.
“Well, whatever,” Levi says, any facade of professionalism that he came into this conversation with starting to crack.
“I still think it’s a good idea.” He walks back up to me and grabs on to my hand with such a death grip, I don’t bother whipping it away.
“We were good together, Isabella. Back when we were just two kids trying to make LA better. Those were the good days. We can have that again. On the national stage. Picture it.”
I think about what life was like before Congress, when I was working for a nonprofit by day and meeting with community members in church basements at night.
Levi and I would knock on doors during the weekends and ask for signatures on petitions outside grocery stores.
I wouldn’t say those were the good days, necessarily—they were grittier, harder, all sweat and protein bars and dealing with angry rich people who just want you out of their way—but there is a certain rose-colored sheen over those memories.
Things were simpler then, and every personal win felt like an affirmation that I was on the right path.
That all of it would be worth it when I was being sworn in on the Capitol steps.
It’s tempting, in a way, to work with Levi again. Despite how it ended, for years I loved it. For years, I loved him. I could be back. Not everyone gets to be president. Famously, very few do. My dream doesn’t have to stay the exact same forever. It can change, it can grow.
“Well,” Levi says. “What do you think?”
I look into his eyes—they’re deep, ocean blue. It would be easy to forget La Musa ever happened. A blip on an otherwise straightforward path. I could dive back in and never look back. I could work for Levi. I could set my pride aside and do it for the good of the people.
But there’s no fucking way I’m doing that.
“I think, Levi,” I say, “that you should go to hell.”
His face twists at my rejection. “Isabella, come on. I need you. America—America needs you.”
I roll my eyes. “Even my ego isn’t that big, Levi.”
“You ran away to that dinky little Italian town, and it was cute for a minute, but you had to come back. I needed you to come back,” he says.
“Wait a second,” I say, my brain putting the pieces together.
Everything he’s said today has been a manipulation.
He tried to kiss me because he thought I still loved him, and it’d be easier to persuade me to come work for him.
He needed me to come back, to be on his side so his approval numbers would rise, and he knew breaking my anonymity would be a good way to do it. “It was you. You leaked my location.”
Levi doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t say anything.
“Oh my god. How?” I ask.
Levi shrugs. “Hired a PI.”
“Are you serious?” I ask. I should be mad, but it’s actually a huge relief to know it was him and not some random in La Musa who was secretly watching my every move. It was just some creep Levi hired to watch my every move.
“I didn’t know where you were. I didn’t know if you had gone to regroup somewhere, ready to enact revenge for the texts leaking.”
“Oh, so you admit that was you,” I say.
Levi raises his hands. “I knew that you thought it was me. I had to know where you were, and when I found out you were just. . . doing your best Meryl Streep character, fleeing to Europe in the midst of a personal crisis, I knew leaking your location would wake you up and you couldn’t hide anymore. ”
I want to punch him, but instead I laugh. I laugh really, really hard.
“Isabella?” Levi asks.
“Levi,” I say. “Please leave. And don’t ever come here again.”