Chapter 12 #2
“No, there’s a lot of fear,” Lauren admitted. “I’m always wondering if I just fucked up the next ten years of my life. Or
maybe I’ll regret not having more time with my mom, I don’t know. But yeah.” She gave him a dramatic shrug. “What’s done is
done.”
“I’m glad it is,” he said. “Where do your parents live?”
Lauren decided to pivot. “Did you really invite me back here to talk about my relocation?” she asked.
Oscar smiled as he stood up from his chair. “Well, if I recall correctly, you were the one who invited yourself back to my
place.”
“Hmmm,” Lauren hummed, sitting back in her chair and parting her legs a little so he could stand between them. “Is that so?
I might need a fact-check.”
“I’ll get right on that,” he said. “After this, of course.” And then his mouth was on hers once more, and this time they weren’t
surrounded by strangers, she wasn’t thinking about who would possibly see them together, and she sank into Oscar’s arms. She
felt herself rise up to him, letting her mind unravel as her body took over, as his hands ran up her thighs and under her
dress, as her own hands tugged at the hem of his T-shirt, and for the first time in what seemed like months, if not years,
Lauren found herself not having to think at all.
“Favorite food?” Lauren asked.
“Easy. Korean barbecue and beer.”
“Respectable, respectable,” she said. Lying next to Oscar in his bed with the sheets pulled up around them, she could not
have felt more relaxed. Oscar’s hair was rumpled, and she loved how undone he looked, how much more relaxed he looked when
he wasn’t Oscar the Royal Reporter.
“My turn,” he said. “Best Christmas present you ever got.”
“The first iPad,” she replied. “Don’t even have to think about it. I sent texts to every single person I ever met in my life
that day. Which wasn’t that many people because I was only thirteen at the time. Okay, biggest challenge growing up.”
Oscar hesitated this time, glancing down at the bed before looking up at her. “Dyslexia,” he said. “I was diagnosed when I
was eight. The teacher used to make us go around the room and read out loud and I always dreaded it.”
“Were the other kids mean about it?” she asked.
“Course they were.” He laughed. “A classroom full of kids is like Romans at the Colosseum. But it was crushing because I always
wanted to work for a newspaper or be a writer and it just didn’t seem possible. But my mum made me realize it could be a superpower
as a journalist. And I think she’s right, it forces me to take an extra beat and check that all the information is always
accurate. So it didn’t end up getting in the way like I thought it would, and well, here I am.” He gestured toward the apartment.
“Nothing but luxury from here on out!”
Lauren smiled as she linked her fingers with his.
“I’m glad you told me that,” she said. “That must have been really hard.” She thought briefly of her own mom and, more importantly, her dad.
She still had dreams of seeing him at Christmas, lost in his small house and unable to find her way out.
No one other than her mom knew that she had seen him, and she had planned on keeping it that way, but she wondered now if she should tell Oscar.
He had shared something so personal, and it felt like the right time to open up to him.
“Well, I have it on good information that two of my worst tormentors got indicted in a major money laundering scheme a few
years ago, so, you know, things have a way of working out.”
And just like that, the moment was gone.
“And did you report the story?” she asked.
“Every single detail.” He grinned and then leaned forward to kiss her. “Okay, my turn. Why did you leave the White House?”
Lauren paused, suddenly aware that she was in bed with a journalist. “This is off the record, right?”
Oscar groaned and let go of her hand, rolling over onto his back. “Lauren, I just told you about being teased for dyslexia
in primary school! You’re literally in my bed. I promise you, everything that’s happening here is one hundred percent off
the record.”
“Okay, okay,” she said. “I’m sorry, occupational hazard.” She took a deep breath and wondered if maybe she should just kiss
him again to distract him. But he had been vulnerable with her, and it would feel unfair if she didn’t meet him in the middle.
“Just so you know, this is an exclusive. Hardly anyone knows about this.”
Oscar crossed his heart. “Nothing leaves this room.”
“So after Brian and I broke up, I was really upset— Wait, are you sure you want to hear about my ex right now?”
Oscar just made a “keep it going” motion at her.
“Okay, fine. So I was a hot mess and I wasn’t really sleeping, couldn’t even talk to my best friend about it, who is also an ex, because they had been having an affair for months in secret.
It felt like everyone at work knew about what had happened between them and were whispering behind my back.
And at the time I had been handling cleanup after a series of damaging hit pieces one of the US papers was doing on the president, and one day I got this email from a reporter asking for comment on a totally false story they were planning to run the next morning, so I had to act on it pretty quickly. ”
Lauren took a deep breath. This was still so embarrassing to admit. It’d be one thing if she had gone out in a blaze of glory,
but this was just a stupid amateur mistake. Even an intern could have done better. “So instead of looping in the relevant
person on POTUS’s team, I accidentally emailed the request to someone in my contacts under the same name.”
“Wait, I feel like there’s way more to this story,” Oscar said.
“You would be correct. So not only did I send it to the wrong person, who, thankfully didn’t even use that email address anymore,
but then I went home, got drunk by myself, and fell asleep, because that was my pretty much my routine for the previous couple
of weeks, and that journalist who was planning on running the piece never got a response from the team. So the next day, this
awful, defamatory story ran in full, above the fold, news alerts everywhere, and my boss had to step in and clean it all up.”
Oscar groaned and fell back onto his pillow. “Nooo.”
“Yes,” Lauren said. “And then to top it all off, I had to confess to my boss that this email had gone to some random person
at a company I had emailed, like, one time in my life. So that was another thing they had to clean up. To stop this confidential
email from getting out.”
“Lauren,” Oscar said. “Did you want to die?”
“I prayed for two days straight for the ground to swallow me up,” she said.
“And at the end of that week my boss called me into her office and said that maybe it was time to take a leave of absence. Only she didn’t say the word ‘maybe’ and she actually said that I had become a liability.
She thought I had taken my eyes off the wheel, and she was kind of right.
And it was just so humiliating, and I didn’t want anyone to find out, so I just handed in my notice. And she didn’t stop me.”
“I’m really sorry,” Oscar said. “Breakups are the worst. They fuck you up so much.”
“You know what made me the angriest?” Lauren said, falling back down on her pillow and rolling onto her side to face him.
“I let them get the best of me. I let them get to my head. I let a man take over, and he didn’t even care about me anymore.”
“Men are the worst,” Oscar agreed, but he was smiling.
“Definitely.” She grinned. “We should probably still keep a few around, though.”
“Do you miss it?” he asked her. “The White House.”
“I miss the idea of it,” she said. “And Air Force One.”
Oscar laughed out loud. “What, you don’t enjoy England’s finest train system, where it can take just five short hours to travel
a hundred miles?”
“A literal leaf could fall on the tracks and suddenly every train is delayed!” Lauren cried, laughing along with him. “Sometimes
it’s almost faster to walk!”
“Ah, it’s one of this country’s many charms,” he said, then reached forward and wrapped his arm around her waist.
“Hmm,” she said. “I’m starting to like many of your charms, it turns out.”
“Oh, really?” Oscar said, rolling her over so that she was on top of his chest. “Going to need confirmation on that one.”
“Well, twist my arm,” she said, then reached up for him again.
Her alarm went off at 8:00 a.m., which felt particularly cruel until she remembered that she had set it the night before so she wouldn’t miss her brunch date with Joy.
If there was anyone in the world who would have understood that Lauren had to cancel brunch because she was in bed with Oscar, it was Joy, but Lauren knew Joy had had a hard week, and she didn’t want to be the kind of friend who flaked.
She managed to uncover her phone just as Oscar groaned into his pillow. “Kill it,” he muttered. “Kill it with fire.”
“I’m trying,” she said, her voice husky with sleep. “I told you, I’m having brunch with Joy this morning.”
Oscar nodded, his eyes still closed. “Spare toothbrush in cabinet under sink if you want it,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward
the bathroom.
“I’m sorry I have to go,” Lauren said. “This wasn’t my best planning moment.” Her eyes felt gummy and sticky, and she also
felt like she had slept for twelve hours straight, even though they had only dozed off around 3:00 a.m. or so.
“No, go,” Oscar said, finally unearthing his face to look at her. “Joy’s your friend. Friends are important.”
Lauren leaned close and brushed his hair off his forehead before giving him a kiss. “Thanks for last night,” she said. “It
was really fun.”
“It certainly was.” He kissed her collarbone.
Lauren reluctantly climbed out of bed before anything happened that would delay her. She went to the bathroom then slipped
out the door, opening Google Maps to find the nearest tube station.
When she got home, she was running late and had to hastily pull herself together.
“Well well well,” Una said, sidling into the bathroom as Lauren, fresh out of the shower, was pulling on a pair of sweatpants.
She had no time to dig through her closet and find a cute brunch outfit, and she hoped wherever they were going wasn’t fancy.
“Look at you. I’m very proud.”
“And how do you know that I didn’t just go for an early-morning run before getting ready for brunch?” Lauren said, pushing
her date night dress to the side of the floor with her foot.
“Um, because I know you?” Una said, moving the dress back into the middle of the room with her own foot. “Was it with . . .”
She gave Lauren a wink.
“It was not,” Lauren said. “And thank you for your discretion.”
“Well, in any case, the morning after looks good on you.” Una’s own mascara was smudged, and for reasons that Lauren didn’t
have time to ask about, there was a feather in her hair. “And look at you, racking them up! The student has become the teacher,
I’d say. Did you use my primer again?”
Lauren paused. “It’s possible?”
“I’ll allow it. I’m too tired to protest. But it’s expensive so don’t go thinking this can continue.”
“Are you just getting home?” Lauren asked. “It’s nine o’clock.”
Una just looked at her. “It was Saturday night, Lauren. What am I, a nun? And don’t throw stones from your glass house.” She
clicked her tongue as she started to pull her hair back from her face. “Gonna get Maccy D’s delivered and hit the hay.” She
grinned at Lauren in the mirror. “Don’t you just love the morning after?”
Lauren had to admit, she kind of did.
“Oh my God,” Joy said when she saw her. She was wearing a tailored vest top with wide-legged pants and, alongside everyone in the restaurant, was about 90 percent more dressed up than Lauren.
And she also had a young boy standing next to her, his entire attention focused on an iPad.
“I am so sorry,” Joy said as soon as Lauren ran up. “Theo’s dad had a work emergency, they were supposed to be going to a
football game today, and, well . . .” She looked down at the child with both exasperation and obvious fondness. “Theo, say
hello to Lauren.”
“Hi,” Theo said without looking up.
“Eye contact, please, like we’ve discussed.”
This time Theo glanced up. “Hi,” he said again.
“Hi,” Lauren replied. “Your mom is really cool.”
Theo just shrugged and went back to the game on his iPad.
“It’s a work in progress,” Joy said, giving Lauren a one-armed hug as they were led to their table. “And oh my God, where
were you last night?”
“I need coffee,” Lauren replied. “And why do you ask?”
Joy raised an eyebrow at her as Lauren sank into her seat. “Have you forgotten that I used to work at Scotland Yard?” she said, then gestured toward Lauren’s outfit. “Please, give me a little credit.”
“Coffee,” Lauren said again.
Joy immediately caught the attention of the waiter and mouthed “double espresso” to him, and Lauren turned around and said,
“Americano, please.” She added to Joy, “I don’t need your micro shots. I need something in a big cup.”
“Even more promising!” Joy pressed her hands together and turned back to the waiter. “And a hot chocolate for the little one, please. Extra whipped cream.” She turned back to Lauren. “Anything to distract him. So.”
“We had a great night,” Lauren said.
“Of course you had a great night!” Joy said, slapping the table. “And honestly, can I just say that it’s about time? I’ve
been watching the two of you dance around each other for months. Those press conferences were starting to get me . . . well, you know.”
“Oddly not reassuring,” Lauren said, nearly falling face-first into the cup of coffee delivered to the table.
“Okaaayyy,” Joy said as she tucked a napkin around Theo, who looked up from his iPad long enough to reach for his cocoa. “It
might be hot, darling, just check it first. So do you want to share any details?”
“Maybe not yet,” Lauren said. “Everything’s still sort of new, I guess? I think I just want to keep it to myself for a bit.”
“We love a boundary,” Joy immediately replied, which only made Lauren love her more. Brooke had always been pressing for the
juiciest details about Brian, even after Lauren would demur, and of course Lauren had realized why Brooke was so insatiably
curious after it all fell apart.
“Thanks,” Lauren said.
Joy hesitated. “Do you think maybe we could play charades instead?” she asked. “That way, you don’t have to say anything,
you can just act it out.”
Lauren burst out laughing, as did Joy. “If we play charades about last night,” Lauren told her, “I’ll be arrested.”
Joy squealed in delight.