Chapter 3 #2
Dawn laughed as they walked inside, then went to the bar to get them a couple of whiskeys.
Everyone was drunk and happy, hugging and singing along to Journey on the jukebox.
Gabe felt a twinge of sadness, watching them all, knowing he wouldn’t be back on a campaign for months.
He understood this made him borderline psychotic—and it’s not that he wasn’t looking forward to a vacation, maybe convince some of his college buddies to spend a week in Costa Rica—but when he wasn’t working, he needed a place to physically be.
Maybe he’d stay in Costa Rica until another job came up, get some cheap spot on the beach.
Despite growing up in Los Angeles, he’d never actually learned to surf.
Gabe scanned the crowd of happy faces until he noticed Anya sitting alone in a booth, nursing a beer, looking like her cat just died. He strode over and slid onto the seat across from hers.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we actually won tonight.”
She looked up, surprised, then smiled. It was a genuine smile, but there was still something mournful about it. “I know. Congratulations.”
Her hair was back in its usual bun, but it was messy as hell after a long day of stress followed by a long night of drinking. Little ringlets fell around her face, and her big brown eyes looked especially pretty in the bar’s dim amber light.
“Congratulations to you too.” He clinked his nearly empty beer bottle against hers.
Anya eyed him warily. “Are you admitting I was actually helpful?”
Gabe frowned at her sour tone. Everyone he had ever met had liked him instantly—why did this girl insist on hating him?
“What are you talking about?”
“Come on, it’s been obvious since I got here that you can’t stand me.” She sat up straighter, brushed her hair out of her face. “You don’t care if my ideas are good, you think I’m a suit from DC who has no business on a real campaign.”
“What?” Gabe’s face warmed. He felt nervous, like he might start laughing. “I don’t think that. What do you mean?”
“If you say so,” Anya muttered, then took another swig of beer.
“I mean, yeah, you know.” Gabe stumbled over his words. He was so uncomfortable, he had to say something. “I poke fun, you dress like you get a staff discount at Ann Taylor—”
“Oh my god, shut up!” Anya laughed and slapped his hand—the shock and sting of it sent a jolt through his whole body. “I’m the youngest woman in every meeting I walk into, and like three inches tall besides. It’s hard enough to get people to take me seriously without dressing like a teenager.”
“You’re not young,” Gabe objected. “You were born on the exact same day I was.”
Anya’s eyes went wide. “You remember me?”
Shit.
“Sure. We met one time, right?” He tried to keep his tone casual. “In New Hampshire?”
“Give me a break, you know exactly where we met.” She rolled her eyes. “And you’ve been acting like I’m a neophyte, some interloper in a cheap pantsuit.”
“I never said cheap.”
“You said ‘staff discount,’ which is close enough.”
“There was no non-awkward way to bring up that we’d met!” Gabe huffed. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, remember we talked one time?’ Like, okay? Who cares? And by the way, I didn’t know if you remembered me.”
He poked her arm playfully and gave her a little grin. But she drew her arm back under the booth and looked down at her beer.
“You’re right,” she said quietly. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.”
He peered at her. She really did look upset. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She looked up, and she was smiling again. “It’s a good night. Go back to the bar, okay? You were nice to check on me.”
Something about her face—that mask of “everything’s okay,” how quickly she put it on—felt like a punch right in Gabe’s gut.
“Okay, well, first of all you’re a terrible liar, and second, Dawn appears to be doing a bear fight with Toby, so I’m good to hang here for a second.”
“Bear fight?” Anya scrunched up her nose when she was puzzled—adorable.
“You do a car bomb and a Jager bomb in a row,” Gabe explained. “Whoever finishes first wins.”
“Oh, god. That doesn’t kill you?”
“It doesn’t kill her.” Gabe jerked his head toward the bar. “It would absolutely kill me. Anyway. What’s going on?”
Anya sighed. “I was up for this big promotion in DC. My boss said if I brought home a victory here, it was a sure thing. Except I just talked to him, and apparently it wasn’t.”
“You didn’t get the promotion?”
Anya swallowed hard. For a horrible second, Gabe thought she might cry, but then her expression went flat.
“He doesn’t think I’m ready,” she said, her voice dull and even. “And he calls himself my mentor, so I suppose he would know.”
“What the hell? This race was barely a toss-up when you got here, and we just won by four points. Toby will tell anyone who’ll listen how much that had to do with you.”
“You really think that?” She met his eye for a second, more vulnerable than he’d seen her.
“So what’s your boss’s problem?” Gabe pressed. “He told you to win and you did.”
“I had work to do for him too.” Anya shrugged. “I blew it off to do more here. I thought it wouldn’t matter.”
“Wait.” Something jogged in Gabe’s memory. “Like when you ditched writing that report to take a shift on doors?”
“Exactly like that, as a matter of fact.” Anya drained the rest of her beer.
“Why’d you do it, then?” Gabe was genuinely confused. He took Anya for an ass-kissing straight-A student, not someone who ignored a direct order from her boss.
“Because those reports are dumb! They’re basically reformatted articles that any idiot could google,” she grumbled. “And canvassing is my favorite thing in the world—it would suck if I spent two weeks here and never took a shift.”