Chapter 7 #2
“You’re going to make it up to me in twenty minutes?” Zeke teased. Anya kissed him deeply and started unbuttoning her green silk shirt.
“Maybe thirty.” She moved his hands to her bra, and he groaned with appreciation. “Forty at the absolute most.”
“Hit me, Shawn—what do we have today?” Gabe threw a Nerf football to his deputy, Shawn, a fellow Stanford alum who’d quickly become something of a mini-Gabe.
“You’ve got senior staff in ten minutes, then coffee with that woman from the Sun at eleven.” Shawn scrolled through his calendar.
“That reporter who likes shooting ranges?” Gabe frowned.
“No, the other one,” Shawn corrected. “Tina Reynolds?”
“Then it’s not coffee, it’s cocktails. That woman can throw ’em back at any hour of the day,” Gabe sighed. “Lacey!”
“Yeah?” the department assistant, Lacey, came rushing over.
“Call Tina Reynolds, see if she can meet me for happy hour instead of coffee. Or dinner, or anything after three p.m.”
“Copy.” Lacey nodded. “If she can’t reschedule, should I cancel the meeting?”
“No, I need her to cover Jo walking the culinary workers’ picket tomorrow, so it’s gotta be today. If she can only do eleven, make sure there’s water and aspirin and some kind of very large sandwich waiting when I get back to the office, okay?”
“Speaking of that picket line—” Shawn broke in.
“I need to write Jo’s remarks.” Gabe rubbed his temples.
“She wants a draft by two so she can read it on her way to Crystal Springs.”
“Lacey, did research come back with those numbers on Local 226’s economic impact in Nevada?” Gabe asked.
“They said they’d have it by noon.”
“Not good enough. I need it at ten so I can write a draft while sober,” Gabe groused.
“Gabriellllllll.” Gabe’s press secretary, Preethi, sauntered over, calling his name in a singsong voice. “You are about to be so happy with me.”
“Why, because you made me look cool in Politico?” Gabe grinned.
“Pretty sure ‘looking cool’ and ‘being in Politico’ are mutually exclusive concepts, bucko,” Preethi teased. “But no. This is way better than that.”
“Oh yeah?” Gabe beamed at her. “Let’s hear it.”
“So I accidentally sent the Politico thing to Brent Hogan, by which I mean I sent it to him very much on purpose, but then I was like ‘Oh Brent, so sorry, your name autopopulated’ blah blah blah.”
“The Brent Hogan?” Shawn looked confused. “What does he care if Gabe’s in Politico?”
“He deeply doesn’t.” Preethi smiled slyly. “However, as I suspected, he’s a big fan of Gabe’s girlfriend.”
“Really?” Gabe felt a flush creeping up his neck.
“So we got to talking about how maybe Tallulah could do his show next time she’s in the country—”
“Wait, wait.” Gabe shook his head. “I don’t know if she’ll do that.”
“It doesn’t matter! Because Brent already agreed to interview Jo.”
“What?” Gabe was flabbergasted. “He never talks to politicians! Preethi, this is unreal!”
Gabe leapt up and hugged Preethi, who looked like she was having possibly the greatest day of her entire life.
“I haven’t even told you the best part!” she squeaked.
Gabe was about to ask what could possibly be better than booking their boss on the number one podcast in the country when a flurry of motion caught his eye––Anya, rushing into the office, looking uncharacteristically disheveled.
He glanced at his watch: 8:57, that was weird.
Anya was usually one of the first people here, and always neat as a pin.
But today her hair was mussed and her skin was flushed and glowing.
Maybe she’d just worked out? Most of the time, Gabe couldn’t believe he’d ever had feelings for someone so uptight and self-important, but every so often he was still knocked over by how beautiful she was.
“Gabe?” Preethi prompted.
“Sorry, the best part—can it wait until after senior staff?” Gabe asked.
“Trust me,” Preethi said. “You want to know about this before your meeting.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Simone grabbed Anya the second she walked into the office. “I need the numbers from yesterday’s fundraising email, Flannery’s office has been hounding me all morning about our next ad buy.”
“I’m so sorry,” Anya said. “We haven’t sent the email—we never got comms approval.”
“Are you kidding me?!” Simone’s eyes went wide. “Did you bump Gabe this morning?”
“No.” Anya looked sheepish. “I got distracted by the Politico thing, and Zeke’s leaving for another trip tonight, so we kind of, I mean, I got caught up.”
“So you didn’t bump Gabe because you were bumping Zeke?”
“Oh dear god, don’t quip at me.” Anya tugged Simone’s arm and laughed.
“I’m glad you’re in a better mood, at least.” Simone gave Anya a pointed look, and Anya’s stomach clenched.
“I’m sorry. I know I complain too much about him.”
“Really?” Simone said dryly. “I hadn’t noticed.”
Anya glanced automatically toward the comms cubicles, where Gabe was hugging Preethi and grinning.
He was wearing jeans and a button-down as usual, but ever since his stint working in Montana, he’d gotten very into cowboy boots.
Anya thought he looked absurd, like he was cosplaying some kind of rugged mountain man when he was actually a spoiled rich kid from LA.
And she hated the way he was wearing his hair these days: almost as long as his jawline, pushed back behind his ears.
It made him look like a used car salesman.
Let everyone else fawn all over him—Anya wasn’t buying.
—
Kira was an easygoing boss, but she liked to start meetings promptly, so they were all in the conference room by nine on the dot, sitting at their long white table.
Gabe was the last to slip into the room, and of course the only open seat was directly across from Anya.
She couldn’t help scowling as he sat down.
“What’s with you?” he asked. “Did you oversleep?”
“Excuse me?”
Gabe shrugged. “You come in late, you look mad about something, just a guess.”
Anya narrowed her eyes. “First of all, I wasn’t late, and second—”
“Okay!” Kira tapped the table a couple of times to start the senior staff meeting—though “senior” was something of a misnomer, as no one in the room was older than thirty-five.
“We’ve got a busy couple of days before the boss heads to DC, and Rasmussen is putting a new poll in the field later this week, so I don’t want any unforced errors. ”
“Speaking of DC, can we settle our recommendation on the immigration vote?” Simone asked. “It’s gonna be a shitstorm for me either way, so I want to get ahead of it.”
“Let’s put that to bed right now,” Kira agreed. “Dale, where are we on that issue data?”
Dale looked up from his laptop—at twenty-four, he was the youngest person on senior staff, so he tended to stay silent in meetings unless called on.
But he was one of Anya’s favorite people on the campaign: a baby gay, total math genius, and one of Jo’s former students from her prior career as a middle school history teacher.
He loved Jo more than anyone else on the team, which was saying something, as Anya had never worked for a more adored candidate in her life.
“Um yeah, immigration has come up on doors some, but where it’s a really big problem is on the persuasion calls,” he said. “Independents are definitely worried that Jo is soft on the border.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been saying.” Gabe’s expression was serious. “It would be one thing if the bill had a shot in hell at passing, but why would Jo risk alienating moderates for a protest vote? It’s not worth it. She can’t vote for the bill.”
“It’s not a protest vote, it’s an accomplishment,” Anya argued. “Jo worked her ass off to get that bill out of committee—”
“So she’s already on record as being in favor of it,” Gabe shot back.
“I think Gabe has a point, but what’s Jo supposed to do, reverse her own vote?” Simone asked. “People may not agree with her stance, but they’ll hate her more for being a hypocrite. It’s lose-lose.”
“I actually have a solution to that part of the problem.” Gabe looked a little excited now. “To the whole problem, maybe.”
“What’s that?” Kira asked.
“I just heard from Preethi—Brent Hogan wants to have Jo on his show.”
“No way!” Kira’s jaw dropped, and everyone else reacted similarly.
Even Anya had to admit this was a coup. Hogan might be a misogynist piece of garbage, but his podcast reached millions of people every day.
If Jo could convert some of them into supporters, let alone donors, it could be huge for the campaign.
“But wait,” Anya interjected. “What does that have to do with the immigration vote?”
“He wants to interview her on Thursday. In Texas.” Gabe leaned back, satisfied.
“So she misses the vote to do the interview.” Kira nodded slowly. “That could work.”
“No it couldn’t!” Anya sputtered. “What about our donor base? Our volunteers? All the people who support Jo because she’s a progressive champion—do you think they’ll empathize with Jo selling out one of her core issues to go chat with some transphobe?
Not to mention our allies! MoveOn, the Nevada Fed, Voto Latino—”
“I can handle our allies,” Simone said. “I don’t think they’ll see this as a betrayal. They want Jo to win. They know where she stands.”
“Sure, until she gets invited on a podcast, and then she stands somewhere else,” Anya sniped.
“Anya, Jo can make more of a difference on immigration talking to Hogan’s millions of listeners than she can voting for a bill that won’t pass. Skipping the vote is the smart thing to do.” Gabe’s tone was so condescending it drove Anya insane.
“It’s the spineless thing to do,” Anya gritted. “And it completely ignores why people love our candidate. She doesn’t run from a fight.”
They all stared at one another for a second, unsure how to proceed. Anya hated meetings like this.
“Wow, who killed the vibe in here?”