Chapter 21 #2
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do.” Anya jutted out her chin, and he wanted to kiss it, to nip at her face like a puppy, to press her down into the grass and give her the most intense pleasure of her life; he didn’t care if the entire neighborhood was watching.
“You’re still so goddamn stubborn,” he said. He hoped she could hear what he really meant, which was, I will love you for the rest of my life.
“Come on.” She stood up and offered him her hand. “Let’s go.”
His heart was pounding as they approached the front door.
He could hear the buzz of activity behind it, people talking and arguing—obviously, they’d abandoned all pretense of going to sleep.
Someone had put on a pot of coffee, and it smelled amazing.
As nervous as Gabe was, he couldn’t help but smile. He loved campaign people.
But when Anya pushed the door open, all the activity stilled for a moment. Gabe’s heart lurched into his throat as he locked eyes with Kira.
Please don’t hate me, he tried to tell her with only his face. She cracked a wry smile. Even working past midnight in the most hectic possible environment, she was still chill and debonair.
“So glad you’re back,” she said, and he felt like his heart was about to burst open. “Can you get over here? I need Dale to know every single piece of information in your brain about which superdelegates are Wheeler diehards and which ones only endorsed because they thought he was a shoo-in.”
“The second one,” Gabe said, his heart still pounding. “Almost all of them.”
“Sweet heavenly chorus of angels, that’s what I like to hear.” Kira beamed, and all around her, everyone started talking and moving again, getting back to what they’d been doing.
Preethi rushed over to him. “Gabe, thank god you’re here. Do you remember the name of that reporter from the Sun? The one who wrote that amazing profile of JS on the union picket but they canned it because she left to work for the Post? I can’t find her anywhere.”
“Tina Reynolds,” Gabe said. “And you can’t find her at the Post because she works for the Times now.”
“Yes! That’s who we should put in touch with the teachers’ union for the education piece, Simone,” Preethi said as Simone opened her laptop and started typing.
“Emailing them right now,” Simone said. “I’ll call to follow up in the morning.”
“Hey, Gabe, I’m Hugo. Can I talk to you for a second about that user flow you guys had on your website for volunteer placement? I want to replicate something like it for the delegates, but I can’t figure out how to start the prompt.”
Gabe turned to see the guy he’d once worried would take Anya away from him. Gabe smiled broadly, remembering how passionately Anya had been kissing him on her childhood front lawn not ten minutes ago.
“Sure, man,” Gabe said. “Happy to help.”
“No,” Kira interrupted. “Sorry, delegate head count takes precedence. Hugo, can it wait until after Gabe talks to Dale?”
“No problem. I’ll start drafting language for tomorrow’s social posts?”
“That’d be great, thank you.”
“Gabe, welcome back!” Walt clapped him on the arm.
“Walt.” Gabe hugged Anya’s dad. “I didn’t see you there.”
“It’s pretty crowded around these parts, but someone has to make the coffee,” Walt quipped. “I think I still have some of that kind you like—dark roast, right?”
“Um, yeah, if it’s no trouble? Or I can put on a pot?”
“No you can’t, you’re busy electing a president.” Walt waved him off and headed into the kitchen.
“Anya, can we look over page four of the speech?” Jo had her head buried in a stack of pages as she walked downstairs. “I had a thought for how we might adjust the foreign policy section—”
But she stopped talking when she saw Gabe, and so did everyone else. He straightened his posture.
“Hi, Senator.”
“Now, this is a good way to start the week.” She broke into a wide smile and came over to him. “Are you ready to get to work?”
Gabe looked over at Anya. She was smiling so big she looked like she might burst.
“Yes, ma’am,” Gabe said. “Let’s go fucking win.”
“I hate Election Day,” Anya muttered for what felt like the fiftieth time since she woke up.
“Same,” Kira mumbled.
“Same,” Simone groaned.
“I dunno.” Gabe beamed. “This Election Day isn’t so bad.”
He gave them all a goofy smile—the same stupid smile that had been plastered on his face every day since he and Anya had gotten back together and he’d come back to work for Jo.
Anya had stared at that perfect smile all through convention week, and when they won the nomination on the third ballot (in fairness, they’d all been smiling then—and sobbing, hugging, screaming, cheering), when he took a demotion to be Jo’s traveling press secretary so he could be on the road with Anya while Preethi ran the comms shop at campaign headquarters, when he and Anya shared crappy hotel rooms in every swing district in the country, and he was still smiling now, at 4:07 p.m. Pacific Time on Election Day, just under an hour before the East Coast polls would begin to close.
“I can’t deal with how happy you are right now,” Simone said. “I need a coffee.”
She got up, and Kira followed quickly, leaving Anya and Gabe alone—well, as alone as they could be in a glass-walled conference room in an office teeming with people.
“Have you seen the turnout numbers from Bucks County?” Anya was glued to her phone. “They’re big—but maybe not big enough. Do you think it’s too late to send out another call for phone-bankers? We could post on social—”
“Anya, the field team’s all over that. And the digital team. And the Pennsylvania team.”
“I know, but CNN posted these new exit polls—”
“You always say that exit polls are bullshit,” Gabe reminded her.
“Well they are!” Anya huffed. “They oversample white voters, and affluent voters, people who aren’t rushing back to work or home to get their kids, never mind mail-in voters—”
“Okay, so maybe we don’t freak out about them?” Gabe gently extricated Anya’s phone from her hands and twined his fingers with hers.
“Then what do we do instead?” Anya squeaked. The stress of the day was getting to her.
“I dunno, what did we do the last time we worked in this office?” Gabe grinned.
For the general election, the Sessego team had given up their ragtag digs in DC and moved back to Las Vegas: It was cheaper, easier for staff to find housing on short notice, and geographically closer to a majority of the swing states.
The team was over the moon when Kira told them the office from their Senate campaign was available—except this time, instead of a single floor, they were leasing the entire building.
Of course, Anya and Gabe had barely been there. They’d been crisscrossing the country, from Arizona deserts and Georgia barbecue joints to Michigan factories and Wisconsin cornfields. It was thrilling, and exhausting, and all but over. It felt nice to spend Election Day somewhere familiar.
“Last time we worked here? We yelled at each other a lot,” Anya said.
“You deliberately left your shirt unbuttoned to drive me to distraction and win arguments in meetings.” Gabe ran his fingers along the inside of her arm. She really wished they weren’t in a room with glass walls.
“I can think of one thing we didn’t do,” she said. “One thing I really, really wanted to do.”
Gabe locked eyes with her. “Just one thing? Because I can think of several.”
“One thing in particular,” Anya flirted. “Should we head to the tiny conference room?”
—
In less than a minute, Gabe was pushing Anya into a room barely big enough for two chairs, let alone a table. He locked the door behind them, then turned to her with a grin.
“Do you know how many times I’ve thought about this?” he asked.
“I should, you bring it up all the time,” she teased, backing against a wall.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” He leaned down to kiss her. “Do you not like it when I talk about how constantly I fantasize about fucking you?”
“Hate it, detest it, deplore everything about it.” Anya grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him toward her, kissing him harder.
She was grateful she’d worn a skirt so he could run his fingers up her thigh, the same way he’d promised to in all those texts all those months ago.
She thought about all the months and years they’d spent fantasizing about each other, unable to act on their impulses.
She still found it hard to believe that was over.
This was her real life now. This man, and how deliciously cloudy her mind went when he kissed her, the most perfect feeling on earth, available to her anytime she wanted.
He made her feel so beautiful, so safe, so desired.
The endless stress of the election faded away as she gave in to his fingers, his mouth, to the intensity of the pleasure as he sank to his knees in front of her, to the force of their connection as he sat in one of the room’s two chairs and pulled her into his lap.
He made her believe that love was possible, that better things were possible.
He made her believe that when life was difficult, or even devastating, it could still hold joy and promise.
That they could weather any storm together.
That no matter how dark things might feel, they would always, always, have hope.
She collapsed into his arms, breathing hard. It would be okay. Win or lose, they would keep going. Win or lose, they had each other.
“Hey!” Kira shouted. She was pounding on the door. “Are you guys kidding me?! Put your fucking pants on!”
“How long have we been in here?” Gabe looked dazed, and obscenely beautiful—and still smiling, always smiling.
Anya pulled on her skirt and grabbed her phone off the floor. Oh god, it was after five.
“Hurry!” she urged him, and a few seconds later they wrenched open the door.
Kira and Simone were beaming on the other side.
“We have to go,” Kira said. “The results are in.”