CHAPTER 7
TREY
The Grant crisis broke open on a Wednesday morning.
Trey learned about it from the news like everyone else.
A network chyron appeared beneath the anchor:
SENATOR GRANT ORDERS INDEPENDENT REVIEW AFTER STAFF ALLEGATIONS.
Trey stopped tying his tie.
Paula had left his house at five thirty.
By the time the evening settled, the city outside the windows had become a field of reflected headlights.
Trey noticed the domestic debris accumulating around them—Paula's charger looped around the arm of a chair, his reading glasses beside her notebook, two takeout containers neither had remembered to throw away.
It should have offended his preference for order.
Instead it made the room feel inhabited.
He was beginning to understand that intimacy was partly the accumulation of small evidence: somebody had been here, somebody expected to return, somebody had stopped treating departure as the default.
No details.
Only: “Today might be bad.”
Now he understood.
His phone buzzed.
PAULA: I’m okay. Can’t talk.
TREY: Understood.
He did not send another message.
At work, Malcolm entered his office.
“You saw?”
“Yes.”
“Paula?”
“Can’t discuss it.”
Malcolm nodded.
Trey appreciated people who understood the first answer.
By noon, reporters were outside the senator’s office.
By three, Grant had announced a leave from committee leadership pending review.
By six, Paula had not eaten.
Trey knew without asking.
He ordered food to her office but texted first.
TREY: Sending dinner. Acceptable?
Three minutes.
Then:
PAULA: Yes. Thank you.
Consent did not become less important because the subject was noodles instead of sex.
At nine, Paula called.
“Can you come get me?”
Trey was already standing before she finished.
When she got into his car, she looked composed.
Too composed.
Hair still neat.
Suit still sharp.
Eyes exhausted.
He drove.
For ten minutes she said nothing.
Then: “I did the right thing.”
Trey glanced at her.
“I know.”
“You don’t know what I did.”
“I know you.”
She looked out the window.
“What if the right thing costs people?”
“It usually does.”
“That’s a terrible answer.”
“It’s the true one.”
Paula’s jaw tightened.
Trey let silence return.
At his house she kicked off her heels in the foyer and walked directly to the kitchen.
He followed.
She opened the refrigerator.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
Trey leaned against the counter.
Paula turned.
“I hate this.”
“The case?”
“Not being able to fix all of it.”
There she was.
He said, “Some things aren’t yours to fix.”
“I know.”
“Knowing and accepting are different.”
She glared. “Don’t professor me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Trey crossed the kitchen.
He stopped in front of her.
“Do you want advice?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to listen?”
“No.”
“Do you want to be alone?”
Her face crumpled for one second.
“No.”
He opened his arms.
Paula stepped into them.
That was all.
Later they showered together without sex.
Trey washed her back.
Paula stood beneath the hot water with her eyes closed.
In bed she curled against him.
“No scene tonight,” she murmured.
“I know.”
“I just want you.”
“You have me.”
She slept.
Trey stayed awake longer.
He had spent years thinking the hard part would be getting Paula.
It was becoming clear that love was not acquisition.
It was presence.
And presence required him to tolerate problems he could not solve.