by JL Mac
I wasn’t always this way. I used to be a naïve, vulnerable girl with childish notions about love and life and career. And then life happened. The girl I was had been meted upon by a monster, and I had not been prepared. Now, I am prepared for the monsters because in many ways I am one of them. Get or be gotten is the motto. Ironically, it’s safer for me here with the monsters I know and see coming than it is back home. It’s safer to be this version of me, and it’s just good fortune that my career requires that I be exactly this way.
Here, a “fuck you” means, well… fuck you! Back home, “Bless your precious heart” could mean, “I’ll destroy you in your sleep and steal your dog, so fuck you!” Or it could mean someone from the Baptist church is going to drop off a peach cobbler the next day because truly, “Bless your heart.” You never quite know which to expect. Yes, D.C. is my safe place.
Southerners have a knack for sandwiching judgment and insults between hugs at Sunday service and the occasional Hallmark card. The political strategist in me can appreciate these antics, but the rest of me is content with living my life free of “bless your heart” and peach cobblers. I prefer apple, anyway.
Three days later, I find myself staring at the beautifully embossed invitation to my sister’s wedding.
Mr. and Mrs. Garrett Potter request the honor of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter
Eleanor Jacqueline Potter
To
Douglas Scott Kearney
The invitation is gorgeous. The bride is stunning. The groom is handsome. The venue is ideal. The catering is the best available. It will all be perfect, I am sure, and yet I can’t bring myself to find joy in any part of this because it just means I have to make the trip home. As though she’s felt me thinking about her, my personal cell phone rings. I groan at the screen displaying a photo of my baby sister’s serene face. I slide out of my leather chair, leaving my heels beneath my desk, and walk to the windows in my office. I stand here, peeking down at the screen, hoping she will hang up before I force myself to take the call.
One.
Two.
Three.
Hang up, Ellie.
No such luck. I swipe my thumb across the screen and force cheer into my voice. “There’s the gorgeous bride to be,” I say in a carefully honeyed voice. She squeals into the phone, that high-pitched dolphin shrill in a key and octave that only women can accomplish. I pull the phone from my ear, wincing. “You looked ravishing in every gown at the boutique, but the more I look at the picture of you in that De La Renta gown...” I trail off and whistle low. “You chose the perfect dress. Honestly, the most beautiful bride I have ever laid eyes on.”
“I’d better be! It was six grand,” she wheezes. “Oh, Rae, I wish you could have been there, but I understand your calendar is bonkers right now. Thank god for video calls, huh?”
“Absolutely.” I could have been there. I wish I were a better woman. Then I would have been beside you but I’m not a better woman and Self Preservation knows best. I press my lips together in a hard line, not allowing the words I’m thinking to manifest in my mouth. They would only move across my tongue and make their way over my lips where I can’t take them back.
“And thank you so much for arranging the appointment and the travel and for buying my dress,” she says softly, her voice wobbling slightly. I swallow, feeling uncomfortable with her getting emotional on me. “I still can’t believe you got me in at Keaton Bridal. I heard there are celebrities that can’t even get in.”
Yeah, well, demons and devils and all that jazz, I privately muse. So I called in some favors. It was well worth it to me. “It was my pleasure. Truly,” I lie. It wasn’t my pleasure, it was my penance and quite frankly, my way of making it up to her for not being there. It was payment. An effort to ease my guilt, but I had no choice. Regret is alive and well, the bitch.
The Bride Tribe, their collective name according to the garish shirts Ellie had them all dressed in, met up at our parent’s house and they took a party bus to Keaton Bridal in Dallas. I wasn’t about to go home twice within one year. It’s some kind of miracle I am being selfless enough to attend the actual wedding. Going home is high on my list of Things I Would Prefer Not To Do. It ranks somewhere between root canal and unplanned pregnancy. I’m going, albeit reluctantly, to the wedding, but I am taking a pass on the rest of the festivities, citing work obligations, and I’ll get my butt back to the east coast just as soon as the bouquet has been tossed. In truth, my deputy campaign manager is capable enough to handle my duties if I wanted to take my time and stay for a visit, but going back to Palmetto Grove, Louisiana is most certainly not a vacation. It’s more like a nightmare.
On top of that, I didn’t become one of the most sought after campaign managers in the smarmy arena of American politics by skipping off for parties. Hell, I don’t even have a social life. I count myself lucky to pencil in the occasional meaningless hookup. Politicians don’t just want support of their staff, they require blood oath, and that means you work like a machine, sacrifice like a saint, battle like a soldier and kneel to pray before the deity which is the American voter. It’s a perk I happen to be emotionally bankrupt enough to love all of it. Burning the candle at both ends is something I am good at. I get paid a fortune to not have to think too much about how my personal life closely resembles Chernobyl, and my team gets a world-class leader. It’s a win-win for everyone.
“How’s the campaign trail? Fun? Stressful? Mom said you had to go to a doctor for stomach troubles? Spill!”
I roll my eyes.
“Oh, the campaign is great. Senator Cline is up in all the polls and we expect him to win handily. The travel is awesome. You know this is my scene, so I don’t find it stressful, really. It’s exuberating and my stomach is fine. Anything else is fake news. No worries there,” I say, injecting the right amount of pitch in my voice to sound convincing while I rattle the last two antacids from the container I keep in my bag. I make a mental note to remind Bethany, my assistant, to keep her trap shut about my appointments, even to—and maybe especially to—my mother. She called the office weeks ago when she couldn’t get a hold of me on my cell and Bethany promptly informed her I was out of the office to see the gastrointestinal doctor about scheduling an endoscopy—the same endoscopy I haven’t bothered to have done. I don’t have time.
I tap the screen putting my sister on speakerphone while I fire a text to Bethany directing her to get me another bottle of this heartburn stuff minus the press release about it. She’s smart enough to understand that I am aware of her indiscretion. My gut burns up to my throat. Ugh! I’ll have a dozen ulcers before Election Day finally arrives in two months. I exit the texting app and open Facebook. I pop the chalky tablets in my mouth and munch on them while pulling up Ellie’s profile to search for relevant talking points and intelligence. On my sister. I’m a terrible human.
Ever the politico.
“You killed that interview on the news last night. That one guy on the panel really thought he had you backed into a corner. Mom records all of them, you know.” I stifle a groan and change the subject, grateful for her propensity to over share the shit out of every morsel of her life on social media. I flip through post after post she has made to her profile, speed-reading things she has typed and mentally scanning the photos included.
“How was the bridal barbeque Aunt Joy hosted for you?” I ask, clicking through the pictures she posted. Bridal barbeque luncheon, reads the caption.
How very southern of Aunt Joy.
“It was great! Uncle Carl made his famous brisket, Mom made her potato salad and baked beans, and Aunt Joy made a pile… and I mean a pile of that green marshmallow stuff.”
“Watergate salad.” I smile genuinely at that bit and it feels weird. It seems like years have passed by since I’ve smiled sincerely.
It has been years, Self-Loathing, the wicked inner bitch of the west remarks.
“Yeah, that stuff. So good, and Doug can�
�t get enough of it. Anyway,” she carries on yammering away, but I register nothing else at all because my smile melts from my face and my eyes are glued to the picture that has just filled my screen. I swallow, feeling nausea roll like a rock tumbler in my stomach, clattering away. I grab the seltzer water on my desk and take a sip.
“Who all came?” I ask absently, my voice softer and my accent eddying to the surface just enough to make me cringe.
“Huh? Oh, just the same old crowd, really,” she says, sounding chirpy, nervous. It’s hard to believe that I can be such a seamless liar while my sister, my flesh and blood—someone who was raised in the same home by the same loving parents as me—can’t even string together two white lies without instantly giving herself away. There is only one person on this earth I can’t confidently say I can dupe. I can sell a fib to anyone, with exception to him, and considering there is something like seven or eight billion people on the planet, I think that is a damn good ratio.
“Mmm,” I hum a noncommittal noise with my eyes still fixated on the picture on my screen.
Him.
I flick the nail of my ring finger against my thumbnail, making a clicking noise. It’s an old nervous habit that I haven’t done in years, so doing it now grates on my delicate nerves. I reach for the bottle of antacids again, before I recall I just chewed up the last two I had.
Familiar dark eyes seem to stare right at me through the screen, making my gut twist and my fingers fidget faster. He used to laugh at me when I was doing it and demand I tell him what had me riled up. He’d flash that infectious grin and crinkle his knowing eyes, then he would call my bluff when I swore I was fine. He knew me. He really knew me. All the sides and edges and the little nuances uniquely mine. He was privy to the vulnerable, soft underbelly, to all the little things humans keep hidden from others out of fear and self-consciousness. He knew the geography of my teenaged body, heart and soul, and his betrayal was that much worse because of it. Our unceremonious end was worse still. He forced his way into my heart and the result has been my own private hell for more than a decade since it all came undone. I grit my teeth, pressing my manicured nails into the too soft flesh of my palm until it hurts.
“So when do you get into town?”
“My flight leaves Thursday afternoon,” I say on autopilot, my eyes locked onto the picture of the man who destroyed me and screwed everything up. The hilarity of it is unless he’s a mind reader, there is no way he understands the extent of how badly he screwed up both our lives. No one aside from myself knows how wide sweeping the fallout was when a nuke fell in my lap and detonated, pulverizing the life I had and the future I thought I had laid out before me.
Being forced to go within one hundred square miles of my hometown all but guarantees I will undoubtedly have to endure countless reminders of the life I left behind when I ran from my only home and all the people I have ever known or loved. I’ll drive down the streets we walked along, hand in hand. I’ll see the high school where our connection bloomed and intensified. From my mom and dad’s house I’ll see the Friday night lights of the high school football stadium thrusting skyward above the tree line, casting their yellow-white light over other young girls and guys cheering for their team like we once had. I’ll smell the salt water from the bayou where so many hours were spent discovering each other and growing deeper in love by the day. It all seems like memories belonging to someone else, from a lifetime ago.
I tried to persuade my sister to have a destination wedding. Given that I don’t plan to ever marry or have children—two morsels of happily ever after that I can’t say I deserve—I was happy to give my sister the money. I don’t need the money for myself, but I definitely need the penance.
I had even offered to pay for it, but she refused. I had directed Bethany to email her information regarding the top ten destination wedding locals and package deals to get the entire show done and over with. She stuck to her guns, and of course she would. Ellie has no reason to not love everything about our hometown including everyone in it, and she wants to be married there with everyone in attendance.
The unfortunate cherry on top was that she chose an early fall wedding date during midterm elections and the same week as my twenty-eighth birthday. Fabulous, sis. She doesn’t know a thing about my stupid promise or what any of it has to do with my birthday or him, the last man on the planet I want to bump into. I would much prefer a front-page public relations disaster for Senator Cline with me at the helm. Running disaster management for our team followed by an interview with a panel consisting of political opposition sounds far more appealing than seeing him again. Work catastrophes, I can handle. A trip to Palmetto Grove, Louisiana, where I will face the insufferable, persistent man and the old wounds he carved out in me… not so much.
Chapter 3
Raegan
“Happy birthday!” Bethany, my assistant shouts, bursting through my office door like a goddamned maniac with a cake balanced in one hand and a gift bag in another. I yelp and nearly jump out of my skin.
“Dammit, Bethany!” I growl under my breath, hating that she scared the hell out of me. If I weren’t constantly so lost in thought, perhaps I wouldn’t be so jumpy, but there is no helping it. The impending trip home is happening. As the seconds tick by, I imagine an invisible tether looped around my neck, dragging me inch by inch back to the place I’d prefer to see swallowed up by the earth, dragging me back to him, back to the summer everything changed.
“Happy birthday to you,” the group of staff members filing in behind her begin singing and I smile and nod. I pretend to be delighted with their impromptu birthday party when really I’d be far more delighted if they were combing the web for all things campaign intelligence related while simultaneously checking in with our extended team. Senator Watson is said to be battling back against an accusation of drug addiction levied by his college sweetheart, and if there is any truth to it, I want the details… like yesterday. “And many more,” they chorus, then break into applause.
“Thank you all very much,” I give a saccharine grin and blow out the cartoonish candles—gaudy fluorescent pink numbers, two and eight. They snuff out and within an instant they fizzle back to life. I laugh tightly, glance around at my grinning team. They collectively cackle and whoop at the prank candles. I scowl at the wax dribbling down and with a stiff smile puff them out yet again. They spring back to life and I grumble, snatching the offending numbers from the top of the cake. I promptly plunk them down into the glass of sparkling water on my desk. Everyone laughs at the gesture, amused by the afternoon theatre taking place in my office. They chatter, and smile, and nod, and begin passing plates amongst themselves while pouring coffee into paper cups from an insulated carafe. Fabulous. My office is now a staff lounge.
“Please, allow me,” I chirp, snagging the serving spatula that doubles as a knife with a sharpened edge on one side. I slice like a fanatic and plop large portions of chocolate cake on everyone’s paper plate, eager to boot them all from my office so I can dive back into work and pretend I don’t have a flight to catch in three hours.
“I know it’s not your birthday today, but I figured since you’ll be gone for it…” Bethany smiles and shrugs sheepishly. She’s clueless, but sweet, really. In another life—perhaps the one I had pictured for myself as a teenager, I would be the type of woman that accepts her offer of friendship. It’s a pity I’m the me I am, and that she works for a bitch like myself. In another life, under different circumstances, I think she and I could have been great friends. She’s one of those perpetually bubbly, outgoing types. She’s pleasant to be around, even with her tendency to sing like a bird when questioned about nearly any topic.
“Thank you Bethany,” I say conjuring as much sincerity as I can manage. “I appreciate it.” She bobs her head, grinning while I fight the urge to click my ring fingernail back and forth against my thumbnail.
As it turned out, flying first class was a luxury lost on me and my wallet considering no amoun
t of VIP boarding, supple leather seating, and complimentary beverages could have made me relax during my flight from DC to good old Louisiana.
More booze may help, Practicality chimes in as I stand in front of the counter at the car rental desk. Bethany said she rented a midsize sedan on my behalf, but according to the attendant they only have a green hatchback four-cylinder economy car that I fear runs on dashed hopes and dreams booked under my name.
Great. I’ll be rolling around Palmetto Grove in something that resembles a pregnant roller skate in the shade ‘Sinus Infection’.
“It’s a stick shift,” the attendant lifts one over plucked brow in warning. I note her flimsy plastic badge hanging from a lanyard around her neck, displaying her name.
“Of course it is, Patty,” I reply dryly with a stiff smile.
“That gonna be okay, hon?” she asks, surveying me as though she can physically see whether I know how to drive a car with a manual transmission. I haven’t driven a stick shift since I was a teen hopelessly in love and cruising all over town in a cherry red mustang which was the other love of my life back then, second only to him. It’s been a while, but that’s the thing about stuff like this. It’s muscle memory, and picking up where you left off is just a matter of jumping in and doing it.
“I’ll manage,” I declare. “Any other surprises?” I ask with a return lift of my brow. The attendant chuckles, her belly jolting repeatedly as a result.