by K. A. Linde
He began to rummage through the drawers as I dropped my bag onto the couch. He triumphantly pulled out a corkscrew.
“Aha! I knew I hadn’t packed them both,” he said.
“Why are you all packed up anyway? Does your lease end soon?”
He hadn’t mentioned it, but I figured it must be up soon. Maybe by the end of the summer. Since he said he’d been here about a year.
“Oh, no.” He took the bottle from me and began to open it. “Well, yes. It is soon. Going to have to figure out what I’m going to do about that. But…I actually packed up all of Claire’s stuff.” He gestured off to the boxes after he pulled the cork out. “It was everywhere. And I was tired of looking at it. So, I did it after Court’s event. Hence…” He gestured around again.
My heart fluttered. He’d packed all of Claire’s stuff up. He hadn’t told me that before. I’d tried to tell myself that I wasn’t worried. But in some way, this felt more real than anything else he could have done. He’d said he had things to figure out…and then he’d actually figured them out. Here was the proof.
“I like it,” I told him.
“You’re just saying that.” He pulled two wineglasses out of a cabinet and poured us each a glass. “It’s nothing compared to what you’re used to.”
“That doesn’t mean that I don’t like it.”
“True,” he conceded. “It has charm.”
A buzzer sounded from the oven, and he hustled back over. He pulled out garlic bread wrapped in aluminum foil. He set it down on the stove and then began to stir something in a giant pot that smelled amazing.
“Need any help?” I asked.
“Uh, nope. You can take a seat, and I’ll dish us up some spaghetti.”
“All right.” I took my wine to the small table pressed against a wall just big enough for two.
A few minutes later, Sam brought two plates over full of spaghetti with a red sauce and garlic bread. My mouth watered at the sight.
“This smells amazing.”
“Thanks. It’s my mom’s recipe. She seemed surprised that I was making it in the city. I don’t remember the last time I had time to cook. Or more specifically, had the energy to cook.”
I laughed as I twirled my fork in the pasta. “I feel you. I’m glad that you did it for me.”
His smile was magnetic. “Me too.”
“So, now that we’re getting three days off…”
“Tentatively.”
I rolled my eyes. “Leslie will give them to us regardless if we hit the goal. She just wants this to be the big last push before the voter registration window closes. She’ll want us to be fresh for the last month before the primary. She’ll seem magnanimous. Or at least, it’s what I’d do.”
“True. It makes sense. Why is Shawn running her campaign and not you anyway?”
My cheeks flushed. “Shawn is more qualified.”
“Bullshit. He’s a head case.”
“A genius strategist and head case.”
“Maybe,” Sam said. “But you have the heart.”
“I mean, I’d love to,” I told him. “Honestly, ever since I got on this campaign and realized how much I love it, I’ve wanted to be a campaign manager.”
“You would be already if you went with a candidate for a lower office. A state senator or local mayoral race.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I could. But how could I pass up the opportunity for the mayor of New York City? Even at a lower office? What I’d love to do is eventually be a campaign manager for the presidential race.”
“That’s big time,” he said. “Even more work.”
“I know.”
“You’d be great at it,” he said with a smile.
“Yeah?”
“Absolutely. I already think you should replace Shawn.”
I laughed and waved my piece of garlic bread at him. “You’re a bit biased.”
“Just a bit.”
“Well, it’s only a dream anyway.”
“It’s not a dream,” he said. “It’s a goal. One you’re already working toward and going to achieve.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re the most determined and hardworking person I know. How could you not achieve it? The work is worth it.”
A smile tipped my lips. “Sometimes, I think you know me even better than I know myself.”
“No, I think you know yourself. I just remind you that you’re a badass who is going to take over the world.” He took my hand across the table. “Everything else you hear or think is the world saying that you can’t do this. You’re not good enough. That a guy like Shawn should be in your place. That you didn’t earn your spot. That’s bullshit. You’re here where you are because you deserve to be. You’ve already shown me that time and time again.”
I flushed this time at his words. The words he had no idea how much it meant to hear. I’d been given everything in my life, except this. This was the one thing I’d worked at. The one thing I wouldn’t stop for. Not for anyone or anything.
“Thank you. Sometimes, you need to hear that.”
He winked at me. “Anytime.”
“So, speaking of those three days off,” I said after I finished my next bite, “how do you feel about going to the Hamptons?”
“The Hamptons? Really?”
“Well, Court is doing some kind of photo-op thing with English, and she wants us to all go. I think he’s giving her a hard time.”
“Hmm. I wanted to go home to see my parents, but I wasn’t sure how I’d even make that work since it’s hardly enough time to fly. Let alone drive.”
“Oh, I didn’t even think about that. You know…I could get you a ticket…if you wanted to go home.”
“No way. I can buy my own ticket if I have to.” He started laughing and shook his head. “I mean…I did hustle the guys out of about thirty thousand dollars at poker.”
“What?” I sputtered.
“They invited me to play. They didn’t ask if I was any good.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Yeah,” he said with another laugh. “They insisted I keep the money too. Said that they didn’t play for fake stakes.”
“Sounds like them.”
“Anyway, it’s obviously not about the money. It’s more about the time.”
“Right. I get that.”
“I think I’d rather go to the Hamptons with you.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodded with a glimmer in his dark eyes. “How can I say no to a weekend alone with you in a dream locale?”
I bit my lip, thinking of all the trouble we could get into. “You can’t.”
“Exactly.”
25
Lark
“Have you heard how many we’re at?” Sam asked again.
“My phone has been going off nonstop,” I said, pulling it out of my back pocket. “Reports of how many voter registrations people have at each event around the city and then field updates on totals. Looks like we’re close. Maybe a few hundred from our goal.”
“Not bad.”
It wasn’t.
On any normal day, asking for more several thousand voter registrations would be insane. But with so many people out for the Fourth of July and all the festivities around the city, making them easily accessible, it might actually happen.
It was crazy that we were even out here.
“Boots on the ground,” as Shawn had said.
This was the kind of work Sam and I had done on the campaign in Madison. Field work was the most tiring and also the most rewarding. Contact with voters made them five times as likely to vote. Any contact. Everyone hated getting phone calls and having their doors knocked on, but every time you had that interaction, it increased the likelihood of voting. And considering voter turnout generally sucked, getting as many people out there to talk to voters helped.
Which was why Sam and I were in Mayor Kensington T-shirts in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, walking around and trying to get as many peo
ple registered to vote as possible.
“All of this would be a lot easier if they lowered the cost of voting,” Sam grumbled.
“I know,” I said with a shrug. “It’s costly for so many people to vote. You have to find the time, a way to get the poll, sometimes drive long distances to get to a polling place, maybe take off work, not to mention if you’re a single parent you have to arrange childcare or bring them to the polls, wait in long lines, and that’s all bare minimum on the day of. Voting is a right, but a lot of times it feels like a privilege.”
“Preaching to the choir.”
“And anyway, registration is the biggest impediment to getting people to the polls. Especially in New York where you have to be registered twenty-five days before election day. For a presidential election, where there’s so much media attention, it might make sense. People have it on the brain to register early. But for local elections…primaries, it really hurts us.”
“It’s worse other places.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Everyone is so worried about voter fraud even though it rarely happens. What they should be worried about is how few people actually register and even fewer vote. A lot of elections would look differently if we managed to mobilize the entire population.”
“Your real passion—participation.”
I winked at him and then pointed toward a large group up ahead. “Participating in the government is the hill that I die on,” I confirmed. “I was the asshole who didn’t give a shit about participating. I thought that I had everything. That it wouldn’t matter what happened. I was young and stupid. Politics are personal. Politics are everything that you do in your life. It’s your roads and your health and your children and your air and water. It’s not just the controversial stuff that makes the news.”
“I’m with you,” Sam said. “Once you get bit by the campaign bug, it never goes away. I worked for Senator Maxwell back in North Carolina.”
“Wait, the hot one?” I asked.
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, the hot one.”
“The one who, like, banged an undergrad?”
“I was an undergrad when all that went down at UNC. It was blown way out of proportion. He’s a great guy.” I eagerly looked at him for details, and he just shook his head. “Anyway, we worked with so many small races where the margin of victory was literally less than a hundred votes. So few people were voting that just asking your friends to come with you could have changed the tide of the election.”
“Right! I mean, it’s not exactly the same for the mayoral race here. But I think voting is the least you can do. Calling your representatives, going to a phone bank, knocking on a few doors—it all doesn’t take that long.”
“Or you can be like your parents and just give money.”
I snorted. “Or that.”
“We need the money,” he said with a shrug.
“Yeah. Have to pay everyone.”
“Buy the fancy ad spots.”
I wrinkled my nose at him and smacked him with my clipboard. “It’s the people that make the campaign.”
“The people and the community.”
“Again, preaching to the choir,” I said as we finally came up on the ground. “You or me?”
He shrugged. “I got the last one.”
“All right.”
I took a deep breath and approached the group with my biggest, most genuine smile. “Hi there! We’re out today, doing voter registration and celebrating the Fourth with a little civic duty of our own. Are all of you registered?”
One woman smiled and nodded. “Yep, we are.”
“Great!” I said enthusiastically. “I hope that you’ll all be out to the primary on August 6th to vote in the mayoral race.”
“Wait, Mom, I don’t think I’m registered,” a college-aged girl said.
“We can do it later.”
“Actually, the deadline is next weekend. And it’s super easy. Only takes about five minutes of your time. We send it for you and everything.”
The girl nodded. “I’ll do it.”
I handed over the clipboard, and then, like clockwork, a half-dozen other people remembered that they’d moved or that they weren’t registered at the right address. Sam and I passed out clipboards and pens and let them fill out the information.
The mom who had first spoken just looked at our shirts and lifted her nose. “I don’t even know why you support her. She acts like she’s tough on crime, but then her son is such a mess.”
“But he’s hot, Mom,” the girl currently filling out the form said with a giggle.
The mom just glared at me as if I were the reason for all of this. But I was prepared. It wasn’t my first rodeo.
“I support Mayor Kensington because of the amazing work she’s done with wage disparity for women. I’m proud to work for her campaign and say that I make a dollar for every dollar a man makes there. It’s competitive, but no one is making less just because we’re women and we’ve been taught not to ask for more,” I told her with a smile. “And she’s working on doing that everywhere. I can get behind that.”
Her scowl vanished into something almost thoughtful. “I suppose that makes sense. At least you have a reason.”
I smiled. I wasn’t here to change minds. But personal stories were always more effective than yelling about political topics that literally no one could debate civilly. I had no intention of getting into a shouting match. I just wanted people to make informed decisions and vote how they felt best.
We finished up with that group, collecting the seven additional voter registrations, and then walked away.
“I lost count of how many people have bought up Court,” I said with a sigh. “I hope what English is doing is helping.”
“It’ll take time. Especially with both Reyes and Quinn harping on it.”
I nodded and pushed my shoulders back. “All right, let’s get back to work.”
We spent the next several hours walking the park. It was a beautiful, sunny day in the city. And as we got closer to the start of the fireworks on the East River, our numbers swelled.
Sam and I made it back to the mayor’s tent in the park and handed over our stack of voter registrations. One of the field workers took it from us with wide eyes.
“This is just from the two of you?” she asked.
“Yep,” I said.
“Wow. Can we send you back out? You got more than my last group of volunteers. And there were ten of them.”
Sam chuckled. “Old habits die hard.”
“Yeah, we’re staff. We’ve done this before.”
“Oh wow! That’s awesome. You guys rocked it.”
“We’d go back out, but I think final tallies should be happening soon.”
The girl pointed to the voter registration. “We’re working through them now.”
“Excellent. Keep up the good work.” I gestured for Sam to follow me.
“You don’t think we should help?”
“I might have a surprise after the conference call.”
“A surprise, huh?”
I nodded. “I think we’ve earned it. The two of us did more VR than ten volunteers.”
He grinned at me, and my heart melted. “All right, you’ve convinced me.”
Once we were out of sight of the tent, I took Sam’s hand in mine and directed him out of the park. We walked companionably through the busy streets of Brooklyn and to the marinas on the East River.
Sam stopped when we approached the docks. “What are you doing?”
I couldn’t contain my excitement. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
I pulled him toward a medium-sized yacht on the dock. My friends Lewis and Rowe were already on board along with Rowe’s boyfriend, Nicholas, and Lewis’s girlfriend, Addie. A dozen other people were already on the yacht, awaiting the time when the Coast Guard would allow vessels into the water for the fireworks.
“Are you serious?” Sam asked with wide eyes.
“Yeah. Lewis invited me, but I didn’
t plan on joining him. But…I thought you’d like to see the fireworks from the water.”
He turned his attention to me completely. “You’re amazing. You know that?”
“I mean, we’re hitching a ride.”
But he didn’t let me finish downplaying what I’d done. He placed his hands on either side of my face and crushed our lips together. I stood, momentarily frozen by his enthusiasm. I hadn’t thought it was that big of deal, but I’d never really shared this part of myself with him before. I’d spent so much time hiding Larkin St. Vincent, trying to be someone else, that he never saw all of me. And now that he had…he wasn’t pulling away. In fact, he seemed to be even more all in.
Whistles came from the boat, and we pulled away with laughs and blushes.
“Okay, okay,” I said to Lewis and Addie on the boat.
I grabbed Sam’s hand and pulled him on board. I made introductions to the people he’d heard so much about all those years ago. It was still strange to have my crew so disconnected, but with Penn still in Paris and Katherine already in the Hamptons, it was impossible. Not to mention, things were still…rough after Natalie’s party earlier this summer.
Almost as soon as we boarded, the yacht began to move out into the East River, and the party really started. I motioned for Sam to follow me to the front of the boat to watch us pull away.
“You have such a crazy life,” he admitted.
“No, it’s pretty boring ninety-five percent of the time.”
“But that five percent is pretty spectacular.”
I gazed out across the river and smiled. “I guess it is.”
Sam pulled out his phone and called into the conference call for the mayor, putting us on mute to block out background noise.
And then Shawn’s voice crackled through the line. “Hey, folks. This is Shawn Trotter here, campaign manager for Mayor Kensington. I’m pleased that we have so many people on the line tonight. The most we’ve ever had for the Kensington campaign. We’ve done some amazing work today. And I don’t want to keep you all too long since the fireworks should be going off soon, but we have a special guest tonight—Mayor Kensington.”
There was a short pause, and then Leslie joined him. Sam and I shot surprised glances at each other. We’d had a lot of conference calls, but the mayor was so busy that she rarely was able to get on.