Rogue Acts

by Ainsley Booth

  “I have to make a statement saying I disagree with your actions. That there’s no place in my campaign for violence.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jay. I have to denounce you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s all you’re going to say?”

  He swallowed. Shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “This isn’t funny, Jay,” she snapped, and he had to look away. She was getting angry, and she was so fucking beautiful when she was angry. Lit up on the inside.

  “I’m not laughing. Of course you have to fire me. I’m not sure what else there is to say.”

  “Jay,” she sighed. “Why? Why did you hit him?”

  “I think the question is, why didn’t I hit him five months ago, after the comment he made about how if you’d had children you wouldn’t be trying to do a man’s job.”

  “That was a stupid comment, but it worked in our favor, remember? Our numbers with women skyrocketed. You were thrilled when he said that.”

  He had been. He’d been thrilled. Thrilled that someone had said something so backward he could use it. Jesus. He was part of the problem, too.

  “Because I couldn’t….” He shook his head. The anger he swallowed on a regular basis was not going down so easy tonight. “Because the guy should be punched. Because he should have been punched a long time ago. Probably in fifth grade. Jesus, I wish I knew that shit in fifth grade.”

  “But we’ve been over this. Our strategy—”

  Jay swiveled on his stool again, his knees touching her thigh, and because he was getting drunk, and he was getting fired, and he was actually burning up with this constant goddamn fever for her, he didn’t shift away.

  He left his knees there, against her thigh.

  And she didn’t shift away, and he felt like a college freshman again, wondering if she was doing it on purpose. If she even noticed he was touching her. If she was letting him touch her because she wanted to touch him, too.

  He used to make himself crazy thinking this nonsense.

  “The shit that man says about you, that he says about women everywhere, that he says about immigrants and refugees and African-Americans and Mexicans, those code words and dog whistles, those barely veiled threats. The misogyny and the racism and the fucking white elitist bullshit…I couldn’t take it. Not one second more.”

  “We effect more change in positions of power, you know that.”

  “A punch in the face effects change, too.”

  “Short-term—”

  “I don’t know. I think I busted his nose.”

  “Jay—”

  “There’s a war out there, Maggie,” Jay said. “A war on women—”

  He stopped himself, because he didn’t want to be the asshole who explained what was happening to women to a woman on the front lines of it.

  “Sorry,” he breathed.

  “I know.”

  He let out a breath. “I don’t know how it happened,” Jay said. “How those guys got equal airtime. They got a platform, and we all had to debate their point of view like it has merit. Maybe if some of the good guys punched more bad guys we wouldn’t be here.”

  “That’s a simple point of view, Jay.”

  “I’m a simple man, Maggie.”

  Jay smiled at her, and it took a second—because she was pissed and she had every right to be—but finally she smiled back, and she was no longer his boss. No longer the candidate.

  She was Maggie.

  “It was glorious,” she said, and Jay laughed. “I mean, I thought Wolf Blitzer was going to swallow his tongue.”

  “Serves him right, having those assholes on his roundtable.”

  “We should have pulled you off the pundit circuit a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, probably. Has Katie made a statement?”

  Maggie nodded. “I’m going on the morning shows to talk about it.”

  “Well, feel free to use my line about how more good guys should punch more bad guys.”

  “I will not be using that line.”

  “Right. Use the one about how you don’t condone violence. I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I lost my shit and now you have to deal with it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her hand covering his. He looked at their hands and tried, with a skill carefully honed over all these years, to not feel her touch. Maggie was a toucher. A hugger. She sometimes held his hand as they talked.

  Voters loved it. Staffers loved it. Everyone loved it.

  He felt like he was dying every time she did it.

  And now, his defenses were scrambled. Ruined. And he felt her touch all over his body.

  “I have been careless with you,” she said. He barely managed not to flinch.

  “It’s not your fault,” Jay said and pulled his hand away, wrapping his fingers around the beer bottle. “I was always the best choice for those shit shows, until I wasn’t. We all know it.”

  “Daphne polled,” she said.

  He closed his eyes. This is what he was really scared of. He could handle losing his job. The inevitable lawsuit Bishop would cook up. Even a little jail time. He could handle all that.

  Hurting her campaign would break his heart, though. She was ahead in the polls, but 2016 had wreaked havoc with everyone’s confidence in the polls.

  “The people who don’t like me,” she said, “really don’t like me now.”

  “Maggie,” he sighed. “I’m so sorry. I am—”

  “The people who like me, they like me a lot more. And the undecideds…they’re leaning my way.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Not kidding.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  Their eyes caught and he couldn’t look away. Her mascara still clung to the tips of her eyelashes, making her blue eyes bluer.

  “Ben would have loved that,” she whispered.

  A complicated sorrow lanced him, tore right through him. Sorrow because he missed Ben. And because she missed Ben, and any pain of hers was a pain of his.

  But the fact that she missed Ben hurt him as a man, too.

  Not that there was any competition. He couldn’t win against Ben when the man was alive. But dead? Forget it.

  Maybe, he thought, this would be for the best. Maybe he could finally move on.

  He wasn’t a man who went looking for a bright side, but this seemed true.

  He’d dated over the years. He’d even been engaged. But Sophie had eventually caught on to the fact that, even though he tried, he could never love her like she deserved, and she’d broken everything off.

  “Yeah,” Jay said. “He would have.”

  But that was also complicated—if Ben were still alive, Maggie wouldn’t be running. Ben would be running, he’d probably already have been governor and would be looking toward the White House.

  If Ben were alive, none of this…none of this would be happening.

  Fuck cancer.

  “Bishop is going to come at you with a lawsuit.”

  “Too bad every person I know is a lawyer.”

  Maggie smiled. “Yes. Too bad.”

  “You can have Toby replace me. He’s ready—”

  “There’s no replacing you.”

  “Of course there is. And Toby—”

  “We’ll hire you as a consultant, and you can go on vacation for a week, and when you come back—”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head, because he wasn’t sure if he had the strength to say it again. He’d never said no to Maggie. Not once. Well, as her campaign manager, he said no plenty. But as a friend, a man…never.

  “Jay,” she said. “Look at me.”

  And because he didn’t say no to her, ever, he couldn’t do this and look at her at the same time. “I think…I think it’s time I left. This is a good out.”

  “A good out?”

  “An excellent exit.”

  “This isn’t funny. I don’t know why you insist on making jokes when things a
ren’t funny.”

  “I don’t know why you insist on not laughing at them.”

  “Jay, why do you want to leave?” she asked, and he could hear the rising tide of fear in her voice. Of worry. He was silent because he didn’t know what to say. Because the truth was unspeakable. And he didn’t want to lie to her. He lived a lie as her friend. He couldn’t tell her lies, too.

  “Is it something I’ve done?” she asked in a careful, quiet voice.

  He laughed, though nothing was funny.

  “Then what?” she demanded, and he sipped his beer. “You know I hate it when you’re like this, Jay. When you go all silent and still. I know you better than I know anyone on this planet, but when you do this, when you lock yourself away like this, I don’t know what you’re thinking. I don’t know who you are!”

  I’m Jay Schulman, the man who has loved you his whole life. And I am silent because what I want to say will ruin everything.

  He tried to think of some lie. Something that wouldn’t hurt and at the same time wouldn’t make her ask any more questions. Though…that was next to impossible.

  Maggie always had questions.

  “I just can’t do this anymore.”

  “Do what? Politics? The campaign? You need a break?”

  “You,” he whispered, the word leaving his body like a gasp. “I can’t be around you anymore.”

  He felt her sit back. He felt the pull of air she dragged in, taking all the oxygen in the room with her.

  There, he thought, for better or worse, it was out there. He’d said it.

  “Lloyd,” he yelled. “We need another round.”

  3

  Maggie didn’t suffer crises of confidence. If anything, she probably had too much of it. It took a certain kind and a certain amount of ego to run for office. To think that she and her team of friends and colleagues could solve problems for millions of people.

  She had that kind of ego. She always had.

  But Jay saying he couldn’t be around her anymore crumpled her like a tissue.

  “What…what do you mean?” she asked, feeling breathless and stupid. Like the girl she’d been.

  Jay hammered back his shot. The man was getting drunk. Jay was a good drunk. Sweet. A little baffled. Argumentative, but he never went for blood the way he did when he was sober. It was like all his sharp edges were rounded and he was…touchable.

  Knowable.

  Sober and working he could seem like a too-bright star. Something she had to look at sideways or stand back from.

  He was brilliant, there was no doubt about it. But he ran hot.

  He always had.

  Right now he was so hot the air was difficult to breathe.

  “What do you think I mean?” he asked, looking at her with his green eyes. He needed a haircut. He looked like a wild man right now. Though, personally, she liked him like this. There’d been times in the last month she’d barely stopped herself from rubbing her hands along that beard of his. He was a man who’d gotten better looking as he aged. Like time had honed him to his most elemental self.

  She was constantly battling the effects of time.

  Of course Jay would have them working in his favor.

  How incredibly like Jay that was.

  “Jay,” she snapped, her fingers pressed to her stomach, because that’s what she did now instead of biting her thumbnail when she was upset. “Stop talking in code.”

  He turned again, and…there…yes. His knee pressed against her thigh, and she felt the heat of him through her suit. Through his suit.

  She breathed carefully, trying not to reveal how disconcerting his touch was.

  How…exciting.

  Friends, she thought. You are friends and you are only imagining this...heat.

  This feeling was familiar. The first semester of college. The Ethics and Policy class when she’d been holding out hope that Jay, with all his bright hotness, all his fierce intellect and wild eyes, would look her way.

  He never did.

  But now he was. He was looking at her like he needed something from her, and she had no idea what it could be.

  Well, she had an idea…and if it had been any other man, she might have been bold enough to say something. Do something. But this was Jay, and the stakes were far too high.

  And if he didn’t want her when they were in college, what could possibly have changed his mind?

  “Do you really not know?” he asked. “All these years and you have no idea?”

  Maggie blinked. “I have no idea.”

  His lips pursed, and his expression folded into one of disappointment and exasperation—she’d seen that look a lot over the years. He was hard on staffers. But it was so rarely directed her way.

  She glanced down at her hands. Not because she was chagrined but because when he pursed his lips like that, well…he had nice lips. Beautiful lips, really. She’d once heard Belinda, her assistant since the dawn of time, saying they were sexy. That Jay had sexy lips.

  That’s exactly what they were. Framed by his beard…she’d spent far too much time thinking about his lips. His beard.

  What is wrong with me?

  He opened his mouth and she held her breath. For what, she wasn’t sure. For something…anything.

  All these years, and you have no idea.

  “Lloyd!” he yelled. “Put this on my tab.”

  And then he stood up and walked out of the bar.

  “Jay!” she yelled, following him out into the night. It was a warm October, but the nights were getting cold, and the evening air bit right through her suit jacket.

  Jay was half a block ahead of her, looking around the street.

  “Jay! Wait!” She heard her security trotting up behind her, keeping their distance, but always there.

  “What are you doing?” she asked when she caught up to him.

  “Looking for another bar.”

  “You just left one.”

  “A bar where my boss won’t follow me. My…ex-boss. Where’s a strip club when you need it?”

  “Are you trying to hurt me?” It sounded so plain when she said it, much more plain than she’d hoped.

  He stopped, the neon of the city lighting him up in blues and reds. Crowds of people walked by, none of them looking up. She and Jay were just one more New York City drama.

  Jay stepped closer. And then closer again. The lights were in his beard. His hair. His eyes. He was so…exciting.

  “The last thing I want is to hurt you,” he said. “For as long as I’ve known you, I have done everything in my power to make sure you’re not hurt. To stop you from feeling any kind of pain. If I could have kept Ben from dying, I would have done it. I would have taken his place just so you wouldn’t have had to feel the pain of mourning.”

  “Jay—”

  “You think I’m joking or exaggerating, but I’m not. And it has hurt me,” he breathed, and then smiled like saying that felt good. Was a relief.

  “How?” she asked. Demanded. The implication that she was hurting him didn’t sit well with her, even if the hurt was unintentional. He was her best friend. There was no one she cared for more. “How have I hurt you?”

  “Because I love you.” The silence after his words was deep. Complete. It was an all-encompassing silence.

  Because I love you? Did he say that? Did I imagine that? Is this really happening?

  She glanced around, looking for clowns or the sudden appearance of her third grade teacher, anything that would indicate this was, in fact, a dream.

  And then he laughed. He tilted back his head and howled up to the night sky.

  Maggie tried not to flinch.

  “Oh my God, it feels so good to say it. I love you. I have loved you since freshman orientation. I have loved you since Ethics and Policy. I have loved you every damn day of my life in your company.”

  He laughed like it was all a good joke.

  “And I fucking want you, Maggie.” He curled his hands into fists in front of him like h
e was clutching something and shaking it. Maggie’s stomach bottomed out. Her heart climbed into her throat. She couldn’t think. She could only feel. And she felt so much. His words like fingers brushing over her skin, when her skin hadn’t been touched in so long. “I am fucking dying for wanting you. That’s why I’m quitting. Because I can’t be around you and not…touch you. Not for one more day.”

  “Hey,” A stranger stopped, pulled from his own thoughts by Jay’s wild laughing. “Aren’t you that guy who punched out Bill Bishop on CNN?” He lifted the phone he carried in his hand. “Can I get a picture?”

  “No,” Jay said, reckless and rude. Which was the privilege of being a private citizen, and Jay was not. She certainly was not.

  “No?” the guy asked.

  “You don’t understand the word?”

  Oh, no.

  “You don’t have to be a dick about it—”

  “I’ll take a photo with you,” Maggie said over the man. Jay was unraveling faster than she could pick up his pieces. She hadn’t seen him like this…ever. Not even when Ben died and they both fell apart so hard.

  “Holy shit, Maggie Perkins.” The guy with the phone turned the camera on her, and she smiled for the picture. A small crowd started forming, and she was shaking hands and taking pictures, all while keeping one eye on Jay, who went back to looking for a bar.

  “You have my vote,” a woman said, and Maggie thanked her.

  “Mine too,” said the man the woman was with.

  She caught Rick’s eye, and he came up behind her, escorting her through the crowd to the black limo sitting at the curb.

  She paused at the door.

  “Ma’am?” Rick asked.

  “Get Jay.”

  And then she slipped into the backseat of her car.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Jay fell into the backseat beside her, huffing like a kid sent to the principal’s office. Rolling his eyes, he slammed the door shut behind him.

  Her body felt electric at his nearness. It was familiar this wildness. But she’d been pretending not to feel it for so long. Because she was his boss. Because they were friends.