She watched his chest rise and fall. Under her ear, his heart rate was slowing. He’d be asleep soon if she didn’t keep talking. Though probably not for very long, not with what was happening. They were creatures of news and stress, both of them. Sex had only briefly blunted that.
“Do you want to sleep, or would it help to check the headlines?” Reading the news never helped anymore, but the itching of needing to know, of wanting to feel like you could control it if you just knew…well, she was certain they both felt it.
He regretfully squeezed her shoulders. “Yeah.”
She knew that was yes to her latter question. They both found their phones and sat in bed, flipping through their feeds and cursing. He pointed to a story at Poindexter, which she knew was his favorite blog.
“It’s too bad we can’t just fix this. Track down the cabinet and convince them to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment.”
It was the kind of conversation they had a lot: hypotheticals about government and law. It was just odd to do it naked with the impressions of him still on her skin, still deep in her. “I’m not convinced the Twenty-fifth Amendment would work. It’s pretty clear the amendment’s authors didn’t imagine a scenario with a living, competent president.”
He had put on his glasses, and he glanced at her over the top of his frames, looking sexier than was fair. “You think the president is competent?”
“Legally? Yes.”
“If we’re a few hours from a nuclear war because of his hot air, I can’t imagine a better situation in which to use the amendment. I mean, theoretically. They aren’t going to invoke the amendment.”
He was probably right, but she kept spinning through it in her head. “Since the president would dispute that he’s incompetent, there would be a hearing in Congress. It would need to pass by a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate, and it would probably also set off the mother of all lawsuits.”
“I guess better that than the mother of all wars.”
There it was again: that doubled feeling. They’d done this, but only as friends. Now they were lovers, and they had to relearn everything.
At least jokes were the same no matter what. “Well, I know where a member of the cabinet lives. Do you ever watch that historical houses of Washington show, Old Foundations? It comes on C-SPAN Saturday mornings, after the one about books but before that one where they read you the newspaper.”
“Um, no. How dare you assume I’m a nerd.”
She pinched him. “Madge O’Leary, the secretary of labor, was on a few weeks ago. Her house is in Georgetown. I think I know exactly where. And she’s always seemed reasonable to me. She cannot possibly be cool with what’s happening. Maybe she’s your wedge, the one who could get the ball rolling on the Twenty-fifth Amendment process and remove the president from office.”
“We should go to DC and ask her to save the world.” He wasn’t laughing, but his expression was amused. No, it was deeper, more intimate than that.
And the dizzy feeling was back. She was completely elated or claustrophobic, but either way, she couldn’t breathe. She was here, in her bedroom, in nothing but her skin, staring into Graham’s face, and there wasn’t enough air. She needed to move and think and laugh and sort out what was true.
All she could think was they’d just fucking found this. They’d only within the last twenty minutes made it real. She had to process it. She wiped her eyes and looked at her phone, which was buzzing like mad because the president was destabilizing the world.
One malignant narcissist with too much ego and too little knowledge, and he might stumble too far into something that couldn’t be undone. Not just for her, not just for them, but for everything and everyone on earth.
No. They didn’t have to accept this. They could get some air, she could figure out what this meant, and maybe they could save the world.
“Let’s do it,” she said, climbing out of bed.
“Oh, yeah, sure.”
“I’m serious. Put your clothes on.”
CHAPTER 3
C adence was naked, mussed, and gorgeous. He’d kissed her. He’d made love to her. Even by the standards of today, that was wild enough without adding…whatever she was talking about.
But she wasn’t paying any attention to him; she was too busy separating their tangled clothes. “It’s probably, what, a two-hour drive to Georgetown? There shouldn’t be any traffic. Did you walk here?”
“Um, yes.”
“We can take my car, then. It’ll be a mini road trip. Ooh, we should stop for snacks, and I need to fill up anyhow. Do you want to drive the first shift? Wait, how much have you had to drink?”
He couldn’t follow her words at all. They’d been cuddling and then kidding about the end of the world—which was normal for new lovers, surely. At least tonight. She hadn’t been joking?
She was still watching him, so he answered her final question. “A few beers with dinner.” He’d been trying to calm his nerves. It hadn’t worked.
“I’ll drive then.”
“What are you talking about?”
She shimmied into her panties, and then she set her hands on her hips. “We’re going to stop the president.”
He could barely keep his mind around her when she was covered up; there was no way when she wasn’t. “My brain is fuzzy. Can we rewind?”
She handed him his stuff. “Clothing, Graham. Put it on. We’re already going to be arrested for trespassing and fomenting a coup. There’s no need to add indecent exposure.”
“Right. Well, that should be easy. And then we’ll fix Social Security.”
“Priorities. End the threat of war today, address the social safety net tomorrow.”
That was illogical, he was almost certain, but he flopped down and waited for The Cadence Show to be over. He’d spent a year picturing her naked, it would be a shame to miss a single instant of it.
Sadly, she wasn’t thinking about entertaining him. He could tell her mind was far away. She put on her pants and then dug through a drawer and added a lacy bra the color of a robin’s egg to her ensemble. Only when she was clothed and fixing her hair did he get up.
But when he did, she stopped and watched. She seemed as intent on him as he had been on her. Their mirrored desire made his head balloon-light.
“We aren’t really doing this.” He was ninety percent certain they weren’t.
“Of course we are. I’m always serious.”
But she wasn’t. She was always teasing him, making some witty remark, and thinking circles around everyone else. This had to be another joke. She knew he was tense; she was trying to help. He could think of some ways they could stay naked and occupied, but she was grabbing her phone and digging a sweater out of her closet.
His incredulity must have shown on his face, because she said, “What? It might get cold.”
But he hadn’t been thinking about the weather.
They went downstairs—he was going to have good memories of that stairwell, at least if there was a future—and she located her purse, led him outside, and locked the front door.
“I’ve heard that pub has good burgers.” He pointed to a place down a few blocks. “Should we try it?” He’d only picked at the Thai food he’d ordered earlier.
“No, I’ve got something else in mind.” She unlocked the passenger door of her Honda, and then she walked around and climbed in.
“Okay, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but you’re taking this pretty far. I bet the crowd is thinning out at Vagabond—”
She twisted something on the steering column and washer fluid foamed over the windshield. Rivers of yellow pollen poured down and were whisked away by her wipers. “When will the tree jizz scourge be over?”
He laughed. “Pardon?”
She pulled out of her spot and drove not toward a restaurant or bar, but north, toward 95. “The tree jizz. That oak tree on the corner must have dumped forty gallons of it last year. I can’t remember when the deluge ended.
”
“I’ve never heard allergy season described so…colorfully.”
“It’s because you spend too much time with delicate southern belles.”
“Most of them can swear a blue streak.”
“Is that so?” Her words were sticky sweet and incredulous as heck. She didn’t believe him—and she was jealous.
“Cadence.” He brushed her shoulder. “You have to know I was serious when I said I care about you.” That hadn’t actually been what he’d said, but this moment was different and he felt foolish repeating the L-word. But she needed to know he hadn’t looked at another woman since before he’d met her. She’d completely dominated his thoughts and interest.
She gave him a sideways look, sporting a cat’s grin. “I’m still waiting for a ruling on that.”
“From?”
“The board.”
He should explain, cajole, convince her that he’d meant it—because he did. But her questions inside about why he’d waited so long…well, she hadn’t seemed satisfied with his answers. He’d had good reasons for not saying anything sooner and for turning her down, and she hadn’t been able to deny that she didn’t intend to stay in Richmond. Even now, if the world didn’t end, this was temporary. He’d have to live off the memory that it had happened at all.
Knowing that their conversation would twist back around to the same place, he enjoyed all the delicate movements of her wrists as she drove and waited for her to call this off. He was more than a little curious how far she was going to go with it.
A few minutes later, she pulled into a Wawa near the highway. “Okay, I’ll take care of the gas. You should get something to munch on. You know I love Pringles, but I don’t think we’ve talked about how I feel about Cinnamon Bears.”
“Cinnamon Bears?”
“They are my favorite candy. Like of all time. And since we’ve got a drive ahead of us, a Cherry Coke too. Please.”
“Right.” He’d give it to her: she was committed. Maybe she was trying to teach him some sort of lesson—though about what, he had no idea—but he could play along. “I’ll be right back.”
He bought food and returned, fully expecting her to turn around and take them back to her place or his. But instead, she kissed him on the cheek and got on 95 toward Washington. Well, he knew she didn’t do things halfway.
“You should pick some music.” She changed lanes and settled into her seat again. “I was trying to decide what the ultimate road trip album is.”
That at least he could answer: “Bookends.”
“Simon and Garfunkel? ‘A Hazy Shade of Winter,’ ‘Mrs. Robinson,’ ‘America’?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “My parents were hippies. Or maybe they were too young to be hippies, but they were definitely into 70s counter-culture. I grew up listening to all that late folk.”
“It’s amazing you made it out so normal.”
“Eh, I’m a policy nerd who’s convinced the world is about to end. That’s not the epitome of well-adjusted.”
“And I just talked you into sleeping with me. Well-adjusted is overrated.”
He gave her ponytail a tug and left his hand on her nape. It felt natural, like that was where he should rest it for the rest of his life. It was a silly thought—but he let himself hold onto it and her. A few minutes wouldn’t hurt, at least any more than this already would.
Cadence clicked her tongue. “Bookends is a solid choice. I think I have a playlist with some Allman Brothers, Neil Young, that sort of thing. I have to warn you, though, there is some twenty-first century stuff mixed in, in case that takes away from the purity for you.” She unlocked her phone and handed it to him. “There’s a cord to plug it in somewhere in the glove box.”
Her wallpaper was a blurry photo of the Constitution. “This seems really intimate.”
“You were inside me, but handing you my phone gets your attention?”
“I specifically meant looking at your playlists, but yes.” He opened her iTunes app. She had. . .a lot of music, and it was organized obsessively. There were playlists for different moods, different weather patterns, and different months. “You have a few songs here.”
“And your point is?”
“What’s a ‘Thursday playlist’?”
“That way you feel on Thursday in the winter when it’s gray and you’re sort of melancholy. Like if El Greco were music.” She gave him a quick glance, and her face was a bit flushed. “Tell me you know what I mean.”
“Moody, self-conscious, anxious, stretched—yeah, I might know something about that.”
That was where he’d spent almost every day since the election. Frankly, his spleen was probably going to be tense forever. His underlying anxiety level was high; add in the past few months, and he felt like a fire alarm whose batteries were running out.
But the look Cadence gave him was pure recognition. She saw what he felt, she understood it, and she wanted him in spite of it.
That just couldn’t be right, and what she did next was what he never seemed to manage: she smiled and gave a half shake of her head. “Well, then you know that’s too sad for this. Try the ‘getting shit done’ one.”
She really had a playlist called that? He scrolled up. Yes, she did. “No, I want ‘Ironic Fourth of July.’”
“The irony is there’s no irony. It’s pure patriotic schmaltz. I can’t handle that right now.”
He selected “getting shit done,” plugged it into her car, and, once Jack and Meg White were appropriately pounding, opened the bag of Cinnamon Bears and handed one to her.
“Thank you.” She made a noise of pure pleasure that had him wanting to ask her to pull over, but they were still in the outskirts of Richmond. When he had her again, it was going to be in someplace with absolute privacy and hopefully more space than her backseat.
“You know we have to talk about the elephant in the room,” she said.
“Whether you’re going to come to your senses before we reach the Stonewall Jackson Shrine?”
“Oh, we should put that on our to-do list: destroy Confederate monuments. We should have bought some spray paint. We could have defaced some on the way home.”
He could slurp her optimism down, even if it felt misplaced given what a shit-show the country obviously was at the moment. “The way home from saving the world?”
“Yes, but that’s not what I meant. I was thinking more, will we be leading a coup? And if so, how do we feel about that?”
Oh, well, he supposed if they were really on their way to convince a cabinet secretary to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment, that would be a coup, at least in the strict legal sense. “Like are we seditionists?”
“Yes, and I’m only half-joking. I think I can probably be disbarred for this.” She sounded considering but not opposed.
“There’s never been a Twenty-fifth Amendment situation, right?”
“No, not in real life. Congress passed it after Kennedy died. It’s never been used,” Cadence said, sounding like she was repeating notes from con law.
“Well, if it had been around during World War I, we might have a test case. Everyone was suspicious of Edith Galt.”
“As they probably should have been, though maybe it would have been better to be concerned a white supremacist was the president.”
“It turns out depressingly few people find that concerning, then or now.” But that didn’t make her plan any more workable. “Even if somehow you could get the majority of the cabinet on board, you’d never get the vice president.”
“You don’t think it would appeal to his self-interest?” she asked.
“I’m not convinced he’d be any better.”
“So we should just do nothing?”
He had done something—he’d come to her—but she meant something for the country, for the world. “I don’t know.”
She held out her hand and he set another Cinnamon Bear on her palm. “I know what you’re saying, and it’s not that I don’t agree, but I can’t ju
st sit around. We have to try something. So why not this?”
“Sure,” he finally said. But he didn’t believe it. Not doing anything was, if not his normal mode, then something he was comfortable with.
“My main concern is if we normalize the Twenty-fifth Amendment process,” she asked, “what’s stopping a cabinet from doing it just because a president is unpopular? Isn’t it a bad precedent?”
“In the same way the normal political process has been weaponized? Hearings on the White House Christmas card list and all that?”
“Yeah.”
He sighed and sank down in his seat. They’d finally left the city now and the fields stretching out on either side of the highway were wide and dark. It felt like they were in a little bubble of light together. “I’ve lived in Virginia forever. The evidence of the Civil War, not to mention slavery, is everywhere. It’s pretty dumb for me to say, ‘things have never been this bad,’ but it feels like things have never been this bad. Like if we do this—”
“Oh, we’re doing this.”
“—it’ll never work. The Twenty-fifth Amendment? Even impeachment? It seems like fiction.”
“Democracy is a process, and these are built-in safeguards.”
He didn’t want to argue with her, and he didn’t want to let her see how pessimistic he was. She’d dump him. So instead, he said, “Okay, so if it works, how does the country get past this? How do we stand at a ballgame together and sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’? The damage to our institutions is bad enough, but how do we make the truth matter again? How do we forgive each other?”
It was an impossible question, but probably not a necessary one. The country wasn’t going to be around long enough for it to matter.
“How did we ever? This has always been a divided country, and one built on exclusion. We’ve always overlooked a lot of shit to sit at that Thanksgiving table and talk about national unity. I would guess if we can survive this, there’ll be a lot of repression.”
“Well, cheers to that.” He raised his soda and toasted the air. “Repression is how I get through life.”
She reached out and stroked the back of his hand. “How can you not know how great you are?”
Rogue Desire: A Romance Anthology (The Rogue Series) Page 19