Red, White & Royal Blue

by Casey McQuiston

  June has shut her journal in sudden interest. “How could you possibly have a boyfriend we don’t know about?”

  “I see you more than I see clean underwear,” Alex says.

  “You’re not changing your underwear often enough, sugar,” his mother interjects from across the cabin.

  “I go commando a lot,” Alex says dismissively. “Is this like a ‘my Canadian girlfriend’ thing? Does he”—he does very animated air quotes—“‘go to a different school’?”

  “You really are determined to get shoved out of an emergency hatch one day, huh?” she says. “It’s long distance. But not like that. No more questions.”

  Cash jumps in too, insisting he deserves to know as the resident love guru of the staff, and there’s a debate about appropriate information to share with your coworkers, which is laughable considering how much Cash already knows about Alex’s personal life. They’re circling New York when June suddenly stops talking, focused again on Zahra, who has gone silent.

  “Zahra?”

  Alex turns and sees Zahra sitting perfectly still, such a departure from her usual constant motion that everyone else freezes too. She’s staring at her phone, mouth open.

  “Zahra,” his mother echoes now, deadly serious. “What?”

  She looks up finally, her grip on her phone tight. “The Post just broke the name of the Independent senator joining Richards’s cabinet,” she says. “It’s not Stanley Connor. It’s Rafael Luna.”

  * * *

  “No,” June is saying. Her heels are dangling from her hand, her eyes bright in the warm light near the hotel elevator where they’ve agreed to meet. Her hair is coming out of its braid in angry spikes. “You’re damn lucky I agreed to talk to you in the first place, so you get this or you get nothing.”

  The Post reporter blinks, fingers faltering on his recorder. He’s been hounding June on her personal phone since the minute they landed in New York for a quote about the convention, and now he’s demanding something about Luna. June is not typically an angry person, but it’s been a long day, and she looks about three seconds from using one of those heels to stab the guy through the eye socket.

  “What about you?” the guy asks Alex.

  “If she’s not giving it to you, I’m not giving it to you,” Alex says. “She’s much nicer than me.”

  June snaps her fingers in front of the guy’s hipster glasses, eyes blazing. “You don’t get to speak to him,” June says. “Here is my quote: My mother, the president, still fully intends to win this race. We’re here to support her and to encourage the party to stay united behind her.”

  “But about Senator Luna—”

  “Thank you. Vote Claremont,” June says tightly, slapping her hand over Alex’s mouth. She sweeps him off and into the waiting elevator, elbowing him when he licks her palm.

  “That goddamn fucking traitor,” Alex says when they reach their floor. “Duplicitous fucking bastard! I—I fucking helped him get elected. I canvassed for him for twenty-seven hours straight. I went to his sister’s wedding. I memorized his goddamn Five Guys order!”

  “I fucking know, Alex,” June says, shoving her keycard into the slot.

  “How did that Vampire Weekend–looking little shit even have your personal number?”

  June throws her shoes at the bed, and they bounce off onto the floor in different directions. “Because I slept with him last year, Alex, how do you think? You’re not the only one who makes stupid sexual decisions when you’re stressed out.” She drops onto the bed and starts taking off her earrings. “I just don’t understand what the point is. Like, what is Luna’s endgame here? Is he some kind of fucking sleeper agent sent from the future to give me an ulcer?”

  It’s late—they got into New York after nine, hurtling into crisis management meetings for hours. Alex still feels wired, but when June looks up at him, he can see some of the brightness in her eyes has started to look like frustrated tears, and he softens a little.

  “If I had to guess, Luna thinks we’re going to lose,” he tells her quietly, “and he thinks he can help push Richards farther left by joining the ticket. Like, putting the fire out from inside the house.”

  June looks at him, eyes tired, searching his face. She may be the oldest, but politics is Alex’s game, not hers. He knows he would have chosen this life for himself given the option; he knows she wouldn’t have.

  “I think … I need to sleep. For, like, the next year. At least. Wake me up after the general.”

  “Okay, Bug,” Alex says. He leans down to kiss the top of her head. “I can do that.”

  “Thanks, baby bro.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Tiny, miniature, itty-bitty, baby brother.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Go to bed.”

  Cash is waiting for him out in the hallway, his suit abandoned for plainclothes.

  “Hanging in there?” he asks Alex.

  “I mean, I kind of have to.”

  Cash pats him on the shoulder with one gigantic hand. “There’s a bar downstairs.”

  Alex considers. “Yeah, okay.”

  The Beekman is thankfully quiet this late, and the bar is low-lit with warm, rich shades of gold on the walls and deep-green leather on the high-backed barstools. Alex orders a whiskey neat.

  He looks at his phone, swallowing down his frustration with the whiskey. He texted Luna three hours ago, a succinct: what the fuck? An hour ago, he got back: I don’t expect you to understand.

  He wants to call Henry. He guesses it makes sense—they’ve always been fixed points in each other’s worlds, little magnetic poles. Some laws of physics would be reassuring right now.

  God, whiskey makes him maudlin. He orders another.

  He’s contemplating texting Henry, even though he’s probably somewhere over the Atlantic, when a voice curls around his ear, smooth and warm. He’s sure he must be imagining it.

  “I’ll have a gin and tonic, thanks,” it says, and there’s Henry in the flesh, sidled up next to him at the bar, looking a little tousled in a soft gray button-down and jeans. Alex wonders for an insane second if his brain has conjured up some kind of stress-induced sex mirage, when Henry says, voice lowered, “You looked rather tragic drinking alone.”

  Definitely the real Henry, then. “You’re—what are you doing here?”

  “You know, as a figurehead of one of the most powerful countries in the world, I do manage to keep abreast on international politics.”

  Alex raises an eyebrow.

  Henry inclines his head, sheepish. “I sent Pez home without me because I was worried.”

  “There it is,” Alex says with a wink. He goes for his drink to hide what he suspects is a small, sad smile; the ice clacks against his teeth. “Speak not the bastard’s name.”

  “Cheers,” Henry says as the bartender returns with his drink.

  Henry takes the first sip, sucking lime juice off his thumb, and fuck, he looks good. There’s color in his cheeks and lips, the glow of Brooklyn summertime warmth that his English blood isn’t accustomed to. He looks like something soft and downy Alex wants to sink into, and he realizes the knot of anxiety in his chest has finally slackened.

  It’s rare anyone other than June goes out of their way to check on him. It’s by his own design, mostly, a barricade of charm and fitful monologues and hard-headed independence. Henry looks at him like he’s not fooled by any of it.

  “Get moving on that drink, Wales,” Alex says. “I’ve got a king-size bed upstairs that’s calling my name.” He shifts on his stool, letting one of his knees graze against Henry’s under the bar, nudging them apart.

  Henry squints at him. “Bossy.”

  They sit there until Henry finishes his drink, Alex listening to the placating murmur of Henry talking about different brands of gin, thankful that for once Henry seems happy to carry the conversation alone. He closes his eyes, wills the disaster of the day away, and tries to forget. He remembers Henry’s words in t
he garden months ago: “D’you ever wonder what it’s like to be some anonymous person out in the world?”

  If he’s some anonymous, normal person, removed from history, he’s twenty-two and he’s tipsy and he’s pulling a guy into his hotel room by the belt loop. He’s pulling a lip between his teeth, and he’s fumbling behind his back to switch on a lamp, and he’s thinking, I like this person.

  They break apart, and when Alex opens his eyes, Henry is watching him.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

  Alex groans.

  The thing is, he does, and Henry knows this too.

  “It’s…” Alex starts. He paces backward, hands on his hips. “He was supposed to be me in twenty years, you know? I was fifteen the first time I met him, and I was … in awe. He was everything I wanted to be. And he cared about people, and about doing the work because it was the right thing to do, because we were making people’s lives better.”

  In the low light of the single lamp, Alex turns and sits down on the edge of the bed.

  “I’ve never been more sure that I wanted to go into politics than when I went to Denver. I saw this young, queer guy who looked like me, sleeping at his desk because he wants kids at public schools in his state to have free lunches, and I was like, I could do this. I honestly don’t know if I’m good enough or smart enough to ever be either of my parents. But I could be that.” He drops his head down. He’s never said the last part out loud to anyone before. “And now I’m sitting here thinking, that son of a bitch sold out, so maybe it’s all bullshit, and maybe I really am just a naive kid who believes in magical shit that doesn’t happen in real life.”

  Henry comes to stand in front of Alex, his thigh brushing against the inside of Alex’s knee, and he reaches one hand down to still Alex’s nervous fidgeting.

  “Someone else’s choice doesn’t change who you are.”

  “I feel like it does,” Alex tells him. “I wanted to believe in some people being good and doing this job because they want to do good. Doing the right things most of the time and most things for the right reasons. I wanted to be the kind of person who believes in that.”

  Henry’s hands move, brushing up to Alex’s shoulders, the dip of his throat, the underside of his jaw, and when Alex finally looks up, Henry’s eyes are soft and steady. “You still are. Because you still bloody care so much.” He leans down and presses a kiss into Alex’s hair. “And you are good. Most things are awful most of the time, but you’re good.”

  Alex takes a breath. There’s this way Henry has of listening to the erratic stream of consciousness that pours out of Alex’s mouth and answering with the clearest, crystallized truth that Alex has been trying to arrive at all along. If Alex’s head is a storm, Henry is the place lightning hits ground. He wants it to be true.

  He lets Henry push him backward on the bed and kiss him until his mind is blissfully blank, lets Henry undress him carefully. He pushes into Henry and feels the tight cords of his shoulders start to release, like how Henry describes unfurling a sail.

  Henry kisses his mouth over and over again and says quietly, “You are good.”

  * * *

  The pounding on his door comes much too early for Alex to handle loud noises. There’s a sharpness to it he recognizes instantly as Zahra before she even speaks, and he wonders why the hell she didn’t just call before he reaches for his phone and finds it dead. Shit. That would explain the missed alarm.

  “Alex Claremont-Diaz, it is almost seven,” Zahra shouts through the door. “You have a strategy meeting in fifteen minutes and I have a key, so I don’t care how naked you are, if you don’t answer this door in the next thirty seconds, I’m coming in.”

  He is, he realizes as he rubs his eyes, extremely naked. A cursory examination of the body pressed up against his back: Henry, very comprehensively naked as well.

  “Oh fuck me,” Alex swears, sitting up so fast he gets tangled in the sheet and flails sideways out of bed.

  “Blurgh,” Henry groans.

  “Fucking shit,” says Alex, whose vocabulary is apparently now only expletives. He yanks himself free and scrambles for his chinos. “Goddammit ass fucker.”

  “What,” Henry says flatly to the ceiling.

  “I can hear you in there, Alex, I swear to God—”

  There’s another sound from the door, like Zahra has kicked it, and Henry flies out of bed too. He is truly a picture, wearing an expression of bewildered panic and absolutely nothing else. He eyes the curtains furtively, as if considering hiding in them.

  “Jesus tits,” Alex continues as he fumbles to pull his pants up. He snatches a shirt and boxers at random from the floor, shoves them at Henry’s chest, and points him toward the closet. “Get in there.”

  “Quite,” he observes.

  “Yes, we can unpack the ironic symbolism later. Go,” Alex says, and Henry does, and when the door swings open, Zahra is standing there with her thermos and a look on her face that says she did not get a master’s degree to babysit a fully grown adult who happens to be related to the president.

  “Uh, morning,” he says.

  Zahra’s eyes do a quick sweep of the room—the sheets on the floor, the two pillows that have been slept on, the two phones on the nightstand.

  “Who is she?” she demands, marching over to the bathroom and yanking open the door like she’s going to find some Hollywood starlet in the bathtub. “You let her bring a phone in here?”

  “Nobody, Jesus,” Alex says, but his voice cracks in the middle. Zahra arches an eyebrow. “What? I got kinda drunk last night, that’s all. It’s chill.”

  “Yes, it is so very, very chill that you’re going to be hungover for today,” Zahra says, rounding on him.

  “I’m fine,” he says. “It’s fine.”

  As if on cue, there’s a series of bumps from the other side of the closet door, and Henry, halfway into Alex’s boxers, comes literally tumbling out of the closet.

  It is, Alex thinks half-hysterically, a very solid visual pun.

  “Er,” Henry says from the floor. He finishes pulling Alex’s boxers up his hips. Blinks. “Hello.”

  The silence stretches.

  “I—” Zahra begins. “Do I even want you to explain to me what the fuck is happening here? Literally how is he even here, like, physically or geographically, and why—no, nope. Don’t answer that. Don’t tell me anything.” She unscrews the top of her thermos and takes a pull of coffee. “Oh my God, did I do this? I never thought … when I set it up … oh my God.”

  Henry has pulled himself off the floor and put on a shirt, and his ears are bright red. “I think, perhaps, if it helps. It was. Er. Rather inevitable. At least for me. So you shouldn’t blame yourself.”

  Alex looks at him, trying to think of something to add, when Zahra jabs a manicured finger into his shoulder.

  “Well, I hope it was fun, because if anyone ever finds out about this, we’re all fucked,” Zahra says. She points at Henry. “You too. Can I assume I don’t have to make you sign an NDA?”

  “I’ve already signed one for him,” Alex offers up, while Henry’s ears turn from red to an alarming shade of purple. Six hours ago, he was sinking drowsily into Henry’s chest, and now he’s standing here half-naked, talking about the paperwork. He fucking hates paperwork. “I think that covers it.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” Zahra says. “I’m so glad you thought this through. Great. How long has this been happening?”

  “Since, um. New Year’s,” Alex says.

  “New Year’s?” Zahra repeats, eyes wide. “This has been going on for seven months? That’s why you—Oh my God, I thought you were getting into international relations or something.”

  “I mean, technically—”

  “If you finish that sentence, I’m gonna spend tonight in jail.”

  Alex winces. “Please don’t tell Mom.”

  “Seriously?” she hisses. “You’re literally putting your dick in the leader of a foreign state
, who is a man, at the biggest political event before the election, in a hotel full of reporters, in a city full of cameras, in a race close enough to fucking hinge on some bullshit like this, like a manifestation of my fucking stress dreams, and you’re asking me not to tell the president about it?”

  “Um. Yeah? I haven’t, um, come out to her. Yet.”

  Zahra blinks, presses her lips together, and makes a noise like she’s being strangled. “Listen,” she says. “We don’t have time to deal with this, and your mother has enough to manage without having to process her son’s fucking quarter-life NATO sexual crisis, so—I won’t tell her. But once the convention is over, you have to.”

  “Okay,” Alex says on an exhale.

  “Would it make any difference at all if I told you not to see him again?”

  Alex looks over at Henry, looking rumpled and nauseated and terrified at the corner of the bed. “No.”

  “God fucking dammit,” she says, rubbing the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Every time I see you, it takes another year off my life. I’m going downstairs, and you better be dressed and there in five minutes so we can try to save this goddamn campaign. And you”—she rounds on Henry—“you need to get back to fucking England now, and if anyone sees you leave, I will personally end you. Ask me if I’m afraid of the crown.”

  “Duly noted,” he says in a faint voice.

  Zahra fixes him with a final glare, turns on her heel, and stalks out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  NINE

  “Okay,” he says.

  His mother sits across the table, hands folded, looking at him expectantly. His palms are starting to sweat. The room is small, one of the lesser conference rooms in the West Wing. He knows he could have asked her to lunch or something, but, well, he kind of panicked.

  He guesses he should just do it.

  “I’ve been, um,” he starts. “I’ve been figuring some stuff out about myself, lately. And … I wanted to let you know, because you’re my mom, and I want you to be a part of my life, and I don’t want to hide things from you. And also it’s, um, relevant to the campaign, from an image perspective.”