Private Politics (The Easy Part) (8 page)

One block became another. Their bodies swayed as the cab jolted over the District’s bumpy streets, but neither of them looked away. If only for tonight, if only because she was scared, he might have a shot with her. It might be taking advantage. It was certainly stupid. It wasn’t personal, he knew it wasn’t personal, but it might be enough to be present. For tonight at least, she might be open to it, open to him.

“Me either,” he said, needing to test the durability of the moment. Was it so fragile that words would destroy it?

The brow above one blue eye arched a bit and she broke from his gaze to look him over. The glance was tactile, a soft brush from hairline to toes. Then her attention returned to his face, the bent of her thoughts impenetrable.

Did I pass?
he wanted to ask, but he didn’t dare. What if the answer was no? He couldn’t come this close and blow it because of impatience. Offering her a haven at his place wasn’t his move. When he made his move, his real move, he would have to be absolutely certain of success.

Okay, at least ninety percent sure. Rejection would hurt too damn badly. He could take, would have to take, something short-term. One night at worst. Or maybe a hurried secret thing that she kept from her friends and lied about afterward. That would be...acceptable. Better than nothing. Inevitable if he was ever going to have her.

But he now knew she was interested. Out of fear or jealousy or proximity, he could almost taste potential. It scared him to death.

Chapter Eight

When Liam opened the door to his apartment, what greeted Alyse didn’t live in the same neighborhood as her expectations. Books and papers sagged in several piles on the coffee table—he’d probably been working when Millie had called—but otherwise, the space was clean, modern and utterly unlike him.

Sparkling hardwood floors made the narrow room feel more expansive. Bay windows hugged the couch next to the door. Exposed brick walls punctuated with short, teeming bookcases ran down to a galley kitchen. The appliances were small, but stainless steel and gleaming.

“The bedroom’s back here.” He hauled her suitcases to the doorway in the back.

“I can carry my own luggage,” she muttered, following him. He’d practically fought her for her bags at the curb. He’d insisted on getting all the big ones, while she tripped after him carrying only a purse. Did he think she was weak?

With more force, she said, “And I can sleep on the couch. I’m already putting you out.”

“Absolutely not. My mom raised me better than that. I hope I have some clean sheets.”

She stood in the threshold to his bedroom and watched him dig through linens at the top of a large closet.

She always forgot how tall he was. In her ever-present heels, she towered over most men. Not exactly short to begin with, she refused to leave the house in anything flat unless she was going to the gym. Why would you? Heels were one of the major perks of having two X chromosomes. If her height intimidated guys, well, that was a consequence she’d accept. As she watched him work, she realized that barefoot, he’d have a few inches on her.

Okay that was it: she was entering some sort of twelve-step program for targeted lust elimination. Such a thing existed, right? Because she was clearly addled. She had a lot going on, what with work and Millie’s wedding and her quarter-life crisis. The way her body kept noticing Liam’s was the equivalent of a convertible or dying your hair magenta or a half-decade-too-young post-break-up boyfriend: inappropriate and inconvenient.

“Here we go!” He snapped around, arms full of sheets and grinned with boyish charm as if he’d accomplished something major in finding them, though perhaps it was the possession of clean sheets he found impressive.

As she returned his smile, her heart squeezed. She was absolutely going to freeze that thing off, whatever it was, before it did some sort of lasting harm to their friendship. Because they were friends and this...attentiveness wasn’t fair to either of them.

“I’ll do it.” She crossed into the room and moved to take the sheets from him. “You’ve done everything else. Let me.”

He wouldn’t relinquish them. They stood there, both tugging at the fabric pulled taut between them while warm tongues of desire stretched up and licked the air. Her cheeks warmed and his pupils dilated.

Bad, bad, bad, bad. Why did Margot have to go and get her floors refinished?

Just as Alyse was about to explain how and why the atmosphere in the room was potentially harmful, he gave up and the sheets shot into her arms, now messy and unfolded but a barrier against the palpable thing between them.

“Have you eaten?” His voice was husky and gentle.

They hadn’t broken eye contact. If she looked away, examined his apartment, he might see too much. She was afraid it would defy her expectations and make him more interesting than he was already. Afraid he would see her trying to figure him out before she knew why she cared. Afraid if he got a single inch closer...well, they were on some dangerous ground.

“No. I found the note just before I had a chance to eat. Do you cook?” She felt shy about the question, but she did want to know the answer. She knew surprisingly little about him. He didn’t care about appearances, clothing especially but the opinions of others more generally. He mostly talked politics and sports; those subjects lit him from within. From the books in the living room, she guessed that he liked to read. But that was it. She had no sense of whether he was a gourmet chef or a strictly microwaved-meals kind of guy.

“No. You?” He seemed curious, as if this was some as yet unconsidered dimension to her.

She needed to end that thought before it germinated. “Not even ramen. Especially not ramen.”

He smiled again and she bundled his sheets to her chest in a self-protective gesture, a spectacularly failed gesture because they smelled like him, like the hug they’d shared at Cosi: the same detergent and cleanliness, the olfactory equivalent of all-American boy. Sleeping in his bed was next door to sleeping with him, except without the sleeping with him part. Looking at him now beaming at her, she was afraid it wouldn’t be without that part at all.

“Do you want to order something?” She hoped to steer the conversation to something safe. The Middle East was next on the agenda.

“I had something else in mind.”

Two minutes later, they walked down U Street with a safe measure of sidewalk between them. She could tell she wasn’t in Woodley Park anymore. The neighborhood where she’d lived for almost eight years was peaceful and residential. Sure, you could go east to Adams Morgan or south to Dupont Circle and be in a haze of eateries, watering holes and boutiques, but their immediate environs were quiet and upscale. Liam’s neighborhood wasn’t. Emphatically wasn’t.

“Is it always like this?” she asked, gawking at the people on the sidewalks, the overcrowded bars and restaurants and the shops with surprisingly extended hours.

“Pretty much. It quiets down after two—”

“In the morning?”

“—but by midday, the circus has started again.” He shrugged, taking it all in with the sort of enthusiasm that communicated love of place. No wonder he didn’t have any trouble getting work done in a coffee shop.

She pressed the question. “Does it bother you? The noise, the crowd?”

“Not at all. It feels real.” He smirked at her. “I can’t believe a New Yorker would ask that.” He said
New York
with a put-on accent, the way exactly no one from the city actually talked. She suspected he was teasing her.

Refusing to take the bait, she asked, “Where are you from?” She couldn’t believe it hadn’t come up before.

“Brookline. Boston.”

She threw her head back and laughed. Of course. “That explains so much about you.”

“Such as?”

The rivalry between the two cities was the stuff of legend. She wasn’t too invested in it personally, but as a point of pride, she had to rib him a bit. “A New Yorker living in DC always feels inadequate. Like if she were really cool, really big-time, she’d live in New York. But a Bostonian? You’re used to the minor leagues.”

It was a bit a mean, but she needed the protection right now. If she were a turtle, this would be the part where she disappeared into her shell.

“Ha!” He gave her a courtesy laugh, but his heart wasn’t in it. They’d stopped at a red light and he turned to face her. “You don’t feel that way—inadequate because you live in the District.”

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“You don’t feel like a failure because you’re not in New York.” He delivered the words lightly, but his expression was serious, as it probably should be since he was psychoanalyzing her and doing a pretty good job of it too.

She inhaled sharply. How had he known? She shook her head and tried to set him straight. “I’ll probably head back to New York someday soon. The Big Apple and all that. The world’s most interesting and vibrant city. An ever-changing tapestry, blah blah blah. Who wouldn’t want to live there?”

It was a joke, a bad one, but humor was her only choice. She couldn’t flirt with him just now. Except maybe the real problem was that her entire way of being in the world—all the cutesy stuff and the acting like an airhead because that’s what people expected—really wasn’t working anymore.

“You wouldn’t want to live there.” He started across the street and she followed him, two and half steps behind and too nervous about how he had seen through her to catch all the way up. He stopped on the sidewalk and waited. “No, you won’t move back.”

Slowly, she stepped up to him, looking at the ground but wanting to understand the source of his confidence. “How do you know?”

“I don’t. I suspect. So I was thinking this for dinner.” Evidently he was willing to let the weirdly intimate conversation go for the moment, for which she was grateful.

This
was a garish yellow and red sign that proclaimed Ben’s Chili Bowl, a Washington institution as venerable as the monuments lining the Mall to hear some tell it.

“I’ve never been.”

“Oh good, a virgin.” He smirked at her and she felt like sticking her tongue out at him, but she resisted.

“What do I want?” she whispered to him as they got in line.

“The half smoke. Honestly, the rest of the menu is superfluous.”

As the line shuffled forward—seriously, who were all these people eating dinner at nine at night?—they settled into a comfortable silence. She was glad he hadn’t returned to expressing her deepest desires out loud. She was also glad that she could be quiet with him, without the pressure of having to fill the void.

It wasn’t them, though; there was nothing magic or chemical about it, obviously. What a silly thought. No, it was him. Liam was comfortable.

He made some joke to the guy ahead of them, who laughed and asked if he was from out of town. Then they started talking about what was going in an empty storefront nearby. Just like that, he was chatting with a stranger. From his ease at it, it appeared he did it all the time.

He was warm and solid and comfortable. Here, in a diner, in an intense conversation about regulation in the derivatives market, he fit. He probably, maybe, wouldn’t at an Upper East Side cocktail party, but everywhere else. He was wonky, but he’d accepted it and didn’t care and because he wasn’t invested in self-image, his wonkiness made connections with people. Who wouldn’t be disarmed by a guy who wasn’t intent on impressing you? Who wanted to know what you thought? On him, wonkiness wasn’t a bug; it was a feature, as the kids were fond of saying.

Alyse could talk to strangers and did frequently, but she always felt stilted and formal. She was always calculating; it was the fundraiser in her. What did this person need? What did he want? What was the right pitch to open her pocketbook?

She supposed Liam did that, too, when he was working a story, but he could turn it off and
be
. In a word, he was present. She was arch. They were like oil and water. Or oil and a match. Either way, they didn’t go together.

“Two half smokes split and grilled and two sweet teas.” He ordered and paid while she stood there examining his profile still trying to figure everything out and failing.

While they waited for their food, she chided him. “You should’ve let me get that.”

“You paid for the cab,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, it’s my fault there’s no food in the apartment.”

“None at all?”

The only reason she had any food was Millie, who was a fairly good cook, and Parker, who spent most nights over and who was excellent in the kitchen. If—when—she was on her own, there would be no food, just an excellent selection of take-out menus.

“Yogurt. Vodka. A couple of frozen pizzas. Bugles.” He ticked the items off on his fingers and gave an unapologetic toss of his head.

“They still make Bugles?”

“Totally. It’s the king of snack foods. Bugle is a misnomer. It’s really a crown.”

“The nineties must have been kind to you—I see that you’re stuck there. Or maybe that’s just your snacks and shoes.”

He raised a brow. “Whereas you’re stuck on Park Avenue even though you don’t even like it there?”

“Touché.”

The guy behind the counter called their number and Liam scooped up the bag. In a rare moment of generosity, he allowed her to carry the teas.

When they were again weaving through the crowd, he picked up the strand of her teasing, but answered seriously. “The nineties were a great decade. Grunge rock. Flannel. The Internet. The rise of cable news. The Ken Starr hearings changed my life. I recorded them off C-SPAN every day. I’d race home from school, fire up the VCR and catch up on the day’s proceedings. It felt important. History occurring in my lifetime. Something big and relevant happening not when my parents were kids or in my grandpa’s day, but now. Erm, then. At some point during the impeachment trial, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

“I think everyone looks at the things you listed and sees disaffection, narcissism and commercialism,” she said. “The decade when music sold out. When the press was manipulated for political gain.”

“Well, that’s where everyone else would be wrong. Whenever there’s a crisis, or something you don’t like, there’s always potential for defiance. Opposition. Confrontation. Yeah, I look at the nineties and I feel...hope.”

She made the mistake of glancing at him just as he said the word and there it was: the damn glow he got it on his face when he talked about something he loved. As if
this
were his favorite subject in the world and he was so happy to share it with you. But after six months, she knew that he had many favorites. She’d have to remember to add the nineties and the impeachment trial to her list of verboten topics. It would be easy to call it childlike enthusiasm and heaven knows that she had tried to dismiss it, but really, he was interested in the world. Optimistic about it. Riveted by life in its profundity and inanity. And this trait made him interesting.

She shook off the feeling and turned away from him. “I’m going to keep thinking of the nineties as being corporatist and soulless, thank you very much.”

Inside his apartment, they ignored his big table and pushed the papers on the coffee table to the side so they could eat. The half smoke was indeed a revelation and she told him so. Then they debated the merits of the cheese fries, her argument being that an upscale imagining at a fancy restaurant in Penn Quarter had its virtues too.

“We’ll have to go there and try them so you can compare,” she said.

The conversation had meandered, until Liam asked gently, “Tell me why you care.”

“Why I care about what?”