Red Blooded (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Peyton woke me up one morning with an orange juice.
She stood over me as I sipped it.

“
You can write the book
,”
she said.

“
Are you sure?
”
I
asked as the citrus bit at my tongue.

She crossed her arms and looked out the window.
“
Yeah
,
I’m sure.
”

* * *

After Dylan is sufficiently satisfied that I’m prepped for the funeral, I pull out my textbooks and notes and study for hours. I sit on one side of the couch highlighting facts about ancient tribes and twiddling with calculus problems while he sits on the other side, his legs stretched over the ottoman, his long fingers sliding along the screen as he takes in the news of the world.

Clouds threaten rain as we sip tea and put soft music on and it’s just what I needed.

As dinnertime descends and our stomachs grumble, he heads out for pizza. While he’s gone, I finally change out of my pajamas into one of the dresses I packed. A college student getting a start on her day at 6:00 p.m.—not so strange, right?

I’m reading about how second wave feminism influenced politics when he comes back, drenched. As he sets up the pizza, I get a towel from his bathroom and toss it at him. “Thanks, but I’ll just change.”

He pulls off the sticky, wet shirt and tosses it into his laundry. His black undershirt clings to him. Damn, do his shoulders look good as his arms flex. All these little wonderful dents and shadows curve while he rummages around for clothes in his drawers. Heat rises in my chest and my lady parts. And all he’s doing is rummaging through underwear.

Shit.

My face burns when he turns around and locks eyes with me. I turn away. Tiny sounds of the clock and his dryer’s low hum grow louder as everything else is quiet. His shoes squeak as he heads to the bathroom.

I busy myself with opening the soggy pizza box and putting the slices on plates so we’re all ready when he emerges.

He sits down at the table. We eat, but he looks at me as he chews. When he swallows, he says, “My parents had trouble keeping a pregnancy, and my mom always wanted a girl.” He says it like he’s reading a press release. Factual. “She had infant dresses in my closet. Every time she had a miscarriage, she’d buy another dress, for the next one. But then she got me. You’d think she’d be happy to have a baby at that point, and eventually she was, but she cried that first week and swaddled me in infant clothes with pink ribbons on them until my dad went to the store to get ones with soccer balls.”

My pizza hangs midair. “Why are you—”

“When I was six,” he continues, still with a flat, reportorial tone. “My mom explained Mary’s Immaculate Conception by saying that baby Jesus shouldn’t have existed but then, voila, one day he did. She said many people prayed for him to come for years and God granted it. So, my six-year-old mind figured if I prayed really hard for a yellow lab, then God might ‘immaculate conception’ one for me.” Finally, he smiles and looks at his pizza. “Yes, I used that phrase as a verb in my prayers to God.”

“‘God, please immaculate conception me a dog,’” I say, my hand covering my laughs.

“Exactly.” He grins as he chews. I take another bite and wait for him to explain why it’s story time all of a sudden, but here he goes again: “When I was five, I said I wanted a purple cat for Christmas and I stopped believing in Santa when we got a black cat. When I was ten, I caught the garter at my cousin’s wedding and had to put it on a 45-year-old woman’s thigh. When I was twelve, I ate too many Skittles before a soccer game and puked up the rainbow all over the field.”

I laugh. “Taste the rainbow, for a second time.”

He smiles. “It’s not so good the second time.”

I put my elbow on the table and rest my head in my hand. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because you’re right. It’s not fair that I know all that stuff about you, but you don’t know anything embarrassing about me.”

“Tell me more. But it doesn’t have to be embarrassing.”

“Okay,” he says. “When I was fifteen, I liked a girl in my class who wanted to volunteer with a local campaign. I told her my dad was friends with Senator Ruiz. I mean, that would get me in, right? She went with me to a few events before deciding it was boring. But after those events, I decided she was boring. I was hooked. And, for a long time, no girl made me feel the way campaigning makes me feel.”

My veins are warm and shaky. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t even know if anything
is
going on.

Perhaps it’s time to pivot?

“Let’s see if this whole story has actually blown up.” I grab my phone and search Google for my name.

“Wait, Peyton, that’s probably not a good idea. Just trust me, it will die down.”

I ignore him as I read the
Washington Post
story, which actually highlights the fact that I had to run from my dorm room. Most other stories are sympathetic to me as well. They talk about how my handler pulled me along. Dylan clears the table.

“Need help?” I ask, as I keep scrolling and skimming the screen.

“No,” he says, but he’s watching me.

And then I see it. After a few stories about trust and genetics and my dad, there are several bloggers wondering if there’s more to my handler than meets the eye. In less than a day, fascination has changed from genetics and my dad to, well, Dylan. “Dylan Torres, a member of Ruiz’s close-knit circle, was assigned to help manage Peyton Arthur’s relationship with the media. But some are saying the pictures and footage hint that something more might be going on.”

My heartbeat surges as I rummage through rationalizations. Sure, there’s a picture with Dylan’s hand on my back in the dorm hall, and another where he’s holding my hand on the street, but that’s just because he was pulling me along.

“Have you seen...?” I start, but as I look up his eyes lock with mine. He’s seen it, and he’s been hoping to avoid this exact conversation all day.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s all over Twitter too. People wondering about...” He moves his hand back and forth, between us. His shoulders are straight and he’s stiff and professional. “I don’t want it to make you feel uncomfortable.”

I shake my head and say softly, “It doesn’t.” I’m glad he can’t tell how much my pulse is racing. “Plus,” I say, trying to bring it back to strategy, “isn’t it better if people get caught up in a fake romance between us and forget why the reporters were after me in the first place?”

A grin itches up his right cheek. “Yeah, I guess.”

I smile and think about ice cubes to stem my blushing. This is not a big deal. And the more normal I act, the less of a big deal it will be. I go over to the sink. “I’ll help you dry.” He hands me the plate but between my nervous hands and the slippery water, it falls from my fingers to the floor. Glass shatters everywhere, pricking my bare feet. “I’m so sor—”

“Don’t move,” Dylan says. His hands swoop under my armpits, brushing the sides of my boobs along the way, which makes me melt. He hoists me over his shoulder and his hands send thrills up the back of my mostly bare legs as he carries me out of the kitchen. He sets me down near the couch. I should let go. I don’t. My hands linger on his shoulders. “Thanks,” I say in a much more breathless way than I meant to, but I am a bit breathless.

His hands tighten around my waist. His fingers press into my lower back as I push my hips into him. He opens his mouth and lowers his head. Blood rushes through me as I close my eyes. But, instead of his lips, which I desperately want to feel, I feel his soft sigh. His hands slip off me and he steps back. He grabs a broom and gets to work on the shards of glass.

I rub my face as he focuses on cleaning up. Once the glass is cleaned up, he crosses his arms and looks at me.

“I’m sorry,” he grunts.

“You don’t have to be—”

“Yes I do.” He sighs and puts his hands on the counter. “So, you got a lot of homework to do tonight?”

I wasn’t really done talking about whatever that thing was where his hands were perfectly rounded on my hips, but, apparently he is.

“I’ve been studying all day, I’m not studying tonight.”

He nods and looks out the window. “So...what do you want to do?”

What don’t I want to do with him? But I get it, he’s trying to be good and professional and I shouldn’t just jump him. What’s a “safe” thing we could do? “Let’s watch a really hideous movie.”

That gets me a slight, relieved smile. “Why would we watch a hideous movie?”

“Because they’re good. They’re so bad they’re great.”

He shakes his head. “Wouldn’t they just be bad?”

“Oh, Dylan. Dylan, Dylan, Dylan.” I shake my head and look on him with pity. “Do I have a world to open up for you, if you’re up for it.”

He grins. “I think I could be.”

He keeps a polite and regretful distance from me on the couch, but otherwise he seems to loosen up as we watch
Snakes on a Plane
and
Roadhouse.

When I get sleepy after Patrick Swayze saves the day with his PhD in philosophy and secret kick-ass ‘80s car, Dylan nudges me.

“You take the bed. I’ll be fine on the couch.”

He is fine. He’s out like a light. But I’m not. I hear his breaths come out, slow and rhythmic, and I can’t fall asleep.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Peyton is big on giving tips for and planning my funeral.
Should there be roses or tulips?
Should my suit be black or brown
,
or something really crazy like orange?
Should we serve beef or pork pigs in a blanket at the reception?

She’d spit question after question at me
,
pen in hand as she leaned over her notebook.

I
played along
,
because I didn’t know what else to do.

I
talked to Jen about it.

Jen said
, “
Don’t you see?
It’s the only aspect of this she can control.
”

* * *

Sylvia Murray may have been a Republican, but among the Carmichaels, she was a saint. Even when my grandpa and she were on opposite sides of a bill, she and my grandma would go get merlots and mani-pedis together. When my mom became a senator, Sylvia took her under her wing. She showed her the ropes and told her how to stick it to the good-ole-boys who still, deep down, thought the senate was a men’s club.

As much as I wanted to pay my respects, my throat closes up as our car runs along the front of the cemetery. My mom squeezes my hand. This is my first high profile funeral since my dad’s death. Any picture of me will inevitably be compared to that, and I don’t have the stomach for it right now.

But sometimes you need to do things you don’t want to do. We make it through the service somehow and, fortunately, once we’re past the press outside, and in the cozy confines of the reception hall, the mood is, well, perhaps not happy, but...celebratory. A somber kind of celebration, and no one’s playing politics, no one is formal for formality’s sake. We’re all just being, wafting in the aura of our own mortality.

My mom is rather quickly bustled away. I’m alone in a sea of black suits and dresses. Until...

“How you holding up?” Dylan asks as he sips a beer and passes me an orange juice.

“I’m okay,” I say, drinking in the citrus goodness while scanning the crowd.

Dylan looks at the crowd too, but with every—quite frequent—sip of his beer, he looks back at me.

“What? Do I have something on my face?” I rub my skin, trying to get the anonymous offending thing off. Or maybe he keeps looking at me for another, much better reason?

“What are you talking about?” he asks.

“You keep looking at me,” I whisper.

His dark skin exhibits the slightest bit of a pink bloom, before he runs his hand through his hair. “I just want to make sure you’re okay. Since this is the first funeral—”

“I’m fine!” I bark at him. I didn’t want him to finish that sentence. But, of course, this is when my mom comes back.

“Peyton,” she says in a spear of a whisper.

I close my eyes. “Sorry, Dylan, I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

I drink more orange juice.

“This isn’t a time to be angry, it’s a time to mourn,” my mom says, her words like a cloth twittering in the breeze.

“Of course,” I say. Will I ever get it right?

My doubts personified, aka Bain, strides over. “Jen, Kurt Murphy is here and he wants to go over the event at his house next week.”

My mom whispers, “Is it really appropriate to talk about that at a funeral?”

“When he’s promising to bring in over three million dollars in one night, yes, it is,” Bain says.

My mom’s jaw stiffens, but she nods and follows Bain.

We don’t get much relief from the campaign, though, because next Lisa marches over with an expression that either indicates she just swallowed too much sauerkraut or she’s a little miffed at us.

“I’m really sorry about the whole—” I start.

She holds up her hand. “Peyton, I don’t even want to think about all that anymore. Fortunately, it’s mostly died down, as have those few posts about something going on between the two of you.” She raises an eyebrow and sips her martini.

“Yeah, that was sort of weird.” I sip my orange juice and wish it was in a martini glass.

Dylan tenses. “I can see how some of those pictures, well, it looked like more was going on, but I was just doing my job.”

“You were just doing your job,” Lisa says, but there’s enough of a lift to her words and a pause in her face that make it sound like a question.

Dylan coughs. Her eyes narrow on him.

“Of course he was just doing his job.” I pounce on the conversation. Anything to get Dylan to stop frowning like that.

“Yeah, of course,” he mumbles.

She stares at him over her glass. “Good.” She swivels away and walks back to the bar.

“Nice seeing you too, Lisa,” I say only loud enough for Dylan to hear.

He smiles. “She’s just doing
her
job.”

“Sure,” I say.

He rubs the back of his neck and scans the room, but his eyes stop. “Don’t look now. But Representative Roberts is staring at you.”

“Are you sure I don’t have a booger on my face?” I tilt my head and smile.

“I promise, I would tell you if you had a booger on your face.” His eyes stay on me for an extra beat, to the point I have to look away. Dylan coughs. “He’s over by the shrimp.”

“I’ll be subtle...” I say.

“No, you won’t.”

I ignore Dylan’s jab and brush back a nonexistent unruly strand of hair as I flop my head around to see Roberts. Despite my carefully planned subtleties, I make eye contact with him. Shit. Maybe Dylan was right about my covert skills. Even worse, Roberts nudges his wife. She turns from whomever she was talking to, shrimp careening through the air and her wine glass tipping occasionally as she speaks with her hands. She’s a rather energetic woman. I guess you need to be if you’re married to Representative Roberts. She beams as she trundles over to me, and I can’t help but return the expression.

Roberts’ face scrunches, even though his natural expression is already pretty pained. He crumples up his cocktail napkin into his fist and follows her.

“Why are they coming over?” I whisper to Dylan. He shakes his head and shrugs.

“Peyton,” Mrs. Roberts says. “We’re very sorry for your loss.”

“It’s everyone’s loss,” I say.

“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Roberts says. “Sylvia was an inspiring woman. I just meant I know she was especially close to your family.” She gives Roberts a furtive look that I don’t get.

Representative Roberts nods and rubs his chest with his fist, as though something was stuck inside his ribcage. He forces a strained smile. “How are you handling things?”

“Pretty well,” I say. “I’m lucky to have lots of support.”

I pat Dylan on the back. He blinks a couple of times and smiles.

“We enjoyed your introduction at the convention,” Mrs. Roberts says, leaning forward, voice peaked. “The part about your father made me cry.”

These people are our enemies. What is she doing?

Roberts had said that I shouldn’t even be part of the campaign. He said they were using me. Of course they
are
using me, or, as Lisa put it, leveraging me. Is there a difference? I want to be leveraged. I want to help ensure that we have a new administration, one that wouldn’t appoint a Supreme Court Justice who might help overrule Roe v. Wade, an administration that wouldn’t groan about taxes for the elite while teachers have forty kids in a classroom, an administration that might acknowledge the fact that defense isn’t sacred when it comes to budget cuts—the US pays more on defense than the next eight countries combined.

But this is a funeral, and they’re being polite. I should manage politeness too. I gurgle out a thank-you.

Mrs. Roberts isn’t done. “I lost my mother when I was nineteen. Not as young as you, but I know how empty the world can feel. And I just had to deal with my grief while getting through college. I can only imagine how hard this campaign must be for you, with Richard’s memory so often invoked.”

I want to hug her. I want to hit her. I want to run away and find somewhere to curl up with dust bunnies in a corner and sob my heart out, tears falling all over hardwood floors.

In the end, I swallow and say “thank you” again, in a voice so soft I barely recognize it as my own.

“Are you liking Georgetown?” Roberts asks before taking a large gulp of Scotch.

“Yes, it’s been nice. I only wish I could spend more time there. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been there a month. It seems like every time I’m settled I get pulled away to a campaign event.”

“Or a funeral,” he says, with an odd, sad smile.

“Um, yeah,” I say, not sure if he’s scolding me. “I didn’t mean to make it sound like this was an inconvenience or—”

“No, of course not,” Roberts says, and there’s a softness in his cheeks when he smiles. Well, sort of smiles.

“So, um, how are things on the Hill?” I ask.

“Good. As I’m sure you’ve seen, we’re making some progress toward balancing the budget.” He takes another sip of Scotch.

But I’m too familiar with the bills he proposes to let that slide. “Picking away at discretionary funding, like federal support for education programs, isn’t going to balance the budget. It’s just going to make a teeny dent in our spending while really hurting students.” I hold my orange juice glass tightly and stare at him as he raises his eyebrows.

“The education system is broken,” he says, holding his Scotch glass equally as hard and ignoring his wife as she pats his shoulder, presumably to calm him down. “We can’t just keep funneling money into a broken system.”

“Then fix it.” I grit my teeth. He stares at me for a moment before looking into his Scotch and smiling.

Smiling!

I raise my finger and am about to say that this isn’t funny, when Dylan’s hand finds my back, his fingers pressing into the fabric of my dress. “It’s been great talking with you, but unfortunately, we have a few things Peyton needs to do before we leave.”

“Of course,” Roberts says, taking another awfully big sip of Scotch before extending his hand. “Peyton, always a pleasure.”

“Yes.” I awkwardly shake his hand and remember that I’m at a funeral, not a debate. “And, I’m sorry. I just get a little passionate about these issues sometimes.”

He grins. “Me too.”

As they walk away, Mrs. Roberts—after delivering yet another beaming smile right to me—turns to her husband with a crinkled frown and pokes his arm a couple times. His shoulders stiffen upward into a shrug.

I sigh and turn to Dylan. His hand slides from my body. “Okay, so what did you mean? What else do I need to do?”

He lightly knocks my shoulder with his elbow. “Not talk to them anymore.”

* * *

I climb into the back of the limo with my mom. It’s just us.

“That was nice,” she says. “Well, for a funeral.”

“Yeah,” I say, my finger tracing the embroidery on my dress.

She turns to me. “How are you, Peyton? Is it working out with...” She purses her lips.

“With what?”

She presses her fingers to her forehead and closes her eyes. They open suddenly. “Dylan. Is everything working out with Dylan? I know George has said he’s a great young man. And it seems, well, aside from that whole business with the genetics professor, that you’ve done well.”

“Yeah, um, he’s great.” I watch the trees swoosh by.

“Peyton,” she says softly.

I continue watching the trees. “Yeah.”

“Why did you talk with the genetics professor?”

I rest my elbow on the window ledge and pour my forehead into my palm. “I know you’ve been lying to me, Mom.”

Nothing moves. Not the trees, not the wheels, not the bottles of water in the cup holders or our purses on the seats. The world is static, until I shift. I face my mom, full on.

“I overheard you talking to Bain. Dad’s not my dad.”

Her chest rises in uneven ways. She grabs one of the waters and takes a big sip, careful to keep her lipstick in check as she does.

She closes her eyes.

“Just tell me what happened. I’ll forgive you, I just want to know who my biological father is.” She has to know I’m ready for the truth.

She shakes her head. “You don’t understand. It’s not my secret to tell.”