Dylan left Yale and joined the campaign to make a difference, not keep tabs on some girl. But with the paternity scandal blowing up and Peyton asking questions, he's been tasked to watch her every move. As he gets to know the real Peyton, he finds it harder and harder to keep a professional distance.
When the media demands a story, Peyton and Dylan give them one—a fake relationship. As they work together to investigate the rumors about her real father and Peyton gets closer to learning the truth, she's also getting closer to Dylan. And suddenly, it's not just her past on the line anymore. It's her heart.
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Bain stares at me. Dylan
scrolls in his tablet and hands it to me, my speech all lined up. This isn’t
necessary though. I’ve memorized it.
I memorized it because
that’s something I can control. There are too many other things I can’t
control. Like my mouth, which is now so dry, it’s hard to open.
“Honey,” Bain says, and
his inflection makes an otherwise endearing address sound caustic. “If you
can’t do it in front of me, how do you expect to do it in front of America?”
“I got it, okay.” I
stare him down. Or, at least, I try to.
I start off in a low
voice and only shake, oh, about the level of a 4.2 earthquake when Bain snaps,
“Louder and look up.”
I look up, but my words
trip and fall over each other. All I can think about is how Bain should retire
to one of those little islands where the drinks have umbrellas. He’d like that,
right? Yeah, he should retire and leave me alone.
“Stop, stop,” Bain says.
“Gin, make yourself useful and get her a cup of water.”
Gin dashes to the
bathroom.
“Peyton, I know I’m not
your favorite person. But you need to look up when you talk. Speak loudly and
clearly.” As if in demonstration, he locks my eyes and continues in a slow,
precise voice. “If you stumble, we’ll know it’s because you’re nervous or
distracted. But America will think it’s because you don’t believe what you’re
saying.”
Gin dashes back with my
water so fast he trips. The cup goes flying, drenching my right side.
Cold shocks my skin, but
Gin looks worse. He’s red and still on his knees. I reach down to help him up.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Bain looks to the
ceiling, a vein in his neck threatening to pop out. “Peyton has to meet with
funders in twenty minutes.”
He says it as though Gin
wouldn’t have accidentally spilled water on me if only he’d known that fact.
“It’s okay,” I say,
flipping my dress away from my leg and dabbing it with some paper towels that
Dylan hands me. “If we can find a blow dryer or something it won’t take long at
all to—”
Bain snaps his fingers
and juts his thumb in Gin’s direction.
Gin scrambles out of the
room.
Bain sighs. “Dylan, get
over here.”
Dylan strides to Bain,
and Bain puts his hands on Dylan’s shoulders, turning him to face me. “Okay,
you don’t need to say your speech looking at me, but you need to be looking at
someone. So, can you keep your eyes on him while you talk?”
“Yes,” I say, but too
softly for Bain’s liking.
He puts his hand behind
his ear and leans toward me. “I’m sorry, did you say—”
“Yes!” I yell. I breathe
in. Before Bain can mock me again, I start my speech. “I didn’t have any
siblings…”
I focus on Dylan’s brown
eyes. When he smiles, I get lost somewhere between the memorized words and
muddy comfort. When I start talking about my dad, Dylan’s eyes crease, his chin
dips forward further. He coaxes the words out. He coaxes the memories.
“…Please help us welcome
the next Vice President of the United States of America,” I conclude, but don’t
look away from Dylan.
He grins and pulls
something out of his pocket. A neatly folded tissue.
I barely hear Bain’s
booming voice as he exits the room, off to complete another task on his long
to-do list. “Fantastic, Peyton, just like that.”
I take the tissue and
glide it under my eye.
Gin scrambles in with a
hair dryer and holds it out to me. “It’s fine, really,” I say. He looks around
and, realizing Bain’s gone, he shrugs and leaves.
I go to the corner and
plug the hair dryer in. At first I turn it on my leg, but that’s of course too
hot. I try to hold my dress out myself, but really, it would be best if…
“Why don’t I hold the
hair dryer and you hold your dress,” Dylan says, taking the tool out of my
hand.
I hold it out for him as
he delicately sprays warm air toward some of my more sensitive parts. He’s got
to get close to do it correctly, so when he looks up and asks me if it’s too
hot, his breath is only a couple of inches from my mouth. He’s got me cornered.
My face warms.
He clicks off the hair
dryer. “This is kind of ridiculous.”
“I’ll take my dress
off.”
His mouth parts.
“In the bathroom,” I
say, pointing.
He laughs, but it’s this
weird laugh that’s more of a grunt. I guess we’re back to the frustrated
grunts. He steps aside and I brush by him.
I stand alone in my underwear in the bathroom,
blowing the bottom of my dress dry. Just another day on the campaign trail.
Caitlin Sinead is represented
by Andrea
Somberg at Harvey
Klinger, Inc. and her debut novel, Heartsick, is available now from Carina
Press. Her writing has earned accolades from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Glimmer Train, and Writers &
Artists, and her stories have appeared in multiple publications,
including The Alarmist, The Binnacle, Crunchable, Jersey Devil Press, and Northern Virginia Magazine. She earned
a master's degree in writing from Johns
Hopkins University.
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