Page 129 of See You Next Tuesday

“Will all those former students need to be briefed before they speak to press?” Preethi asked.

“No, I’ll write their talking points,” Anya assured her. “It should be pretty straightforward: Jo changed my life, the nation would be lucky to have her, blah blah blah.”

“Who wants bratwurst?” Walt sauntered into the living room carrying a giant tray of sausages from the grill outside. “And veggie-wurst for Preethi!”

“Walt, you prince among men.” Kira leapt up and ran over to him.

“I live to serve.” Walt gave a little bow as the staff lined up to grab their dinners.

Every hotel in Chicago had been booked up months before the convention, which meant the Sessego campaign was both sleeping in and operating out of Anya’s childhood home. It was easily the wildest week of Anya’s life—and after this campaign, that was really saying something. Anya was in her own bedroom, Walt was in his, and Jo and her husband, Chase, were in the guest room. Every other couch and floor space was occupied by exhausted and elated Sessego staffers who’d been working nearly twenty-four hours a day since they arrived, sleeping only when they absolutely had to. None of them could believe they really had another chance to help Jo become president—and they had no intention of wasting the opportunity.

Walt was having the time of his life, cooking for everyone, cleaning up behind them, telling anyone who would listen about every protest Judy had ever been to, showing them her photos and the framed letter Jo had written about her. Anya was feeling too many things at once to feel any one of them for long. She was thrilled to have this chance, but also terrified of letting the nomination slip through her fingers a second time, that she might personally make another recommendation that would harm Jo’s odds of winning—and, by extension, harm all the Americans who so badly needed Jo in the White House. Anya felt more like herself than she had since April, like she’d been dug out of an early grave and brought back to life to be with Kira and Simone and everyone else from the campaign. She was busy, and she was exhausted, and she couldn’t make any mistakes—she couldn’t stop working for one second to think.

Which was all for the best, because anytime she did, the only thing she could think about was Gabe.

Had he known about Wheeler’s crimes, or had he found out on the news along with the rest of the country? If he had known, when did he find out? Anya couldn’t believe Gabe would knowingly work for a candidate who committed federal crimes—but then, she’d never really been able to understand how Gabe could work for someone like Wheeler in the first place. Still, she couldn’t imagine he was anything but devastated right now. Was he still in Maryland? Had he gone home to LA? Was it possible he’d be coming to the convention, here in Chicago? She tried googling his name to see if there was any news, but there was too much news to be of use—Gabe’s name was mentioned in thousands of articles about the Wheeler scandal, and none of them said whether he would be in Chicago, let alone how he was feeling about his ex-girlfriend.

Ex-girlfriend. She hated thinking of herself that way, and she could never think of him as her ex either. The idea that they had once meant something to each other but didn’t anymore? It was too upsetting to contemplate, even if it had been entirely her own doing. Or maybe because it had been entirely her own doing.

She could always call him and ask how he was. She knew that was an option. He might not want to hear from her, but he’d always reached out to check on her, even when she didn’t want to hear from him. She was desperate to know if he was okay. But she didn’t know what to say if he asked her a single question in return, and she was too crazed to figure out how she was feeling on her own, let alone what to say to Gabe about it. So she didn’t call him. She just kept working.

At around eleven on the night before the convention, Jo came into the living room and ordered them all to get some sleep. It had been a long week already, and they had an even longer one ahead. She needed them rested and ready to go. Anya expected the staff to protest, but they were all so exhausted that they were grateful for the reprieve. So they filtered off to their crooks and corners of the house, and Anya shut herself in her room, turned off the light, and went to sleep.

Well, she tried.

She was nervous about the convention. She kept running scenarios in her mind of the different ways it could play out, delegates breaking this way or that, all the paths momentum might take and the things she could do to shift it. She closed her eyes, tried to force her breathing into something steady. Thought about falling asleep on Gabe’s chest, the rhythm of his heartbeat. The warmth of his arms around her, how safe he made her feel. She couldn’t take this; she had to do something.

She didn’t even think, she just picked up her phone and opened her texts with him. There’d been no communication for months, not since April.

Are you okay? she sent. And then, I miss you so much.

She put down the phone. Fuck. Fuck! She shouldn’t have done that, she should have thought about it more before she did that. Except, all she’d been doing was thinking about it, so maybe it was better that she actually did it? She looked at her texts—no response, not even the dot-dot-dot of a text in progress. Damn it. There was no way she was getting to sleep now.

She couldn’t stay in this bed, and she couldn’t go anywhere either. She couldn’t even go down to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea––there were half a dozen sleeping colleagues in the way. But she remembered her dad kept a little electric kettle and some tea bags in his bedroom; he liked to make himself a cup when he woke up in the middle of the night and worked on briefs. So Anya shoved her phone under her pillow and tiptoed down the hall, relieved to see a crack of light spilling out from beneath her father’s door.

“Kiddo.” He looked up over his reading glasses as she stepped into the room. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” She carefully closed the door behind her. “Can I trouble you for a cup of tea?”

The room was exactly the same as when Judy had been alive, warm wooden furniture and peeling floral wallpaper in autumnal hues, mustards and maroons. There was a bed with a Shaker frame and a burgundy bedspread, a couple of dressers and big bookcases, and a round table with chairs in an alcove with a bay window. Walt was sitting there now, a mug of tea already beside him, a few photo albums open on the table.

He got up to plug in the kettle. “Chamomile or mint?”

“Chamomile, please.” Anya walked over to the table and took a seat in the chair next to Walt’s. “What’s all this?”

“Simone wanted to see some more pictures of your mom, so I dug out the albums.”

“I haven’t looked at these since…” Anya didn’t finish the sentence.

“Me neither,” Walt said. “Look, this is your mother and me in college.”

Anya smiled at him. She’d seen this picture a thousand times—Judy talking animatedly in a bar while Walt gazed at her, completely besotted. “You were so in love.”

“With your mother?” Walt gave her a crooked grin. “How could I not be?”

Anya picked up the next album—their wedding album. Judy hadn’t wanted a whole to-do, so they got married in a little park on the lake, up by Montrose Beach. They had the ceremony in a field of black-eyed Susans, with Lake Michigan and the city skyline in the background. Walt wore jeans; Judy wore a simple white sundress. Anya had never seen anyone look so happy.

“Was it scary?” Anya asked. “Loving her that much?”