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9. How hard you try.
10. How hard you’ve always tried.
11. How determined you are to keep trying.
12. That when your shoulders cover mine, nothing else in the entire stupid world matters.
13. The goddamn issue ofLe Mondeyou brought back to London with you and kept and have on your nightstand (yes, I saw it).
14. The way you look when you first wake up.
15. Your shoulder-to-waist ratio.
16. Your huge, generous, ridiculous, indestructible heart.
17. Your equally huge dick.
18. The face you just made when you read that last one.
19. The way you look when you first wake up (I know I already said this, but I really, really love it).
20. The fact that you loved me all along.
I keep thinking about that last one ever since you told me, and what an idiot I was. It’s so hard for me to get out of my own head sometimes, but now I’m coming back to what I said to you the night in my room when it all started, and how I brushed you off when you offered to let me go after the DNC, how I used to try to act like it was nothing sometimes. I didn’t even know what you were offering to do to yourself. God, I want to fight everyone who’s ever hurt you, but it was me too, wasn’t it? All that time. I’m so sorry.
Please stay gorgeous and strong and unbelievable. I miss you I miss you I miss you I love you. I’m calling you as soon as I send this, but I know you like to have these things written down.
A
P.S. Richard Wagner to Eliza Wille, re: Ludwig II–1864 (Remember when you played Wagner for me? He’s an asshole, but this is something.)
It is true that I have my young king who genuinely adores me. You cannot form an idea of our relations. I recall one of the dreams of my youth. I once dreamed that Shakespeare was alive: that I really saw and spoke to him: I can never forget the impression that dream made on me. Then I would have wished to see Beethoven, though he was already dead. Something of the same kind must pass in the mind of this lovable man when with me. He says he can hardly believe that he really possesses me. None can read without astonishment, without enchantment, the letters he writes to me.
TWELVE
There’s a diamond ring on Zahra’s finger when she shows up with her coffee thermos and a thick stack of files. They’re in June’s room, scarfing down breakfast before Zahra and June leave for a rally in Pittsburgh, and June drops her waffle on the bedspread.
“Oh my God, Z, what isthat? Did you getengaged?”
Zahra looks down at the ring and shrugs. “I had the weekend off.”
June gapes at her.
“When are you going to tell us who you’re dating?” Alex asks. “Also,how?”
“Uh-uh, nope,” she says. “Youdon’t get to say shit to me about secret relationships in and around this campaign, princess.”
“Point,” Alex concedes.
She brushes past the topic as June starts wiping syrup off the bed with her pajama pants. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover this morning, so focus up, little Claremonts.”
She’s got detailed agendas for each of them, bullet-pointed and double-sided, and she dives right in. They’re already on Thursday’s voter registration drive in Cedar Rapids (Alex is pointedly not invited) when her phone pings with a notification. She picks it up, scrolling through the screen offhandedly.
“So I need both of you to be dressed and ready… by…” She’s looking more closely at the screen, distracted. “By, uh…” Her face is taken over with a horrified gasp. “Oh,fuck my ass.”
“What—?” Alex starts, but his own phone buzzes in his lap, and he looks down to find a push notification from CNN:LEAKED SURVEILLANCE FOOTAGE SHOWS PRINCE HENRY AT DNC HOTEL.
“Oh, shit,” Alex says.
