Read Online The First Affair by Emma McLaughlin - Free Book Online Page A

and then released my hand as we stepped into the sun.
    “Great, thanks for waiting.” He circled his desk for the manila folder, extending it for me to come and take.
    “Okay, thank you.” I turned away with it; the dog stirred.
    “Jamie.”
    I pivoted.
    “You can take your soda.” He motioned for me to flip the tab.
    • • •
    That night, Lena’s IMs pinged with the speed of Morse code as I pushed my toes against the sharp sisal rug, where I’d slid to charge my laptop in the nearby outlet. “It’s bad, right?” I typed, my hair almost dry from the shower I’d sat in trying to make sense of the afternoon. “He’s really married.”
    “And you don’t want to be the porn he can’t risk downloading,” she typed back.
    I dismissed it as a mischaracterization based on what I had shared, or rather not shared, about our first kiss. But if I was honest with myself about it, we hadn’t held each other or even really talked. This was undeniably— “He’s really married.” I gripped my forehead.
    A moment later she responded. “I’m choosing to take comfort in that, you know, as a citizen.”
    “I just wish it had been bad. Or awkward. Or a letdown. It was so—there’s some connection here that is just, well, as you have identified, base. Which is why I will heretofore deliver papers in not just panties, but a snowsuit. Hemmed in razor wire.”
    “So back up—they might offer you a job? Will you take it? I’m not saying pleasenopleasenopleaseno. Except that I am.”
    “There’s no way it’s going to happen. The competition is beyond fierce. I mean even if it does—and it’s such a long shot—I don’t think I should stay here, do you?”
    “Agreed. I think nude modeling might be the healthier choice.”
    “Thanks, Mom.” I hit Send and was startled by the sound of the landline in Gail’s room. My parents were the only ones I’d given the number to. I jogged down the hall.
    “Jamie?” The voice hit me like cardiac paddles.
    “Yes?”
    “It’s Greg. Rutland,” he added his last name to clarify.
    “Hi.” I glanced at the digital clock. Two fifteen in the morning. Was this a booty call? Did I care?
    “Am I—I didn’t wake you?” he asked.
    “No, no, I was just, um, chatting with a friend. How did you find this—”
    “Getting your file took a level of strategizing that put my efforts in the Middle East to shame.”
    “I don’t know how I should feel about that.”
    “I was gunning for flattered.”
    “Accomplished.” Smiling, I sunk down onto the crisp duvet, so far beyond flattered. Wooed. To put this in context: at Vassar, if a guy held the cafeteria door for you, he’d consider himself Lord Byron.
    “I didn’t know if you’d answer, or this Gail—”
    “No, she’s—I’m just using her apartment for the internship. I’m alone.”
    “It isn’t Gail Robinson, the RNC fundraiser?”
    I cringed. “She’s really a nice person.”
    “She’s brilliant,” he conceded. “Partridge’s best asset.”
    “Well, I kind of saved her daughter’s life, so she’s overlooking my politics,” I said quickly, trying to tacitly communicate that the thing we were tacitly not acknowledging was explicitly safe with me. “I mean, she’s never here. And that’s—she’s not here. So, um, yes.” I waited. Was it the right answer?
    “Look.” I heard him blow out. “I’m sorry about today and also the, uh, other day. That’s why I called, to tell you that.”
    “Oh. Okay.” Neither booty call nor flattery—I was, apparently, being triaged.
    “I didn’t intend to—I wasn’t planning,” he continued.
    “Okay.”
    “I don’t seem to be able to think clearly around you.”
    “Ditto.”
    Then he laughed the same deep laugh he had that first night in the bullpen, and I realized that was something the public didn’t know about him—what he sounded like when he cracked up. “So what brought you to the White House?” I was unsure why he wanted to keep talking,