He sets his coffee next to mine, and a folder, and his reading glasses. “No coffee?” He lifts my empty cup.
“If I have one more I’ll never sleep again in my life,” I groan, and he laughs, such a pleasant laugh, and takes my cup and goes to refill it.
He sets it down in the exact same spot it occupied before. Next to his.
Then he takes the seat beside me, and I can’t concentrate for a moment. I’m hyperaware of him, of nobody else in the building but us.
Matt has a way of occupying more space than his body does. He shifts to prop his elbows on his knees, and my heart trips at his nearness. “Hey. Why are you still here, Charlotte?”
“It’s my cubicle.”
He smiles sardonically and just eyes me for my sass.
I’m too aware of him sitting there, with the rich outlines of his shoulders pressing into the black, soft-looking fabric of his shirt.
I try not to notice. “I was trying to finish this pile of letters,” I finally answer, grabbing the pen as I pretend to get back to work.
I can’t.
He’s staring at me.
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t agree to help me so you could spend all night answering letters,” he says.
“Maybe I did. But why did you ask me?” I narrow my eyes.
“When you get a letter from a girl you just met, you know she means business.”
“I perfumed the stationery—of course I meant business,” I say slyly. “Though it seems you didn’t mean it when you said you didn’t want to run when we first met.”
“Yeah, well.” A chuckle rises up his chest, and he drags a hand over his hair.
“You changed your mind,” I say.
“You could say I matured into the idea. Takes time to gather the courage to believe you can do it. Then it takes another to believe you can do it better than anyone else.”
He seems calm, as if he’s got nothing to hide, his eyes warm and simply . . . friendly as he leans back and loops his arm behind the chair as he shifts. “I kept thinking if not me, who? If not now, when?” He gazes out the windows at the far end before glancing back at me. “I’d like to change things. Still no equality, still a need of jobs, still too many self-serving ambitions. We’re all wild wolves who were fed at the doorstep too long and forgot how to hunt. Where are the workers that built America? On unemployment?”
He sounds so passionate, and he’s so close, I’m a little breathless. “I love how proactive you are about jobs.”
“Because nothing feels as good as a day well invested in doing something right.” His eyes flick down to my lips for a minuscule moment. “Actually, not nothing. But precious few things.”
Neither of us is laughing.
In fact the air feels a little charged, a little bit electric.
He means kissing, a part of me whispers.
No, Charlotte, he means sex!
I feel myself flush at that, aware of Matt watching me as if he’s enjoying that immensely. I set the pen down and look up at him. “What you said the other day, about never being able to trust someone not running with the story. There are so many stories about your family and you . . . Are they all real?”
“Trust me. They’re not as interesting as you’d think they are.”
“Not true!” I protest. “They’re all fascinating.”
He smiles. Shifts forward. “You’re fascinating,” he whispers.
I nearly choke on my saliva.
“I find everything about you fascinating. Even the fact that you’re sitting here now at this hour.”
“So are you,” I counter.
“I’m the candidate.”
“And you’re my candidate. So, I’m here.”
The word my sort of feels different when I say it to him. The idea that Matt could be anything of mine is just mind-blowing, to say the least.
But he could be my president.
He was my first crush.
He is my boss, and my candidate.
And right now he is my very breath because nothing has ever felt as exciting to me as this man, this man in this moment, sipping his coffee, leaning back in his chair, watching me with such lazy eyes—as if he has no intention of going anywhere.
As if what happened when we ran/walked together sort of connected with him too.
“It is true you had a chimpanzee at the White House? You were gifted it by a foreign ambassador?” I ask.
I admit I’m addicted to talking to him, to learning more about him.
“Baboo. She was six months old when we got her.”
“Oh really? Were all your college girlfriends terribly jealous because she got to live with you? I can’t even keep up with the list of those girlfriends. Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lawrence—who was it really?”
Matt sets down his coffee, a smirk on his lips. “Neither. Both are friends. My White House years taught me to guard my every step and after . . . let’s just say I enjoy being the hunter in the relationship.” He eyes me mischievously. “What about you, Charlotte?”
“Oh no.” I shake my head, laughing. “My parents have given up on hooking me up with some promising political entity. I’ve simply not found the right guy.”
There’s a silence.
Matt seems oddly pleased. He leans forward. So close that his shoulder touches mine, and a part of me wonders if it’s on purpose.
“Do you want to?” His voice is deep and a tad quiet. He raises his hand and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, almost like he did when we were running/walking together, and a white-hot shudder races down my spine.
My heart is flip-flopping in my chest as we stare at each other and Matt lowers his hand, still looking at me with heavy eyelids.
“Of course, everybody wants to find that. I’m a realist, but I dream of finding what my parents have.”
“So why not . . .?” he prods, his gaze caressing me.
“Most politicians are old, stuffy, or boring.”
He laughs—a rich, deep sound.
When he falls sober, his voice drops a decibel. “Good thing I’m a lawyer and a businessman, and not a politician. Because I’m not stuffy, and I’m definitely not boring.”
My throat runs dry. Oh, god. He is most definitely nothing like politics has ever seen, even with the Kennedys.
But you’re not available, I think to myself, though I somehow feel too tongue-tied to say it.