Cruel Truth

by K. A. Linde

  “Me too, dear.”

  My smile was wide, and all the drama with Sam evaporated in that moment. When Leslie said things like that, it made my heart soar. I wasn’t just needed; I was necessary.

  This was why I was on campaign. This was why I did it. I wished that I could explain to everyone else what I loved about campaigning. Maybe then I could get my parents off my back about being behind the scenes rather than a politician myself.

  But it was working for someone that I believed in, who valued me. It was the joy of packaging and marketing and selling a candidate. To reaching out to thousands of people through phone calls, knocking on doors, volunteering, banquets, rallies, and more. At the end of the day, when all the votes were tallied, there was nothing more satisfying than my candidate winning. I worked hundred-hour weeks for that high. And I’d keep working at it for as long as I could.

  “Now, wish me luck,” Leslie said with a smile.

  “You don’t need it,” I told her honestly.

  Leslie patted my shoulder. “How right you are.”

  8

  Lark

  For all the nerves I’d had all week, the banquet was a hit. Jay Neville had given an amazing speech. Leslie had wowed the audience, as she always did. Donation numbers had gone through the roof. For a whole ten seconds, I could breathe again before worrying about the next step on the campaign trail.

  “Awesome job, Demi,” I said as I stepped into the back room to grab my jacket. “This success is all on you.”

  She laughed and shook her head. Her curls bounced around her face. “No way. My success is everyone’s success. I couldn’t have done this without any of you.”

  “Well, you killed it. It was great,” I told her.

  “Thanks.” She beamed. “Hey, a bunch of us are going to go to this pub around the corner to grab a celebratory drink. You interested?”

  I winced. “I would, but I am so beat. I still have to see my parents, which is always super fun.” I rolled my eyes. “I think I’ll have to pass on this one. But have fun.”

  “We will. But we’ll miss you,” Demi said, nudging me.

  “Next time,” I assured her before stepping back out to go deal with the inevitable.

  My parents.

  They donated considerable money to Leslie through the company and tried to come to her bigger events. They’d been doing that before I joined the campaign, back when Leslie had been a state senator and a close friend. It would look bad if I didn’t say something. Even though I would rather send Shawn over.

  I brushed my hands down the sides of my little black dress and then headed out into the mostly empty ballroom. My mother, Hope St. Vincent, was easy to spot in her floor-length red dress that formed to her curves and the black fur coat draped across her shoulders. My father stood next to her in a sharp, custom-designed, handmade black suit. He worked with a handful of designers each year and had his collection redone to perfection. It made him look effortlessly powerful. They said Alexander St. Vincent was not to be underestimated.

  My mother noticed me first. “Larkin, darling!”

  “Hello, Mother,” I said, seeing how she very carefully didn’t hug me. She wasn’t affectionate like that. Never had been.

  She held me at arm’s length. “That’s one of my dresses!”

  Shit! I’d forgotten that I was wearing the clothes she’d picked out. “Uh…yeah,” I stammered. “I like it.”

  My mother beamed as if I’d finally done something right in my life. “I knew you would if you just gave it a chance.”

  I veered toward my father to avoid responding to my mother’s enthusiasm. “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Sweetheart,” my father said. He put his hand on my back and then kissed my cheek. “What a good event this was.”

  “Yes,” my mother agreed. “If you did this all the time, I might actually understand why you work here.”

  I bit back the cringe. Showing no emotion was better than letting them know how much it got to me that they hated my job. I knew it wasn’t glamorous. I could be doing something much, much flashier than this. I didn’t have a bachelor’s from Brown and a JD from Columbia for nothing. But it just didn’t interest me. And I was done trying to be someone else for my parents. Or anyone for that matter.

  “You know, if you enjoy the event-planning side, we could have you work with the STV Foundation,” my father mused. “Our charity always needs a boost. You’d be perfect for the job.”

  “What a great idea, Alexander,” my mother said.

  I stared between them blankly. So much for just thanking them. Perhaps they’d coordinated this attack. They knew that wasn’t what I wanted.

  “Well, thank you. But I’m not the event planner. Our fundraising chair, Demi, did most of the planning work. She’s brilliant. Maybe after the campaign, I could give her your information,” I suggested blithely.

  My parents shared a look. The look. Like they were going to move into plan B.

  I spoke before they could. “I just wanted to thank you both for coming and for your generous donation to the mayor’s campaign. It’s donations like yours that keep this campaign running and put the mayor in a position to help the people of New York City. We can’t thank you enough,” I said as if reading from a script. “If you have anything to discuss with the mayor, feel free to reach out.”

  “Larkin,” my mother said with a tired sigh.

  I kept my smile painted on. “Again, thank you. The campaign will be in touch!”

  And even though I knew I was supposed to be sucking up to them, I just couldn’t do it tonight. Not after the week I’d had. So, I turned around and headed out of the ballroom. I’d probably hear about it later, but right now, it just felt really damn good.

  A smile returned to my features by the time I made it to the nearly empty back room to grab my purse. Shawn stepped in just then.

  “What are you grinning about?” he asked with his own smile plastered on his face. He got like this after events. Like he was on top of the world even though, a few minutes ago, he’d been a stress and anxiety-ridden mess.

  “Just happy about how well the event went.”

  “Yes!” he said, holding his fist out. I awkwardly bumped his fist. “We’re all going out for drinks. Come on. You can walk with me.”

  “Oh no, I’m beat. I just need to sleep before work tomorrow.”

  He threw his hands out. “I gave everyone the day off. I wanted to celebrate our accomplishment while we have the time. Once we get to the primary, we’ll have few days off. Helps to keep morale up.”

  I opened and then closed my mouth. “Oh.”

  “So, no excuses!” he cheered. “Be a team player and come have a beer.”

  I didn’t even like beer.

  But what the hell was I going to say?

  “All right. Sure,” I said with a nod, trying to search for that smile again. “One drink won’t hurt anything.”

  “That’s the spirit!”

  We headed out of the building and down the street to a dingy-looking Irish pub with Guinness signs all over the windows. The room was dimly lit with a long bar on one side, a row of booths on the other, and billiards set up in one corner. We easily spotted the campaign group, considering we were the only ones in evening dress attire in this dive bar.

  It was about night and day from Sparks earlier this week. But it had its own charm. Something I never would have been able to acknowledge before working that year in Madison. You couldn’t walk a foot without hitting a bar in Wisconsin. It was the only state in that country that I was certain had more bars than people. You could even drink in the union on campus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I’d grown up drinking, but Wisconsin was something else entirely.

  “What do you drink?” Shawn asked. “I’ll grab the first round.”

  “Um…I’ll just have whatever you’re having.”

  I was certain there wasn’t a good wine in the entire establishment. And I didn’t want liquor. It’d be easier
to just pretend to drink the beer. I could probably pass it off to Aspen without Shawn even noticing.

  I headed to the row of tables the campaign had commandeered. There were two empty seats next to Aspen and Demi, and I took the first one.

  “You decided to come out!” Demi said.

  “Shawn,” I said by means of explanation.

  “Oh yeah, he gave us the day off.”

  Aspen laughed. “What are you going to do with yourself, Lark? I didn’t think you took days off.”

  I shrugged. “I was thinking of sleeping all day and eating a lot of junk food.”

  “No way. You’ll come into the office anyway. Even if no one is there,” Aspen said, nudging my shoulder. “It’s who you are.”

  She wasn’t wrong. I’d done it before. But with everything that had gone on with Sam, I felt like I needed a mental break. Work had always been my escape. The thing I loved so much. But now, he was there. At work. And when I went there, I thought of him. I needed a day off from that.

  “Maybe,” I said with a shrug.

  A shadow fell behind me. “Oh, I guess I’ll pull up an extra chair.”

  I turned around in confusion. I hadn’t thought for a second why there were two open chairs at the end of the table. I figured that they’d held one for Shawn or maybe just that they had more than they needed. I hadn’t realized I’d taken someone else’s seat.

  “Hey, sorry,” I said, standing. “Did I take your seat?”

  I turned to face the girl who had spoken. She was dragging an extra chair over. And when I caught sight of her, my breath hitched. She was the blonde from the orchestra. The violinist who had been seated at the very back of the group. Her hair had been pulled back into a bun at the time, but now, it hung in loose waves to her shoulders. I couldn’t even get that look with a curling iron. And she’d managed it by pulling it out of a bun. She still wore the nondescript black dress pants and a fitted, long-sleeved black blouse. Somehow, it didn’t look stupid.

  “Oh, no worries!” the girl gushed. “I can just grab another.” She stuffed a chair at the end of the table between me and Aspen. “See, this works for me.” She held out her hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Claire, Sam’s girlfriend.”

  I took her callous hand in mine and shook. “Lark.”

  “Ohh!” Her eyes widened.

  For a moment, I worried that she knew. That Sam had confessed it all to Claire and that things were about to get really awkward.

  But then she just grinned bigger. “Sam has told me so much about you. You run the campaign, right?”

  I stared at her blankly for a few seconds too long before responding, “I’m the deputy campaign manager. Shawn”—I pointed toward him at the bar—“is the head campaign manager.”

  “Well, still, I hear you’re the one who keeps everything running.”

  “She does,” Aspen interjected. “Lark is, like, literally the best.”

  “See,” Claire said, gesturing to Aspen.

  “Don’t try to deny it, Lark,” Demi said. “Shawn is great, but he’s no Larkin St. Vincent.”

  “You all are too much,” I said, uncomfortable with the praise…and Claire.

  “Here’s your drink,” Shawn said, setting the beer down in front of Demi and pushing it across the table. “I’m going to go catch up with Christine. See if we can talk about the feminism topic again.”

  I gave him a thumbs-up. “Have fun with that.”

  Aspen snorted, and Demi tried to hide her own amusement.

  Claire glanced around with wide blue eyes. “Y’all are so cool. I wish I had more people my own age in the orchestra.”

  “How did you get into that?” Demi asked her.

  I shifted, looking around the room as I took a sip of the beer in front of me. I choked on the dark liquid. God, it was gross. What had I been thinking?

  I was looking for Sam.

  Of course.

  Where the hell was he? And how had I been left alone with his girlfriend?

  That was the minute he appeared out of the restroom. Our eyes locked across the room. I could see his thoughts clear across his face. I was there. Claire was there. What the fuck had he gotten himself into?

  It was the same question that I was wondering.

  But to his credit, he still strode across the room toward us.

  I missed everything Claire had said to Demi and Aspen in the brief exchange with Sam. Claire didn’t even notice him until he was standing right in front of her.

  “Oh hey! Look, Lark is here,” Claire said with a big smile.

  “Should I…scoot down?” I asked with my poker face firmly in place.

  “No!” Claire gasped. She waved her hand at Sam. “We don’t have to always be together. Take the other seat.”

  Sam wavered for a second. But what could he say? Sorry, I don’t want to sit next to Lark because she’s my ex-girlfriend and this is insanely uncomfortable?

  Nope. He took the seat.

  And now, I was fucking sitting between Sam and his girlfriend.

  Kill me. Just kill me.

  “So, as I was saying…” Claire continued.

  But I didn’t hear what she said. My ears were ringing. This was such a bad idea. I hadn’t thought that Sam would be here. Let alone with Claire. I should have anticipated it, but after the confrontation with my parents, I hadn’t even considered that option.

  “Are you drinking Guinness?” Sam asked next to me. “Don’t you hate beer?”

  I glanced down at the drink I’d barely touched. “Shawn got it for me.”

  Then I pushed it toward him. Sam loved Guinness. I remembered one of the UW-Madison bars had this guy who had studied in Dublin to pour Guinness. That was how serious he was about the authenticity of their staff. Sam had raved about it. I wouldn’t touch the stuff. Except that one crazy night that involved an Irish car bomb and lots of fuzzy blackout memories.

  Our fingers brushed against each other as he took the drink from me without comment. I jerked away on instinct.

  “How did you and Sam end up in New York?” Aspen asked. “I always love these stories. Everyone has their own how I got to the city story.”

  “Except Lark, right?” Claire asked. “You’re from New York.”

  How much had Sam told Claire about me? Christ.

  “Uh, yeah, I am. Born and raised.”

  “So cool,” she said. “Well, Sam and I met my senior year of college, which was his last year of law school. We had mutual friends and ended up at a party together. We were together, what, about a year when I auditioned for the orchestra?” she asked Sam. He nodded, his head buried in his beer. “Yeah, a year. And when I got the position, he took the New York bar and transferred up here to be with me. It’s been about a year since we’ve been here too.”

  I kept my gaze from wandering to Sam. He’d lied. He’d lied to me. He’d said that the firm had transferred him. But he’d only been transferred after Claire had gotten a job here. He must have requested it. He’d moved her for her. When he’d never done that for me.

  My throat tightened painfully.

  “I love that,” Aspen said. “I wish I had a cute story like that for how I met my girlfriend. We met in a bar.” She laughed and shrugged. “So cliché.”

  “That’s not cliché. That’s great!” Claire said. But then turned her attention back to me. “So, Sam says that y’all worked on the Woodhouse campaign together. Isn’t it just crazy that y’all met up again on a campaign here in New York?”

  “Wait,” Demi said with an arched eyebrow, “you and Sam knew each other before this?”

  “Hey, I didn’t know that,” Aspen said.

  “I didn’t know it was a secret!” Claire said.

  I forced out a laugh. It was hard to speak around the knife in my chest. “It’s not a secret. We both worked in Madison, like, five years ago. I didn’t even know he was in the city or anything. Just coincidence that he’s here now.”

  “Yeah, I actually thought sh
e was working with her parents still,” Sam said.

  Which meant…if I’d known, I might not have applied for this job.

  “What a small world,” Aspen said.

  “It’s all about connections,” Demi said. “I really believe that the world is so much smaller than we think. And that once we make a connection with someone, we’re more likely to see that connection everywhere.”

  I gulped and glanced over at Sam. That was exactly how I felt.

  “Like, think about when you test-drive a car. You immediately see that car everywhere on the road. But before, you never even noticed it. That’s how it works with people too. We’re brought together for a reason. It’s serendipity.”

  Yeah, and what happy accident brought me to this incredibly uncomfortable situation?

  “I love that idea,” Claire agreed. “I lived most of my life in rural North Carolina. I like to think that it’s not so big after all. And people come into our lives for a reason.”

  I swallowed. I needed to extract myself from this conversation.

  I coughed hard into my hand. “Ugh, guys. I think I caught something. I’m really not feeling well. I wish I could stay longer, but I think I should just go.”

  There was a chorus of people trying to get me to stay. But I pushed my chair and coughed a second time, apologizing through coughs. Sam glanced at me once, seeing through my facade. But he didn’t try to stop me as I made my excuses and headed toward the exit.

  I’d seen enough anyway.

  Claire seemed like a perfectly nice, perfectly normal woman. She had heart. She was genuinely curious about people. She seemed interested in being involved in Sam’s life. I could see how they worked together.

  Even if I didn’t like it, there was nothing I could do about it.

  Not that I even would if I could.

  That was the old Lark. Bad Lark.

  The separate entity that I didn’t want to rear its ugly head ever again.

  I already knew how this played out. There was no point in sticking around and enduring it any longer. I didn’t want to be made a fool of…again.

  9