by Kerry Clare
But their advantage was not her advantage, because, as she reminded herself again, none of this had anything to do with her. She hadn’t even known about the interview until she woke up after eleven, her head sore from all the wine the night before. It was her day off, thank goodness, but poor Lauren had to go in to work, slamming the front door shut behind her. Which is what had disturbed Brooke’s uneasy slumber—otherwise, she might have slept all day.
And now she was awake, empty hours looming, and she hadn’t wanted to check her phone, because checking your phone should never be the first thing you do in the morning. But in this room, empty as the day was, what else was there for her to do, except bench presses? Not even a spot of sunlight to watch as it moved across the floor. No, the one object of interest within these four white walls was her phone, right there within arm’s reach. So enticing, irresistible—even if her only messages were from her mom, her sister again, and the very persistent Shondra Decker. And then another Derek alert about a live-TV appearance, so Brooke sat up in bed and watched the clip. It was proof that Derek was alive, if not altogether well, and still in the world.
He was wearing a V-neck sweater, and he looked tired, but also comfortable, which was important in this context. Being comfortable made him far more credible, like he had nothing to hide, as he denied the allegations made against him, underlining that they were baseless, anonymous. He was still angry—Brooke could see the emotion just beneath the surface. But he managed to keep it contained as he answered the questions put to him.
“But what about the rumors?” asked the host, who was never going to go easy, but she was a woman, which would play well if everything went according to plan. “The ones about your propensity for relationships with young girls.”
“Not young girls,” said Derek. “Never underage.”
“But teenagers.”
“There were people I met when they were teenagers,” Derek said, “that I’d become involved with later. But some of them, I met when I was a teenager, I mean. I’ve had relationships with girls in their twenties. I’ve had relationships with girls in their thirties. I’ve had relationships with girls in their forties.”
“Girls in their forties?” the host asked.
Derek corrected himself. “Women. And I mean, it’s not like I’m a casanova. If I was, I’d probably have been married by now—at least once.” The studio audience laughed. “But I’m a political nerd, I’m a workaholic. I’ve never been the guy with smooth moves, but I’ve always respected women. It’s how I was raised. My sisters are my two best friends. And I would never do these things they’re accusing me of doing. These anonymous allegations, they’re just not me. And anyone who knows me will tell you that.”
“There have been rumors, though,” the host persisted. “People are saying that. Stories about nights out back home—this is not the first time they’ve been raised.”
“But what’s that all about?” asked Derek. “The rumors. I mean, this is me back in Lanark, with my friends. The same people I’ve been friends with for decades. What are they saying, you know? What are the people who actually know about it saying? We like to have a good time, I’m not going to deny that. I mean, we specifically worked to build a local culture where people would want to go and have a good time and get together, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“But that’s not what these allegations are about.”
“These allegations are about nothing,” said Derek. “You ask anyone who was there. I’ve made a point of living my life, being a man of my word. You build currency with that, right? People have faith in me. They know who I am.” He looked at the camera. “You know who I am.”
BEFORE
Brooke had known Derek for four years before anything romantic transpired between them—except for this one time the summer before, during a party at his house up north, and that certainly hadn’t been romantic. Everyone else was gone, or passed out, scattered somewhere, and they were in the basement where he had a mini-theater set up, a big screen and a row of leather seats with cup holders. A terrible movie was playing, the one where Ben Affleck saves the world, the volume turned up loud because Derek’s favorite song was, unabashedly, “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” She had been sitting on his lap, and now she was straddling him, his chair reclined, his hands on her breasts. And they never got further than that, because someone smashed into the sliding door in the kitchen upstairs, glass flying everywhere, and they heard the explosion. He had to go up there to investigate and clean up and she’d fallen asleep at some point. They didn’t talk about it in the morning, or ever after.
She wasn’t sure if he even remembered it had happened. Once they were back at work they went on as usual—so maybe it really had been nothing. This was all during what would end up being the most intense year of her life, the year she spent working on Derek’s leadership campaign. She’d finished school and was hired on full time, and during all those years she’d been working for Derek, she’d been watching him grow up too, albeit belatedly, and it was about time. But she’d been there and seen it happen. It meant something to her, the way he’d been handed responsibility and decided to live up to it. He was drinking less, trying to balance his work life with healthy habits. The atmosphere in his office was less like a party than it had been once upon a time, and even though Derek hadn’t yet made the big life changes so many of his colleagues and contemporaries had—things like marriage, and parenthood—he seemed to have become more subdued. Now he was known to say things like, “I guess I’ll call it a night,” and he no longer stumbled into work in the morning hungover.
“The truth, though,” he confided to Brooke one evening when it was just the two of them out for a drink and he’d ordered a Coke, “is that I just can’t do it anymore. I’m getting old, Brooke. I used to bounce back like a rubber ball, but these days it just sucks the life out of me.” He was depressed anyway, because his doctor suspected he had irritable bowel syndrome. “And that’s not exactly on-brand now, right?” He was smiling, he was joking—but not entirely.
Brooke sipped her whiskey sour and Derek looked at her intently. “I so envy you,” he said, “having everything before you.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “You’re not exactly washed up.” She wasn’t about to go in for the flattery. She had known Derek too long, and he was too important to her, which meant the things they talked about should only be real things. And she refused to be one of those girls.
“You can deny it all you want,” he said. “Or at least I’ve tried to. ‘Age is just a number’ and all that, which was the kind of thing I really believed when I was trying to do things—to prove myself—when I was in my teens, in my twenties. But there comes this point when believing it doesn’t even matter, because the body knows. You can’t stave it off, and there you are: you’re old.”
“Derek, give me a break,” she told him, signaling to the waitress to bring her another drink. “You’re a guy,” she reminded him. “Or maybe you’ve forgotten. Perhaps you’re confused and believe it’s you who has been made the target for ‘age-defying’ skincare products and Hollywood movies with the subtext that women are washed up at thirty-six and can only be cast as suburban mothers driving minivans.”
“But it’s the same thing,” he said.
“No, it’s not,” said Brooke. “Male actors get to be leading men when they’re in their seventies. Men get wrinkles and gray hair and they get to be distinguished. You get old, Derek, and people see you as experienced. It compounds your authority.” Brooke had taken a course on gender and aging in third year. “It’s only a matter of time before I audition for a movie and get cast as somebody’s spinster aunt.”
“You’re twenty-two,” he said.
“But my love interest would be a guy who’s nearly forty. And somehow it balances out that way.”
“Doesn’t sound unreasonable,” Derek said.
&nbs
p; “Well, it wouldn’t,” she told him. “Not to you. Maybe you watch too many movies.”
“So it wouldn’t be so implausible, then.”
“What?”
“You and me.” There had been insinuations before, but never so direct, and not when he was sober. She had tried never to take them seriously, and blowing off comments like this was a reflex, though it had been easier just to humor him when he’d been sleeping with her colleague two desks over. She didn’t want anything to happen between them until she was sure that it was real.
But Derek wasn’t sleeping with anyone right now, as far as she knew, and he hadn’t had a drink all night. The vibe was different, but she tried to fight it anyway. “Just because it’s in a movie doesn’t mean it’s plausible. We’ve all seen movies, Derek.”
“But I’m not talking about movies.” His glass was empty, but he sipped his straw anyway for want of occupation. Brooke realized that, in this moment, he’d lost his swagger. No one got to see Derek like this very often, and certainly never when he was sober.
“Let’s not do this,” she said to him. The thing about Derek was that you had to remind him of the boundaries, because it was in his character to want to defy them, all of them, like a series of hurdles he was just compelled to leap.
“Do what?” Looking right at her with big eyes, and maybe it was the light in the bar or the way he held his head, but there was nothing strong or distinguished about Derek now. He could have passed for sixteen with that look, such naïveté. As if he really didn’t know the answer to the question he was asking her. But always, always, Derek was smarter than he appeared.
“It doesn’t work on me,” she said. “The thing you do.” It wasn’t that she was immune to his charms, but that after all their years together, she understood the context better than most people.
“This isn’t ‘a thing I do,’ ” he said.
“Isn’t it?”
“Sit here with my friend, who might just be the person who knows me better than anyone, and confess my most terrifying and vulnerable feelings and open myself up to the possibility of rejection? No, not exactly routine.”
Brooke said, “Well, maybe that part is true. I don’t think you’ve ever known the possibility of rejection in your life.”
Derek said, “All the time.”
“What?”
“Just because a person is determined to succeed doesn’t mean he’s not aware of the risks he’s taking. I don’t look down, Brooke, but I know what’s there.”
“What’s there?” His eyes were locked on hers.
He said, “There is nothing. A terrifying abyss that could swallow you up, a great black hole. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve ever wanted—gone. But I step forward anyway. You just do it. You can’t think about odds.”
“The odds of what?”
“That maybe there could possibly be something between you and me? Something real? And that maybe it could be the first real thing I’ve ever known in my whole life.” It was hard to believe this was real, that it wasn’t a joke. Was it a joke? “And I know,” he said. “I know I’m messing with things here, taking a risk with our friendship, with work, and everything. And between us, it’s never going to be easy, or straightforward. I don’t even—” He stumbled on his words. “Um, I don’t even really know what I’m trying to say here. What I’m doing.” He was nervous. “I just—well, you know this would never be a traditional kind of relationship. But, I mean, if there is any possibility that you might feel the same way too—that this thing between us is something worth pursuing—I’ve got to know about it, you know? Because if I’m right—and I’m usually right, you know I am.” He clasped his hands like a prayer. “Well, then, I can’t miss this. To let you get away would be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”
“But I’m not going anywhere,” she said. And he took this as a promise, even though she meant it in practical terms, that he had no reason to fear he’d wake up tomorrow morning and she’d be gone. She also meant that they didn’t need to rush this, make it into a production…but now he’d taken her hand, and she knew that this was going to be a production for sure, and all her resolve was crumbling in the face of this moment, which she had been thinking about for years.
As though she had written the script, to be honest. In invisible ink, maybe, and only in her mind. She’d never mentioned it to anybody (or even properly to herself), calling out anyone who’d dared to suggest it. But now they were there at the table and he was confessing his feelings for her, and it was almost familiar. And not because Derek fell for girls the way trees fell in the forest, because this felt different, sober and stressful. And Brooke had all the power here, to make or break whatever was blossoming between them. He was waiting to hear what she had to say.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said again, and what she meant this time was I’m yours.
He was holding her hand, and he said, “What do we do now?”
She said, “I don’t know.”
“I need a drink,” he said.
“Might be a good idea.” She ordered another one too, and they were quiet when the drinks arrived. Which was strange, because they were never quiet together. They were always arguing about something, talking, discussing, but nothing was pressing now. Everything important had already been said. Derek took her hand again, and didn’t let it go, even when the tables filled up all around them and anybody could have seen.
It had been her. All along, right down the line. It felt like a song, or a movie after all, kind of cheesy, which had never been her kind of narrative. The people she’d hooked up with before had never gone in for grand gestures, and there hadn’t been any forethought to what happened between them. Most of the time she’d just woken up in the morning beside someone new and supposed, “Well, here goes nothing.” Which usually turned out to be the case.
But this was different, which was why she and Derek didn’t know what to do with themselves, and even once the drinks were gone and their nerves were less taut, she still didn’t know how to be.
“What’s up with that?” she asked Derek, about their awkwardness. He’d paid the bill and they were walking out of there, his hand on her back. “I thought you had moves for every situation.”
“This is kind of a new situation,” he said. He was years older than she was, but he seemed like a little boy, and it felt like she was the one with the experience here, but she wasn’t. Still, she knew what to do.
“You could kiss me,” she said. “It would be a good start.” Which made her sound more cool and assured than she really was, because her legs were shaking so stupidly with nerves she was practically tap dancing. And there she and Derek were, out on the sidewalk for anyone to see, except the street was empty. It was late, and they were the only two in the world.
And a kiss—Derek knew how to do this. Closing his eyes, and bringing his face toward hers, that face she’d seen a thousand times. It was like coming home, and she kept her eyes open, and they kissed so much that by the time they stopped it seemed like they had traveled a long way.
* * *
—
And that was it, for a while at least. He walked her back to her house and kissed her again, goodbye at the door, which felt right. His behavior had been gentlemanly, she would remind her best friend Carly days later, when Carly warned her about the trouble she was getting into. But that first night, Brooke didn’t want to tell anybody yet. She went upstairs and got ready for bed, her mind a bit spinny, not from drinks, but exhilaration. Butterflies in her stomach as she replayed the evening in her mind.
What did it mean that he’d left it at just a kiss at the door? And in the days that followed, when everything between them remained up in the air, she regretted that she hadn’t pressed the point, that she hadn’t brought him upstairs with her, just to establish whether this was one thing or the other. So that at least
she’d have it to hold on to, a memory of one tangible thing, even if this turned out to be another situation where they never talked about it again, like the last time. But it didn’t feel like that—or was this only wishful thinking? How could she be sure?
She couldn’t get him alone. As days went by, there were stolen glances and his secret texts: I can’t stop thinking about kissing you. His hand on her arm, nothing she ever would have noticed before, but now his touch was electric—how could everybody around them not feel it too? But nobody did, which was a relief, because she liked the idea of this, whatever it was, being just theirs.
Everyone in the office was distracted anyway, focused on other things. Derek was introducing a bill to make gun violence a public health issue, a controversial motion that would probably not pass, but the issue was important, and there was enough support for it on the other side that they had a chance of success. They were busy with lobbying, presentations, consultations, and research, and it was so all-consuming that there were moments where it slipped her mind—his words, his touch, that kiss—but only ever for a second or two, and she’d be back again, daydreaming. Had it really happened at all?
But it was real, as affirmed by those looks, the way her body responded to his hand on the small of her back as they’d enter a room together. And by his texts, especially the one she’d received from him the morning after the night he’d kissed her on the sidewalk—I want to take this slow. And I don’t want to mess this up. But last night was really important, and I can’t wait to do it again.
He wasn’t avoiding her, he told her. Everything that was keeping them apart now was only circumstantial, and when they finally managed to be alone together, the two of them in his office with the door shut, both drunk on the tension between them, he explained just why he wanted them to take their time. She wanted to jump him, then and there, but he was the one holding back. “And it’s weird for me, to not just want to bound ahead—you know that slow is not my speed. But with you, I just want to take in everything we have right now, for the sake of right now and not just to get to the next thing. It’s just that there’s no rush, I think.”
