“Beth,” Jimmy said, but I couldn’t look at him. For some reason, I felt like I was going to start crying. “Beth, look at me.” I shook my head and rubbed one of my eyes and then felt Jimmy’s hand on top of my head, in a gesture that was almost brotherly, like he was about to ruffle my hair or give me a noogie. I did look at him then, and he took a deep breath. “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “We’re all going to be fine.”
It was hard to keep him in focus; everything around me was rocking back and forth. “We should go,” I said, sliding off the barstool. “We’re drunk.” As I stood, I knew there was a good chance I was going to be sick and just hoped I’d make it back to the room before it happened.
“Are you okay?” he asked, and I nodded.
“Good,” he said.
We walked back to our rooms, which were right next to each other, and Jimmy laughed as I closed one eye to concentrate on sliding the card into the lock. “You got that?” he asked in a stage whisper, and I gave him a thumbs-up before going inside.
I did get sick that night, violently so, and I cursed myself as I knelt on the bathroom tile — for how stupid I’d been, for how much I’d had to drink, for how much I’d said. But when I finally brushed my teeth and climbed into bed, empty and wrung out, I thought of Jimmy’s eyes on mine, the way he’d brushed my hair away, and even with my stomach still turning, I smiled into the darkness.
—
The next morning when we got to the car, Jimmy was leaning against it, wearing sunglasses and holding a tray with four cups of coffee in it. “Here, man,” he said, handing one to Matt. “This one’s yours. Black.”
“Thanks,” Matt said and nodded at him. It appeared this exchange was going to be a satisfactory apology for both of them.
Jimmy took out another cup and gave it to me. “One coffee with cream, for you,” he said, pushing his sunglasses on top of his head and winking. Jimmy always winked, just like he always called waitresses sweetheart. This was nothing new, but as I took my cup of coffee from him, my stomach flipped.
Ash came out of the hotel then and Jimmy held out a cup of coffee in her direction, which she accepted wordlessly before getting in the car. I settled in the backseat next to her and put my seat belt on. Matt began to drive, and I drank my coffee, willing my headache to go away. A few minutes later, my phone beeped with a text from Jimmy, who was sitting directly in front of me: Chin up, ok? I felt my stomach flip again, told myself it was just from all the vodka I’d had the night before, although I knew better.
We were pretty quiet on the ride home, but not in the same way as we’d started the trip. There was a resigned sense in the car, the way it feels when you know something is over and you’re just waiting for the end to come.
Chapter 20
Back in Houston, the last few days before the election crawled by. Friday was Halloween, so after Jimmy stopped by a community center and a church group in the morning, he and Matt returned home so he could take Viv trick-or-treating. Ash had decided months earlier that Viv should be a pumpkin for Halloween. (“Because she’s our little pumpkin,” she explained, as if they were the only people in America who referred to their baby as pumpkin.) Beverly made the costume herself, and it was a beautiful one — a soft round pumpkin body with a jack-o’-lantern face on the front. Viv wore green striped tights and sparkly green shoes and (of course) a headband that had a leaf attached to it.
Ash got her dressed upstairs, then had us all wait in the front hall as she brought her down. Both sets of grandparents were there, and we all stood at the bottom of the stairs, clapping as Ash presented her. Viv laughed at the attention and then started clapping for herself. We all agreed that she made an exceptionally cute pumpkin.
Jimmy and Ash posed with her in front of the house, and I took pictures of the three of them smiling and looking adorable, which were immediately posted to Facebook. (What you couldn’t see from the picture was the fight they’d had right before, when Ash asked Jimmy to put on a different shirt so they could better color-coordinate and he said, “What is this, a fucking catalog shoot?” before stomping up the stairs to change.)
Sugar Land went all out for Halloween — there were costume parades and haunted houses in the town square. Families decorated with huge cobwebs and spiders on their lawns, ghosts hanging from trees, scarecrows propped up by front doors. By 3:30, the sidewalks were flooded with groups of tiny costumed children. Matt and I stayed at the house to hand out candy while Jimmy, Ash, and the grandparents took Viv trick-or-treating. (She only made it to about five houses before she was ready to call it quits.)
Later, we all ate the chili that Mrs. Dillon had brought over and drank pumpkin beer and ate leftover miniature Milky Ways. We were acting chipper, maybe for the benefit of the grandparents, but the evening had a strained feeling to it. I got into bed early that night, before 9:00. I wasn’t all that tired, but I was ready for the day to be over, impatient for morning to come so we could be one day closer to putting this all behind us. If we could just get through the next week as planned, I felt that things would be okay. But it took me a while to fall asleep that night, possibly because my mind was busy, thinking, Hurry, hurry.
—
On Saturday, we went to a Rock the Vote rally and I handed out push cards as fast as I could — I’d noticed there were still boxes of them in the den and I figured the fewer that were left, the less depressing it would be. (I noticed that Matt and Ash were both handing out their own push cards at an impressive speed, which made me think they had the same thought I did.)
Candace Elroy wasn’t at this event — the Republicans were always invited but rarely participated — so Jimmy was one of only three Democratic candidates who spoke. As he came up to the stage, I took note of how handsome he looked. He’d always been handsome, of course. This wasn’t anything new. And it’s not like I’d never thought about it before — it was, after all, the very first thing I’d noticed about him when we met. But my awareness of it now felt different. It wasn’t just a fact that I knew about him — like that he was tall or from Texas — it was something I was conscious of all the time, in a way that seemed stupid and dangerous. When we got out of the car that day, he’d brushed by me and my whole body had buzzed. As we walked into the event, he said, “Are you ready for this?” and I said, “As ready as I’ll ever be,” and then he held up his hand for a high five, and when I awkwardly slapped his palm, I felt my cheeks get warm.
Katie stood next to me while Jimmy spoke. She was as serious and diligent as ever and had plans to move to DC in January. Matt had already hooked her up with a few people there, and I knew without a doubt that she’d find a job easily, that she’d be successful. She was so certain of what she wanted to do, and I felt something like jealousy that day as she smoothed her ponytail and clapped at Jimmy’s words. When he was done, she turned to me out of the blue and said with complete seriousness, “You should be proud of how you handled the social media. Not everyone your age can navigate it so well.”
—
That night, we picked up pizza on the way home and ate an early dinner in front of the television, balancing plates on our laps. We were all quieter those last few days — there was no more fighting or at least none that I saw. Matt wasn’t quite so forceful with his opinions, and Jimmy didn’t push back as much. The two of them were acting like a couple who are getting divorced but still have to live in the same house after the decision’s been made — there was nothing left to fight for so they may as well be civil.