Chapter 4
It was another two weeks before he saw her again, and by then the craving he felt to see her face nearly outweighed his need to hate her. And it was a need, he determined. He needed to hate her, to blame her, to have nothing to do with her for his own sanity. The trouble was, trying to hate her was driving him absolutely insane.
When he did see her, it was 6:15 on a Tuesday morning. He’d been working unbelievably hectic hours, hadn’t gotten home until after two the night before and the alarm had gone back off at 5:45 that morning. Between campaigning and regular work, three hours of sleep a night had been the norm recently, and he could feel it catching up with him. Still, he welcomed the distraction. The more he worked, the less time he had to think of her. To think of her long neck and her big blue eyes and her innocent smile. To wonder if she was with Dr. FreeRide, if they were married, if they had kids. The thought made him extremely jealous, which in turn made him angry at himself. He thought he’d gotten over those feelings years earlier. If she’d only stayed away.
So he sat in his car at 6:15 that morning on his way to work, and as he waited for the light he was at to turn green, she jogged up to the corner in the same outfit he’d seen her in at the Baked and Wired. She didn’t see him and he was glad, because he found he couldn’t take his eyes off of her as she pulled her ponytail holder out of her hair, pulled her hair back, and redid it to keep it off her neck in the late August heat. Then she jogged directly in front of his car and he looked down as though he was looking at his stereo and watched her out of the corner of his eye, thankful he was wearing sunglasses.
As she jogged, she glanced at his car and he knew she either recognized it or him inside, because she smiled and started to wave. But he kept his head down as if he hadn’t seen her and after a brief pause, her smile disappeared and she continued jogging across the street and down the sidewalk, looking back at him once and taking his stomach and heart along with her. He watched her go as long as he could until finally, the car behind him honked and he looked up to see that his light was green.
That night, he dreamt of her. He hadn’t had a nightmare about Rosslyn in over a year, but that night he dreamt she was there with him, as his assistant. But unlike April, she was standing next to him, and when he was shot, she helped him sit down against a wall with a small smile, and he believed instantaneously he was going to be ok. Then she handed him a note. Through his blurred vision, he read it. I’m sorry Josh, I have to go. Do good. Donna. He looked up as she jogged away from him wearing navy gym shorts and a white tank top.
**********
A few days later, Sam walked into his office and sat down in the visitor’s chair with a tired sigh. Josh glanced up at him but then went back to the half-written bill in his hand. “Yes?”
“I recall a life in which I slept, dated, watched sitcoms and ate things on plates instead of out of plastic containers.”
“I recall no such life.”
He yawned. “How late last night?”
Josh put his pen and the bill down then propped his head up on his hands on his desk. “Three.”
“When did you get in this morning?”
“6:30.”
“That’s even less sleep than me.”
Josh shrugged. “I’m fine.”
“You’ve been doing that for weeks.”
“It’s fine.”
“Josh…”
“Josh…”
“I’m fine.”
“When was the last time you left the office?”
“There’s a lot to do.”
“It’s been weeks. You can’t keep doing this.”
“I get more done at night.”
“Killing yourself working isn’t going to make you stop thinking about her.”
“Well something has to!”
“Josh…”
“It has to, Sam. It has to.”
“Yeah…”
“It doesn’t make sense. She’s been gone longer than she was here. Why can’t I… It was only six weeks.”
“Yeah, but it only took about six minutes.”
“Why’d she leave?”
“Why’d she leave?”
“She went back to her boyfriend.”
“I would’ve…” he looked back down at his desk, took a deep breath and then looked back at Sam. “I gotta get back to work. Did you need something besides food on a plate?”
Sam stared at him for several seconds before standing up. “726.”
“Pre-School programs for children with special needs.”
“Right.”
“What about it?”
“Toby thinks we should get Allen and Wilson to shelve it until after the election.”
Josh stood up and walked to his door with Sam. “You disagree?”
“I think we should get in on it; try to push it through. Passing an education bill in September or October would help with the election. And not just us, it’d help with tight congressional and senatorial races too. Plus it’s, you know… good for kids with special needs.”
Josh nodded. “We’d have a better chance of passing it if we won back the house.”
“We’d have a better chance of winning back the house if we passed it.”
He looked at Sam for a minute before yelling for April. She spun in her chair to face him and gave him a questioning look. “Call the Children’s Rights Council and get a copy of 726.” She nodded and turned back to her desk.
**********
The following Sunday he left the office at eight o’clock, the earliest he’d left since the Sunday he had off and ended up working anyway three weeks earlier. He was out of coffee at the townhouse and stopped at the Safeway in his neighborhood for a few staples; as much as he hated grocery shopping, coffee was a necessity. So at 8:15, he walked into the Safeway and picked up a basket, heading through but not into the produce section.
She was knocking on watermelons when he saw her, and he was struck not for the first time at exactly how beautiful she was, standing there in loose fitting jeans, a Georgetown t-shirt and sandals, with what looked like no make-up on and her hair down around her shoulders. She looked fresh and beautiful and young and, also not for the first time, he found it extremely hard to breathe.
She looked over at him and he looked away, but it was too late. She’d seen him watching her and was smiling at him. He was standing next to a display of bananas and started looking at them, pulling a plastic bag from the roll hanging over them and putting a few inside even though he didn’t like bananas.
“So, we must live near each other,” she said tentatively a minute later.
He put the bananas in his basket and told himself to ignore her and move on into the rest of the store, but instead found himself looking at nectarines. “Guess so.” The truth was, he knew exactly where she lived. He’d seen her car three weeks earlier on
She picked up a watermelon then and put it into her cart. Another one slipped and started to roll down the pile and she reached out to catch it before it rolled to the floor. Two more from the top of the pile started rolling then and she put her other arm up to catch them, her body and arms twisted awkwardly around the display. He found himself rooted to the spot as he watched her try to keep them from falling. After a few seconds, she looked over at him. “Could you uhh…help me here?”
“Could you help me with something?”
“Sure, what?”
“According to this, the governor voted against the morning after pill. But according to this, he voted in favor of it.”
“Ooh.”
“Yeah. That’s not good, right? That’s wish washy?”
“Wish washy?”
“Yes.”
“Is that a word?”
“Of course it is.”
“I’ve never heard that word.”
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t one.”
“I’m just saying, I had a 760 verbal on my SAT’s and I’ve never heard that word.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed by your SAT score?”
“Most people are.”
“You have a habit of telling people your SAT score?”
“Only people I’m trying to impress.”
“Or tease.”
“Right.”
“What about this morning after pill thing?”
“There was probably something he was opposed to in to the bill the first time. Maybe it restricted who could take it or the reasons it could be taken. Or maybe the drug hadn’t gone through enough testing and he didn’t think it was safe.”
“You think?”
“I’ll talk to him about it.”
“You will?”
“Yeah.”
“Ok. Thanks.”
“Hey Donna?”
“Yeah?”
“Good catch.”
“Josh, I’m about to make a huge mess here.”
He focused on her again, put his basket on the floor and walked quickly to where she was standing awkwardly leaning against the watermelon display. “Good catch,” he said as took one of the watermelons from her hand and put it carefully on top of the others. He took one of the others and did the same as she slowly and carefully stood upright, holding the last of the three that had almost fallen.
“Thank you,” she said, embarrassed.
This was the closest they’d stood since the day in the gas station six weeks earlier, and he could smell the shampoo in her hair and see the freckles on her nose. “You’re welcome,” he said in a voice he didn’t quite recognize as he took the last watermelon from her hands. Their fingers brushed lightly and he had the nearly overwhelming urge to take her face in his hands and kiss her. Instead, he turned around abruptly and put the watermelon in his basket.
“You didn’t knock on it,” she said.
He looked at her with raised eyebrows as he picked up the basket, now much heavier. “Knock on it?”
“To see if it’s hollow.”
“Hollow?”
She knocked on his watermelon. “They sound hollow when they’re ripe.”
“Oh…kay.”
She looked up at him and smiled and he was lost again. “They do!”
He tilted his head. “Where do you get this stuff?”
“It’s well known stuff, Josh,” she said, walking back to her cart.
He smirked at her and started walking slowly. “If you say so.”
She walked next to him with her cart as they walked into the bread section. He picked up a loaf of Sunbeam and put it in his basket, which was nearly full and starting to hurt his arm. “You don’t live in
She took the bread out of his basket, switching it with wheat bread, then put a loaf of the same thing into her cart as he watched with wide eyes. “I moved here two years ago. But I just moved to
“Why DC?” he asked as casually as possible as he mentally berated himself for hoping she didn’t say anything about a man.
“Law school,” she said casually as she guided him to the deli. The woman behind the counter looked at her. “A half-pound of turkey breast. Shaved, please.”
“Law school?” he asked surprised.
She looked at him and smiled. “I just started my last year on Monday.”
He looked down at her t-shirt. “At
“Yep.”
He smiled at her then, maybe for the first time since this whole thing started six weeks before. “What type of law?”
“Child advocacy.”
“Child advocacy?”
She turned and took the turkey from the woman behind the deli counter. “Someone once told me children needed to be our top priority,” she said in a shy voice, her eyes still on the woman.
He stared at her with wide eyes, his mouth open and his breathing quickened. Someone said something to him but he couldn’t make it out. Finally, she turned her head slowly and looked at him and they both smiled giddy, goofy smiles. “Sir?” someone asked him again.
He turned his head then, looking at the woman in the deli. “Same thing,” he said dazedly, looking back at Donna.