Page 27 of Bi-Partisan

I’m keenly aware of the handful of people in my office that don’t know Adrian isn’t my real boyfriend. During the strategy meeting yesterday, we decided that only the people in the room needed to be in on the plan, so I’ll need to keep up appearances.

Before I can overthink it, I stride over to him. “Hey, darlin’,” I say with an easy smile plastered on my face.

His head snaps to me at the pet name, and his eyes widen as I rest a hand on his elbow and lean in to kiss his cheek.

“Not everyone on my team knows the truth,” I whisper in his ear before pulling back.

He still looks a little bewildered, but then he nods slowly. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey, so change of plans. Ben isn’t coming, so it’s just us for lunch,” Mina says as she approaches the front. Then she holds out her hand to Adrian. “Hi, nice to meet you in person. Mina, press secretary and best friend.”

“Oh, hi,” he says as he quickly extracts his hand from his pocket and takes Mina’s hand to shake. Then he looks at me. “I thought we were meeting here,” he says, his voice lowered.

I drop my voice as well. “Technically, we can’t talk about anything election related on government property, so to be safe, we’re going out.”

“Right, makes sense,” he says, shoving his hand back in his pocket.

“I’ll just go grab my coat.”

Hawk n’ Dove is just around the corner from the Cannon Building, so it doesn’t take long for us to walk there. It’s only about fifteen minutes before we’re being shown to a table in the far back. It’s probably a cliche that this is one of my favorite places to eat, but it’s basically a Washington political landmark, and I love the vibe. Thankfully, there’s no one sitting near our table, but we will still need to be careful to talk quietly. That was going to be the case no matter where we met, though, seeing as we don’t have a lot of time before Adrian has to get back to work, and I have to get to a meeting.

Mina slides into the booth side of the table before starting to wiggle out of her coat. When Adrian starts to shrug out of his, I step behind him to catch it out of reflex. Then, I drape it over the back of one of the chairs and hold it out for him. He stiffens slightly, clearly not expecting it, but doesn’t say anything and slowly sinks into the seat.

I catch Mina trying and failing at suppressing her amusement as I shed my coat, so when I drop into the chair next to Adrian, I nudge her shin with my foot and give her a pointed look. The last thing I want is for her to make Adrian feel uncomfortable, and she has a terrible habit of instigating and meddling.

We’re silent as we peruse the menu, then once the server takes our order, Mina breaks the ice.

“Alright, so Jamie said you had some questions about the plan,” she prompts.

“Yeah,” he says, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. “I guess mainly, I want to know what the expectations are—what you’d need from me to make this…”

“Convincing?” she supplies, and he nods. “Well, today, all I need is a cute photo of the two of you to use for Jamie’s coming out post. We’re handling the coming out portion of this in two phases—an Instagram post, and an interview with District Buzz.”

“District Buzz?” he asks, and if I’m not mistaken, he sounds a little pissed about it. “Aren’t they the ones that…”

“Yeah, they’re who broke the story. Normally, I wouldn’t want to give them the satisfaction of also being the only official news outlet to interview Jamie. But I have a friend who works there, and she actually tipped me off that her slimeball of a coworker had the story. She’s queer, and I trust her,” she explains. Then she smirks at me. “Plus, our dear Jamie was feeling a little petty and wanted to send a little southern passive aggressive ‘fuck you’ to the original reporter.”

“I’d be petty, too.” The corner of his mouth ticks up. “So would you need me for the interview?” he asks, looking at me this time.

“No, not unless you wanted to be there,” I say.

He quickly shakes his head. “That was actually one of my hesitations that I wanted to talk to you about. I…” he pauses for a moment and takes a deep breath before continuing. “I don’t do well with people’s focus being on me. I have anxiety. It’s not something I typically share with people, but I figured it would be important for you to know now because if part of the expectation here is that I would need to be super visible, then I don’t think I can help you with this.”

He looks down at his lap, where his hands are twisting the cloth napkin. My impulse is to reach out and take his hand to offer him some comfort, like I did last night, but I’m not sure if it’ll be welcome. So I settle for pressing my knee against his.

“I understand, and thank you for tellin’ me,” I say, offering him a soft smile when he looks up.

“We’ll do everything we can to ensure your privacy. It may be a little difficult at first, but I’m hoping that in a few weeks, this’ll all be old news,” Mina assures him.

“So the interview…?” he asks.

“All you need to do for that will be help to Jamie get your story straight,” she says.

He nods, his shoulders relaxing. “Okay. Now, you said you hope that in a few weeks this all will die down. So how long do you envision the charade going on for?”

“Ideally, through the election. A public coming out followed too soon by a breakup might look suspicious.”

“That’s assuming my name even makes it on the ballot,” I point out bitterly.

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