Page 16 of The Liar's Reckoning

Avery beams at my side, the trauma of the move yesterday nowhere to be found on her lovely face tonight. She’s in a scarlet gown with a high thigh slit and elegantly placed sequins. Her long, platinum hair is loose, falling in perfectly formed waves down her back. When we stood together, posing in the mirror before we headed out tonight, we both agreed we made a stunning couple. “Of course we won,” she’d said.

My opponent in the election was the old incumbent who came with name recognition and a record of flip-flopping on various issues. As much as he may have paid lip service to New York’s purported values, he hasn’t gotten anything done in congress for eighteen years, and I won the race by a seven point margin, surprising a lot of people, including me. Being scandal-free helped, as did all my promises to work across the aisle for the good of New Yorkers.

Whether any of my campaign promises are realistic is yet to be seen. I won’t be sworn in until January, but I mean well, and I like to think it shows. In the idealized version of what politicsshouldlook like, I have a vision for who and how I’ll be as a senator, but the reality of DC is an unknown I’ve been told no one can prepare me for.

I look forward to the challenge, though, and tonight I’ve realized a dream. My father is glowing.I did that. I kept my head down, did the work, said all the right things, stayed perfect, and I put a smile on the old man’s face.

Paul Lawther is a powerful man, and everyone in attendance tonight knows it. Getting on his bad side typically means ruination. He sees himself as a kingmaker—backing winning candidates for office since I was in diapers, using his money and media influence to sway the world in a direction that enriches and continues to empower him.

Imagine any conservative win in America, and my father probably had something to do with it. Guns. School vouchers. Tax cuts for the wealthy—all powered by Dad and his deep pockets.

“Dance with me,” Avery murmurs when my father gets pulled into conversation with a Long Island congressman.

I follow my wife to the dance floor and take her in my arms, smiling down at her as we find the beat of the waltz. “How are you holding up?” she asks.

“If my face hasn’t cracked yet, I think fine.”

“Your smile is still intact. My feet are killing me, though.”

“I told you you’d regret those shoes.”

“I don’t. I love them. I only wished they loved me.”

Being married to Avery is like living with a full-time cheerleader. She’s upbeat, full of energy, and expensive. Keeping her happy requires an apartment on the Upper East Side, designer gowns, weekly spa appointments, and a ridiculous amount ofPilates. She says that’s where she’ll meet all the important people she wants to run around with while I’m being a lawmaker in Washington.

She plans our life while I pore over my constitutional law textbooks from my Harvard days. For the last few months, we’ve been staying with my parents while we waited for the UES apartment to become available. Now that we’re moved in, she’s excited to get to work on becoming a perfect public wife to me and a sought-after socialite.

So far, she hasn’t expressed any regret over what she’s had to give up to be in this marriage. I’m sure there will come a day when she realizes her needs go beyond facials and Dior gowns, where we’ll have to negotiate some sort of sex life for her, but this seems to be our honeymoon period where everything is turning out exactly like we planned a year ago.

She’s still in the mindset of “I’ve had enough sex to last me a lifetime.”

I wish I could say the same.

I think about that night at the Plaza with clockwork-style reliability. Nightly, it happens. No matter where I am or who I’m with, I’ll remember the clench of Silas’s hole around my cock—the scent between his thighs, the taste of his cum, and I’ll find myself hard and aching to touch myself.

I jerk off every day now. Before that night I needed to get off once a week at most, and even then it was more a way to entertain myself for a few boring minutes or an experiment to see if it would help when the stress of my life got too intense.

Now, it feels like survival depends on blowing my load at least once a day.

Turns out I’m a sexual person after all. What most boys go through in their teens—long showers, popping boners at inconvenient times—I’m going through now in my thirties. I binge porn like it’s a Netflix thriller.

Most of the men at the ball tonight are older, unattractive, and I wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole, but there are a few—younger, built, good-looking men my age—a few of whom are serving drinks on platters—that have me averting my gaze in order not to get aroused while dancing with my wife.

My imagination has become my own worst enemy. Thank God for work and the need to maintain appearances. Otherwise, I doubt porn would save me from myself.

“I found a gym for you by the way,” Avery says because I told her to be on the lookout in the new neighborhood.

“Yeah?”

“It’s right beneath the Pilates studio. We could walk over together when you’re in town.”

“Perfect.”

“If you work with a trainer, you could learn what to do in DC, even if the gyms aren’t as nice.”

“Good point.”Didn’tSilas say he was a personal trainer?

“Now that you’ve been a few times, do you think you’ll get an apartment there?”she asks, meaning Washington. “Or stick with hotels?”

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