Page 44 of Wicked Me
“Please,” I said and pushed my glass toward him.
But he started pouring before the glass had stilled, and water slopped all over my hand.
“Jesus, kid.” Riley slammed his wine down and threw his napkin at me. “Watch what you’re doing.”
“It’s okay,” I assured the boy, then turned a sharp gaze on Riley. “It’s just water.”
“Sorry. S-sorry.” The boy’s cheeks erupted in a blush, and he carried his pitcher stiffly away.
“Riley,” I scolded while I dabbed at my hands. “What the hell? It was an accident.”
He stretched his arm across the back of the booth like he hadn’t even heard me, but his jaw pulsed like he was actually angry. About water. This man sitting across from me was not the boy I grew up with. Had politics warped his mind into thinking he was better than everyone else and could therefore treat everyone he thought was beneath him like dirt?
He used to be so compassionate. When we passed homeless people on the street, he was always the first to start digging through his pockets. He used to volunteer at a reading center for kids with me. If it wasn’t politics that had changed him, something else had, but this new, short-tempered Riley definitely wasn’t my favorite thing about being back in D.C.
“I’m just tired, that’s all,” he said and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “He wasn’t even looking at where he was—”
“Drop it,” I warned, my voice low.
Was this what it was like to reprimand a petulant child? Honestly, what was his problem?
His cell rang, and he nearly dropped it in his empty wine glass in his haste to answer it.
“Steve, my boy,” he answered.
The house wine had stained his lips crimson, which was why I only drank red alone at home and with a pan of brownies. Every time he grinned, it reminded me of Dracula, and I had to look away.
With him distracted, I fished my phone out from my purse and did a few quick keyword searches for Max Cleary and Rick Chambers together. Several photos showed the two men smiling, shaking hands, or posing with the current president. One article from three years ago detailed a veterans’ benefits bill they were collaboratively sponsoring.
Rick, who was probably in his early thirties by now, had returned from a tour in Baghdad a few months before I met him. A blizzard of shrapnel from a homemade bomb had nearly taken off his arm, but Max Cleary quickly took him under his wing when Rick returned to the states. When he wasn’t paving his way to Capitol Hill at the Clearys’, Rick visited my house. Always eager to please, he did odd jobs to help get us ready for our move to Wichita.
But both he and Max were thought of as war heroes. They weren’t involved in any scandals, at least outed ones, but a year ago Rick became the twenty-fifth senator, and the second from Pennsylvania, to switch parties since 1890. His explanation was that his beliefs were no longer aligned with the other party’s. Was that why Rick didn’t want Max to be president? Because they were now on opposite sides of the political spectrum? Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary, nothing that would inspire Rick to turn against his old friend Max, at least according to the first page of Google results.
Maybe it wasn’t political, and if it wasn’t, then it had to be personal. Something to do with Riley and his younger brother who had earlier fueled me up to maximum power. But what?
Our waitress paraded a tray of food in our direction and then set one plate in front of me. “You had the nut-kissed meatballs and linguini, right?”
