Page 5 of Screwed (Dad Bod Contracting 4)
“So, I have to point out a few things, here,” I say. “Like I said, I knew Calhoun was a horn dog who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. I knew it. I knew his wife was the same—she’d slept with half of the good-looking aides in Washington, and a good many of the law students and interns. She had a thing for younger guys, apparently. But the senator and his wife had an agreement—keep it discreet, no pregnancies, no tabloid or news attention, and don’t shit where you eat. Meaning, no sleeping with your own office people. I guess that was a major part of the agreement: neither the senator nor his wife was allowed to sleep with anyone who worked for them. Anyone else was fair game, but not the interns, aides, or office workers.”
“And Mrs. Calhoun broke that rule,” Laurel says.
I nod. “Yep. Worse yet, she’d done so in the most dramatic way possible—she didn’t just sleep with one aide, but two. And not just that, but she’d come between me and Landon. Plus, Eileen was married too. Newly wed, the ink still wet on her marriage license, basically. So Presley had ruined not just her own marriage, but my engagement to Landon, and Eileen’s marriage, all in one fell swoop.”
“Wow. Shitty decision making, huh?” Laurel says.
I sigh. “Yep. But it doesn’t stop there, and the story doesn’t leave me squeaky clean, either, unfortunately.”
Laurel blinks at me, and then shakes her head. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“You slept with the senator?”
I groan. “Yeah, I did.”
“Wow.” Laurel pauses. “Not trying to be judgmental, but…wow.”
“Not, like, that day. I held out for…shit, like three months? The senator divorced Presley, and that was a quick, quiet, and truly savage deal, too. Being connected the way he was, Calhoun made sure she didn’t get shit. He paid her a lump-sum deal and that was it. No alimony, nothing. She didn’t get a car, the house, nothing. He got her a halfway decent Georgetown apartment, they split custody in his favor, he paid minimal child support…it was ugly. But that’s beside the point. Landon got fired, and went to work for a congresswoman—who I think he also slept with, incidentally, but again, whatever. Eileen left her husband and moved to Norway to be a diplomatic attaché. Which left only me—and he, as far as I’m aware, never did dip into the pool of women who worked for him in terms of his sexual misadventures.”
“Except for you.”
I nod. “Except for me.”
“How’d that happen? I mean, you don’t strike me as that type of person, you know?” She rolls a shoulder. “Especially knowing what you did about him.”
“I got drunk with him. The day the court finalized his divorce, he and I went out to celebrate. Which wasn’t unusual, honestly. We often had working lunches, dinners, cocktail parties that kind of thing. This time, though…it was different. We both got just…obliterated. One of only two times in my entire life I’ve ever been that drunk. I was lonely and horny since I hadn’t been with anyone since Landon, and I think even Calhoun had been holding off until his divorce was done, for whatever reason. And we just…we got drunk and stupid, and ended up in bed together.”
Laurel eyes me. “But that’s not it, is it?”
“It?” I ask, clarifying.
“That’s not all that happened—you getting drunk and sleeping with your boss—and it’s not why you’re here.”
I shake my head. “Nope. Sadly, I was not that smart. I continued to sleep with him. And somehow it snowballed from sleeping together to becoming involved, openly. And then he proposed, and I accepted—”
“What?!” Laurel shoots forward, her feet stopping the swing. “You didn’t!”
“I did.” I shake my head. “Young, dumb, lonely, and naive, I guess. I was still in my early twenties, and delusionally idealistic. I convinced myself I would be the one to change his philandering ways. He’d be faithful to me even…though he hadn’t been to his wife and kids, blah blah blah.” I waved a hand. “So stupid. He wanted to get married right away, so I started planning. And he was…well, he was really good to me. Took me on vacations to Europe and the Caribbean, got me a nicer apartment—even got me a job with a different senator so there wouldn’t be office drama in our relationship.”
“Let me guess…and then he wasn’t faithful.”
“Yep. Got it in one.” I sigh for the millionth time. “He didn’t even try to be sneaky about it. I had a dentist appointment one afternoon, so I took off work in the morning, went to the dentist, and when the appointment was over I thought I’d surprise him with lunch and desk sex.”
“And you walked in on him.”
“With…get this…my new boss’s secretary.”
“Wow. Not subtle, was he?”
I laugh. “No, not really. That was the last straw for me. That was when I realized Washington was just…gross. Everyone was lying to and manipulating everyone, working solely for their own ends and using anyone they could, and everyone was sleeping with everyone else. It’s a surprisingly small town, in a way. The people who work on Capitol Hill tend to know everyone, and everyone knows everyone’s business. The whole town knew Calhoun was cheating on me, and with whom. That shit goes around, you know? You discuss who’s sleeping with whom around the coffee machine.”
